It went well! The difference between a “dirty” and regular firing: super heavy reduction, extra carbon trapping (going for grey to charcoal porcelain), and extra soda. It’s excellent. I had a lot of work - nearly half the kiln - so this is truly the highlights reel. (And I haven’t even shown you the pods.)

The surfaces of this vessel are particularly fantastic. Went in with an unglazed exterior (and plenty of copper glaze on the inside), came out like this. Purple to yellowish, matte to glossy. Grolleg porcelain. Amazing, no?

The bathtubs turned out as hilariously as I thought they would. They’re soap dishes.

Set of houses. Iron stoneware washed with chromium oxide, and came out wonderfully. Must do that again.

This little dish got a big drip of silicone carbide in it, which made a lovely accent.

The newer short cup form. The surfaces came out so well. The heavy reduction really pulls the iron through.

The positive side of the busy coin is that I’ve had a bunch of really intense weeks lately and learned and experienced a lot. The negative is not too much downtime in which to decompress, process, and share!

Some people manage to pull together a post a day - and I’ve realized that they do it by keeping it short and sweet. As you probably guessed by my rather image-intense post about materials over temoku, I tend to be thorough. This approach is too time-consuming for the pace of my life of late, so I’m going to try a new approach. One post, every other day, until I am caught up with everything I wanted to share (and that list is growing fast!)

Hope you’ll stay tuned. As a note - I check the comment moderation queue regularly to clean out the spam. So if your comment doesn’t appear, it may have been deleted accidentally - please resubmit it!

Some photos from the early May firing in Galena.

Sunset.

Pre-firing. The woodpiles have an architecture of their own.

Nighttime. We had fun burning this hollow log. It made a fun chimney.

Firebox, middle of the night. The visually detected color is much whiter.

Next morning. We’ve been firing for about twelve hours. Note the depleted wood supply.

Power. The kiln shed is out of frame to the right.

This is what it’s like out there.

Smoking away after a salt stoke.

Creekside.

My contribution to the landscape: a bisqued house.

These are the cups whose boxes were in the kiln at the time. Too pretty not to take a picture.

Freshly stoked kiln.

Spring arrived late this year.

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.

Further thoughts, and photos, are to follow. (I hope!) There are quite a few posts in my queue, written but awaiting the addition of photos. Until then, here’s an update:

Last weekend was the wood+salt firing. Wood firing is a ritual for the patient faithful. It takes both those, and then some, to fire a kiln to 2300+ degrees, starting from campfire embers shoveled onto a pile of kindling.

The Bucktown Arts Fest was two weekends ago, now, and I’ve been busy. This was my first outdoor show. Crates and boxes of work, along with shelves and table, got packed into my little Saturn. Setup was quick and easy (yay for good planning) and I sold some work!

Former gallery/shop owner Roadside Scholar picked my work for her best of post. How exciting!

Over the last month, I’ve made a lot of work; a single Saturday can consume 50# of clay, especially when the day’s interest includes a few large pieces, beside the plethora of tiny ones that take far more care than clay. Thus I filled my shelves, stacked bisqueware, amoebaed onto adjacent shelves, filled another shelf, more greenware, exhale of greenware to the kiln, breathing space filled with more greenware, inflow of bisqued pieces, I need another shelf, only to return the next day and find that I’d accidentally left a couple of big wrapped houses, still green, on yet another shelf, rather than finding them a home upon the ones I’d already sequestered.

This week I finished the cups and boxes I’d started earlier; they’ll dry and be bisqued.

Monday marked a great exodus, as I glazed all the bisqueware I had, to be fired in the soda kiln. My shelves are nearly empty; a few plates still dry.

One cycle has tapered, the next begins. Now my attention turns toward the upcoming wood+salt firing in Galena and creating work for that. The last of what I have: for a couple of years, I had a 50# box, part-bags of porcelain clay: last night I finished the last pounds in the last bag. Now I’ve a half bag each of soda clay and FSCI, and the bag of terra cotta that’s waited a year already (it’s not a high fire clay, so I’m not sure, yet, how I’ll use it), several pounds of FSCI reclaim - it seems like a lot of clay, but I’ve used all the bits and pieces that cluttered my clay shelf over the last couple of years; this really feels like a fresh start.

Last night I threw out, and compressed by rolling, an enormous slab: after I cut the errant edges off, it measures about 20″x30″.

Cut the slab in half; it’s too thin for one large vase; to make two smaller ones. (Use ’smaller’ loosely- these are still 20″ high, 8 or 10 inches in diameter.

At the same time, the show-preparation cycle occurs: I’ve still quite a few preparations for the Bucktown Arts Fest in two weeks.

If you’ve wondered where I’ve been - it’s the studio. Lots of work going through; I spent hours glazing Monday night, much was loaded into the soda kiln yesterday, and I’ll be unloading on Saturday. There are some whiskey cups at home that are ready to be photographed, too. Spent all day Saturday at Lill Street learning about firing the soda kiln. Many thanks to my willing teacher for his Friday night invitation: there’s a lot to learn, and I’m grateful to understand more.

There were lots of people in the studio the last few days, and I had several good conversations, as well as making a bunch more pieces.

Conversation #1: It’s nice to find other artists who feel that true mastery isn’t confined to being able to make nice pots, learning comprehensively about the iterations of the ceramic process. Clay composition, glaze chemistry, firing techniques, all these things have an intense effect upon the final product. These are things that intensely interest me, but have to be pursued outside of class.

Conversation #2: Everybody’s work is precious, and equally so. Thus, all artists should treat others’ work with as much care as their own. I think so too. Not everyone is so thoughtful, and that can be frustrating.

Conversation #3: One of the ingredients for my glaze has run out, and the studio doesn’t usually order it. After I mixed a new batch using a substitute, I learned that nearly all the other published versions of the recipe call for the alternate material anyway. Because I had done a bunch of research before the substitution (that didn’t include looking for alternate recipes!) I was able to have a coherent conversation in which a more experienced glaze-maker confirmed my thoughts on how the results would vary. Not all artists or teachers act as though the dialog can go two ways; it’s great to draw on the ones who do.

Conversation #4: In another conversation, a fellow artist commented that a lot of Lill Street people are going to be at Bucktown. He mentioned several people, following their first name with a phrase to identify their work, if I didn’t know the name - “who has the frog motif”, “who makes the pinch pots”, “who makes the creatures”. I’m not sure my work can be reduced to a few words. I’m not sure that I want it to be.

Conversation #5: I learned that one of the artists who teaches at Lill Street will be doing a wood+salt firing up in Galena, WI, and immediately approached him about participating. He had lots of suggestions, as I glazed my work, that some of those pieces would do well in that firing, as well as mentioning other clays and additives I could use to get some neat results. I’ve got some ideas, and a few weeks to make work.