I may have a mild obsession with taking hot kiln pictures.

Molten kiln wall.

I think this is the best bending-cones picture I’ve gotten: c.8 down, c.9 soft.

I climbed into the soda kiln with my camera a couple of months ago and want to share some of the amazing surfaces in there. This kiln is two or three years old and is fired something between fifty and seventy times a year… that’s a lot of wear.

Hello, my pretty. This is one of the burners. Boo! These are more like seven years old, from what I’ve been told.

Closeup of the flue entrance… love the layering of soda with the floating glaze. I’d like to use this surface for something.

Entrance to the chimney again… but looking up. Look at all that soda built up on the refractory brick. I’d like to use this texture on a big sculptural piece.

Sitting on the floor and looking toward the front. The opening is one of the soda ports. When we add the soda, we flip the angle iron toward the outside wall (at the left).  Lots of soda lands on the target brick, bottom center, and builds up in the area behind it.

The range of color the wall picks up is beautiful. The depth of the colors would translate well to an oil painting. Maybe when the kiln gets rebuilt I can have this section of the wall. The interior wythe is hard brick, to better resist wear, so even this small part would be quite hefty. It would still be worth it.

Here’s another super crusty part, above the soda port. I like the blue and green color and the rippled texture. Reminds me of Gail Nichols’ work a bit. It has more green than over by the flue - a little more iron? - and is a bit less crusty. Great surface. I love it.

Here are forty-two cups and teabowls that I dipped in slip on Wednesday evening, setting out to dry. I’m trying some new things here. Forms that’ve been on my mind for weeks. I’m simultaneously pretty sure I’m crazy and pretty sure I’m not crazy for trying seven new slip recipes at once. And did I mention that they’ll recieve an assortment of new shino recipes and get sent through the next dirty firing?

I think it’ll be great.

Contemplating the wonderful wood+salt-fire results have given me a lot of food for thought. (I know, I know, I haven’t shown you the results yet. Soon, dear readers, soon! Here’s one to tide you over. It’s one of my favorite cups from the firing, and went to its new home this morning.)

In the last weeks I’ve been busy preparing for and conducting three events.

First, my first dirty firing at Lillstreet - so called for the extra reduction and serious carbon trapping. Jayson Lawfer had done a few, and I’m aiming to get the process well-documented and fine-tune it. The firing was full and had several enthusiasts - heartening for my first run! And we were not disappointed; the results were outstanding. I swung for the fences with a couple of new projects, and got really exciting, I-have-to-continue-this results. To tide you and me over, some pretty rims.

New cups. 2008. Handbuilt of Tile6 over stoneware FCSI. Temoku glaze. Soda fired to c.10, reduction cooled. 0h, 0w, 0l each.

Second, my first fair of the year, NSUC. Hours were spent photographing pieces, packing up work and grinding off stray bits of wadding, when necessary. Seeing my work together provided an encouraging perspectivew: I have a very strong aesthetic, and my pieces hang together well as a body of work. Here’s a section of one table: it doesn’t have a little bit of everything, but it’s close.

Third, a wood+salt firing in Galena. It began on a rainy day, poured the first night, went below freezing the second night, and was beautiful on the last day. The process may be a post in itself. I haven’t yet photographed my pieces from the first one - but soon will, along with the pieces below. One new form made its debut. Another upcoming post will contain lots of images and a lengthy discussion of the results.

The studio is pretty quiet for me right now. In the last week I’ve been catching up with life - bills, cleaning, and recovering from all the new work created by events #1 and #3. I need more display space at home, so I can spend more time living with and contemplating my own work. This will entail a major shuffle. I’m also planning to start a shop at Nancy and Andy have been encouraging me to do so for the last year.

Meanwhile, many experiments are forthcoming. A clay experiment has been underway, successful, and needs to be fine-tuned. A few beauties below; a little distortion from being behind glass. I’ve been researching flashing slips, have a dozen to try. And glazes - likewise, a big handful. A couple of us will be mixing up several recipes for carbon trapping glazes for general use in the next dirty firing. Any of these may fly or flop: experimentation keeps things fresh, challenges boundaries, keeps my eyes open to possibilities.

Pods/Apertures. 2008. Handbuilt of porcelain with additives. Unglazed. Soda fired in reduction to c.10, reduction cooled. To 4″ in length each.

After the winter hiatus, the soda kiln is firing again. Some photos for the curious, and a fun test for my camera:

Kiln room, from the front of the kiln. Hood overhead, shelves to the right, kiln ahead. Lit by flame and heat. Kiln light makes for some dramatic monochromatic shots.

Arch of the door; the silhouettes are so figural.

The insulating ability of soft brick is another thing that amazes me. You can see my gloved thumb at the left and of course the 2300 degree end at the right. The end I’m holding is warm, but not too hot to touch. As always, be appropriately cautious where heat and fire are involved. At the very least, the glove keeps arm hair from being singed.

I’m impressed that my camera got this picture. Digital editing adds clarity. You can see cone 9 down and cone 10 falling in the foreground, a little darker than what’s behind them, and of course glowing work in the background.

This equipment does the heavy lifting: back side of the kiln as firing is reaching completion. The body of the kiln is off the left of the frame; the lit brick surface is actually the chimney. Round thing is the blower; gas is the vertical line into the blower output. The gas/air mix tees behind the kiln and splits to both burners, one of which is visible in the frame.

End of the firing, cone 10 flat on the bottom. Infrared isn’t particularly good for your eyes, so we wear filtering goggles to look into the kiln. Through computer-screen intervention, this is safe to look at.

In the first wood+salt firing, I fired a bunch of my little cups. In the last few days, I over-ambitiously created a bunch of boxes for the next firing of the same kiln - overambitious because there simply wasn’t enough time to allow for a proper drying and bisque firing. So it’ll be a few months more before they’re finished. I enjoyed and was struck by the contrast of brilliant turquoise interiors against soft surfaces of brown and gray and white clays, and so I here share them with you.

I set my pieces on newpaper in part to leave something to be peeled off the wet slip, and in part to avoid contamination by the ware boards, as I prefer to control the bottoms of my pieces. If the greenware shelves for dry pieces are especially dusty, I’ll lay a bit of newspaper down there, too. This shot felt particularly architectural.

I’ve become so accustomed to the boxes’ oversize, accounting for shrinkage, that I wonder if I’ll be shocked by the smaller finished sets, and need some time to acclimate to the new scale of them.

The light is great in this shot. The browner glaze is a thin application of my Woo Blu, the turquoise is a copper blue glaze that Jay Strommen uses.

Just over a week ago, I attended a workshop with Meredith Brickell. She showed us many of the techniques that she uses in working with wet clay, talked about her thoughts toward working in clay, some of her surface decoration, glazing, and firing methods, and shared some recipes. The pace of the workshop was pleasantly fast.

I learned some really neat little tricks and a bunch of bigger techniques. I’m looking forward to making myself some bowl molds - my very own.

Meredith introduced the (to me) radical notion that wet clay could be used as a mold. We used pieces of old sheets and pillowcases like slings to move slabs of clay around, and to keep the wet mold and wet slab from sticking together. After making and draping this hump mold, I learned that she’s always done slump (concave) molds. Over the next few days, I added coils and used pinching and my serrated rib to create this:

I must say, I’ve never made anything like it, but I like where it’s going.