What is important?

Spring is time for cleaning out the closets, the garage, the garden, the corrals, and that corner between the shop and the driveway where inconveniently shaped, un-splittable and therefore un-burnable tree stumps and broken pieces of unidentified equipment seem to accumulate. This is also a good time to sweep away the mental cobwebs and detritus of broken commitments, stymied and never to be completed projects, sidetracked plans and those ideas and goals that once attracted my attention but are no longer shiny or important, and are a drain on my energy.

I tend to have a hard time giving myself permission to move on. So, while I conduct the recurring battle that is the end of every semester (a project in itself that is loosing it's appeal), I think about what is most important and what I really want to do. I love teaching Ceramics in the studio. I am no longer entertained by teaching students psychology, and I really don't like the on-line Art History classes I am doing. I love being out in the woods at Maple Knoll, but I am really really tired of not having enough money to go around.

How can I arrange my life so that I make enough money doing what I really like to do to keep doing it, rather than doing things I don't like to make money to try to do what I like in my spare time? My next project is to figure this out.

Planning the pit firing

Adorable hubby wants to cook a bunch of clay chunks and use it as grog in some of the soggy spots in our road, since we have lots of clay and lots of wood. I am escalating this plan to a regular pit firing of some pottery, which I will invite my pottery friends to, with the goal of getting some pieces that look like This!

Here is a nice link that gave me lots of ideas, and here is another one with great pictures.

Ceramics Monthly also posted this very concise summary of what to do:

1. Dig a pit of the appropriate size, depending on the amount of work to be fired.

2. Place a bed of dry leaves and twigs and possibly coal, which will burn slowly, at the bottom of the pit

3. Place the pottery on top of this.

4. Carefully sprinkle oxides and carbonates around the pieces (particularly copper carbonate), which volatilize and result in flashes of color appearing on the fired work.

5. Cover the work with more leaves, twigs and dung (if available), building up a mound over the pieces.

6. Once the stacking process is finished, light the pile around the edges and leave to smolder for several hours, or until the next day.

7. Towards the end of the burning process, bury the pit in earth or sand, which will cut off the oxygen supply and create a strong reducing atmosphere inside the mound.

8. Allow the kiln to cool overnight and open the next day.

9. Remove excess scum with a wire brush under a running tap.

Tips:

1. Additions of grog or volcanic ash 'open up' the clay and make it more resistant to heat shock.

2. The best color results can be achieved with iron bearing, or red clays.

3. Bisque firing the work first helps to prevent shattering and cracking.

Not hard at all! I've done this with just a few pots in a garbage can. Maybe I'll do a little experimental hole in the ground the first part of May, before I invite a bunch of people over for a party.

Sundial Birdbath with Dragonflies

So, here is a fun thing! Seems like I have had a hard time getting to my own work in the ceramics studio this semester, but finally, here is a completed piece to show. This is a birdbath with a decorative sundial to put in the garden - not sure it

will really work to tell the time, but I thought the little birdies might like to perch on it.

This birdbath about 13 inches in diameter. I drew the dragonflies in brown engobe, and it is glazed with celadon and tenmoku glazes. It was a drape project demonstration for my beginning ceramics class at the community college, but it turned out so nicely, I think I'll make some more.

This one will just have to sit on a table of some sort.I think I'll put some reinforced holes in the rim of the next one I make, so that it can be hung from a tree limb.

-2 F in the Woods

"Baby, it's cold outside!"

That song was written for today. It's 8 in the morning and it's colder now than when I got up at 5:45! Winter is upon us! I will stop feeling like a slacker for not getting the sugar maples tapped last weekend.

I taught the Ceramics students how to glaze last night. I glazed the two little vases and bowl I made with some of the new glazes in the studio, but I don't like these glazes much - too much bentonite in them - they get all gluey and puddley. I should suspend judgment until I see how they look after firing - they could work beautifully.

We are planning on doing a real pit firing - dig a hole in the ground, start a fire to make a bed of coals, throw on sawdust, put on the pots, metal oxides for color, more sawdust, manure and newspaper for heat, lots more wood, let it burn down, cover it up to let it cool slowly and then retrieve lovely pots from ashes pit firing. This will happen the week after Fourth of July.

But, I need to focus on teaching the other classes I have right now. And go give the thirsty ponies some liquid water - I expect their tank is an icecube.

Ceramics class met for the third time last night

The students worked on coil projects, and a couple of the advanced people did some throwing, and I gave a brief demonstration about how to make slab boxes. The got the take home assignment of designing their Treasure Box, which will be the first major project of the semester. Great group - they work hard and share and are doing a good job of being open to struggling with the process of learning new things. I trimmed up the little vases and bowl I made on Saturday. Hopefully a bisque firing will happen this weekend so that we can do some glazing next week. So much fun - I like this a lot better than teaching psychology classes! Sorta amazing - how much I have moved away from that.

Summer projects

This summer I will teach some one week pottery classes to middle school kids at a nice non-profit called the Chelsea Center for the Arts near by. We will make garden pots a couple of times - toad houses, stepping stone tiles, sundials, etc. One session will be wall hangings, where the kids will make several tiles with a theme, and connect them together with string or wire after they are fired to make wall hangings and mobiles. The gallery associated with the Center is displaying all the instructors work, so I took some pots over there. Only have a picture of one of them... but it is one of my favorite pots I've made lately. The director of the gallery admired my work and invited me to bring in some more. An excuse to get busy in the studio with some of my own work for a change! Yay! I think I'll start with making a toad house like I'll have the kids do - hopefully that will attract some students' mommies...

The Joy of Pottery

Here is a two figure work by one of the advanced students, that came out of the kiln on Sunday. These are about 18 inches tall, quite impressive in person. It is such a delight to have the kiln working - the students are applying themselves with gusto to finishing up their projects. It is a pleasure to watch them moving confidently about the studio, designing and producing works with a sense of control most of them did not believe they would acquire at the beginning of the semester.

Catching up !

The kiln is fixed, so I am firing it every other day to give the students a chance to finish up their ware before the end of the semester. Maple syrup is all made, as well. Now I will sell it to my friends, and donate half the proceeds to my favorite charity, Vision Builders, which promotes and provides health care and gender equality in education to children in the developing world, and well as cultural and environmental preservation projects in the areas where we are working with children. Vision Builders is doing a 5K race in a couple of weeks, which is what the little donation link over there is. Give money, or if you are in the area, come and run in the race, which gets rave reviews from participants. Moving on, time to think about getting ready for my bees and planting the garden, although today we are having major rain, so what I will actually do is grade a bunch of school papers and clean the house.

Kiln Problems

I'll give an update on the ceramics studio here. The students glazed all the lovely bisque ware that came out of the kiln, but when I did a glaze firing two weeks ago, the pieces came under-fired. We have been running the kiln in the old studio based on the electronic readings, but this time, the electronic review said the kiln had attained 2232 degrees, when it was obvious that many of the pots in the bottom of the kiln had not gotten anywhere close to that temperature. I ordered some standard Orton indicator cones, and we reran the glaze kiln with indicator cones at each blowhole. I started the kiln early last Thursday, and was able to monitor it's progress. The upper element did heat up, but the lower element initially didn't heat up at all. When the electronic read-out said the kiln had reached 1200 degrees, then the lower element came on and heated up very rapidly, causing a couple pieces on the bottom shelf to pop when the kiln reached around 1350 degrees. I heard them go. The next day, when the student worker unloaded the kiln, the indicator cones were not deformed at all. The kiln had not even heated up to Cone 4. This is very disappointing for the students, who are eager to see their finished work. It would appear that the electronics in the kiln are malfunctioning - the temperature sensor appears to be very mis-calibrated, and the programing that is supposed to turn the different elements on and regulate how much current is run to each element is also not working correctly. My supervisor is making arrangement to have someone from Runyon Clay, where the kiln was purchased, come down and work on it. This kiln is at least 10 years old, and is apparently damaged in the move from the old studio to the new - it just got shook up, I guess. Always something. Spring break is next week for our little college, so I am having the students do mini-critiques for their midterm grade. They will present me with their two best pieces, and we will evaluate concept, technique and product for each piece. This will be fun for me, but stressful for the students, I suppose.

The First Bisque Firing in the new Studio!

Well, I've opened up the kiln, and this is what I see ....no apparent explosions, no nasty cracks, just a slew of nicely baked pots, now waiting to be finished with slips, glazes and student imagination, and then run through the glaze firing. Delightful!

The Studio is coming together

Here is a pic of the new studio, showing the slab roller, the student work tables, and the door into the kiln and ware storage area. I'm so pleased at how it has finally started to come together! I have a great batch of students this semester - 16 in each class, one overload each but it still isn't too cramped. And they are all working well together. Some of them are already pretty focused potters, and I have one man auditing the class who is quite an accomplished sculptor. All in all, it makes it pleasant to get up in the morning, looking forward to the delightful things I get to do.

Start of the new Semester

Haven't posted here in a while, but the semester is now underway! I am about 93% moved into the new studio, and have held two classes already. YaY! And now, I need to get ready for the class that meets in just a few minutes. I love the beginning of each new semester - so many possibilities!

Mudgoddess's Lizard Tile

Look at the beautiful tile I found! Mudgoddess has more of them, too. I admire other people's beautiful work, and can't wait to get back to the studio...

Moving the Kiln next week!

Just got word that the work crew will move the kiln from old building to new building next Tuesday...Exciting and scary at the same time! I'll go over there and take some pictures of the new space. In other news, we have a fairly intense storm going on here. This is the view out my front door. Like I say, we live in the woods. The driveway goes off to the east and finds the road about a third of a mile away....

Sold a Pot!

The local Potter's Guild held a Christmas sale in a couple venues in the downtown area, and someone actually bought one of my pots - a nicely balanced 9 inch tall vase with a very dark shiny brown glaze. I'm so happy! Sorry I don't have a pic of it....

End of the Semester Some More

I have spent the morning entering grades for my two big Psychology classes. The students have done well, worked hard and most of them have learned something. Hopefully they will feel satisfied with the grades they have earned. This is part of why I like teaching the ceramics classes so much more than the psychology. In the pottery classes, the students get immediate feedback from the clay about how they are doing - how closely their skills and their ability to conceptualize coordinate with one another. In psychology it is much less clear to the students that having a firm opinion about an idea or a theory is not the same thing as understanding the theory clearly. Plus, in the psychology classes this semester I had much more of a problem with cheating than I usually do, so I am just not giving grades on some of the materials that they handed in. So, we will have to see how that goes....

The End of the Semester

The best laid plans, etc etc! The semester is almost over - my ceramics students learned a lot and made some wonderful objects. I interacted with a lot of psychology students and definitely over-committed myself with those doubled up classes. The students learned a lot and so did I, so will do better organizing my time next semester. :-) Now, trying to wrap up this semester, and think about the break - focus on the farm, family and dharma for a while....(not necessarily in that order!) I have also discovered Twitter! I'm there as meredifay...

Teaching Bliss

The fall semester at the community college starts on August 18. I just checked my rosters. I am teaching 2 sections of the 4 credit Introductory Psychology, both of which are overloaded with 43 students each at this point. My supervisor asked me yesterday if he could double me up and give me 90 students in each of those classes. The more the merrier, I guess. We'll see how many more actually sign up! One section is Mon/Wed morning for two hours, the other section is Tues/Thurs morning for two hours. He says he'll try to get me some more money for doing this, which would be nice. For the Tuesday evening Ceramics class I will be teaching, there are three people signed up so far. I should look up the difference between "Ceramics" and "Pottery", since I think of what we will be doing as pottery rather than ceramics. Ceramics to me has the association of slip cast Halloween ghosts with faces from "The Scream" and Easter bunnies glazed with Cone 04 'magic crystal' glazes that make little runs of green and yellow through the pink base color. Not that I am totally offended by kitsch, but that is not what I am going to teach my students! Guess it's time to start thinking about syllabi - syllabuses?- and course assignment lists. The beginning of a new semester is always fun - so many possibilities! Next Thursday, I am going to do a little barrel smoke firing with my friend, Julia. So, before then I need to make a few coil pots and pinch pots to put in the barrel. Busy, busy, busy....

High Fire fire.....

The Cone 5 firing came out very nicely. One pot had a glaze than ran a lot, but it was fortunately placed one of the kiln shelves that had been most recently and thickly covered with kiln wash, so it did exactly what it is supposed to. The glaze ran onto the kiln shelf, but as the shelf cooled, the pot just popped loose from the shelf, so the owner of that pot can just grind down the glaze edge, and the pot looked great. All the pots look great - I think it is a very successful kiln. Once again, credit to the students who worked carefully to create successful pots. I'll post a couple pictures in a minute here. My celadon glazes dragonfly bowls and cups look great. The experimental Coyote Clay shino glazes are all also very nice.

Low fire fire....

Here's the low fire kiln, just opened - it's still pretty warm in there, but the student pieces turned out well. The students in the summer class were a good group, with all showing talent in some area or another. Many had an eye for color, as can be seen here. I did some glaze experiments with abandoned student pots from a few semesters ago, and started up the Cone 5 firing. Didn't get it started until 12:15, so I am going to wait until Thursday to go in and unload it - I know it will take longer to cool than the Cone 05 kiln did. After spending so many years doing therapy, part of why pottery is so satisfying to me is simply the concrete products that are the result of all that work. When the kiln is unloaded, there is the result - pieces you can hold in your hand, and see immediately if the pot is intact, if the handles are firmly attached, if the glaze melted the way you planned, and the overall effect is pleasing and centered, or out of balance in some way. See how I use the same vocabulary I used to in therapy, but now applied to tangible bits of burned earth and colored glass, instead of to people's subjective internal experience and objective presentation to the world? My lama would tell me I am analyzing too much, again. It's all just celebratory display of the unitary awareness that is existence in this moment, and I need to analyze less and love more. "Love this world" the lama says. I believe I will make a pot with that on it.