Clay360 Project
Happy new year! Back in production mode here at MudStuffing Industries. After such a great holiday season, I geeked out and bought a rad little camera, the GoPro Hero2. I think it’s more for extreme sports enthusiasts, but it also has some cool features that interested me artistically. Whenever I make a large purchase like this, I start feeling guilty and obligated to turn it into some sort of business expense. So I got this idea that I am calling the Clay360 Project (if anyone has a better name, throw it out there). Basically what I plan on doing is giving everyone a 360 degree view of the ceramic process, start to finish, with all the mundane shit thrown in as well. The GoPro camera came with a variety of attachments, rail mounts, tri pod mounts, head mounts, car mounts etc. etc. What I plan on doing is this….
Starting at the very beginning of the process record the: wedging, throwing, trimming, finishing, bisquing, waxing, glazing, wood prep, kiln prep, wadding, loading, bricking, firing, unloading, decaling, re-firing, and photographing of EVERY SINGLE POT or ceramic piece for a firing.
As most of you know, all that stuff is incredibly repetitive, in order to not bore the shit out of you, I’ll only be shooting one frame every 2 seconds. That means for every hour of work, you will see 1 minute of video (30 frames per second). I figure I’ll be posting an average of 2-3 minutes of video of everyday of the project. And probably ending up with 40 minutes to an hour of total footage.
Below is a test of a hours worth of work this week. Throwing 16 mugs, and putting feet and handles on 12 from the day before.
Whatcha think? Would this be interesting? Would love to hear some encouragement (or not), cause it would be a pretty intensive project for me (the me who has trouble with starting projects and not finishing).
I had a few reasons I thought this would be a good project. 1) The more people who understand the intensive work that goes into handmade objects, the more they will value handmade works. There is no better way to convey “work” than to show someone physically doing the work for 30 days straight in order to produce a load of pots. 2) If any of my pottery heros did a project like this, I would be enthralled, and tune in everyday, popcorn at the ready. Being able to see a series of work start to finish would be kinda cool even from an average potter like myself. 3) Money… moneymoneymoney lol! YouTube is now monetizing my videos, so if you feel like click an ad in the video, that would rock! I’m curious to see if there is any money in making pottery videos on YouTube. Even if it’s only enough to buy a six pack of the “really nice beer” I think it’d be worth it.
BTW – Music would make these videos infinitely more entertaining, but if I run ads, I can’t use good music unless I have permission.
If I follow through, this would happen after my next firing. I plan on firing at the end of the month or early February, so I would probably start shooting then.





























