A happy Saturday selling pots and coffee

Saturday's "Among Friends" kiln-opening and pottery sale was a wonderful one-day event. Not only because everyone seemed happy with their sales, but because it was just a good time. The trick to enjoying this occasionally iffy business of staging an event in the summer on Cape Cod is to have a group of people that like each other and are fully capable of having fun, no matter how many pots go out the driveway.

But quite a few did. The joint firing was successful, Mike Race brought good coffee, Tammy Race made scones, Jo Ann Muramoto made a tomato tart, we had dozens of bagels and many, many chile dogs. What could be wrong with that? I suspect we'll do it again next year and give people a reason to come to Hatchville. Now ... if we can figure out how to plan cloudy, non-beach weather like yesterday's.

Photos: Top, Denny Howard sets up, with Kim Medeiros behind him and Angela Rose in the background; three of my pots from this firing - an oversize Shino teabowl; a low, ragged-edged teabow and a small vase with overlapped Shinos.

Kiln fired, tents setting up, come on down

We fired yesterday for the opening and pottery sale today here at Hatchville Pottery in Falmouth. If you're nearby, come on down. We've got the work of five potters and one local coffee-roaster. Potters are me, Denny Howard, Kim Medeiros, Annie Halpin and Angela Rose. Mike Race makes the coffee. The sky is cloudy but so far there is no rain. We'll see ...
Above, Kim at work on one of her big vases. Below, setting up.

Loading the kiln for "Among Friends" firing

I shot the top picture earlier today, about halfway through loading my kiln with my work and work by Kim Medeiros, Denny Howard, Anne Halpin and Angela Rose. All five of us have pots in here, to be fired Friday and opened Saturday morning for ourselves and whoever responds to the newspaper ads, posters and e-mail blasts we all (and coffee roaster Mike Race) have sent out.
The event begins at 10 a.m. Saturday the 28th, here at Hatchville Pottery in East Falmouth, on Cape Cod. We open the kiln at 11, but before and after the opening all of us will have other pots on tables and under tents here at the pottery. Angela Rose, a landscaper in her other life, had her crew in here Monday to mow, trim and weed the property to within an inch of its life. Thanks to her - and to Dee's gardens, which are now so well-displayed - the place looks great. We're hoping for no rain or thunderstorms. Ideally, the weather will be cloudy enough to discourage people from going to the beach but not horrible enough to make them stay home and play Monopoly. This business of selling pots in a summer resort community is like that ...
We'll have Mike Race's freshly-roasted coffee, pastries of several kinds to go with it, chile dogs with genuine New Mexico red chile at lunch. Call 508-563-1948 for more information, or e-mail me at hatchvillepottery@comcast.net.

And in other art-related news, the Cahoon Museum on Route 28 in nearby Cotuit opens "Come East at Our Table" tomorrow evening. I have yet to see the show, but there are several of my pots in it, as well as pots by several other Cape potters. Included in the show are the Nuka/copper red bowls at the bottom of this post. 

A summer meal, taken from the water

Dee's away in New York state this weekend at a baby shower for our niece, and I stayed here to clean up the studio and bisque new pots in the freshly-repaired (and now functioning) Skutt electric kiln.
But she'll be back tomorrow and so my meal-making responsibilities resume Sunday. Fortunately, we dug hardshell clams (locally called "quahaugs") last weekend at the edge of Buzzards Bay and I have enough left to make white clam sauce. Done right, this is a marvelous meal, mixing the very briney clam juice with the rich olive oil, and the pungency of fresh garlic and jalapeno.

The recipe can hardly be more basic: Olive oil, garlic, a couple of fresh jalapenos from our garden, parsley from a local farmer, as many clams as you have. Saute the garlic and peppers in a cast-iron skillet, drop in the clams and chopped parsley, steam the clams open. Let them cool, take out the meat and chop it, combine with the oil and clam broth and heat up. Cook pasta until just short of al dente, then add to the simmering clam mix. Let it cook just a bit longer, serve with grated Asiago or Parmesan cheese.

I am an electrical engineer ... not ...

I had no idea there were so many wires entangled inside the nearly invisible inner compartment that holds the computer and the relays and such on my Skutt KM1027. I should have, of course, but I'd always rather just let those things work than look into them. But when the electric kiln I use for bisquing pots began blowing them up with rapid temp rises, it was either do it myself or get in someone who knew what he/she was doing.
Always unwilling to admit that I don't know how to do something, I got in touch with the tech people at Skutt, described the problem and ordered what they said to order, which was three relays (WTF is a "relay"????) and an envelope of what looked like a sample of everything made by some Midwest wire factory. I downloaded a couple of pages on Skutt's website which purported to describe how to put all these new wires inside the box and take out the old ones. Right.
I do a lot of staring when I have one of these projects. And I did a lot of staring this time. Mostly, I stare because that at least will not do any damage. It's hard to make a mistake when you're just looking at something. But action had to be taken, so I carefully replaced each of the three relays ("relays"???), taking off an old wire and immediately replacing it with a new wire. None of this business of dismantling everything and then wondering where all the new stuff goes.
So, got the relays in and started staring at the wires. I can't possibly need all those wires; the ones still in there look just fine. So I e-mailed Perry Peterson at Skutt (God bless Perry ... ) and basically asked him exactly that. "Just replace the black wires with the new white wires," he said. So, carefully and one at a time, I did. Then reassembled the computer/controller box, screwed in the baffle, screwed in the hinges, screwed the whole damn thing to the kiln wall, squeezed behind my gas kiln to plug in the Skutt.
No smoke, no fire, no big noises ... programmed the kiln as I usually do, and over a period of a couple of hours, the temp was raised to 160. And there it sits, at least for now. Which is what it's supposed to do for 20 hours. Halleluiah.
I've got a couple of loads of pots to bisque before I start glazing for next week's reduction firing, which will include not just my pots but the pots of four other local potters.
So, many thanks to Perry Peterson at Skutt, and to Andrea York of Cataumet and Suzanne Wadoski of Falmouth, both of whom today offered to let me use their kilns for bisque-firing if things didn't work out. Stay tuned.

On the board of Studio Potter ...

I got word last night that I've been voted onto the board of Studio Potter magazine, a serious and professional publication for working artists and craftspeople. I'm flattered and looking forward to working with the creative people who are part of the organization.
A few years ago, Meredith Heywood (of Whynot Pottery in North Carolina) and I worked with editor Mary Barringer on a story about blogging and potters, and about the subsequent Southern Pines, N.C., show that brought the work of many of the bloggers together in one building. That was the start of wider horizons for me and for my clay work.
Then, a few months ago, I met Elizabeth Cohen of Wellesley, Mass., at the State of Clay exhibit in Lexington. Elizabeth is on the Studio Potter board and suggested that as a potter and former journalist I might be of some use to the magazine. I agreed, and after interviews and applications and a vote, that's where I am. I'm eager to see what happens.
Photos: Two pots whose photos went out last night in an application to a show next year in Texas.