Beans and Cornbread D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
October 2009
Kate Brown's Tile Class
Page: 2The banter among the students becomes humorous — nervous laughter? — as they begin to dig into their projects. One woman has out her cell phone.
"Are you calling a life line?" another student asks with a laugh, referencing the television show "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?"
"No, I'm using my calculator feature to see how big my tiles have to be," the phone-wielder replies.
From another corner of the room, a student gives out an exasperated "Shoot!," drawing some compassionate, good-natured giggles.
Seems I should have whipped out a cell phone calculator of my own, or at least been a bit more attentive with the ruler. I realize I've cut one row of tiles an inch narrower than the rest. Laying out my newsprint drawing as a template, I calculate that I can fix my boo-boo by using the smaller tiles sideways, creating a freeform piece. Okay, hanging piece with an asymmetrical border it is! Heck, the lizard's tail extending beyond the box might add a whimsical dimension to the piece. One can hope.
The afternoon flies by with time spent painting and allowing coats of slip to dry. I enjoy the pleasant sunny day, the lovely mountain views all around, the homemade bread and herbal tea.
Back at the slab — now gouging pieces from the lizard's back to reveal the terra cotta clay below the color, adding texture and tones to the piece — I discover that I am not the only one having to adjust her project to compensate for a misjudgment or error. One classmate tosses out a whole row of tiles she cut too small. Another compensates for a design miscalculation by beveling the edges of her tiles. And the woman painstakingly creating a whole slate of identical decorative tiles has to simplify her design.
The last of the students is now finishing up, painting with the final coat of slip.
Brown gives us a demonstration of slab rolling with a handmade plywood contraption and huge homemade concrete rolling pin. Okay, working with clay is body-building work!
She then pulls out some previously fired tiles and demonstrates how we can cement them to a board or set them into a wall. She also has tiles she has already mounted to a board and demonstrates how to grout them to give a finished look.
As the grout dries, Brown invites us to walk around and see each other's work. There are little exclamations of surprise, the most common question being, "Do you know where you're going to put your tiles?"
Brown calls the students back to the grout demo. She rubs the surface briskly with an old sock, removing the excess grout from the glazed tile surfaces. The colored grout pulls the piece together visually, and the class members ooh and ahh.
Always the recycler, Brown then washes the cement and grout off the tiles, saving them to demonstrate these same procedures to future classes.
Brown estimates that after drying, she'll have our pieces fired and back to us in about a month. We can come out to the Mimbres Ranch again to pick them up, or she will bring them into town and deliver them.
And so I make arrangements to meet up with Kate Brown one afternoon on Bullard Street.
"Here they are. And they came out great!" says an excited, smiling Brown as she pulls a huge paper bag out of the back seat of her car. Kneeling on the sidewalk in front of Isaac's Bar & Grill, she unwraps a few tiles to show me how my colors came out with the firing. I'm delighted.
I hurry home and lay the tiles out on the floor of my studio to see the lizard as a whole.
Darn! I miscalculated the width of the middle section of the tail. It's too long and one side does not match up with the other tile. I pull out the offending tile and realize the tail actually looks better without it! Huh!
And the "extra" tile makes a great coaster!
Kate Brown's next tile-making class will be held Oct. 24, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. $95 includes materials, instruction, firing and delivery. Next month, on Nov. 6, she will mark 40 years as a potter with a celebration and sale. And the 26th annual studio sale at the nearby Mimbres Hotspring Ranch, including Brown's work, will be held Dec. 2-3. Kate Brown Pottery and Tile, HC 15 Box 1335, San Lorenzo, 536-9935, katebrown@gilanet.com, www.katebrownpottery.com