This pot is from 1998. It was fired for days in a wood kiln in Wilimina, Oregon.
It is constructed from coils, with a troweled surface. It does not hold water.
This pot is from the same fire as the one above. It is also from
the same clay. The clay was taken from a garbage can that contained the
slaking trimmings, scraps, and throw-aways of the Ceramics Department
at the Oregon College of Art and Craft, where I then was employed. I
took this clay and added fire clay and Helmar Kaolin to it until it
was workable. Then I took it home. The clay was nearly unworkable. It
had chunks of leather hard clay in it the size of marbles. This was OK with
me, because I was working with an old Shimpo wheel with a suicide-shift
speed-control that sputtered and started and was entirely unable to keep a
constant speed.
This pot was from that clay too, but from a different fire.
It was made in the same garage, on the same wheel. I was only trying to
bisque-fire a kiln full of pots for a wood-fire in Grass Valley, CA. I
should have used a pyrometric cone. I have no idea how hot it got in there,
but it was more than bisque. I was petty unhappy with the pots from that
fire, because they were not what I had wanted, but now I think this is one
of the best I have made. I like it because so little has been done to the
clay. The fire was in a soft-brick, updraft, cylindrical kiln, fueled by
propane. The kiln lid was made of fiberfax and hardware cloth. When I put
the lid on, the hardware cloth burned and melted with a sick greenish flame
and a thick smoke.
This pot is from the fall of 1995, I think. I know it is from a Grass Valley
wood fire, which means it was fired for hours in a glaze-type kiln. I made
it specifically for that firing. If it is from when I think it is, this was
my second fire at G.V.. There is talk of another this fall. I made the pot
with stoneware clay that had big chunks of feldspar in it. When I went to
load it in a bisque kiln, it was about an eighth of an inch too tall, so I
took it out and rubbed its bottom on the cement floor. That did the trick. I
glazed it in a shino-style glaze, but I dipped it in water first, so that the
glaze would stay thin on the pot. This is one of my favorites. I was thrilled
when I saw it come from the kiln
This pot is from the Grass Valley kiln, too. The kiln is at the John Wolman
School. It is a seven-chamber, hill-climbing kiln of the noborigama style.
We fire it with cedar. A few times we have gone to the forest or a snag,
which we cut ourselves. The one I remember best was a one-hundred-eighty year
old, ten year dead, two-and-a-half-foot-thick, bone dry tree. We found it
a hundred feet above an old logging road, dropped it, cut it into rounds,
and loaded about two chords (use the form above to correct me if I am wrong
here, Tom) into the truck. The wood splits great. The pot is some bland
stoneware with a white slip over it, and markings that are sgriffito, I guess.
I put the slip on at the wheel, and scratched the design in there too. I
made this pot at the Oregon College of Art and Craft, when it was still a
school. I glazed it in celedon, and the unglazed band is the result of a low
level of glaze in the bucket. One dip from the top, one from the bottom, and
never the twain shall meet. If there had been enough glaze to get the whole
thing, there would be a band of double-thick glaze, because that's the kind
of potter I am. I try to find ways to make things look good with the
resouces I have at hand. To facilitate this, I have cultivated a style that
some woud surely consider sloppy. I don't like firing bad pots, though.
The bottom chamber of the Grass Valley kiln is really a firemouth. It fires
longer than any of the glaze chambers. Once it is fired off, the stoking
moves to the next chamber up the hill. The primary air for that chamber comes
through the firemouth. Likewise, when the first chamber is fired, the stoking
moves to the next chamber, and so on up the hill. I think one reason that
the later chambers fire so fast is that the primary air is heated by the
lower chambers before it burns the fuel. With that theory in mind, I made
this piece, and others like it, to sit in the firemouth, absorb and radiate
heat. They are radiators. Actually, they are a bit small to really have
much impact on the heat transfer through the firemouth, but it's the thought
that counts, right? I made this piece (piece, hmm. It's a funny term. I
didn't make the piece of clay, I handled it. I suppose artifact is a better
word, but it sounds pretentious.) in 1996, I think, for my third fire at
Grass Valley. A really good trick that Tom Orr told me for checking the
heat in a kiln is to look into the cracks on the inside of the chamber and
see the color there. Wear special glasses to look into hot kilns. The clay
is a helmar kaolin based wood fire clay of my own devising. I might post the
formula someday. Ask for it, using the form above, and I will surely email
it to you.
This pot is from Grass Valley, too. I made it in 1999, in my garage in San
Jose. It is really two pinch-pots, joined in the middle.
This is another pot from Grass Valley. I made it in 1997, I think. I was
at the Oregon College of Art and Craft, and I made a bunch of pots for one of
the Grass Valley firings. They were very heavy, and a lot of them did not
have good feet. I think feet are very important, but I do not like to trim
pots upside down on a potters wheel for two reasons: First, a lot of the tops
of pots I make are asymetrical and, this may be a third point, they may be
marked by the process. Second, to trim with a trim-tool, I would have to get
to the pot at a very specific moisture content. Since I have almost always
had to commute to a studio, this is not always possible. Consequntly, I have
put a great deal of effort into developing pottery forms that can succeed with
feet that are either carved right at the wheel or later, as late as leather-
hard. In the case of this body of work, I liked the forms, but was unsatisfied
with the feel of the pots. I went into the studio the next day and cut the
bottoms off the pots, set them aside, and used a trim-tool to carve out the
inside of the pots. I then re-attached the bottoms. In some cases I paddled
the pots after that. I think this is a curious case of form following function,
because usually, in pottery, function refers to the functionality of the pot
for the (non-ceramic industry term comming) end-user. Here it is
form following the functionality of the tools and time-constranints of the
potter.
I made this pot in 1998, at San Jose State University. When I moved to
California, I tried to make some time for pottery. In my first appartment, it
was pretty hard, because I had no basement or garage. I tried signing up for
an open-studion class at SJSU. Aside from some bureaucratic hassle, it was
a really good place to make pots. The students were interesting, and the
facility is a good one. For me, though, it was hard to make the time. My
fiancee lived three hours South of the Bay Area, so I visited her on weekends,
and nights after work it was hard to make the time. I would often get to the
studio at nine or ten, and, with work the next day, I had a hard time staying
late. I made this and a few other pots. This is my favorite. It is gas-fired
to cone ten. I took special care of this pot right off the wheel. It did not
want to hold its shape at first, so I inflated it by blowing into the lip. I
held it upside down for ten minutes so that it would set a bit before I put it
on a shelf.
I made this pot in October of 1993, at the Stark Street Studio in Portland,
Oregon. It was one of the first pots I made after I got to Portland. It is
coil built. It is glazed with borax and iron oxide. It is fired to a high
bisque. This was such an innocent and optimistic time, I get all misty
thinking about it.
I think this pot is from 1997. I know it was fired
in Grass Valley. I had a lot of clay sitting around, and I knew the firing
was coming up. I threw a bunch of forms, most of which were heavier than I
wanted them to be. There were some things I liked about them, but not too much.
I do remember blowing into some of them to help them keep their shape when I
took them off the wheel. Bats are such a pain. A few days later I went it to
the studio to work on the pots. They were dryer than I wanted. I
paddled them. Some of them I cut the bottoms out of and removed clay from the
inside with a trimming tool, then re-attached the bottom, then paddled again.
Others I did this to the top. Some cracked. This is when I started to like
the pots. The glazes at Grass Valley are chunky, and I washed this pot in one
glaze that is essentially mud from Nevada then covered it in a white glaze.
This pot is from 1998. It was fired for days in a wood kiln in Wilimina, Oregon.
It is constructed from coils, with a troweled surface. It does not hold water.
This pot is from the same fire as the one above. It is also from
the same clay. The clay was taken from a garbage can that contained the
slaking trimmings, scraps, and throw-aways of the Ceramics Department
at the Oregon College of Art and Craft, where I then was employed. I
took this clay and added fire clay and Helmar Kaolin to it until it
was workable. Then I took it home. The clay was nearly unworkable. It
had chunks of leather hard clay in it the size of marbles. This was OK with
me, because I was working with an old Shimpo wheel with a suicide-shift
speed-control that sputtered and started and was entirely unable to keep a
constant speed.
This pot was from that clay too, but from a different fire.
It was made in the same garage, on the same wheel. I was only trying to
bisque-fire a kiln full of pots for a wood-fire in Grass Valley, CA. I
should have used a pyrometric cone. I have no idea how hot it got in there,
but it was more than bisque. I was petty unhappy with the pots from that
fire, because they were not what I had wanted, but now I think this is one
of the best I have made. I like it because so little has been done to the
clay. The fire was in a soft-brick, updraft, cylindrical kiln, fueled by
propane. The kiln lid was made of fiberfax and hardware cloth. When I put
the lid on, the hardware cloth burned and melted with a sick greenish flame
and a thick smoke.
This pot is from the fall of 1995, I think. I know it is from a Grass Valley
wood fire, which means it was fired for hours in a glaze-type kiln. I made
it specifically for that firing. If it is from when I think it is, this was
my second fire at G.V.. There is talk of another this fall. I made the pot
with stoneware clay that had big chunks of feldspar in it. When I went to
load it in a bisque kiln, it was about an eighth of an inch too tall, so I
took it out and rubbed its bottom on the cement floor. That did the trick. I
glazed it in a shino-style glaze, but I dipped it in water first, so that the
glaze would stay thin on the pot. This is one of my favorites. I was thrilled
when I saw it come from the kiln
This pot is from the Grass Valley kiln, too. The kiln is at the John Wolman
School. It is a seven-chamber, hill-climbing kiln of the noborigama style.
We fire it with cedar. A few times we have gone to the forest or a snag,
which we cut ourselves. The one I remember best was a one-hundred-eighty year
old, ten year dead, two-and-a-half-foot-thick, bone dry tree. We found it
a hundred feet above an old logging road, dropped it, cut it into rounds,
and loaded about two chords (use the form above to correct me if I am wrong
here, Tom) into the truck. The wood splits great. The pot is some bland
stoneware with a white slip over it, and markings that are sgriffito, I guess.
I put the slip on at the wheel, and scratched the design in there too. I
made this pot at the Oregon College of Art and Craft, when it was still a
school. I glazed it in celedon, and the unglazed band is the result of a low
level of glaze in the bucket. One dip from the top, one from the bottom, and
never the twain shall meet. If there had been enough glaze to get the whole
thing, there would be a band of double-thick glaze, because that's the kind
of potter I am. I try to find ways to make things look good with the
resouces I have at hand. To facilitate this, I have cultivated a style that
some woud surely consider sloppy. I don't like firing bad pots, though.
The bottom chamber of the Grass Valley kiln is really a firemouth. It fires
longer than any of the glaze chambers. Once it is fired off, the stoking
moves to the next chamber up the hill. The primary air for that chamber comes
through the firemouth. Likewise, when the first chamber is fired, the stoking
moves to the next chamber, and so on up the hill. I think one reason that
the later chambers fire so fast is that the primary air is heated by the
lower chambers before it burns the fuel. With that theory in mind, I made
this piece, and others like it, to sit in the firemouth, absorb and radiate
heat. They are radiators. Actually, they are a bit small to really have
much impact on the heat transfer through the firemouth, but it's the thought
that counts, right? I made this piece (piece, hmm. It's a funny term. I
didn't make the piece of clay, I handled it. I suppose artifact is a better
word, but it sounds pretentious.) in 1996, I think, for my third fire at
Grass Valley. A really good trick that Tom Orr told me for checking the
heat in a kiln is to look into the cracks on the inside of the chamber and
see the color there. Wear special glasses to look into hot kilns. The clay
is a helmar kaolin based wood fire clay of my own devising. I might post the
formula someday. Ask for it, using the form above, and I will surely email
it to you.
This pot is from Grass Valley, too. I made it in 1999, in my garage in San
Jose. It is really two pinch-pots, joined in the middle.
This is another pot from Grass Valley. I made it in 1997, I think. I was
at the Oregon College of Art and Craft, and I made a bunch of pots for one of
the Grass Valley firings. They were very heavy, and a lot of them did not
have good feet. I think feet are very important, but I do not like to trim
pots upside down on a potters wheel for two reasons: First, a lot of the tops
of pots I make are asymetrical and, this may be a third point, they may be
marked by the process. Second, to trim with a trim-tool, I would have to get
to the pot at a very specific moisture content. Since I have almost always
had to commute to a studio, this is not always possible. Consequntly, I have
put a great deal of effort into developing pottery forms that can succeed with
feet that are either carved right at the wheel or later, as late as leather-
hard. In the case of this body of work, I liked the forms, but was unsatisfied
with the feel of the pots. I went into the studio the next day and cut the
bottoms off the pots, set them aside, and used a trim-tool to carve out the
inside of the pots. I then re-attached the bottoms. In some cases I paddled
the pots after that. I think this is a curious case of form following function,
because usually, in pottery, function refers to the functionality of the pot
for the (non-ceramic industry term comming) end-user. Here it is
form following the functionality of the tools and time-constranints of the
potter.
I made this pot in 1998, at San Jose State University. When I moved to
California, I tried to make some time for pottery. In my first appartment, it
was pretty hard, because I had no basement or garage. I tried signing up for
an open-studion class at SJSU. Aside from some bureaucratic hassle, it was
a really good place to make pots. The students were interesting, and the
facility is a good one. For me, though, it was hard to make the time. My
fiancee lived three hours South of the Bay Area, so I visited her on weekends,
and nights after work it was hard to make the time. I would often get to the
studio at nine or ten, and, with work the next day, I had a hard time staying
late. I made this and a few other pots. This is my favorite. It is gas-fired
to cone ten. I took special care of this pot right off the wheel. It did not
want to hold its shape at first, so I inflated it by blowing into the lip. I
held it upside down for ten minutes so that it would set a bit before I put it
on a shelf.
I made this pot in October of 1993, at the Stark Street Studio in Portland,
Oregon. It was one of the first pots I made after I got to Portland. It is
coil built. It is glazed with borax and iron oxide. It is fired to a high
bisque. This was such an innocent and optimistic time, I get all misty
thinking about it.
I think this pot is from 1997. I know it was fired
in Grass Valley. I had a lot of clay sitting around, and I knew the firing
was coming up. I threw a bunch of forms, most of which were heavier than I
wanted them to be. There were some things I liked about them, but not too much.
I do remember blowing into some of them to help them keep their shape when I
took them off the wheel. Bats are such a pain. A few days later I went it to
the studio to work on the pots. They were dryer than I wanted. I
paddled them. Some of them I cut the bottoms out of and removed clay from the
inside with a trimming tool, then re-attached the bottom, then paddled again.
Others I did this to the top. Some cracked. This is when I started to like
the pots. The glazes at Grass Valley are chunky, and I washed this pot in one
glaze that is essentially mud from Nevada then covered it in a white glaze.