Chautauqua again...

I am back in the bubble that is the Chautauqua Institution. I have resumed my role as KILNMASTER!!!!!...did you here the echo? That is the title...I fire all the kilns along with maintaining them...and I manage the ceramic facility for the season. I have five dedicated work study students that help keep the studio chugging along and my full time assistant Dan Kuhn. Dan is finishing his MFA in ceramics at IUP where I work and has had several experiences in residencies and community oriented pottery studios. That's Dan in the above picture...below are a couple images of the throwing room and the hand building room before the onslaught tomorrow. Classes start in the morning...not only do we in the ceramics dept. service the students that have come from all over the country, but we also allow for the Chautauquans, who are here spending their vacation time in the Institution, to sign up for classes. It makes for a busy, busy summer.

The art department is celebrating its 100th year birthday this year! The Institution itself has been around for more like 120-130 years. For those of you who do not know, its a very interesting place that houses schools of visual arts, dance, theatre and music along with absolutely every kind of religious denomination in an open and all embracing community.

The images below are of the faculty studios(my space is in the first one ) and the other is of the wondrous kiln palace...their both in that groovy, retro, Dwell magazine, brown and orange Brady Bunch color scheme. That's my best buddy for the season peaking out of the kiln palace doors...the Blauuw Kiln. Its a fully programmable digital gas kiln...fancy shmancy.

Frank and Polly Martin are here to teach for the first couple weeks and then Alec Karros, Jeff Greenham, Chris Miller, Adam Paulek, and Jim McDowell are all coming in for a couple weeks at a time until the last week in August. All really good people with a little something different to offer the students.

In the down time of the last weekend before classes start I wandered down to Strohl Art Center, which is the department's "new as of last year gallery" to check out the opening...Roberly Bell's bright, blobject pieces were installed in the sculpture garden and there were 3 other exhibitions happening inside. One exhibition I really liked was Anne Lamanski's sculptures...very cool stuff.

Roberly Bell's work in the sculpture garden...

Anne Lemanski's very cool work...

This weekend has certainly been an easy way to ease on into the awaiting season. Monday morning there will be people beating down the doors and we will be making and firing all week. The upcoming weekend will be packed here for the 4th and I will be giving my talk on Sunday the 5th...Sometimes hectic, sometimes frustrating, all the time interesting...stay tuned for more updates from inside the bubble. Let the season begin!

That's wood firing baby!!

I am back in rural PA all suntanned from my FLA vacation with my other souvenir from the sunshine state...an ear infection. Other than that I am fairly rested and preparing to leave for Chautauqua on Friday. I will be back in the Chautauqua Institution for the entire summer firing kilns and managing the ceramic facility. I am currently working on my "talk" that I will be giving there on July 5th..."To Function or not to Function"...my continued back and forth bouncing of utilitarian work and sculptural work and how they intertwine...its like therapy for me. Chautauqua is a great place to blog from because there is a never ending stream of stuff happening so stay tuned for the upcoming Cha-posts...but on to the real business at hand...The last firing of the train kiln!

Well, everyone that fires a kiln and uses glazes knows that there is a certain amount of acceptance involved at the end. I tell this to all ceramic students...sometimes the finished piece is not exactly like the glaze tile...sometimes bad and sometimes good. Giving up the work to the random effects of a glaze firing is a big part of what I am interested in with my own work. This is why I wood fire, it was why I used to raku...it is that unknown variable that makes it unique and unlike anything that is mass produced. I say this because the firing was not altogether super. Nancy said she was a little disappointed and after seeing my pieces, I was too. This was a different firing that did not yield a perfect kiln load but did yield a handful of really awesome pieces. We both ended up with some real beauties, allot of pieces that can be re-fired and will be great, and also group of pieces that are beyond salvation. I will be doing re-fires in the Blauuw kiln at Chautauqua and then decal, decal, decal, and some gold luster. Some I will not even fire an image on them because they are so perfect. I'm posting a few pieces that were indicative of the whole firing...lots of drippy ash, some ash stuck here and there that didn't melt, and rich colors and juicy shinos. After 34 hours of firing, I would have hoped for more but I a bow to the kiln gods and happily accept the winners that I came out with and also know the potential of multiple firing the other pieces that were not exactly what I expected. My motto: "It ain't over until it falls apart...even then, you might want to think about it before its tossed on the shard pile." Click on the images to see bigger and to really examine the surfaces.

These two pieces below were right up next to the firebox and are the ones that took the lion's share of ash...they will probably stay just the way they are...drippy bowl and crusty vase forever...mmmmm.

I got a great new wall platter out of the firing (below) as well as a handful of other nice pieces that I will be doing post firing work on...

Next posting...Chautauqua, NY!

loaded...

Nancy and I finished loading the kiln yesterday around 8pm. As I type away at this very moment, Nancy and Cindy Rogers are firing it...my shift comes about 4:00am. I'm a morning person these days, but 4:00am barely qualifies as morning... The loading is sort of tricky as far as having to climb up and into the chamber but it goes quick because the highest we stack the shelves is 2 high. When its loaded, we slide over the industrial shelf lid, layer that with soft brick, then smother it with fiber blanket. Its the kiln loading equivalent to getting a mess of hash browns at the Waffle House..."scattered, smothered and covered". Here is a great picture of Nancy's head popping up to tell me what size pieces to bring over. Sorry Nance but this pic was to good not to post!

Here is another of Nancy as we had a moment of silence...praying the new glazes work out...!

I'm off to bed early tonight seeing how I will be up around 4 am and most likely will hang until the end of the firing.. Unfortunately, I will be unable to post the results for a couple weeks because I will be heading down to FLA to visit the family and the BEACH! It will be difficult for me to have to wait an extra week to see the end result but laying around in the sand and surf will help to ease the pain of waiting...ahhhh, Summer is here!

Until next time gentle reader...

Got wood...fire?

I came across this while doing some reading...thought I would share. I'm looking forward to firing, can you tell?

..."But the changes wrought by fire are changes in substance: that which has been licked by fire has a different taste in the mouths of men. That which fire has shone upon retains as a result an ineffaceable color. That which fire has caressed, loved, adored, has gained a store of memories and lost its innocence. Through fire everything changes."

...Gaston Bachelard's "The Psychoanalysis of Fire"

Bird is the word...

Plugging away slowly but surely...what a great day too. I was able to sneak away from my house today for a few hours or more to make pieces for our upcoming firing and generally ponder the meaning of the universe. I have about a 25 minute drive to the studio to think myself into a tizzy...to put my brain in deeper conflict about what it is I should be making. Should I be thinking about more sculptural work or be happy about the promise of new wood fired utilitarian ware. Well, where I ended up mentally today was back in a place that I seem to be allot...surface space...using glazes as abstract backgrounds for the menagerie of clean linear graphics to inhabit. So today I concentrated on creating spaces, some large wall platters...perfect for images, bowls and of course, more cups. Mugs and cups are my fave-O-rite thing...fun to make with endless possibilities of form but more importantly, mugs and cups are the best vehicle for communication. The cup below is one that I made a couple years ago...Nancy has a pair of these, both with a strange bird fired into the surface.

Mugs and cups pull double duty with almost nobody knowing. They are guerrilla in their communication...sneaking up on us while we sip our libations and BAM, we are looking at the surface, noticing whats on the outside of the carrier of our liquid refreshment. There is a great little book, I believe it is from an exhibit that was put together by Garth Clark...its called "The Book of Cups". Among other subjects, the book addresses the history of decalcomania and states that..."this technique has allowed the potter to produce an endless number of pieces that are identical...it has allowed the cup to become an outspoken propagandist and advertising device...the printed mug has since become a communications medium of some consequence". Needless to say, not only can the message be direct but it can be complex and intricate and composed of both private and personal meanings. So, regardless of the function of the work I am making, I can create space...space for these ideas to live.

...and that's just what I am doing right now...like I said, plugging away, slowly but surely filling the kiln. Here are some of the pieces I made today and the other image is of Nancy's big bowls! Wood firing June 1 and 2!

Good Clay Gone Bad...

I'm feeling good...the semester is over, my grades are turned in, and all the paperwork is complete. I'm enjoying a little quiet time around the house and thought why not post a few images of "GOOD CLAY GONE BAD!!" ...I have been digging around in the garden and chomping at the bit to put in some veggies and herbs while the rest of the flowers have been popping up...daffodils, tulips, alium, columbine and so many more. While out in the garden, I have been admiring my collection of "garden pots". I know every potter has them...pots that are seconds and thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths and so on but there is something about them that for some reason they never see the shard pile. Well, my yard is full of them...all for one reason or another, a hole, a crack, or something, they found their home in my garden. The pic above is Max with a blown out Raku totem-ish sculpture peaking behind mounds of wood hyacinths...the piece in front of him is a large corm piece of mine, there are two more similar stashed here and there.

This was a really nice bowl, that is before it cracked in the firing....now its a helpful back fill bowl, I usually truck my compost in to pack in around new plantings.

I fired this guy in grad school. Its a rugged clay body fired in a wood kiln, then fired it again in the electric with my decal graphic image, that's where it cracked. Its great border edging material currently.

I really liked the shape of this one, I also liked the way the glaze fired out...I liked it all except for the big crack in the bottom...oh well, more creative garden edging for the beds.

This was a nice size piece that was just full of issues...glaze problem, wobbly legs, surface design...you name it... Now its kinda nice in the garden with its anthropomorphic handles, it looks like its screaming from behind the daffodils.

This is the first year that the wood hyacinth actually bloomed through this piece, I did not plant it in there , it just found its way up and through the open bottom of this terra-cotta piece...if you look closely you can see a wood fired and decal-ed mug wedged in the gap. It was good up until I dropped it while carrying to much at once. Speaking of wood fired, Nancy and I have set June 1 and 2 as the dates for firing the train kiln. I have a mess of B-mix and I'm ready to start throwing this week...I wish you all more pots and gardening in your near future.

Post post firing post...

Yet again I am starting a post with...FINALLY, I have gotten around to getting this on my little ol'blog. I have been sitting on these images for a week or more now. Here is my last group of mugs and cups complete with images fired in...and a couple of just darn nice salt fired pieces that I could not bring myself to incorporate images into...heck, even for an image junkie like myself, sometimes a nice glaze is hard to improve upon. The dark clay body is interesting and works well with the tone of the decal but I admit to still preferring a very nice white stoneware over just about anything. I would say this is the last of my dark body mugs...maybe...ok, who knows!? The stumpy, softly squared mug that appears at the top of this post is my fave...it just goes to show that sometimes you have to take it all the way before you pass judgement on a piece. I wasn't so sure about this mug before it was fired but a good glaze job and also the graphic motif and additional glaze spots really made this guy sing. Click on the images below to enlarge and inspect!

This is a big beauty of a mug...over sized, probably much better for a beer than a spot of tea...I call this one the "Yoda Nouveau" mug. As for the mugs that appear below, one is more of a mug with a tattoo than anything...the decal is a collage of sorts made from early 20th century floral motifs and long squid tentacles...quite the bouquet. Its neighbor there is another of the dark

body mugs ...warm and earthy. The graphic decals are a mix of my own digital photography and other assorted floral images. The next two are thrown from a Jack Troy cone 6 clay body...I loved it...and it fires out so nicely. I have been putting some of these pieces on my Etsy shop and they can be purchased from there, while I have sold some already and a couple I am hording for the time being. As much as I liked the gas firing in the salt kiln with these pieces, I am anxious to start throwing pieces for the wood kiln...I am also anxious to be finished with my duties at the University this semester and to be able to return to the studio full time for the summer. I will be making, making. making in between firing kiln loads for Chautauqua again...but that's another post altogether...enjoy the images and happy May!