2 steps forward one step back

Yesterday I realized that my plan for firing this doorway was not going to work as planned. I had loaded the whole kiln with only three posts per shelf. I hind sight this was a bad idea as the corners of the shelves without posts were not sturdy enough. So the whole things was unloaded and reloaded with double the posts. Each shelf now has 6 posts per shelf and is ready to fire. I has been candling since monday morning and will be fired slowly to cone ten tomorrow. If the day is dragging too long then I might only go to cone six. I'll play that by ear.

Last nigh the potters Guild of Hamilton and Region was treated to a presentation by Bruce Cochrane about his career and influences over his tenure as Head of the Ceramics Department at Sheridan College. Bruce is probably one of Canada's best potters. He has been making wonderfully designed and beautifully executed work for over 35 years. He has Retired as of this fall and is now exploring new found time and freedom in a shared studio space in Toronto. Good luck Bruce!

and so it all begins...

After a wonderful summer of friends, family, sun, cottages and not doing a whole lot other than having fun with my wife and son, it is time to work again. It also means time to think and write and grow. This fall I have the pleasure and fear of firing the wonderful doorway which Peter King made with us at the Hamilton Potters Guild workshop in July. It is made on a 1" thick slab of clay and weighed approximately 600 lbs wet! It is all cut into sections and has dried together for the whole summer untouched. It has been lightly sprayed wit a directional coat of rutile and yellow iron. I am now slowly loading it into the gas kiln to fire slowly over several days. I think it might take as many as 4 firings to do the whole thing.

I think my poor shelves will be sighing a big few when this is done. These pieces each weigh about 12 lbs.

This fall also means a busy time at the the new gallery. Allsorts has been coming along really well and we are all looking forward to the fall. The space is looking fantastic and is filling up with wonderful work.

murmers of ideas

I've been struggling with how to talk about the new pots from the last wood firing. I think that it isn't so much that I can't speak about them or don't have an opinion but rather that I have a huge amount to say about them and can't seem to pear it down to a manageable mouthful. Here are a few of the pots and I'll try to be brief. The first is a sweet little tea pot which was one of only a few of my pieces that ended up with a blast of cooling crystals on the fireside face. We crash cooled the kiln for about 20 minutes before starting the reduction cooling cycle. This was probably more an over sight than a mistake as we bunged up the kiln. This produced a crusty crystalline structure on the surface of many of the pots on the fire face of the first shelf.
These are the fireside and leaside of this bottle. Notice how there was lots of bounce back of the flame on the back of the bottle to give the fantastic reduction cooled swirls. These pics don't do the depth of colour in the surface justice. There are reds, yellows greens and blues and mingling together to form a massive amount of surface variation and movement.

old forgotten friends

This weekend melinda, alec and i headed up to the Ottawa valley to see my folks. As all good parents do they keep around the things their children have made. Over the years I have made many things but most proudly displayed seem to be my pots. Many of these I haven't seen or maybe noticed in a long long time. Somehow with the latest wood firing out and all of the pondering I'm doing about surface and direction of my work these pieces spoke to me again. Perhaps it is the full circle I've taken back to wood firing, or maybe just noticing them again but they remind me of why I do this. The simple forms informed by quiet nights of firing with good friends, good wine and good conversation. These all date back ten years to my Sheridan days.

I wonder sometimes about how ideas or notions get into our thinking. I've often wondered how I was drawn so strongly to making pots. Looking around my moms place made me realize that I've always been surrounded by them especially old ones. Here is one of my favorite of her collections, check out the fantastic old Quebec stoneware gallon jug!

unloading

I think this firing will be something that I talk about for a long time. These pots for the first time in a long time make me choose my words carefully. They make me wonder what words to use let a alone use them, and when it come to describing the work solely with words I am left slightly speechless.

Instead of going on about what happened during the opening of the kiln, I think i'll show a few photos and that will speak for itself. The first is the crew unbricking the door and then taking out the remaining ash left in the firebox. The following are in order from front to back stack of the kiln as it came out. I'll post more photo of the pots themselves as I am able to talk about them.


The last is of Cam Fishers large jar which was the top of the last stack. It went in raw and with nothing on the surface.....

and so it ends

well it is suddenly finished! after weeks of prep and a whole week of frantic work and driving, it is all finished. Now we need to wait and contemplate what we have done until friday, when we can see if the labour was worth it.
A quick bit about the firing.
-We started the fire on monday morning at 4:30 am
-small fire for a whole day then a slightly larger one until we were into full on stoking by wed.
-Wed morning we were at about cone 6 in the front and not yet cone 04 in the back
-thurdays' evening / over night we were at cone 11 in the front and 9 in the middle, with six almost down in the back

-by friday at 2 we were at cone eleven in the front and middle and not at 9 yet in the back,so we started side stoking

-friday night we cranked the stoke up a bit and dropped 9 and ten in the back as well as 12 in the front

saturday at 7:30 am we filled the fire box to over full and closed up the kiln and bunged up all the peeps and ports as well as any cracks in the door
we down fired in reduction til I left at 1 pm and were planning on continuing til into the evening

and now we wait.....

who needs sleep...

well the firing has started. Late is better than not happening so life is good!

As I arrived last night at 10 pm for my shift of starting the fire, I noticed that there were people standing in the kiln! My fears were confirmed as I approached through the dark that in fact they were still loading and had two thirds of the front stack still to go. As always I pitched in as much as possible.

By 11, Chris had to go home and Louise went off to sleep as she was to take a shift at 2- 7. They had managed to get one more shelf in by then.

A very tired Cam and I worked hard an had the rest loaded by 3 am. and the fire in the bottom of the chimney going by 3:30.


This left the door to be bricked up which took about another hour.

The fire box was lit by 4:30, I was off to sleep!

I had a lovely wake up call from my son Alec at 7:30 and headed back out to take my shift til 1pm. This morning was breezy and cold, but the farm is looking wonderfully inviting this time of year.

Here's a pic in the door and lets try a video!

and so it begins

well loading the kiln has started, and should as i'm writting this be finished. Here are a couple of pics of the start of the back stack and also of the new stoke door. We have new main fire box and side stoke doors for this firing. Hopefully they are easier to use than the last ones. These should lift off very easily as the others were heavy and sometimes a bit stuck!




here is a pic of the inside of Chris Lass's new studio. It is a turn of the century post and beam barn! So jealous!

cups, cups, cups

I've started to glaze for the firing this coming week and have realized that I have a mountain of work ready. I guess I am going to have to edit what I really want fired. Before I realized this I went ahead and made twenty more cups! Guess I'll have some left overs. Oh well they can be put through the reduction kiln and add to the inventory for All Sorts Gallery.
I'm also realizing it is a good thing I have at least a small SUV because it it is going to be full to the gills with pots to take to the firing. Two large crates of bottle vases barely put a dent in the work to be packed up.Here is another pic of the new work, I'm working on labeling for the new gallery.

spring warmth

This morning looked quite bleak as I headed out the door to take Alec my 3 year old son to daycare. Clouds were circling and it felt a lot like rain. By the time my work day of 1 hour was over, the sun had come out and a glorious day was in full swing. I decided to come home and make for a last day before the woodfiring next weekend.

It was a great day to dry to things outside, not too hot, not too sunny, and most of all no wind. So as fast a work came off the wheel it went out in the back yard to stiffen up. When it comes to outdoor flat surfaces for pots, anything will do!

This lets me finish the work all in a day. This also allows me to hopefully get it all dry by wednesday to bisque, and then glaze on Friday. We start to load on Saturday so there is no time to loose. I looked through my work that I have ready for the firing and decided that I needed a couple more bottles, 14 didn't seem like enough and some more plates and wall plates.


Today also allowed me to finally really make a mess in the new studio. People have been asking for along time now if I have been making int he studio, well I have, but not enough to make a mess. Today finally feels like I'm in there and making it my own.

Here are some of the fired pots from the firing a couple of weeks ago. It feels like the owrk is starting to have a cohesive feel.

warmth

Today felt like the first day of spring here. My tulips are coming up and have been eaten off again by the passing deer. So much for festive colours in front of the house. The classes at both mohawk and DVSA are between terms and so I had a very short day in a mohawk today. Kiln shelves were washed, platter were checked on and the studio had a quick once over with the mop.

This left me with most of the day to spend in my own studio. For the first time I managed to sit down at my wheel and be bathed in sunlight. My old studio for those of of you who had never been here was in the basement. As was my studio before that and most peoples first studios. They are the unwanted spaces of most homes and are easily converted to a messy area. Finally having a studio above ground is wonderful. The warm sun on my hands as I through made up for the fact that I was wearing a tuque and that the water almost had ice in it. Luckily my clay lives beside my heater and so it too was warm.

Here are a couple of pics of some brie bakers and some new slab dishes with feet on my new rolling racks. The dishes are decorated with roulettes as slabs and after setting up they are slumped over a plaster mold and the feet are added.

The brie bakers all received a generous coating of slip after only a couple of hours of drying. The warmth of the sun was making them happy as well today. Seems like my window placement was a good choice.

mix ups

A couple of weeks ago I re-wrote my glaze book. It was a mess with glaze spills and oxides. Not to mention all the formulas that were written in the margins. In doing so I seem to have miss labeled my slip recipes. This was twigged by a friend and fellow Potter Jordan McDonald who comment that my recipe seemed to be lacking a lot of plasticity (clay). Was he ever right. I had switched the titles of my Robin Hopper Slip with my Casting Slip. What a goof.

Now that the problem is solved I have two new buckets of slip aging. I took the opportunity yesterday, to make some more platters to try it out and make sure the slip is right this time. It was nice a creamy in the bucket and stood up well to some brush work. Hopefully these 30 inchers will last this time. My pile of reclaim only seems to be growing these days and not going down. Luckily one bucket of reclaim equals 4 platters so the pile will go down quickly once it is processed again.
I love when I can get the slip to clinging to the underside of the rim like this. I try as much as possible to have at least one on each platter. It comes from the brush pushing the slip out over the edge when I'm swirling the leaf pattern on. I think it references the wet slip really well. They end up looking dynamic like maybe they might drip off.