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.

Kiln-opening and open studio this weekend

The kiln is loaded and the burners are firing. It's around 700 degrees in there right now and it will fire until later this afternoon. Then we'll open at 11 Saturday morning, with what is likely to be a studio full of visitors eager to see the pots that Kim Medeiros and I have inside.
When Falmouth potter Angela Rose and I started this holiday kiln-opening/open studio weekend about nine years ago, I think we had three or four people around us when we opened the kiln door. And I think all of them were relatives. Times have changed. This will be the third year that we have had to hire a Falmouth policeman to manage the kiln-opening traffic. That uniform carries more car-parking authority than the fleece vest or denim jacket worn by whatever unfortunate friend volunteered to help park cars. There will be a lot of people here.
This idea sprang from the holiday home pottery show of the late Shino master Malcolm Davis. When we lived in the Washington, D.C., area, and I was a beginning potter, we would go over to the Adams-Morgan neighborhood townhome of Davis and marvel at his Shino pots. We even bought some once in a while. But what struck us as a good idea was the fact that he always had four or five other craftspeople in other media also selling in his home.

So when Angela and I decided to do a December show, we wanted to include other craftspeople. Since that first show, we've had jewelers, potters, painters, one glassblower, a paper artist, a coffee roaster, a photographer ... maybe some I can't remember. Jeweler Kim Collins has, I think, been with us from the beginning. Glassblower Bryan Randa has been with us for several years, as has paper magician Ruth Bleakley. This will be raku potter Lois Hirshberg's third year and functional potter Kim Medeiros's first. Mike Race will sell his freshly-roasted coffee beans for the second year. 

And everyone will bring food. This is a good place to have lunch on Saturday, even if you don't feel like buying pots. (Though that's encouraged.) For the past five years we've served chile dogs made with genuine New Mexico red chile. That started when a friend arrived with five hot dogs (five????) and five buns. I happened to have made chile that morning, so we combined the two and Ed's strange potluck contribution was consumed almost immediately (well ... there were only five) and started a tradition. Now, chile dogs have to be on the menu. And there will be much, much more ...

Come on down if you're on the Cape. We open at 10 Saturday morning and open the kiln at 11. Sunday we open at 11. Both days we close the doors at 4.

Happy holidays, all.

The photographs of a few of my pots available this weekend: Top, two side-handle teapots, appropriately decorated; small lobed vase fired in the Truro wood kiln; mugs from the Truro wood kiln;  fat vase, from the same kiln.

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.

And just a few more wood pots, refired ...

I refired about 15 of the underfired pots from the Truro wood kiln, opening my own kiln yesterday. It was a pretty good firing. Most of the wood pots, whose glazes looked reeeeaaalllly bad at cone 2, matured nicely, particularly with the amber ash going lovely and transparent over crackle slip (a technique adapted from Virginia potter Dan Finnegan).
And Kim Medeiros, my stoking partner in Truro, got several pots into this firing, too, coming out with very nice work, both refired and first-fired. Her glazes do well in my kiln.
I'll just post a few pictures of the pots for you. I'm throwing again for the next firing here, but I haven't thrown in a few weeks and it feels like I never knew how. Jeez ...
So, to the pots: Top, a lovely fat jar, crackle slip under a gray Shino; squared jar, crackle slip under amber ash, ash celadon on the bottom; trailed crackle slip under amber ash on a small cup; larger teabowl faceted with twisted wire, with amber ash; my prize from the woodfiring, one of Kim's tumblers, traded for one of my small cups.

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.