Adventures

I'm off to an adventure up in Maine. First a residency at Watershed and then to do some serious relaxing and hiking! I'll be back to post about my adventures and inspirations so stay in touch! I'm sure I'll have hundreds of pictures to share!

the Mark of the Potter

I've been moving for two months. First it was my studio in June. July was moving out of my house. An old 100 year old farmhouse in the mountains where 3.5 years ago I moved to and set up my first clay studio. Last week I finalized things at that old house on Bad Creek. I scrubbed the walls down where clay had splattered all over them, hauled off loads of pots and other various collectibles that potters tend to hoard. I couldn't help but feel very sentimental about leaving the place. I was so immersed and connected to the life and energy around it. It was such a leap for me to start that studio all by myself and continue in it making and selling pots. So as I was cleaning, I kept thinking of how I was erasing the traces of the potter being there. Are there still traces? Could I really get rid of all of them? Between clay smudges, pottery wads, old conepacks and pottery shards, shouldn't be there some potter's mark left behind to show of my 3.5 years there?

As I move on to new experiences, I know I am shaped by these three years I had to myself where I could completely concentrate and throw all of my energies into my work. I will take those memories and traces with me.

I'm headed to Maine next week for a residency at Watershed with Sequoia Miller. I was just catching up on a post he wrote on his blog, because he too, is moving. It was interesting to hear some of those same reflections from him that I have been thinking. It'll be nice to meet him.

I'm so excited to leave and visit a new place for a bit to freshen up my perspective. Then when I return I am in a new home with a new studio and full of inspirations and new marks for this potter to make!

Unloading

We unloaded the new wood fired pallet kiln today! It was better than I'd hoped for since it was just the first test firing. These plates turned out better than I've ever had them!

Overall, it was still dry and colder on the top, but with some tweaking, I'd say this kiln will be firing great to my standards in no time! The best part, and most worrisome part, was what the nails were going to do to the pots. There are 90 nails in each pallet. We burned around 115 pallets for this 20 hour firing. You do the math and think about how many nails that is. We thought they would melt and leave iron marks all over the pots. Not ONE single nail showed up on the pots. I think it's because the firebox is built so large to accommodate a whole pallet being stoked. The pots are so far up and away from where the pallets are being burned that all the nails stayed in the firebox!

In my book it can only get better from here! More pictures are here at this link:

the Pallet Burner

Some scenes from the firing....

Mark Peters, the pallet kiln builder

Will Baker stoking soda into the kiln

stoking pallets

a nice ending

Here

Things have been pretty interesting lately for me. Despite uprooting my entire studio a month ago, now I am in the process of packing, moving and unpacking into a new home, closer to the new studio. And just because I'm so good at packing these days, I thought I'd load up the new wood kiln at the studio for a test run.

And test run we did. We fired it off successfully in 20 hours last night using wood pallets that come in here at the landfill. At this point, the pots in the kiln serve as 'information' to us. The first firing of any kiln can be a huge unknown, so with careful loading of all of the 'assorted flavors' of slips and glazes we use, we can learn a lot after the unloading. Tweaking a few things here and there from each firing, you can learn so much about a kiln.

So, admist all of this, I'm here, a little unbalanced, but welcoming the change. If I can just get everything moved and and settled, then in less than two weeks I'm headed to Maine for my residency at Watershed and then to hike and play in Acadia and Baxter State Park. I'm sure after that I will be posting more regularly to tell of my adventures and inspirations, so stay in touch!

Learning curve

Will and I have each made some progress this week by filling up the greenware cart with new pots. Between these and some old bisqueware we're close to having enough to fill the wood kiln. We're going to give it a test run in mid July. If you're local and want to "donate" some cone 10 pots for this first firing, let me know. Just remember, no guarantees...this is the first firing of a brand new wood kiln. Usually there's a steep learning curve involved with this kind of adventure. But that's what keeps things interesting, isn't it?