Archive for the ‘Adminstrative’ Category

Studio Flood — and a New Beginning

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

Once again I have fallen far behind in posting here. Earlier this year, I devised a plan to spend the summer focusing on more pit fire experiments, as well as documenting results from last year’s firings and publishing them as new blog posts here. Alas, life had its own priorities and requirements, and as a result I didn’t get to start the first firing of the year until well into the last week of July. But the worst was still to come.

oil on paper from art student days in the 80s

figure 1: oil on paper from my art student days

On the 3rd day of September, disaster struck. The hot water heater in the house attached to my studio building broke, while the tenants were away on a camping trip, and the studio became flooded with 3 to 4 inches of warm standing water. To make a long story short, I spent the rest of September salvaging what could be salvaged, and getting rid of what could not be or were not worth salvaging. In the process of doing so, I found myself getting reaquainted with some old, old artwork from my art student days, dating back to the early 80’s (figure 1, 2, and 3.)

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The Birth of a Blog

Wednesday, May 17th, 2006

This blog was born out of necessity. It all started a couple months ago, when I brought one of my pit fired pieces to some friends to show what wonderful things horse manure can do for a pot. (This piece was smoke-fired in a BBQ using horse manure as fuel — well, actually some wood was used, too! And okay, full disclosure: the pot had also been bisque-fired to cone 06 prior to the firing in the BBQ, and was wrapped in salted raffia with copper carbonate sprinkled about during the smoke-firing. So it’s not just horse poop!)

pitfire image 0024c

One thing led to another after the show and tell. Before long I was tasked to organize a pit firing event. Then came the myriad of questions: What kind of clay should I use? What kind of effects can I expect? What kind of forms are good for pit firing? Is there any kind of special preparations that I should do for my pot before the pit fire? What kind of preparation or treatment will cause the effects I see in this pot here?

pitfire image 0031c

Or that one over there? (more…)