i've got power!!!!

a week away

Last week in Philiadelphia, I visited the clay studio.  It is a big city clay studio.  They do an amazing job.  However, I was just a little taken aback at how "rule oriented"  the place seemed to be. I guees that is what's needed in a studio and gallery of such large size.  Also, it seemed like atmospheric kilns  were something that the studio and many of the artists there just didn't do - Surprising to me, though it probably shouldn;t have been.

Backat home, I'm feeling like I need to push the projected firing of my kiln back till after the holidays.  The pressure of finishing the kiln, making a body of work, and coordinating a firing - all before christmas - seems kind of like an unescessary challenge. 

Also, the arched grate bars that I cast didn't work at all.  I'm going to use arch bricks to create arched firebox grates....

the japanese potters...

.... are really great.  i am having such a great time just being in their presence and seeing so many similarities and differences in the way they work with clay. more later.

morning time... need to loosen the grip

I'm  drinking tea and eating cereal at the kitchen table this morning, and I realize how much the morning pages that I wrote so diligently at the beginning of this year helped my life and creativity.  I've been slacking on them, and feeling more and more overwhelmed by life.  I've given myself a deadline to fire sometime in december.... Every deadline I've put on myself and the kiln project in the past I have betrayed.

Also, this project is vitally important to me.  It isn't just a job that i can escape from afterhours...  It is my life's work, and in the years that this project has been underway many emotions and expectations have clung to this hulk of a thing. 

This weekend we began grate bars for the fireboxes.  They will be made of castable, as well.  I'm gearing up to help my friend Susie Bowman host some japanese potters for the week.  She met them last year in Echizen.  They have never done a soda firing or been to the united states, so it should be a fun and interesting week - if not a little stressful. 

My camera is broken and sent back to nikon for repair, hence the no photos being posted lately. 

exhale.....

kaolin, lovely kaolin

lovely kaolin mine. 

third day of kiln shelf casting...

I'll get some photos soon....

I'm on the tthrid day of working on kiln shelf casting.  My hands feel like they are vibrated off of my arms, and my arms are like tightly braided steel cables: Working with the conctrete vibrator is hardcore stuff, especially trying to man-handle the kind of control that these small castings require...

Also, I think I may have figured out the vibrator technique a little better and I hope that I didn't leave too much air in the first shelves I cast!  I hate not knowing about such a crucial thing...

the chimney blocks

So check it out, these blocks are precast from an alumina and silicon carbide castable which includes stainless steel fibers.  Complete overkill for the chimney, but it is the material with which I had to work.  I still have tons of these too.  I'm thinking of building another kiln using them for the bulk of the construction.  They are, however,  very, very, very heavy. The blocks were originally designed to be installed in the cooling chamber of a lime kiln.  They are called "cooler tiles" which makes them sound kind of breezy and quaint.  Let me tell you, they are neither breezy nor quaint.