What I love about the process of slip transfer is it combines my interests in drawing, printmaking, painting, and ceramics. By drawing or screen printing the designs on newsprint paper first, the workload falls on a single sheet of paper rather than the pot. It's easy to replicate complex designs. I love the spontaneous transfer marks of the folds and wrinkles on the slip-covered paper as well as the misregistration of line and color, giving a glimpse into how it is made.

I balance densely filled graphic areas with simple raw clay surfaces. A combination of the printing processes make the final surfaces of my work. Using thick underglaze, I screenprint my drawings as outlines onto newsprint and fill in the designs with colored slips working from foreground to background. The newsprint is then pressed and transferred to the clay surface, resulting in a one time unique print also called a monoprint. This method creates a timely, aged, and weathered appearance of my drawings on the red clay foundation.

Some pieces are thrown and others are hand-built or a combination of both. Each piece is fired twice. After the first firing the drawings are set so the pieces can be wet-sanded followed by a second firing of glaze so the pieces are functional and food safe. 

To learn more, please check out the article "Drawn and Transferred," originally published in Pottery Making Illustrated, September/October 2018. http://potterymaking.org. Copyright, The American Ceramic Society. Reprinted with permission.

Additional links to some my favorite tools.