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greenstormI have a laptop again, courtesy of a good friend. I'm over the emotional shock of getting even more paperwork that needs to be done without the information needed to do it, and another friend is helping with that. I can allow myself the luxury of writing about something important, something I don't want to forget.
Yesterday (I think) I unloaded the latest glaze kiln that I'd run. I'd both loaded and unloaded it alone, and checked it in between, right after my doctor's appointment, and caught the uncanny glow from between the firebricks. If you don't know, modern artisanal ceramics is making a thing with muddy hands, letting it dry, putting it in a kiln and firing it once, putting on the glaze on the outside which will turn to shiny glass, and firing it at a higher temperature to make that glaze melt.
People have helped me the last several kilns, which is welcome: it's thoughtful, fiddly, and a lot of bending over a deep well of firebrick to reach the bottom. I didn't have it in me to organize help this time and I had a deadline of plant stakes for the plant swap door prizes and thank you baskets, so I just did it.
I put everything in, made since the light started returning, with smudges and layers of sandy red and grey and pale green on the outside. How it comes out is always unknown. Then the waiting, which contained a doctor's visit and a lot of melting down about how much paperwork I have for disability, and then the opening.
The kiln was roughly 150F when I opened it. That's a temperature where things can be taken out with thick gloves, but nothing is anywhere near glowing and it can be set right on the table -- not even oven temperature!
The kiln is a deep well, a cylender of firebrick, and the shelves are set inside, then posts put on and the next shelf stacked on those posts. Opening the kiln means only the top shelf is visible, until everything is taken off it and it's removed and set carefully aside, and then the next shelf down is revealed. We tend to fire four shelves deep.
Each shelf is 2' in diameter, roughly. Each shelf is more than the eye can take in; on opening the eye darts around to what's most spectacular, and only the top of each piece can be seen. Then each is lifted, glanced at or examined in detail, set aside, and the next one taken out. Piece by piece the last months of creation coalesce into something that could, before the fact, be guessed at but not known.
This piece was finished and terrible, and I tried something unconventional and now it's magic with the words "grow" and "live" peeking green through a swirl of darkness. This was a complete blank filled only by the memory of the physical sensation of making it, and now it's an object I can see and hold in my hands, with the green swirls I had hoped for. This is a totally unbalanced mash of texture and colour that needs reworking. This is the teapot I made when my aunt died that turned out exactly how I want, and the feeling of struggle as I worked with that particular, difficult clay returns as I pick up the finished piece for the first time. This is a seed bottle, lid set atop of, that needs a slight sharp knock for the lid to come off and then spin freely.
And another and another, all set out on the big table until the shelf can be lifted, another level revealed, another abundance of culminations that the eye cannot encompass all at once. And again, and again, reaching deeper and deeper as the shelves are removed until, at the bottom, I need to exhale and tuck in my lower ribs to reach. At the bottom are pendants made by people who came to a workshop I held, and the known-quantity plant tags for the sale.
When the kiln is empty the table is dizzying. Few things really quiet my mind but this does, in the same way perhaps that background noise helps some people to feel silent. Each object I made was a question, an unfinished discussion between my body, my understanding of physics and chemistry, and the actual word which contains real physics and chemistry: what happens if I do this? And, secondarily, my aesthetic sense: do I like it? And the table is full of them, 12 square feet worth of mugs with carvings, bowls cragged to look like rock, bowls with lids on them, seed jars, plates with letters carved into them. The table is full of answers.
I had made so many astonishing things, beautiful things and failed things and intriguing things and things I didn't want to look at because they were icky and things I wanted to have near me so I could keep thinking about them. If I could keep those things near me so they didn't escape my memory I could iterate on them, take the sensation of making them and bend it a little to make something new.
What a delightful feeling.
I was probably a little drunk on it when I went upstairs and told the building manager that when the show space was next empty I'd like to book a show for myself, maybe in fall so I'd have time to write text for everything. She slotted me in for September.
Don't take it for what it isn't: two months after me is the kindergardeners yearly show. But I'm going to be thinking of these pieces, setting them in boxes in groups with a write up for each grouping, into storage, and then in September I suppose I'll be unearthing them and moving them into the space.
I am 100% going to have an area with mugs with five different handles and a raffle box where people can enter their name and favourite handle.
I haven't captured that slow wondering feeling of unloading the kiln, but I've at least set down that it was significant. Under the paperwork and forced rest there is still some of me that exists, and I will show it to the world.
Yesterday (I think) I unloaded the latest glaze kiln that I'd run. I'd both loaded and unloaded it alone, and checked it in between, right after my doctor's appointment, and caught the uncanny glow from between the firebricks. If you don't know, modern artisanal ceramics is making a thing with muddy hands, letting it dry, putting it in a kiln and firing it once, putting on the glaze on the outside which will turn to shiny glass, and firing it at a higher temperature to make that glaze melt.
People have helped me the last several kilns, which is welcome: it's thoughtful, fiddly, and a lot of bending over a deep well of firebrick to reach the bottom. I didn't have it in me to organize help this time and I had a deadline of plant stakes for the plant swap door prizes and thank you baskets, so I just did it.
I put everything in, made since the light started returning, with smudges and layers of sandy red and grey and pale green on the outside. How it comes out is always unknown. Then the waiting, which contained a doctor's visit and a lot of melting down about how much paperwork I have for disability, and then the opening.
The kiln was roughly 150F when I opened it. That's a temperature where things can be taken out with thick gloves, but nothing is anywhere near glowing and it can be set right on the table -- not even oven temperature!
The kiln is a deep well, a cylender of firebrick, and the shelves are set inside, then posts put on and the next shelf stacked on those posts. Opening the kiln means only the top shelf is visible, until everything is taken off it and it's removed and set carefully aside, and then the next shelf down is revealed. We tend to fire four shelves deep.
Each shelf is 2' in diameter, roughly. Each shelf is more than the eye can take in; on opening the eye darts around to what's most spectacular, and only the top of each piece can be seen. Then each is lifted, glanced at or examined in detail, set aside, and the next one taken out. Piece by piece the last months of creation coalesce into something that could, before the fact, be guessed at but not known.
This piece was finished and terrible, and I tried something unconventional and now it's magic with the words "grow" and "live" peeking green through a swirl of darkness. This was a complete blank filled only by the memory of the physical sensation of making it, and now it's an object I can see and hold in my hands, with the green swirls I had hoped for. This is a totally unbalanced mash of texture and colour that needs reworking. This is the teapot I made when my aunt died that turned out exactly how I want, and the feeling of struggle as I worked with that particular, difficult clay returns as I pick up the finished piece for the first time. This is a seed bottle, lid set atop of, that needs a slight sharp knock for the lid to come off and then spin freely.
And another and another, all set out on the big table until the shelf can be lifted, another level revealed, another abundance of culminations that the eye cannot encompass all at once. And again, and again, reaching deeper and deeper as the shelves are removed until, at the bottom, I need to exhale and tuck in my lower ribs to reach. At the bottom are pendants made by people who came to a workshop I held, and the known-quantity plant tags for the sale.
When the kiln is empty the table is dizzying. Few things really quiet my mind but this does, in the same way perhaps that background noise helps some people to feel silent. Each object I made was a question, an unfinished discussion between my body, my understanding of physics and chemistry, and the actual word which contains real physics and chemistry: what happens if I do this? And, secondarily, my aesthetic sense: do I like it? And the table is full of them, 12 square feet worth of mugs with carvings, bowls cragged to look like rock, bowls with lids on them, seed jars, plates with letters carved into them. The table is full of answers.
I had made so many astonishing things, beautiful things and failed things and intriguing things and things I didn't want to look at because they were icky and things I wanted to have near me so I could keep thinking about them. If I could keep those things near me so they didn't escape my memory I could iterate on them, take the sensation of making them and bend it a little to make something new.
What a delightful feeling.
I was probably a little drunk on it when I went upstairs and told the building manager that when the show space was next empty I'd like to book a show for myself, maybe in fall so I'd have time to write text for everything. She slotted me in for September.
Don't take it for what it isn't: two months after me is the kindergardeners yearly show. But I'm going to be thinking of these pieces, setting them in boxes in groups with a write up for each grouping, into storage, and then in September I suppose I'll be unearthing them and moving them into the space.
I am 100% going to have an area with mugs with five different handles and a raffle box where people can enter their name and favourite handle.
I haven't captured that slow wondering feeling of unloading the kiln, but I've at least set down that it was significant. Under the paperwork and forced rest there is still some of me that exists, and I will show it to the world.
