Discussion of NC Granite Glazes | Dalton Hughes
Overview
The three artists — Sean Bailey, Steve Fishman and Dalton Hughes — opening a joint exhibit at the Skylight gallery in Hillsborough, North Carolina, on Aug. 30, 2024, have been preparing for the show since January and hope to present coordinated works that reinforce and compliment each other. This is a short conversation about pottery glazes being developed for the show by Hughes. Each glaze being tested utilizes a granite from different quarries across the state of North Carolina. The conversation took place at the Mebane studio of Fishman on July 21, 2024.
Transcript
Sean Bailey
… Dalton, do you want to talk about these are some pieces that you brought for different places? Yeah.
Dalton Hughes
So essentially, I’ve got two things that happened in the past like month. For one, I’ve gotten a selection of granites from seven different granite quarries all through the state, like Rocky Mount, Neverson, Princeton, Salisbury, Crabtree —all these different places that have their own granite quarries. And as they cut these large slabs, all the fines that come off of the blades just get washed into a pond. And I have a friend that gives me access to all of those fines. They just go up, scoop out from the pond, like the size of a backhoe. You can just like a five gallon bucket, they just give me. And it’s all free. So I created a glaze out of each one of those granites…
Sean Bailey
Which was from Rocky Mountain, you remember?
Dalton Hughes
Oh, that’s one of my favorites. In the right light, if you can see, sort of like ambered to it, but it’s like it’s a really beautiful celadon that you get out of it. And I use that white slip trailing that you can see and there’s some red dots on there. All of it shines through. So it was like kind of what I’ve really been excited about.
And then I got a call from a friend, he found a clay pit. And he’s like, hey, it’s a big pit of clay. If I can get my hands on it, it’s enough for not only my lifetime, but like several potters’ lifetime… So I went out there on Tuesday [July 16, 2024], and I hand dug about 500 pounds of clay, processed it and I’m gonna let it age for a week and then I’m just gonna start throwing it.
Between all of these materials, these granite materials that I’ve gotten, and this new clay body that I’m working with, I’m just gonna see what pops out. And I made a lot of the work that I wanted to show … so I’m going to glaze those with this color palette, but also maybe interchange some of this new clay body that I’ve gotten and just see what pops out.
Looking at what Steve’s been doing, you kind of see like some of these really beautiful colors like these purples and pinks and peachy colors. And I got this I’ve never seen this before on using like really natural materials, but you see this like pinkish bloom color I’ve never seen this happen before in a firing and you can see I still get this green ash drip on the bottom. And all this mottled gray, kind of like — I was describing it — kind of like if you go hiking and you see the lichen on rocks, it kind of reminds me of that. And I learned of a new rock called Unakite and I’ll show you.
Sean Bailey
Does this always happen at the edge of the…?
Dalton Hughes
For this particular one, yeah. And so, sometimes it breaks and you see it bubble over. But I’ve never seen these before. And I’m so taken by this. And so I’m just gonna, I mean, for the next like month or so, up until the show, I’m gonna be seeing what pops out I already have a lot of made already, but I’m going to be really loosening up and trying to let these natural materials really show but that’s kind of what I’m going with in terms of the color the surface decoration.
Steve Fishman
So is the color of the clay body, do you already know how this stuff’s gonna fire?
Dalton Hughes
Yeah. …It’s a little bit darker than this, the more like this color. It’s got a amount of iron in it. So yeah, so we’ll see. But that’s kind of what I’ve got going visually and then it’s in all different shapes and forms, lots of jars, small things …
