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.

Dragon's debut

The dragon that grew in my studio and lived there for several weeks is now on display at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, along with the work of other students and their mentors in the program run through the museum by Linda Kemp. Linda matches up professional artists with high school students for eight weeks of work together. The show that formally opened last night (to a huge crowd of admiring friends and relatives, as always) is the culmination of those months of work together. Alex Urbina, my intern the dragon-maker, was there with her mom.
It's good to have the responsibility for the mythical sculpture out of my hands. It survived bisque- and glaze-firing more or less intact, only to fracture once it was delivered to the museum. (Not the museum's fault, by the way.) Careful gluing by yours truly restored the animal enough that most people last night had no idea that it wasn't perfect. Intact or not, it was a great effort by Alex, who worked tirelessly to complete the dragon, beginning to end.
She is going on to an All-State art program, recognized as a talented Massachusetts kid, and she will work soon with others at the Worcester Center for the Arts. Alex wore her prom outfit to the opening, which was pretty cool. For those of you who want to see it, sorry. I didn't photograph her, only the dragon. My bad.
I'm firing this morning. This load of pots is almost entirely glazed in Nuka or some combination of Nuka and a couple of other glazes. It's an experiment. As always ... we'll see.
The photos: Top, the dragon, guarding Alex's copper red vase of flowers; two visitors contemplating Alex's work; mentor Steve Kemp's magnificent wood-fired covered jar, my somewhat overshadowed Shino jar, the work of one of Steve's students.