A little bit of North Carolina on Cape Cod

Dinner tonight here in Falmouth is a cheese grits casserole made with barbecued pork and Portuguese linguica sausage. The grits are courtesy of Tracey Broome in Chapel Hill, NC. And fine grits they are. They're from Old Mill of Guilford in Oak Ridge, NC. Yellow grits. Nothin' better.
My firing partner Kim Medeiros and I helped fire Rose Esson-Dawson's new wood kiln a few days ago. Actually, Kim was the operator of the splitter two days before the firing. I wielded my chainsaw and supplied wood for Kim to split. Then I spent several hours throwing wood into the Julie Crosby-designed kiln Saturday with Rose, Ron Mello and Rose's husband Bruce. We open Thursday, though Kim will have to observe from her beach holiday at Salvo, NC, where I assume she has ready access to grits.
Below: Cheese grit casserole ready for the oven; fine stoker and potter Ron Mello of Middleboro, MA, shaking up the ash pit in Rose's Bourry Box kiln.

Japanese potters still suffer three years after quake

One of the wonderful things about the internet is the easy friendship and recognition that can happen between potters thousands of miles apart. I know that's not news, of course. Meredith Heywood,, of Whynot Pottery in North Carolina, and a group of other blogging potters put together a great international show in Southern Pines, NC, some years ago. It brought together potters from the US, Europe and Down Under.

I'm thinking about these enhanced worldwide connections now because my internet friend Gas Kimishima, an anagama potter in Hertfordshire, England, has put together an online auction of donated pots from potters around the world, to benefit Tohoku woodfirers in Japan who are still struggling with the effects of the Fukushima earthquake three years ago. Go to kamataki-aid.com and see the pots that have been donated for the auction. My friend Kim Medeiros, a potter here on Cape Cod at The Barn Pottery, turned me on to Gas's project. She donated a woodfired vase, which you can see in the gallery on the website. Other donors include Hannah McAndrew of Scotland, Doug Fitch of England, Phil Rogers of Wales. And there are many others.

Take a look. Bid on a pot. Or just send money to help the potters struggling on the other side of the planed.

The photos: Kim's pot, fired last summer in the train kiln at Castle Hill art center in Truro; my own crackle-slipped and amber ash-glazed bowl, fired here at Hatchville Pottery.

The blog is back ... and an international show of clay this summer

Hello to both my blog readers.
I'm kidding about that (I think), but only barely. It's been eight months since the last post. But I'm doing a little mouth-to-mouth on hatchvillepottery.blogspot.com, hoping that it will revive and be a lively part of my outreach to the world from snowy Cape Cod.
For the past year or so, I have tried to post daily to my Hatchville Pottery Facebook page, and I've been fairly successful at that. So those of you who want to see what's been going on since June - those who are Facebook users, that is - can go to my page and check it out. I've reached people all over the world through that page. I love that connection There are lots of pots there, photos of wood kilns, weather on Cape Cod, etc. But I know there are stubborn anti- and just plain uninterested-in-FB people out there, soooooo ... the blog is back, and to quote Joe Pesci in "My Cousin Vinny," "for YOU!"
The significant announcement today is the "Collaborations In Clay" show that Kim Medeiros and I are curating at Falmouth's Highfield Hall this summer. Highfield is a restored mansion that is now a beautiful conference and art center. We were asked by Highfield's exhibitions director Annie Dean to put together a small show of collaborative clay work by potters from around the US and the world. Invitations to participate in the show are still going out, but we have confirmations already from Hannah McAndrew and Doug Fitch of the UK, Blair Meerfeld and Allison Coles Severance of Maryland, Bruce Martin of the North Island in New Zealand, Patty Griffin of California, Abby Rappaport of Israel and several others. Each invitee will choose another clay person to work with and produce a collaborative piece for the show. Plus, each collaborator will have a solo piece as part of the exhibit.
"Collaborations" will run throughout the summer season and bring a new international clay presence to Falmouth and Cape Cod. We're very excited about that and expect that there will be other events related to the show. Please go to highfieldhall.org for full details as they become available. And if you're on Cape Cod this summer, please come by Highfield and see the exhibit.
Besides working on this show, Kim and I are still prospecting on Cape Cod for a place to put our planned wood kiln. Earlier this year we drove a U-Haul truck to Rhode Island and brought home 1500 bricks, 38 shelves and assorted other gear, most of which is now weighing down the southeast corner of my basement. In a hurricane, that will be the place to go.
That's all for now. Glad to be back.
The photos, top to bottom: Anagama-fired vase by New Zealand potter Bruce Martin and his late wife Estelle, UK potters Doug Fitch and Hannah McAndrew, Maryland potter Allison Coles Severance, Maryland potter Blair Meerfeld, California sgraffito potter Patty Griffin.