A Healthy Happy and Holy New Year to everyone!
The grant Lee and I applied for from ArtsNB was accepted. The project includes firing our new bourrigama and preparing for our 2-person show at Gallery 78--One Hundred figures and The Buddha, opening in July of this year.
And I just received word that my proposal to write and present a paper on Intuitive Woodfiring for the First International European Woodfire Conference in September 2010 in Broellin, Germany, has been accepted. I will be writing and presenting the paper with help from Lee, and all four of us will be heading to Germany: myself, Lee, Horus and our new baby, who will be 1 month old at the time of the conference. Hijinks ensue!
Future plans are made manifest through daily practice.
All we need is an LED lightbulb in the new studio. Our wheels are next to each other, mine and Lee's. I am using a disastrously awkward, (new [to me]) wooden-framed kickwheel while I wait for my friend Julia, a talented woodworker, to handcraft my Korean-style wheel. We each have a window and shelves. Lee did a creative job of installing the Jotul woodstove in the corner next to my wheel. The space is tiny, and cozy.
We have no refrigerator; we had been using the porch as a cold room. Now, with the entranceway insulated and wood-warm, we have moved the cooler and vegetable bin outside.
We have had very little sun lately, and there were only a couple of bright days over Christmas, so we haven't had much power for lightbulbs and laptop power-ups, let alone laundry. We are tied, not unpleasantly, to the rhythm of meals made on the wood cook stove, trips to the well outside for drinking water. Its taste is slightly sulfuric, not that I mind: it is unfluoridated, chlorine-free, and clean. So many in the world do not have this luxury. We are lucky.
We will be firing the bourrigama as soon as possible, in a matter of days. The snow is a reality, but the temp will dip into the -20s (celcius) about a week from now, so we will aim to start loading on Wednesday. The flame will warm.
Lee and I will both be making figures. And also whiskey cups, glasses, coffee mugs, yunomi, guinomi, tokkuri, and plates. A few larger vases, as well. And chawan.
I have made some resolutions for the new year. I will be 29 years old on the 28th. I went through a period of practicing yoga for a couple of hours a day, and I would like to resume that. And I would like to be meticulous and regular in my art-making. With fervour. And feeling.
Walnut is our fuel this firing. We found a source of free scrap walnut in one-inch by one-inch sticks, no splitting required, from a local hardwood company. Some we have saved for butcher blocks in our new house. We have heard of walnut burning with a green flame. It is a highly resinous wood. We could see much glaze variation. Exciting.
I am consumed by Shino dreams. Shino is a traditional woodfiring glaze, whose primary ingredient is feldspar, a benign naturally occurring rock, based in either sodium or potassium. The effect of shino fired in a wood kiln is magical. Rather than imparting colour to the clay, shino is utterly sensitive and reactive to the heat, the flame, and the ash. A shino will interact between the inherent minerals in the clay, as well as atmospheric conditions in the particular spot in which the piece was placed in the kiln. Even at the back, in cooler areas, the shino's effect is icy, sparkling and precious. I am generally uninterested in glaze, but shino is in a rubrick all its own. Rather than mask with preordained colour or texture, shino reveals; itself, the character of the piece, formal elements, a jewel-like luminosity, the shadows of trapped carbon.
Anticipation.
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