tomorrow is jamie and sarah’s show, can’t wait. i’m sad to see them go but very happy to see how much they’ve accomplished in their time here. jamie and i will do one more personal firing before she leaves, so need to get to cracking on more work for that. then fill the kiln at least once in august. maybe a second time in september? this summer has been so crazy and busy and it won’t settle down for at least awhile longer. in a couple of weeks the three of us will head out for bowling green. i’m looking forward to a couple of days of FREEDOM!
i had some cracks come up along the coil lines. don’t know why since they aren’t going all the way through and i smoosh on both sides of my coils. i don’t mind because they only come out after an atmospheric firing and i feel they are in line with the anphibian like skin. the stress of the enviroment causing crackles and ruptures. and they aren’t structural, i don’t think. i’m going to experiment with bisquing a little higher and see if that helps. one of the chicken butts had a long crack across it. again it didn’t go through, but i didn’t like how wide it got. too distracting. the same peice had a big ol’ dry spot on the whole back side, so i refired it this week, again getting lots of juicy soda and carbon trapping and filling in that crack a little so it looks like a healing froggy scar.
it’s so fun firing this kiln up. we’ve gotten the results we were after but it’s all a total learning experience and experiment to an extent. were we firing this for the members we would have to back way off on the carbon trapping and the body reduction and also do a proper glaze reduction. and though i was happy with the results from this load i found areas of the kiln i particularly loved so i’m going to have to work on refining the technique we’ve been using.
again, chistmas mentality took over (and the fact that j- is heading out in a few weeks) and we started scheming how we could fire it again before she leaves. having someone to share the kiln with is good, make a little work, fire, fire, fire. once she leaves i’ll have to put my nose to the grindstone to fill it.
j- is moving up to bowling green, ohio for grad school, which is were s- just got her bfa from, so in early august the three of us are going to head out on a short roadtrip to move j- up. i have no connection to the area, just an extreme urge to TRAVEL. we’re going to stop in on my friend k- in atlanta and mudfire. from there we’ll stop in asheville, nc in hopes of checking out the highwater factory, odyssy center and maybe some local artists.
friday. my day was made complex by the fact that the minivan had a minor melt down on thursday. conking out on 22nd st. literally in front of a automotive shop which burned down about three months ago was funny, having n- from the clay co behind me at the light was lucky. she was kind enough to lend me her aaa service and found a car shop. s- came by and helped us move the car out of traffic. we had some fun mosquito infested converstaion while we waited by the burned out auto shop for the tow truck to arrive. i had to commute the next day to sarasota so my parents came and got me and i so i could drive their car to work the next day. my luck seemed to continue because the problem was minimal, fixed on friday and i was able to get out of work early to go and pick it up. definitely best case scenario. with a little help from friends and family what could have been a real mess was made bearable.
friday night loading with j- ended up taking a little longer than originally planned. when we finished up at 2:30 am we decided NOT to start at 6 am. first turn up was at 9 am. s- and r-sensei were firing rudy inside. they had started at 6. we had taken good notes during the last firing and this time everything seemed to stay on a similiar schedule. around 6 pm s- and r- headed out. it started to get dark. i knew that we were looking at an estimated soda time of 1 am and though i was looking forward to the fireworks we would see after the sun went down i was starting to feel a little clausterphobic. i’ve never been a big fan of dusk. day is great, night is awesome. dusk is clasuterphobic. but once the sun fell i started to get my second wind.
once the fireworks started going we climbed out a second story window to the roof where i could see fireworks going off for 360 degrees. the best show in my line of sight was coming from down town st. petersburg. seeing fireworks definitely makes me nostalgic for tokyo. there’s no fourth there of course, fireworks are a summer long thing with different areas hosting shows. most are free, some you can pay a fee for good seating (ash and debris falling on your head good) and some you have to brave psychotic crowds to see. in the event listings each event has a number next to it, so and so thousand for example. knowing that the sumida river event was the biggest of the year i incorrectly thought that the number was the amount of folks in attendence. i felt very silly when i finally realized the number was the amount of fireworks being fired off. sumida river, the last time i went boasted 20,000 fireworks. crazy. regardless of the numbers thoug there is something about all that sparkly light in the night sky. it’s breath taking. j- said she’d considered becoming a pyrotechnician. that would have been awesome. just like judy chicago.
around 12:30 am we got everything ready to soda. shot in some soda/sawdust chalupas, sprayed and then added some wood for good measure, let it burn and then shut her down. i finally made it home around 2.
just as the exhaustion threatens to settle in, it’s time to soda and just as you think you’re going to drop from the heat, and dehydration you’re done and it’s time to start wondering what’s going to come out.
christmas or halloween??
can you see the cones? rough, since it was taken with my cell phone.
