http://www.design-realized.com Adventures in Soda Firing and Ceramics Sun, 06 Jul 2008 22:12:05 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en These three pieces are currently at Womanmade Gallery in current show The Secret. The opening was concurrent with Drawing on Experience, where I also have one piece. A lot of fun, some good conversations. I circled through the gallery, including the two solo shows, several times. A few pieces caught my ... http://www.design-realized.com/2008/07/06/the-secret-and-painting-and-drawing/ 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. http://www.design-realized.com/2008/07/06/hot-kiln/ 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 ... http://www.design-realized.com/2008/07/03/up-close-and-personal-soda-kiln/ 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 ... http://www.design-realized.com/2008/07/01/april-dirty-firing-1/ 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 ... http://www.design-realized.com/2008/06/27/too-much-is-enough/ 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 ... http://www.design-realized.com/2008/06/07/new-work/ 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 ... http://www.design-realized.com/2008/06/07/my-kind-of-heaven/ 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 ... http://www.design-realized.com/2008/05/13/much-afoot/ I draw images on my work to create spaces of refuge, built of experience and imagination. I particularly enjoy nighttime solitude with nature - walking in the woods, kayaking on the lake, watching the shadows of tree branches dance on a surface, letting my mind imbibe what I see with ... http://www.design-realized.com/2008/04/20/drawing-on-experience/ These are a couple of my favorite cups to come home and see, finally getting some time under the lights. Two cups. 2006? Handbuilt of Tile6 slip over stoneware FCSI. Woo blu glaze. Soda fired to c.10. 6.5h, 3.5w, 3l. I sent a few pieces to a call for entries, titled "Drawing ... http://www.design-realized.com/2008/04/01/a-few-new-photos/