Catherine "Kater" Cheek is a writer and artist.
Catherine Cheek
Author's posts
Dec 25
Dark Smiley Ball
Experimenting with photography again. This time I used the speaker stands/tripods to suspend a spotlight about 8 inches above the piece. Husband and daughter held the other two spot lights, as non-diffused fill. On one hand, I think that the level of detail is acceptable, if not great, and the shadows aren’t distracting, but on …
Dec 17
Weed Cup 1
This is the same dark brown clay I used in the “dark smiley” piece. I like the color of the clay body, but it’s rather porous and soaks up glaze. I needed something waxy and opaque to compete with it, and as I learned from the momiji cups, only white satin would do what I …
Dec 13
Momiji Cup 2
This was the sister cup to Momiji 1. I was experimenting with glaze techniques, so I used a different one on this cup. For this cup, I used white satin glaze plus a shino. Shinos can be a great way to bring out detail, especially details of depth. While it’s interesting, it’s not quite what …
Dec 10
Momiji Cup 1
I got the idea for this series of pieces from a link my friend showed me of an intricate ballpoint drawing on the outside of a styrofoam cup. I wanted to do the same thing, but in ceramic. For the design, I took about a hundred photos of plants while I was visiting a friend …
Dec 05
Yellow Porcelain Bowl
All of the glazes at the Tempe Arts Center are lead-free and high firing, so most of them are in a limited range of colors. This glaze is called “Steven Hill Yellow” and it’s almost always a dirty brown for me. On this white porcelain, however, it came out true to its name. I’m very …