Kristen Young Ceramics
104 St and Jasper Ave T5G Edmonton, AB, Canada

I think this is one of my favourite pots I've ever made. It's a honey pot, filled with raw, local honey. I like how the roundness of it makes it look kind of floaty. I like how the glaze "breaks" over the carved hexagons, and it has this gooey drippy look that's just like honey. The design matches the function. And it's used almost daily, which is how pots should be. #pottery #ceramics #honey #honeypot #canadianceramics #madeincanada #handmade #clay

Pottery teaches you a lot of life lessons. Like how you have to do a lot of boring stuff so that you can do the fun stuff!! Cleaning kiln shelves is a huge pain, but luckily it was nice out so I could do most of it outside: chipping off old glaze drips and really flakey kiln wash. Then repainting kiln wash on. This is something I've been putting off for a while so it felt so good to get it done. You can't really tell from the photos but my shelves were in bad shape. I can jus...t see my old teacher Garry frowning at them. If you accidentally put a pot that you're firing onto a glaze drip than they'd probably fuse together and ruin your pot. Or if you don't have enough kiln wash on your shelves, then your pot could fuze onto the shelf directly and you'd have to break it off of the shelf, possibly ruining your shelf. Another lesson that came to mind as I was working on these and making a huge mess and chipping bits of glass and kiln wash all over the place, was that sometimes things have to get a lot worse before they get better. Now I'm one step closer to my glaze firing! #potterylifelessons #ceramics #pottery #kiln #skuttkilns #yeg

Oldies from my last year at Kootenay School of the Arts. These bottles were fired in the gas kiln there and shown at Touchstones gallery in Nelson, BC. I like to think of them as magical potion bottles and one day I'll have a nice place to put them in with no wood paneling allowed in the house!! Lol! Whoa just realized that I graduated 5 years ago already. It's a struggle to fit pottery into my daily life now but I'm going to make it happen! #kootenayschoolofthearts #pottery #stoneware #clay #nelsonbc #bottles #magic #potion #determination #ceramics

Bottoms up! And by that I mean that I just finished painting the bottoms of all these pots and more with wax so that they are now ready to glaze. One of the not fun parts about pottery, in my opinion. But I watched a million episodes of Gilmore Girls while I did it. So that helped. #crushedit #booyah #ceramics #pottery #yeg

The bisque firing went well. Couldn't see any cracks or anything. Nothing exploded. So I'm happy about that. Now to remix and re-strain my glazes a few times. After sitting in buckets doing nothing for a couple of years that will be a big job. Then comes painting the bottoms of the pots with wax so that glaze doesn't stick to them. Then the glazing process. After that the next step will be prepping my kiln shelves: scraping off bits of fired glaze, and painting them with "kiln wash." And then the glaze firing! One step at a time.

Loading up for the first firing, the bisque firing, to get the pieces ready to glaze!

I finally unburied my kiln in my parents' garage. Hopefully this means I will GET GOING!

I really need to do a firing. No space. My kiln is in the garage and it's cold out there. And lots of other excuses. So there.

Here's what I've been working on lately!

Film yourself making things and you'll discover the interesting facial expressions that go with it!

After a long absence I'm slowly getting back into it!

I am an elf in my workshop today! ;)