I did learn a few things about how to set up a firing more effectively by making more mistakes. First, make sure your wood is in small enough pieces. The first pit firing I did used fairly small pieces of kiawe that were a fourth the size of the largest pieces we used in this firing. The smaller pieces ignited more easily, the fire burned hotter, and burned down more quickly. The pieces of kiawe we used for this firing had been split but were still so big that they only smoldered through most of the firing. I removed some of them toward the end because they threatened to fall down on the pots and crack them. Second, make sure your wood is dry. We've been pit firing at Steve Martin's house in Kaneohe which is in one of the rainiest parts of Oahu. The wood had been left out in the open and was still very wet. This made it difficult to get the fire started, even with lots of kindling and even after I used quite a bit of lighter fluid. Because the fire never burned that hot, the pots turned out pretty dark again and didn't develop as much color or high contrast between color and white and black as some of my first pit fired pots. Third, don't use too much fine sawdust. Steve has some huge bags of fine sawdust that were given to him. They're so fine they're like flour. We put that on the very bottom to act as a base. We put coarser, fluffier sawdust on top of this and laid our pots down on that. Last time I didn't get a good jet black finish on the pots when I placed them on the fine sawdust, maybe because not enough air could get in. The lady who was firing with me, however, buried her dragon and other small pieces in fine sawdust. After the fire had been going for almost 5 hours, she dug around her pots to see how they were doing and a few inches down the sawdust hadn't even started to ignite and the bottom half of her pieces were still white. Maybe it would have burned down in time, but she dug around the pieces and exposed them more to air which caused the sawdust lower down to ignite and gave her a more even color. We then put small slivers of wood around the head and tail of her dragon which ignited, burned off some of the carbon, and made those areas a little lighter. Her goal had been for the dragon to be darker on the bottom half and lighter on the top half. With these adjustments we were able to accomplish this.
I tried a few different things in this pit firing. First, I tried spraying terra sig in a different way. Everything I've read says not to make any drips on the pot with terra sig or it will show up on the finished pot. I decided to heavily spray different areas of the vase so that the terra sig cascaded down the side like a waterfall. So far as I can tell, it didn't make a difference to the finish. Eventually the terra sig absorbed into the clay and I couldn't see any trace of where it had dribbled down, both in the greenware and in the finished pot. Second, I tried burnishing the pot in a different way. After spraying the vase with terra sig and then burnishing with a plastic bag, I used a hole cutter to burnish it. I moved the metal cylinder of the hole cutter up and down on the vase which left much more glossy marks than the plastic bag. I didn't try to burnish the whole pot but wanted to see if these burnishing stripes would show up on the finished pot. They did and you can see what they look like in the images below. Still trying to decide if I like it or not, but it gave me the idea that different patterns could be put on the terra sig using this type of technique. I'm sure many have done this before, but it was a first for me. Third, I carved the outside of the bowl to see what texture would look like in a pit firing. I had a bowl exactly like this in the last pit firing in January, but someone knocked it off the table just before we put it in the barrel and it broke into about a dozen pieces. So I made another one, and I like the way it turned out. The high areas tend to be darker, especially the ones with more carbon, which highlighted the carving. Fourth, I wanted to see if I could successfully pit fire one of my bowls. In the last firing, I removed the bowl from the barrel after about 20 hours and it immediately started cracking so I had to throw it away. In this instance, I left it in the barrel for about 36 hours so it was cool enough to remove with my bare hands. It was still warm when I took it out but it didn't crack. Fifth, I tried out a new clay, Nash White, which was formulated by Paul Nash, ceramics prof at Windward Community College. It's a great clay to throw and performed well in the pit firing. I did learn a few things about how to set up a firing more effectively by making more mistakes. First, make sure your wood is in small enough pieces. The first pit firing I did used fairly small pieces of kiawe that were a fourth the size of the largest pieces we used in this firing. The smaller pieces ignited more easily, the fire burned hotter, and burned down more quickly. The pieces of kiawe we used for this firing had been split but were still so big that they only smoldered through most of the firing. I removed some of them toward the end because they threatened to fall down on the pots and crack them. Second, make sure your wood is dry. We've been pit firing at Steve Martin's house in Kaneohe which is in one of the rainiest parts of Oahu. The wood had been left out in the open and was still very wet. This made it difficult to get the fire started, even with lots of kindling and even after I used quite a bit of lighter fluid. Because the fire never burned that hot, the pots turned out pretty dark again and didn't develop as much color or high contrast between color and white and black as some of my first pit fired pots. Third, don't use too much fine sawdust. Steve has some huge bags of fine sawdust that were given to him. They're so fine they're like flour. We put that on the very bottom to act as a base. We put coarser, fluffier sawdust on top of this and laid our pots down on that. Last time I didn't get a good jet black finish on the pots when I placed them on the fine sawdust, maybe because not enough air could get in. The lady who was firing with me, however, buried her dragon and other small pieces in fine sawdust. After the fire had been going for almost 5 hours, she dug around her pots to see how they were doing and a few inches down the sawdust hadn't even started to ignite and the bottom half of her pieces were still white. Maybe it would have burned down in time, but she dug around the pieces and exposed them more to air which caused the sawdust lower down to ignite and gave her a more even color. We then put small slivers of wood around the head and tail of her dragon which ignited, burned off some of the carbon, and made those areas a little lighter. Her goal had been for the dragon to be darker on the bottom half and lighter on the top half. With these adjustments we were able to accomplish this.
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For a detailed description of how I've done pit firings in the past, see my blogs from April, 2013 and October, 2014.
I tried several new things this time. First, I tried pit firing one of my bowls. I mounded up the sawdust and put the bowl upside down on top of it. The inside developed a very interesting metallic finish while the outside had great color. Unfortunately someone decided to throw vermiculite (mixed with copper sulfate) directly on the bowl when the firing was almost finished. As a result, it left large rough patches. When I came to take my pots out the next day (after more than 20 hours in the barrel), the two vases were cool and could be easily picked up with my bare hands but the bowl was still very hot. I was in a hurry so I pulled it out and set it on a brick. It cooled too quickly and developed several cracks as it contracted so I had to throw it away. Next time I pit fire a bowl I'll have to make sure I give it enough time to completely cool in the barrel. Second, I roughened the surface of my tallest pot to see how it would look when pit fired. It certainly did give the piece a different look than one that's perfectly smooth, but I'm not sure if I like it or not. Third, I carved the side of a second bowl to see how texture would look in a pit firing, but someone knocked it off the table when we were getting ready to load and it broke on the ground. Guess I should have put it upside down on the table. Fourth, I sprayed three of the four pots with terra sig instead of brushing it on. It seemed to cover the pots well, but I had trouble getting any sort of sheen by buffing. I'll have to figure out what I was doing wrong. Fifth, I used a half barrel with higher sides than usual because I thought it would offer more protection from the wind. It seems to have offered too much protection. I didn't get enough air circulation so my fire never got going well and the pots seem dark and underfired. You can see where great color is on the pot, but it's lying under a layer of gray because the carbon wasn't burned off. Sixth, I tried using a few new things to give color to the pots. I added red iron oxide which may have contributed to the overly dark color of the pots. I also put copper wire on the bowl and the tallest pot and it left a few black lines, nothing spectacular. Seventh, I usually use fairly coarse sawdust at the bottom of the barrel, but this time I used a superfine sawdust from sanding. Several other people used the same sawdust as well, and none of us had pots that developed jet black sections, just alot of gray. I assumed the superfine sawdust would produce an even deeper black, but it didn't seem to work that way, at least not in this firing. So overall I'm not too pleased with this pit firing, but I've learned a few things that I can take with me to the next firing. I also enjoyed making and eating pizza made in Steve Martin's pizza oven. That helped to make up for some of my frustrations! On December 20, I was able to take a one-day demo workshop with Adam Field at HPG. Adam and his family were on vacation in Maui and carved out a day to be with us in Honolulu. For the first half of the day, Adam was showing us the way he makes cylinders on the wheel and how he forms cups from them. He also showed us how he throws off the hump and how he decorates both the inside and outside of his cups immediately after throwing. During the second half of the day, he showed us how to make a carving tool from a piece of spring steel (it involves a bench grinder) and how to use that tool to carve pots that are leather hard. I wasn't expecting this, but he showed us how he uses a laser to lay out a design on a pot. He primarily uses this technique on larger pots where the design is more complicated and it's easier for the design to get out of shape if it isn't laid out well from the very beginning. The ground he covered in the workshop is the same as he covers in his new DVD: Precision Throwing & Intricate Carving, but I enjoyed the opportunity to ask questions and get greater clarity about what he was doing and why. Adam's a great teacher and very clear in his explanations. I recommend his DVD and why not ask him to do a workshop?
During the Holiday Art Sale at Linekona, I had several people ask me why I made bowls with such small feet. They said the bowls looked dangerous and they were afraid of tipping them over. A few wondered if I was copying the work of Lucie Rie. Well, here's my story of why I make bowls with small feet.
From the time I was a boy, I'd been attracted to the work of mid-century designers like Russel Wright, Eva Zeisel, and Ben Seibel. Their style appealed to me, especially their dramatic curves. When I came to Hawaii in 1992, I was introduced to wood turners who make bowls that are very similar in shape. They have very small feet and swooping curves. These influences were more general and ones I only recognized in hindsight. I also began making bowls with small feet for two other reasons that are more related to my work in clay. First, I was reacting negatively to many of the pots I saw coming out of the kiln at the Hawaii Potters Guild that were too wide at the bottom for my taste, that seemed to be squatting on their haunches. Second, I started making smaller feet because I was trimming my bowls so badly. While trimming my first bowls, I couldn't get the foot as circular as I wanted them, so I kept trimming them and trimming them until they ended up the size of a quarter. Some of them slumped as a result, but I liked the general design and knew this was the direction I wanted to go in. It was here that earlier design influences became more apparent to me. When I had a bowl in front of me with a small foot, it reminded me of the work of designers I admired and the turned wooden bowls I'd seen. When I started making larger bowls with small feet, one of my teachers asked me, "So, is that bowl a homage to Lucie Rie?" and I said, "Who's Lucy Ree?" Well, I looked her up on the internet and found a kindred spirit. Along the way I've found other artists who like small feet and swooping curves such as James Lovera, Gertrud and Otto Natzler, Elsa Rady and Rupert Spira. Some people say they like bowls like this because they're more elegant, but I like them because they're more dramatic. Along the way I've learned a few things about how to make bowls like this more successfully. Many of my first larger bowls tended to slump near the foot, primarily because of two things: first, the wall was too thin near the foot and second, the wall was almost perpendicular to the foot. In time I learned to leave more clay in the bottom third of the pot and not to trim it as thinly as possible. I also learned to keep the wall at enough of an angle so it could bear the weight. Just a few days ago I made a bowl where the angle wasn't right so I waited a few hours until the clay had slightly stiffened and then used two ribs to bring it up slightly near the foot. I also had trouble with my first bowls tipping over. Keeping more weight in the foot (primarily by not trimming the bottom of it) and keeping more clay in the bottom third of the bowl made them more stable, but the most important thing I've found is to make sure the foot sits absolutely evenly on a flat surface. If the foot is uneven at all, it's much more likely to tip over. After the glaze firing, I usually make the foot as even as possible by putting it on a kiln shelf without kiln wash, put my right hand on the bottom and press down while rocking the bowl back and forth with my left hand. The bottom very quickly evens out and sits absolutely flat. Just don't get too aggressive doing this or you'll chip the foot on the edges. If you'd like to see a video that shows a more sophisticated way to do this, look at Hsin-chuen Lin's video #219 on youtube about Grinding Flat and Smooth the Feet of Fired Pots. I still wouldn't serve mashed potatoes in bowls with small feet, but my family loads them up with fruits and vegetables on our kitchen counter and we have glass fishing floats and other things in them on coffee tables. Bowls like this also tend to get wonky and warp easily. Sometimes the effect looks good, but usually it looks like bad craftsmanship to me. In making bowls like this with thin walls that stretch out so far, it's easy for the walls to warp. Even after making larger bowls with small feet for the last few years, I still find that about half of them need to be broken down and made again. One of the most common problems I have while pulling up walls and stretching out the clay is with the clay developing "eccentricities" which reveal themselves as a wobble of one sort or another. People will often say that clay has "memory" and that certain types of clay such as porcelain have more "memory" than other types. We're obviously speaking metaphorically when we say that, but what's the metaphor pointing to? I'd suggest that when clay develops eccentricities as it revolves on the wheel, it's developing areas that are thicker and thinner. Even if the potter is skilled enough to control the wobble, the differences in thickness remain. When the pot goes through the glaze firing, the differences in thickness will create differences in shrinkage and the final pot will be warped in some way. So I'll often break down a pot that I'm working on if it develops too much eccentricity as I'm making it. In the last few days I've thrown the same piece of Black Mountain twice and had to take it down each time because of this problem. In both cases, I finished the bowls and put them up on the shelf to dry. I knew they wouldn't turn out the way I wanted them to, but I hated to break them down when I'd spent so much time on them. After a few hours, however, I had enough perspective to break them down and start over. From November 8, 2014 until February 8, 2015, the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in Pomona, California is presenting Chris Gustin: Masterworks in Clay. The exhibition is a retrospective of Gustin's 40 year career working in clay. The Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts presented the same basic exhibition in 2012. Fuller also printed a beautiful catalog of Gustin's work which had a very short print run (800 copies in paperback and only 50 slipcased and signed) but is still available through their store. Chris also gave a lecture at AMOCA entitled Finding Form and AMOCA just put it on youtube. It's about an hour long and goes into depth about his creative process throughout his career. It's one of the most important talks I've heard about how a ceramic artist finds inspiration and begins a new body of work. You can find the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NmhBe5S5H8&feature=em-subs_digest.
What used to be called the Studio Benefit Sale at the Honolulu Museum of Art School is now called the Holiday Art Sale. In spite of the name change, proceeds from the sale will still support the programs at the museum's school at Linekona. This is the finest craft sale of the year in Hawai'i and features work from teachers and students in jewelry, weaving, fusion glass and ceramics. I have more than 100 pots that are ready for the sale. I can have up to 50 in inventory at any given time, so I'll start out with 50 pieces and add more pots as they're sold. That means it's worth returning to the sale every few days since the inventory is constantly changing as artists add new things. The sale starts this coming Tuesday, November 25, with an opening reception from 5-8pm. Free appetizers will be available and you can buy sake and the sake cup for only $5 (if I remember correctly). The sale is at the main gallery at the Honolulu Museum of Art School, Linekona, will run through Sunday, December 7, and is open daily from 10am-6pm. See you at the sale!
Recently the Honolulu Museum of Art exhibited a selection of glass from the collection of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser. I keep an eye on what other artists are doing, especially sculptors, architects, glassworkers, woodworkers, metalworkers, and basket makers. Their forms and textures have had a huge impact on me. Much of what they do with their materials can be done with clay, and much of what they do cannot. After looking at this exhibit I'm thinking about new forms, new ways of carving clay, new ways of opening up the inside of pieces and new ways of using nerikomi .
Earth 2 Water is a small exhibit at the Koa Art Gallery at Kapi'olani Community College. One of the five artists in the exhibit is an artist at the Hawaii Potters Guild: Yoko Haar. Yoko calls these two assemblages Ripples I and II. Here's how she describes them: "This new series of work encompasses the theme of this show 'Water.' Until now, I have been emphasizing texture for my work, and have reduced this aspect to go along with this theme. The irregular spaces which formed between the linear portions of each tile reminded me of the way rings of ripples form around droplets of water. When these ripples congregate, like a downpour on still water, it shows a noisy and busy scene which continues to widen, as they continue to affect neighboring spaces."
Earth 2 Water runs from October 22 to November 13. The Koa Art Gallery is open from 10 to 4, Monday to Friday, and 9 to 3 on Saturday. Today I visited Clay, a new ceramics exhibit at Windward Community College. This is the most impressive exhibit of local ceramics that I've ever seen in Hawaii. Many of the best ceramic artists in the State have been asked to submit work and it's of consistently high quality, some of the best pieces I've seen from these artists. I enjoyed taking pictures of each piece and I hope you enjoy looking at them. Clay runs from October 24 to November 23 at Gallery 'Iolani and is open from 1 to 5pm, Monday through Friday and Sunday. It's closed on Saturdays.
An exhibit just closed at the Honolulu Museum of Art called Natural Unnatural Supernatural. Here's the museum's description of the exhibit: "Natural Unnatural Supernatural focuses on themes of nature (landscape, seascape, animals, birds, insects, flowers, etc.) as artists have depicted them, ranging from "naturalistic" representations to images that are unnatural in terms of color or activity to others that are surreal in the way appearances and expectations are altered." The exhibit drew mostly from the museum's collection and included a few loans. Some of the pieces changed over the course of the exhibit which kept me coming back. Below are images I took of the ceramics in the exhibit.
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AuthorI hope this blog will be encouraging to potters, especially beginning potters, and a source of helpful information and comment. Archives
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