What is Sgraffito?

Sgraffito is the art of scratching through to a layer below.  Potters and ceramic artists utilize the technique, as well as enamelists.  I learned the technique from Angela Gerhard several years ago, using liquid porcelain enamel.  

Scratching through liquid porcelain enamel is delicate business.  If it's too wet, you get little squiggles that roll up and are difficult to irradicate.  If you let it dry too much, when your lines cross, large chunks can flake off.  So, creating fine textures are difficult.  I recently learned of a technique that was developed by John Kilmaster.  It's called granular spray enamel.  It is very exciting to have a new way to create design and texture in a free an exacting manner.  In the picture below, you can see me spraying a steel mask that I fabricated in a class I took from Alisa Looney, a student of John's.

Here are some process pics of one of the test pieces I made in Alisa's class.  We taped the steel tiles to cardboard to make it easier to work on.  The last photo is of the piece after it was fired.  It was slightly underfired, so there is a lovely, bumpy texture to it.

I went to Alisa's class planning to make jewelry.  We spent three days making test tiles and fabricated one large piece.  We made a few token pairs of earrings.  I had to come up with designs on the fly - flying by the seat of my pants - ha, ha.  Knowing that I am going to be exhibiting a collection based on The Day of The Dead at Whidbey Art Gallery in October, I decided to create a sugar skull.  However, my sugar skull somehow turned into a more life-like skull. 

The ease of creating lines with the sprayed on enamel was so freeing!  I really enjoyed creating fine detail and shading with cross hatching.  The photo above left is pre-firing.  The middle photo is just after the skull came out of the kiln.  In the third photo, I'm applying watercolor enamel to the skull to add more shading and visual interest.

Here, you can see the little scratching tool we made in the class.  I'm using it to remove some of the watercolor enamel before I complete the final firing.

This is the skull after the final firing.  I'm pretty excited about how it came out.  Now, I have to figure out how to do this process at my studio.  It's messy - not something you can do inside.  I have the spray gun, but I don't have a compressor yet.  So, I'm still doing sgraffito the way I learned from Angela.  Here's a little video of how it's done.

I thought I'd share a sneak peak of the sgraffito process in porcelain enamel that I use to create much of my recent jewelry. The is for the Obi on a new Kimono Box I'm making. More to come tomorrow....

If you are interested in learning how to do sgraffito in porcelain enamel, you should check out my Beginning Sgraffito Enamel Technique Tutorial.

The American Dream

The American Dream, as long as I can remember, was to own a house.  Unfortunately, that dream has become unattainable for so many.  For others, it has become their worst nightmare.

I absolutely love watching all of the tiny house shows on television, perusing the internet for tiny house designs, and imagining what it would be like to live in such a small space.  I'm not sure a tiny house is for me, but there is something so addictive about the movement.  I think it's the allure of being mortgage free.  Being mortgage free is being free.  For so many people, having a mortgage is like having a ball and chain around your ankle.  It keeps us from jobs that make us happy, from traveling more, and a host of other pleasantries. 

Several years ago, I created a little series of paintings that incorporated tiny enamel houses.  Like so many, we were worried whether or not we would be able to keep our dream house - the one we built with our own four hands.  The series was a reflection on the American Dream of owning a home.  It was always our dream of building our own home.  Once we achieved that goal, the economy started to unravel.  My husband's job was severely affected, and so was our income.  The American Dream was becoming our worst nightmare.

I went back to work as an optician to keep our home.  It pays the mortgage, but that's it.  I am thankful for it, but I look back on the days when my parents were young, when owning a home was so much more attainable.  Will we ever achieve that balance again?

My little dream houses bring back memories for so many of the "good old days."  Creating them helps me to stay positive during difficult times.  I plan to continue this series, developing it over the next several months.  I hope to help keep the memories alive and the dream within reach.