Do you ever reach a tipping point?
I did.
I had just made a batch of beads to fill a couple of orders & I was getting low on my good "plastic feel" ceramic clay. I went to pull some clay that had been pugged 5.5 years ago. And it was short. Not plastic at all. Ugh!

When clay is short – it makes for a very bad studio day. Nothing ever comes out right…

I have got to have over 700 lbs of this hard, short clay…

Sometimes it is not too hard to break some down and expose lots of surface area to water & beer.

Yes! I prefer beer. Others use yogurt…

The goal being to promote bacteria growth in the clay so the particles will align and work in a longer, more plastic state.

This gray area is from my last batch of brewed clay from a few months ago.

So while I started to break down this clay, my ADHD kicked into full gear! My studio is not set up to how I work now.

It’s a freaking mess of thrown together spaces piled with crap and unfinished projects.

It’s a great space for bring in a basement. Just not well utilized at all!

So section by section – it is getting purged and then rearranged (clay is a heavy medium to work in, so moving around is not a frequent option).

My drywall boards are better over here – and easily accessible if I choose to do lots of slab work once again.

I can actually use my rolling cart to put work in progress on (instead of finding places to clean off to use).

And lots of room to store the freshly pugged clay once I get started doing that (it is going to take weeks to pug ALL of that clay!!!)

And as I want to spend more time creating – getting all of this cleaned and rearranged will allow me to clear my mind and focus on the work I need to be making.

More to come!