BAMBI (OR BAMBETTE) RETURNS... (THE STORY VERSION)

Quite a while ago, I had a picture of this fawn on my blog, bedded in the thicket next to my house. I have thought of the encounter often. So..."What about it??" you say... well here's my story. Once upon a time, I built a wood-kiln. Not a huge one, but one I could fire by myself.  I have been spending all of my "clay time" making pottery to fill this kiln so I can learn how to fire a wood-kiln. I now have fifteen firings under my belt and I feel pretty confident that I have a good grasp on it. I have to admit that I didn't spend as much time on some of the work as I would have liked to, but I didn't want to waste "clay time" on a poor firing. Understandable. I remember not being able to get past cone nine until after my third firing. I can now get to twelve in no time... I actually hold the kiln back now for the results I want. So, what does this have to do with the fawn!!?? Talk about dragging it on and on ... So, now that I am confident with the kiln, I have been putting more time into the pieces. I was a sculpture minor in college and have missed sculpting and now I have been doing more sculptural pieces for the next firing. I have sculpted objects on top of pottery, sculptures all by themselves and I just finished a serving dish with a fawn bedded inbetween the logs on top of it. I am working with a fettling knife in the first picture, carving details in a log.

I want the end of the log to look old and weathered...

And have the bark peeling away... and a good shape for a handle.

Add a few shale/limestone rocks like there is poking though the forest floor up in my woods...

A bed of leaves to keep dry on... Bambi has returned, just in clay form.

I also made some casseroles with a simpler fawn, this particular one is a mule deer fawn...

So... looks like I'm starting to get my sculpture "fix" now, and it looks like the snow is melting some.  I've had enough winter. There was three feet of snow out there just one week ago! Closed all the schools in the area.

Guess what I was doing? ... besides the driveway...

Looking forward to firing soon. I have enough for a kiln full now, just need to melt some snow.

And, I have some more teapots, couple with the birds I've been seeing at the feeder every day...

THE END

STONE QUARRY HILL ART PARK - WINTERFEST 2011, WOOD-FIRED RAKU

We had the Syracuse Ceramic Guild's Winterfest-ivities today. Folks from all over Central New York came to Stone Quarry Hill Art Park in Cazenovia, N.Y. for a day of snow filled activities. There was lots of sledding down the big hill that the Art Park sits on. Inside the barn was hot chocolate, coffee, snacks, etc. and Denise and Sheila helping visitors with the un-frozen raku glazes.

There was a core crew of four of us, braving the blustery cold winds to fire our almost new, wood-fired raku kiln. "Double D" Dave, Dave "L" and me on the right, are prepping for the start while Sabrina took a minute to help prepare things inside. Wood splitting, unthawing and pre-heating the bricks took a bit of time to do.

Here's "Double D" Dave ('cause his last name starts with D and the other Dave's last name starts with L) splitting some wood in anticipation of the high temps we needed later. We fired to approximately 1850* F

Here's two of the kids glazing, I think the lens fogged up coming in out of the cold, as a few more rest in the background, and when the pots come out, we preheat them a couple of minutes to finish drying them, as they're freshly glazed pots.

Now the firing takes about fifteen minutes to get to temp, then I remove the door, we take the still glowing, orange - hot pots out with long tongs and place them in a trash can that has a few inches wood shavings in it, throw a big hand full of shavings on top of the pots and then Sabrina quickly pops the lid on while the shavings are still burning to create a smoke filled can. The glazes are molten at this time and will be affected by the changes in the atmosphere. We are reducing the amount of oxygen (why we call it "reduction") and increasing the amount of carbon particles, which in turn affects the looks of the clay and glazes (creating surface lusters, crystals and keeping copper and iron from returning to it's oxidized state which would change the color dramatically).

Maybe I should have titled this post " A Raku Tutorial - Winterfest Edition "

A NEW THIS ... and a NEW THAT...

Just wanted to show you some brushwork I'm trying again. The tricky part is getting it hot enough without too much ash to obliterate the designs. Placement in the kiln is everything... well very, very important anyway.  Last time I tried it, I ended up with too much running.  I know this type of work is usually saggered... but, I gotta' try it this way.

Next new thing I'm going to try is making my own handles. I have been making grape vine handles from vines on the edge of the woods. There are three for starters.

 This is a very small kyusu that should hold about 5 oz, good for gyokuro.

I did some handbuilding too... A sake set made out of slabs, before glazing...

... and after glazing with a couple more pieces.

Back to glazing... and a couple more experiments.

Campfire / Forest Fire Thing ... Part III

The Winners of the giveaways are:  Dawn for the mug and mywifesstudio for the yunomi. Congrats to them and I hope everyone had fun.  Contact me at williperri@aol.com with your name and address and I'll ship them out to you!  :-]

Now for some close ups...

 It was a nice firing and a great time... they came back to pick theirs up on Saturday Morning. Everyone was real pleased with the results! We will have them back next year, same time.

The Campfire / Forest Fire Thing, Part II

Back to the wood-fire workshop posting. A view of the rest of the great weekend we had. We finished bricking up the door, using my trimmings that hit the floor for mortar.

A view of the pre-fire kiln ...

Because we glazed the day before and loaded "right after", I candled the morning of the firing starting at 6 am for about 3 1/2 hours to gentlly finish drying the ware.

A little bit of stoking... and stoking... and stoking...

And a view of the finished pieces...

One of the many beautiful pieces...

A happy crew...

KILN'S DONE...

I'm tired but I wanted to share some pictures from the firing. I can't wait 'till Sunday. I got a soft 12 in front and 10 almost flat in the back. Only about a cone difference front to back, gettin' better. Top to bottom is even. I'ma likin' this kiln...

Thanks Scot...

I had the good fortune of having Scot, a new member of our Syracuse Ceramic Guild, come down to help with the prep for a wood firing workshop scheduled for May 15 and 16. Dave also helped but I forgot to get the camera again when he came. Sorry Dave. The picture above shows him finishing the beech up, a nice finishing wood as its heat value is very high at 89-91 and it is plentiful here. He proved to be a quick study and had the art of splitting down in no time. You may not think it's that hard, but there are some woods that are challenging. The grain is wavy in some woods such as apple. You can see some of it in the lower right corner of the picture. I am trying apple wood this firing. I have an old apple orchard on the property with parts of the trees coming down at times. It does have some very nice coaling qualities like beech does. I also have some large hophornbeam that I girdled two years ago and are now standing seasoned wood waiting to be cut. It has the highest heat value in my woods. It will be interesting to see how it looks in some line blends. I usually start at 60% ash, 40% feldspar with 10% china clay added.

New site: Wikiclay.com

Hey everyone,
I just joined a new ceramic information site by Michael Kline called Wiki Clay. Check it out for information on artists, techniques, all kinds of useful information. I'm on a list of ceramic artists who blog.

http://wikiclay.com/wiki/clayceramics-blogs

On your mark, get set, almost ready to go...

I'm back... I've been really busy with getting a lot ready for April and May's events. April includes my first firing of the year. I have hundreds and hundreds of pieces ready to go into the kiln. The weather has been really nice, today was 87! I have been cutting a lot of firewood and splitting it and you can see the stacks in the picture above. I cut, split and load the trailer right in the woods. Leaving all the "mess" right there to return to the Earth.


I do bring small amounts of logs to the "landing" we call it, instead of moving everything to the logs. If I have a big pile, then of course I'll move to it.

I'll put it in the loader on the tractor and park it right next to the splitter, split and throw it right back in. Then drive the splits back to the kiln area or where ever I'm piling it. I like to have two firings worth split ahead of time, so it will be dry by the time I get to it.


I had to stop and replace the "spider" it's called. It's a hard rubber piece that goes between the engine shaft and the hydrolics-box shaft. By the time I went to the store, put it in and got back in business, I had lost a few hours. (Hard to keep your momentum going with all that going on!). You can see the splitter tipped up on end to get at it.
I thought this would be good to show how much work goes into wood-firing, on top of the making of the pieces themselves. Don't get me wrong, I do like playing in my woods and exercising in the fresh air and all.
May includes giving a wood-fire workshop here at the house, mostly to the guild members of the Syracuse Ceramic Guild that I belong to. There are some friends from Ithaca, New York that wanted to come too. I'll have everyone bring their own bisqued cone 10 clay and we will cover ash friendly glazing, wadding, loading and bricking up the door on Saturday. Then I'll get up early Sunday morning and candle the kiln for a few hours until they come around 10. Then I will guide the firing of the kiln, explaining about ember management, the stoking cycle - the different atmospheres, wood types and their effects, temperature management... all that stuff. I'm the only wood-firing potter in my guild so it will be cool for them. I'll have them come back the following Saturday to pick up their pieces. I have a wedding to go to in the afternoon. My step-son Ben and his girl friend Tiffany are tying the knot.
I'll have lots of blog postings soon with my April firing and May workshop with details and in color.

Not High-Def, 3-D though... sorry. I'm old school.

"Stack 'a Work for the Fourties"

Another stack of work ready for the bisque kiln. It's getting more exciting now because now I know I now have enough to fill the wood kiln again. I have altered a lot of pieces to compliment the wood-firing process. Soft corners and uneven surfaces, trip up the flow of the ash and flame, leaving interesting surfaces in the wake. I will bisque fire these and then start my glazing, which should take me a couple of weeks, working part-time - I still teach full-time.
The glazing will be exciting because I can continue with my experiments of color combinations and layers, an ongoing, never ending process. The timing of all this should take me to later in March where I can fire. Mid fourties would be nice.

Retaining wall

I finished putting in a small retaining wall and some berming to keep water out from under the kilns' foundation. Next spring, I'll add some color out there, but for now I'm busy getting ready for the winter. I think the kiln will last a lot longer if the winter freeze doesn't get under there. ;-] I also added some more adobe mix on the back of the chimney. I fired last Saturday, my ninth firing so far. I finished building this kiln a year and a half ago, in July '08. I like the smaller size, as I am firing it by myself. I can get cone 12 down in 9 1/2 hours if I wanted to, but I like to slow it down to around 13-14 hours. It gives the pieces more time for ash build up and there is less problems with the firing. I am firing bisqued, glazeware in case my firing times were making you wonder... I like ash accented shinos, glazes and oribe.