jbbartram-illu - Tumblr blog

[jbbartram-illu]

A 5200-year-old pottery bowl from Shahr-e Sukhteh bearing what could possibly be the world's oldest example of animation. It shows 5 images of a wild goat leaping, and if you put them in a sequence (like a flip book), the wild goat leaps to nip leaves off a tree. Museum of Ancient Iran

[jbbartram-illu]

[jbbartram-illu]

So I mentioned glaze issues from my last kiln firing & here's one of them. I am SO GLAD that I followed my gut* & tossed these selkie sculptures onto little trays at the last minute because two of them stuck and would have messed up my kiln shelves if they had been tray-less!!!! TERRIFYING!!!!

Thankfully I can most likely dremel off the glaze drips from the two that stuck and free them from these ugly slapdash trays (a bunch of pals on insta suggested I leave them like this & make them trinket dishes, but I can't emphasize enough how unpleasant these trays are, being plain unglazed/unrefined clay that's been toasted in multiple firings). Stay tuned for news on how the stuck selkies fare!

*by 'followed my gut' I actually mean a combo of that + knowing that one of the glazes on them has crystals that make those rad spots but also make the glaze run more in the kiln, so not letting them go straight on the kiln shelf is probably always the best move

[jbbartram-illu]

It meeeeeee (did I reblog this a while ago? Maybe, but I love that she's still out & about!) <3

Jessica Bartram

[jbbartram-illu]

I fired my kiln this past Saturday and got some pretty sweet stuff out of it (also some minor glaze issues, but nothing catastrophic & more good than bad, so phew!). Especially happy with some of these mug inside/handle glazes...

& also pretty thrilled with how vibrant the underglaze stayed!!

[jbbartram-illu]

hi everybody please reblog this and tell me your go-to coffee order right now and if you don't like coffee feel free to include your go-to tea order instead

[jbbartram-illu]

Update: North Gaza Women's Project!

Mahmoud Abu Salama is doing an amazing thing in North Gaza! He is starting a project to help Deaf Palestinian women use their pastry making skills while also distributing food to families in need. This is helping both the women make a bit of a living and feed the hungry in the North.

By donating, we’re helping Mahmoud hire more women who take pride in helping both themselves and their communities! So please feel free to donate if you have a few dollars to spare, or spread the link if you're unable! Any little bit helps!

HelpGazaChildren Notion Site || #helpgazachildren tag

GoFundMe Link

[Quick ID: Video of Mahmoud Abu Salama speaking to the camera with women sitting on the floor behind him as they put together packages of pastries. We then get a closeup of the women who sign to the camera.]

[jbbartram-illu]

Having anotheg 'gork we have got to get out of bed faster then this' morning

[jbbartram-illu]

Seeing drag queens in real life gives me the exact same feeling as how the hobbits describe elves in the lord of the rings

[jbbartram-illu]

Hannibal was filmed in Toronto/the GTA, so that's a beach on Lake Ontario (maybe the Scarborough Bluffs? They filmed over there a few times through the show), which is why it looks Ocean-y (Great Lakes my beloved).

I'm mostly responding because I feel like I have an inverse reaction to you while enjoying the show, like I recognize TOO much. SO many big Toronto landmarks appear in the show (the opera singer scene from S1 is the atrium of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Randall Tier's first episode had scenes filmed at the Royal Ontario Museum, but then the museum was like WTF is this we don't like this????? & the second bit of his appearance [post-death] had to be filmed at the University of Toronto, etc etc) that their location markers come off as very silly to me b/c obviously that's Toronto, people.

it’s been four years since I last watched through all of Hannibal & I still think about the episode set in West Virginia where they’re literally at the beach. The beach in Grafton WV. A town notably 1,000 feet above sea level & roughly 200 miles from the nearest seawater

Like….was it supposed to be a lake….

is this perhaps what someone at NBC thinks a lake in the Appalachian mountains looks like

[jbbartram-illu]

Goldfish breeds and other aquarium fishes, their care and propagation, 1908

[jbbartram-illu]

Archetypal mad scientist who is an Ecologist and her evil plan is always something like put Baikal seals in the Great Lakes

[jbbartram-illu]

I think I stumbled upon some kind of ichthyological forbidden knowledge. Opened up a book of names that were never meant to be read.

You've probably heard of "can-opener smoothdream", right? It's practically a meme by now.

But the thing is, it's a deep-sea fish. And deep-sea fish have historically not had English names because nobody drops them into the conversation over a hot cuppa. Sure, there's generic stuff like hatchetfish and barreleye, but when you want to refer to the actual fish you're probably saying such euphonious phrases as Diretmus argenteus, Sternoptyx diaphana, or maybe even Opisthoproctus soleatus.

So whence "can-opener smoothdream"? Certainly no non-ichthyologist has ever used that name. It's not even a direct translation of the scientific name Chaenophryne longiceps - that would be "long-headed gape-toad". Which to me is even cooler than "can-opener smoothdream".

But I digress. The "dream" bit comes from the anglerfish family Oneirodidae, from oneiros, "dream", because those marvelous fishes look like they came out of a dream (Pietsch, 2009).

Note that Pietsch (2009), more or less the anglerfish bible, uses English names at the genus level only. So Chaenophryne is the smoothhead dreamers genus but no mention is made of "can-opener smoothdreams". So no luck there.

Wikipedia, root cause of a lot of misinformation, has this to say.

"Longhead dreamer" is a far more accurate name. And in fact, despite Wikipedia prioritizing "can-opener smoothdream" (because it's funny?), the links listed use "longhead dreamer" and "smoothhead dreamer" as the name and "can-opener smoothdream" as an alternative.

So. Again. Where did "can-opener smoothdream" come from?

The answer, as it turns out, lies with McAllister (1990).

In the book A List of the Fishes of Canada, ichthyologist D. E. McAllister sought out to list every single fish known to Canadian waters, providing both an English and a French name.

And when there wasn't an English name, like for most deep-sea fishes, he arbitrarily gave them a name. And his names "differ in many instances from the widely accepted names" (Holm, 1998)

This had varying results. This is his name for one of the netdevil anglerfishes.

The humpback anglerfish or blackdevil anglerfish becomes a werewolf (????).

This one is just confusing.

The white-spotted lanternfish or Rafinesque's lanternfish instead becomes...

And most embarrassingly, the Mediterranean spiderfish gets saddled with something that "violates the tenet of good taste" (Holm, 1998).

This then is the original source of "can-opener smoothdream". It was invented by an ichthyologist in 1990, and has seen little to no use outside of how bizarre the name is.

Maybe McAllister's goofier names will catch on. Who knows? They certainly aren't very popular in the scientific community though.

References

Holm, E. (1998) Encyclopedia of Canadian Fishes (review). The Canadian Field-Naturalist, 112, p. 174-175.

McAllister, D. E. (1990) A List of the Fishes of Canada. National Museum of Natural Sciences, Ottawa.

Pietsch, T. W. (2009) Oceanic Anglerfishes: Extraordinary Diversity in the Deep Sea. University of California Press, Berkeley.

[jbbartram-illu]

Real person message!! When making your sculptures (or other things too really!) do you ever get bored of making the same kind of guy many times? And if yes, do you have a way to spice up the process, or do you prefer to just move on to something new? (I love your work a ton! Both when the types are very different but also when they are like siblings :D)

Oh man YES I do get tired of Particular Guys! Sometimes because the whole process is so labour-intensive (hello, Woodsbeasts & big Bird Ladies), sometimes just because I run out of creative steam on 'em (most recently, sphinxes), Thankfully (because the timelines of pottery are so so so long) just not making them for a batch or two will give me a minimum 6 month break & by the time I think of going back they feel fresh & exciting again.

I also have the benefit of pottery being the more flexible part of my job (I'm also an illustrator/graphic designer) - when it started to become a viable part of my practice, I promised myself that, with the exception of commissions/prepping for particular sales, most of my batches would be of whatever I felt like making at the time. As opposed to my other work, which takes the shape of particular projects (a book, a report for a client, etc), I can just tootle away at my pottery desk, sculpting weird beasts that make me happy. This has worked well for me & I plan to stick with it as an approach for the time being.

Mugs/vessels are a bit different, as the actual making of the forms almost becomes muscle memory (especially the slab-built mugs), so it feels less creatively draining. I can, however, burn out on particular types of vessel decoration, eg. the EIGHT (8?!?) medieval-marginalia inspired pieces that are in the glaze kiln as I type. They took SO LONG and by the last couple of mugs I was full-on cursing my choices (tho if they turn out well I know I'll forget all about the pain & go oooohhhh let's make more. This is how my terrible brain works).

So yeah! Burnout happens, but I don't let it worry me because I know my weird little guys can wait until I'm ready to make 'em again :)

Note: this starts with 'real person message' because in Oct 2023 I got a bunch of annoying spam messages & asked people for real asks...then I got a ton of lovely Qs & am still working through the backlog in...uhhh...April 2024. Oops/thank you for your patience?!

[jbbartram-illu]

Okay real talk how do you get your pinch pots so smooth???? Mine always end up vaguely lumpy looking

First off, I love the pinch-pot texture & don't think that pots need be lump-free! I just have a surface-refining problem that cannot be reeled in. Also, my pots definitely still have some pinchy texture™ (that just doesn't come through as much in photos), but my tricks for a smoother surface are as follows:

Don't try to do all the pinching while the clay is softer. I like to rough out the form, then leave it to firm up a bit (nowhere near leather hard, but like...tip of nose texture maybe?? Around there?!). This makes it easier to do detail work on the walls without risking losing the shape as the clay won't squish as easily.

Once the walls are the ideal thickness, I use wood tools with flat bits and/or a rounded wooden rib to smooth the outer walls more (by drawing the tool up from the bottom to the top of the piece). This irons out the bigger lumps & also has the bonus effect of compressing the walls, which can prevent cracking! For the inside, I get a firm sponge in there & smooth away (making sure the sponge isn't too wet, as I don't want to make it goopy!).

I also sometimes trim things a bit (just on my banding wheel, as I don't have a motorized wheel) but only with wooden tools (like this one), as without a motorized wheel it's harder to use circular momentum to trim smoothly.

FINALLY (how do these always turn into essays?!), I burnish!! Mostly because I don't usually glaze the outside of my vessels, so smoothing the surface makes them nicer to hold, but it does smooth out the pinched pieces a lot. I just use a cheapo tbsp measuring spoon & gently run it in circular movements over the leather hard piece. It's a really soothing activity!

I hope this was helpful!