matt long and his students were visiting in january and they tore down and rebuilt our soda kiln.  today r, our lovely kiln tech was putting the finishing touches on the burners.  he and b have been working hard on it and i’m hoping we’ll fire it up this week.  i’d like to get the garlic in if possible.  i think that it would look super in a soda fire.

recently i have been interested in jason briggs’ work.  actually i fell in love with it when i saw it in the exhibition “biomimicry” at the 2004 NCECA.  it was totally awe inspiring.  it was one of the pieces which i looked at and saw in it so much visual language that i wish i could speak.  if you know what i mean.  it seemed perfect, more exquisite than is possible to make by hand.

recently i googled his website (why had this never occurred to me??) and was delighted with what i found.  his site has lots of information and images as well as a image loop showing a piece from start to finish.  in lieu of seeing briggs demo in person, i was pretty satisfied by viewing his site.  it’s here.

seeing the progression of his work and reading about his process really gave me a different perspective on atmospheric firings.  i guess i think of them in a rustic kind of way.  though i see the amazing way they work out for other folks i hadn’t really thought they were right for my work.  his chicken skin speckaly, bumpily blushes really turned that thinking around and has given me a fresh perspective on atmospheric firings.  yeah!

this week i finished a set of slab plates with sgraffito.  they are for a doctor at work and they feature a stylized pneumocystis pneumoniea (sp??) carving.  i had a mishap with one and had set it aside and today i went at it with the carving tool and fashioned a  “syphilis” plate, the first in what promises to be an exciting series.  next up, chlamydia, gonnorhea and trichamonis. note, i am only featuring curable infections.  non-curable infections are way too much of a bummer.