Pottery friends in 2012

Studio pottery can be a lonely job. Or, at least, a solitary job.
Most of us work in our own spaces, removed from the rest of the community unless a buyer comes by or another potter needs a break from her work or we choose to go into town to the coffee shop or the grocery store. That's certainly the case with me. And I mostly like it that way.
But we can't get along without friends - for conversation, bitching about craft shows, problem-solving, borrowing of essential glaze ingredients (I still owe Denny Howard a few pounds of OM4), planning of regional clay shows, any number of things. We support each other, whether we realize it or not.
So here are some images of a few of my potter friends here on Cape Cod. These are not all of them, just some that I have photos of. I'm leaving out Ron Geering, Ron Dean, Diane Heart, Anne Halpin, Ann Newbury, Lois Hirshberg, Jim Irvine, Sue Wadoski, Sarah Caruso and others.
The photos: Denny Howard of Howard Pottery in Sagamore, demonstrating for a friend; Tessa Morgan of Flying Pig Pottery in Woods Hole, glazing; Kim Medeiros, my woodfiring partner, decorating (please note the Frida Kahlo earrings); Gail Turner of Millstone Pottery in Brewster, stoking in Truro; Shelley Fenily of Falmouth, left, with her partner Natalie Mariano; Brian Taylor of Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, loading the art center's train kiln this past fall.

Into the Castle Hill salt kiln

Kim Medeiros and I drove down to Truro again today, this time to deliver a few pots to Brian Taylor for the next firing of the salt kiln at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill. I fired in the kiln a couple of years ago, with mediocre results, but Brian has been working with the kiln since then and has gotten very good orange peel effects in the past several firings. Kim and I each took a half-dozen or so pots down, just enough to fill the last couple of shelves before Brian bricked them up. He'll fire the kiln right after Thanksgiving.

Wood Pots, Part Deux ...

I'm posting a few more good pots from the weekend's Truro woodfiring. And I urge any of you Facebook users to keep an eye on Kimberly Sheerin Medeiros's "The Barn Pottery" Facebook page over the next few days. She was here today and I photographed about 20 of her pots for her. Kim does a lot of sliptrailing and decoration on her pots and they took very well to the Castle Hill kiln. They're worth taking a look at.

Now, on to my pots. At top: Brian Taylor, ceramics director at Truro Center for the Arts and the guy who guides the firing, unloading; a fully-blasted vase, fired right in the firebox; a transparent celadon/Shino vase; very small faceted cup; a lovely little cup, traded away to Kim Medeiros for one of her tumblers. An even trade, I think.

Gotta fire with wood more often ...

Cleaning up a few ash-encrusted pots this morning. Those pots closest to the fire got pretty hammered, which is what you expect. The top photo in this batch is a small cup you can see sitting serenely on the firebox floor an hour or two into the firing of the train kiln at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill. In the end, it was overwhelmed by the growing bed of coals that built under the hobs. A very rough and blasted pot, but one of my favorites from this firing.

I fired this kiln with Brian Taylor, the Castle Hill ceramics guru, and friends Kim Medeiros, Gail Turner, Matt Kemp and a few other folks. Eight of us in all.

It was a good firing, though I've got about 15 pots that I will put into my own kiln for refiring. There were cool parts - the upper left rear had only cone 2 flat - and glazes did not mature back there. But I have no doubt that can be taken care of by firing in my gas kiln.

As it is, I've to a dozen or so pots that I'm in love with. Always dangerous, because that means I put ridiculously high prices on them so that I can live with them for a while. I'd like to get to the point that wood pots were not as precious to me as they are now. And I think that can only be done by firing regularly in my own wood kiln. I'm talking with a friend about that now. We'll see what happens.

Meanwhile, here are some pots from the firing. At the top is the firebox cup (the Japanese call those pots "yohen," I think.) And below that is the same pot in the firebox. Then a few more of the successful pots.

Weekend in Zombieland ... firing the kiln

When the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill built its train kiln a few years ago, it sought out a place with open land and few neighbors. It found the old U.S. Air Force radar installation on the ocean side of Cape Cod, several miles from the main "campus" of Castle Hill. Once home to several hundred Air Force personnel charged with spotting incoming nuclear bombers, this is now a strange amalgam of slowly deteriorating, asbestos-ridden military buildings, a summer theater, a working radar installation (yes, still), a weather observation station, a parking lot for transit buses, scientific ventures, a train kiln ... and zombies.

Well, not the zombies, as far as we know, but the first thought of my visiting niece during this week's firing was, "Wow, this place looks like 'The Walking Dead.' "

It sits on what would otherwise be prime waterfront real estate. But it's owned by the U.S. Park Service and strictly regulated. The building of the train kiln by visiting potter Donovan Palmquist was very closely inspected. 

So, arriving is a little strange, but the kiln is beautifully crafted and kept clean, as is the kiln shed. Brian Taylor, a Westerner by birth, oversees the clay program at Castle Hill and he runs the loading and firing. Brian is even-tempered, does not panic at the slightest dip of the pyrometer, and works well with a crew of potter/stokers whose experience runs from a few months to more than 30 years.

It took several hours to finish glazing pots, wadding, loading and closing up the door on Saturday. Sunday morning at about 5:45, Kim Medeiros and I unlocked the gate (letting the zombies out to ravage Truro) and then Kim put the first match to paper and kindling.

We worked a six-hour shift, got the pyro to about 350F and then retired to naps and later dinner in Provincetown. (And a thank-you to Castle Hill, which let us share the school's apartment they keep for visiting faculty.) The rest of the crew took over for the next 24 hours and when we got back for our second shift at noon Monday, cone 12 was bending near the front and we were just a few hours from shutdown. Brian tried his fine-tuning of the front- and side-stoking routine to even out the kiln temperatures. It looked pretty good, so we'll find out how it went Saturday afternoon. The last wood went in about 4:15 Monday, after 34 hours of firing. We open Saturday morning at 9.

The photos: The spooky view from the kiln shed; Brian Taylor, left, and potter Matt Kemp load; Kim Medeiros puts her Bic lighter to good use, getting the firing going at dawn; camera in the firebox after a couple of hours of burning, my teabowl on the left, Kim's big bowl in the middle; cone 12 nearly over at the front, next to the neck of a Kim vase; Traci Noone side-stokes.