Last night I did the midnight shift. The whole time I was struggling to get rise and keep it in enough reduction so the pots didn't come out all pasty. Mark came out at 4 and then Joseph took over for me at 6. I went back to sleep for a few hours and by the time I got back out there at 1:30 they had finished firing the damn thing! It was an easy quick firing, partly due to the fact that we only did the first two chambers but also impart to the terrific help we got from fellow potter James Ward who lives up in Hillsborough. Unfortunately I slept through the most exciting part of the firing and so the only pictures I got where of the boys relaxing after a job well done.
A few pictures from the past few days. The kiln is loaded and preheating. Tomorrow we start bumping up the heat and should finish everything up by Monday night. More pictures to follow...
It's been a dreary day down here in Pittsboro. Cold rain all morning while we loaded the back stack in the first chamber of the "New Kiln". Wet boots and cold toes. The afternoon was a bit less strenuous. Mark was off teaching his class at UNC and Joseph and I were left to finish glazing, roll some wads and I even got to paint a few pots.
What has really had me feeling like the fellow on the receiving end of the embedded video is reading a few pieces in Garth Clark's seminal collection of essays : Shards. I know that his views have been discussed and responded to in great length but this is really my first experience with him. All I can say is that I really wish that I had Henry Glassie to rock me back to sleep, telling me it will all be ok, that our work is meaningful and good and has a place in this world.
Garth talks about nostalgia alot and how much of a force it is in the "Anglo-oriental" school of pottery that am being trained in. He also says that nostalgia is essentialy a bad, useless, emotion. I suppose that my initial reaction is simply that my nostalgia is a reaction to things that I see happening around me in the world as well as in my head that I don't neccesarily like or agree with. Whether that is a worthy response I don't know, but it is a response noetheless.
As I read the essays, after picking myself up off of the gym mats and dusting myself off, there is also a feeling of excitement, like opening a door in your house to a room that you always knew was there but never bothered looking in for a number of motivations, fear being one of them.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Just a few shots from the end of the week. The new kiln is all cleaned up and ready to go. Shelves are washed, wood is stacked. Monday and Tuesday will be devoted to mixing up glaze and then glazing the bisque ware.
I found this little cup in the local thrift store. All I know is that it is salt glazed. Does anyone have any idea's as to where this little feller's from?
Here are just a few pictures of the pottery a week before we start loading the new kiln. Joseph is wrapping up his teapot rampage with some whoppers. Mark made large 9lb jars and pitchers yesterday and I had a good day with some straight sided medievalesque pitchers which should be the last of the wet clay I touch until we fire the glaze kiln. I handled them all this morning and then unloaded the bisque before cutting away at 5 to go enjoy this bizarrely balmy weather we've been experiencing in the Piedmont. Below is a small casualty from the bisque with a simple but new to me scrolling design.
...the work is maddening and others, it is a delight, the clay springing from the wheel head effortlessly, as though it couldn't wait to be turned to its final form. Other days the clay stays obstinately close to the wheel, slumping back down when it is worked too hard, tired and wet, retiring to a growing pile of slumped pots in the corner of the splash pan.
Yesterday I went down to Seagrove to help out Chad Brown put some of the chinking in his log cabin. The cabin looks great and will make a wonderful home, pottery, or showroom some day (Chad thinks it may go through several incarnations) in the near future.
On Friday me and Joseph got the drying beds fill up. The old system, before we built Mark the drying beds, involved putting the clay directly on the slab on top of and covered by bed sheets. I like this system much more. I've read that the more the clay is watered down in the original mixing the more plastic it will be after drying. We will see.
Today Joseph and I did wood for most of the day and soaked up some much needed sunshine. I even got to take the old cut-offs for a spin. Tomorrow it's back on the wheel, hopefully to make some half gallon pitchers.
Here are a few little cups I made on Thursday afternoon. I guess Turkey has been on my mind a bit and these little 6 0z. cups (weight, not volume) came from the small cups that the Turks consume enormous quantities of tea from. The cups are small and refilled often. Below is one in its natural surroundings. Above, Joseph blows glaze out of the spout of a teapot. These are a fusion of the tulip shaped Turkish tea cup and a North Carolina swirl-ware. I've never made any swirl-ware and I rather enjoyed making them. They forced me to throw faster and fuss less over the details in order for the swirl not to get blended into the parent clay.
Michael Kline asked in a comment on the previous post if I had seen similar shapes in Turkey and indeed I had. I watched Mehmet Gursoy's thrower make this shape. He throws it in one piece and leaves it quite thick and unrefined and then comes back later and trims it down to the final form. Another path to a similar destination.
We are all plugging away towards the next firing which is only a few weeks away. The wood is stacked and all that is left is cleaning a few posts and shelves, and making a few more pots. These are all composite vases that Joseph made. He let me decorate one. He throws all the bases one afternoon and then comes back the next and adds the necks and then decorates on the third day....very impressive indeed. He's so nice he even gave me one to decorate.
After finally getting the internet in my new house I'll give this another go around. I've been working on an article on my former boss, Matt Jones, for this little literary journal that my Mom publishes with some friends of hers. On one of my trips to Asheville I stopped by the pottery to hang out, see what Matt and Alex have been making, and snap a few pictures for the article. Here is some eye candy from the fall firing.
This is the new wood heater that Matt made this fall. It fires with just a handful of sticks and then stays toasty warm most if not all of the day. Very impressive. The jug in the middle is now in my possesion.
"It is a genuine sense of the past that gives pride and purpose and guidance to the present."
Dr. Charles "Terry" Zug
Alex Matisse
Alex Matisse recently completed a two-year pottery apprenticeship with Matt Jones in Sandy Mush NC. He currently works with the potter, Mark Hewitt and in the spring of 2010 he plans to build a kiln and pottery of his own.
