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.

Road trip ... and an answer

Kim Medeiros and I took to the highway yesterday, driving six hours of the Massachusetts Turnpike from the ocean to the Berkshires to bring back a half-ton of clay from Sheffield Pottery in the extreme southwestern part of the state.
Nice folks there at Sheffield, with big warehouses for mixing clay bodies and good, helpful people in the retail end. We also took Kim's recently collapsed kiln furniture for a diagnosis of the problem. The verdict - everyone was surprised they lasted 15 years of reduction firing. Kim found herself a whole new set of much beefier posts for her kiln.
On the way back, we stopped in Great Barrington for a sushi lunch at Bizen, a wonderful Japanese restaurant decorated with genuine anagama-fired pots. And then we stopped at Asia Barong, a stunning retail shop with a warehouse and grounds filled with Asian work, new and antique - Buddhas of all sorts and sizes, old Japanese doors, entire Indonesian stilt houses, kimonos, pots, tools, paintings, prints, carvings, jewelry - there appeared to be no end to what they bring back from Asia to the hills of western Massachusetts. Go to asiabarong.com for a tiny sampling. We were enthralled.
Now we're back in our studios, both anticipating a fun Saturday evening when "Facets of the Harbor" opens formally at Gallery 65 on William in New Bedford. Come see the show, please, finger food and wine June 8 from 6 to 8 p.m.
Here's an image from Asia Barong yesterday.

Two pots from the upcoming New Bedford "Harbor" show

It will be interesting to see if two Cape Cod potters - Kimberly Sheerin Medeiros and myself - can draw fellow Cape Codders across the canal and down the highway to New Bedford this Saturday. Personally, I'm doubtful; it's difficult to draw Cape people off-Cape in the spring and summer. But there's always a chance.
Kim and I have been working together on pots for "Facets of the Harbor" at Gallery 65 on William for the past month - throwing, stamping, slip-trailing, trimming, glazing, firing ... and we think it will be a good show at this lovely cooperative gallery in downtown New Bedford. Our pots and John Robson's photographs should work well together in the old whaling city.
I have longtime links to New Bedford. My grandmother, Edna Jackson, was born there on January 1, 1900. My mother went to nursing school there. For much of my childhood on Martha's Vineyard, New Bedford was served by a ferry from the island and was the "big city" Islanders went to for department stores, dentists, doctors.
But the city has had some hard economic times in the past few decades, as the fishing industry suffered, and the downtown is not the magnet that it once was for shoppers. Still, it's rallied with the conversion of a big department store into the arts department of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. And the New Bedford Whaling Museum is a first-class attraction just a block or so from Gallery 65. New restaurants and galleries have been opening. The Zeiterion, an old theater downtown, books tours of national and international performers. It's become an interesting place, particularly as artists trained at the downtown school have decided to stay and work in New Bedford. And Kim and I are delighted to be asked to be part of it.
If you're on the Cape or in Southeastern Massachusetts, please come to the show and see what the artists are creating on the cobblestone streets of the old fishing port. The opening is this Saturday, June 8, from 6 to 8 p.m.
Here are two pots from the show: At top, a platter thrown by me and decorated by Kim; bottom, a vase from my wheel, altered, stamped and glazed by Kim.

"Facets of the Harbor" opens June 8

The pots for "Facets of the Harbor" were delivered to New Bedford this morning. Please join Kim Medeiros and me for the opening reception at Gallery 65 on William Saturday evening between 6 and 8.

Collapsing kiln posts: Ideas?

My friend Kim Medeiros and I are stumped as to what caused the splintering of three of the posts in her kiln yesterday. So I thought I'd try some blogger crowd-sourcing. 

Here are the facts: Kim has been firing to cone 10 with these posts in her Olympic updraft kiln for 15 years. Never a problem. (They were bought from Sheffield Pottery in western Mass. I've emailed Sheffield, but have had no response yet.) When she opened her kiln Thursday, one side of the stack was tilted ominously. Reaching the bottom layer, she found all three support posts tilted and splintered at the bottom, as you see in the photos.

It seems to us that if a prop was going to give way after 15 years it would happen one at a time. Or, perhaps, one in one part of the kiln and one in another. But all three on the same shelf strikes us both as a clue ... but a clue to what? We have no idea. Stacking was the same as usual, with heavier pots in the center of the stack, lighter ones to the outside. 

It seemed an ordinary firing other than the collapsing posts. Any ideas? Let me know.

Lots of pots in the past few weeks

Kim Medeiros and I have been busy in our studios for the past month making work for our "Facets of the Harbor" show at Gallery 65 on William in New Bedford. The "Moby Dick"-era whaling port - and still vital deepsea fishing port - is climbing out of decades of a depressed local economy. But the old downtown is in good physical shape and shops and restaurants have been slowly returning, spurred in part by the conversion of a local department store into the art department of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. That's brought more art and artists to the downtown. It's exciting for both of us to be part of that.
Our pots for this show will reflect the long-ago whales and sailing ships, and the motorized ships of today and the fish they hunt. We should have more pictures tomorrow, since most of the pots are in my kiln and Kim's kiln as I write.
I'll post pots for the show tomorrow or Friday, after all of them are out of the kilns. Meanwhile, I'm still making my own pots, as Kim is making her own pots, and I've been happy with the work lately, particularly the Shinos and some of the overlapping glazes. Here are a few from the past couple of firings.
Photos: Serving bowl, Malcolm's Orange Trap Shino, with ash celadon pours; small vase with Trap Shino and ash celadon; bowl with Nuka over Temmoku; bowl with crawled Trap Shino; another bowl with crawled Trap Shino; small lobed vase with Trap Shino under an overcoat of ash celadon.