Fun With Sodium Vapor and Other Fiery Tales

I was recently down in Medicine Hat for a 10 day atmospheric firing workshop with Robin Dupont. The goal of the workshop was to fire the salt, the soda and the wood kiln in those 10 days as well as make enough work (on top of what we initially brought with us) to fill them. I left Calgary at about 2:30 pm after picking up one last box of clay. The trip was fairly uneventful, except for the dramatic prairie storm that was on the horizon. I was driving straight towards this huge, towering wall of storm cloud for about an hour and a half before I actually caught up to it, and then the highway veered off to the south and I essentially skirted the storm for most of the way, although I did get a bit wet. This shot is an attempt to capture the electric yellow canola fields against the stormy black backdrop.

The workshop began on Friday and we were decorating and glazing pots right away to fill the salt kiln.

Robin loading the salt kiln

While the salt kiln was firing/cooling, we were all in the studio madly making more pots. That being said, I did take time out to just relax. I was outside the kiln pad when I saw this little guy. Not your regular hare, more a peter cotton tail bunny. It was quite young and there were a whole bunch of them all over the place, hanging out in the tomato patch, under piles of scrap wood, etc.

After some debate as to schedule and when to fire, we began loading the wood kiln. We were pushed off schedule a bit because of a massive thunderstorm that knocked out the Blauww gas kiln that was full of our pots getting bisque fired, but a quick reset the next morning to finish the bisque had us back on track pretty quickly. We ended up having so much work that we ended up loading the salt again too. This shot is of the throat arch chamber that is a "secret" chamber in between the firebox and the main chamber. The pots here will get a ton of heat and ash, so fingers crossed they come out ok.

This is the main chamber and the pots here will get less ash deposited on them.

This isn't the actual storm, but it was a precursor to the one that knocked the gas kiln out.

Once the wood kiln was loaded, we fired it up at around 10 pm on Wednesday night. I was on stoking shift from midnight to 6am Thursday morning. This was a fairly easy shift, just keeping the fire going and spreading the coal bed around, making sure not to chuck wood into the pots that were about 2 feet away from the action.

After that shift I went to bed for about 4 hours and came back to the studio to finish glazing pots for the soda and salt kilns and to start the loading process. Somewhere around 10pm it became apparent that there was a problem. We couldn't get anyone to do the midnight to 6am shift on Thursday night/Friday morning, but even though I had really only had 4 hours of sleep in the last 24 hours, I volunteered. That was actually fun. I was on shift with Michelle, a potter from Ft. McMurray. She chopped and split wood and I stoked. We were firing with cotton wood, not the easiest wood to fire with as it is a horrible wood to chop and it burns so fast you are constantly stuffing the firebox full of logs. I did get a really good feel for how that kiln fires. I was even able to tell by the sound it was making as to when temperature would start to climb, when it needed wood, when to fill the firebox etc. The heat was insane, and I lost about a gallon of sweat. When we were nearing our goal temperature, we began spraying in about 2 lbs of soda into the main chamber.

I missed most of that morning and afternoon as I was sleeping, but I came back around 3 to witness the addition of the salt and soda. We were really concerned that the draw rings were not showing much glaze and so in an attempt to get a better read on what was going on, Robin decided to take a little cup off the bag wall that was able to fit through the port. I think we ended up adding another 3 or 4 lbs to the kiln. After we reached temp and we shut it off, Robin then perfomed a very slow cool down at around 1800F by keeping one burner on low to prevent the kiln from dropping in temperature too fast until it got to about 1400F (I'm working from memory here, so I might be off on my temps)

These are a few results from the kilns: Wood fired porcelain flask

Wood fired stoneware pitcher fired in the secret chamber. It looks really crusty, and it is, but I have cleaned and scrubbed most of the crud off of it. I still need to grind a few chunky rough spots off and smooth the handle, but it should be pretty good.

One of my favs. This cup came out of the soda kiln and is a really good example of what the slow cooling at the end achieved. It matted the surface and promoted crystal growth. In the sunlight, this surface is so amazing. There are rainbows of colour and the surface feels soft and silky. I had a few good pots out of the first salt, but only 2 cups made it into the 2nd salt and I guess I did not take any good pics of those pots, so we'll wait until I clean them up and get them ready to take to market.

My drive back home:

2013 In Review

We are now 1 week into the new year and I thought I would do a little recap of 2013, as I saw it.

Way back in January 2013, I was getting ready for a salt and soda firing in Medalta. The firing was not until April, but I was making pots in preparation for it really early.

I think I was done making for this firing by mid February. These are most, if not all of the pots I was to take with me.

A group of students and instructors at Fairview Studios were also in the middle of organizing the 1^st ever studio OPEN HOUSE in the hopes of attracting new students as enrollment levels have not quite been what they used to be since we moved to the new location. So at the end of March, in preparation for the June open house, I threw a few groggy tea bowls to be raku fired on the day of the open house

.  I also made some really, really good ribs and served them up on one of my sgraffito plates.

and the amaryllis plants that I started from seeds that I had pollinated by hand many years ago, decided to bloom too.

My pal Susan and I trundled off to Medicine Hat in April and fired off the salt and soda kilns

. We were very tired puppies by the end of it all.

Not much happened in May. I was exploring more with the sgrafitto, trying to come up with unique designs for every pot (almost). That taxed the brain and I have since pared the patterns down to one or 2 good ones.

.

I  got a new photo cube) and in June, I began seriously documenting all the new pots that were coming out of the kiln.

But then came the flood and washed it all away on June 21^st. All the rain we had gotten over the spring had saturated the ground and when some parts of the mountains received over 108 cm of rain in 24 hours, the ground couldn’t hold it and the water surged into the little creeks that became raging torrents and they cut swaths of destruction all the way down into the foothills and the prairies beyond.

This first pic is looking down on the elbow river where it winds around behind Lindsay Park and is just 2 blocks north of my street.

)

This image shows the vastness of the flooding in the Victoria Park and Mission neighborhoods and is looking south towards my part of Mission.

. This one shows Macleod Trail looking North from Cemetery Hill. If you were able to turn left at the bottom of the hill, my condo is 2 blocks west and 1 block north of this image. The water kept going all the way over to the Stampede Grounds and Saddle Dome that are just to right of this picture.

I got my first up close look on June 24^th and this is what I saw

. The next day I was floored by how many people came out to help. There were roving groups of people in rubber boots with shovels ready and willing to lend a hand. All of the people I know that were able to come out did, all of my sister’s friends came and helped, local businesses helped with food, water, supplies and even beer. Everything I have ever owned is on the lawn in this image.

 The next day we all came back and began the process of moving all of the mud caked and water logged mounds of garbage into the back of the garbage trucks that were there at 8:00 in the morning.

As soon as I was able to get back in the studio, I started making these flood mugs and gave them away to fellow floodies and selling to any and all that wanted to buy them.

The year progressed as it always does – in a blur. Fairview had it’s Christmas Sale, and I had a couple more of my own sales at the end of November and throughout December. I also kept scratching away on my sgrafitto pots. Just before the Christmas/New Years break, Ceramics Canada moved to a new location and I was there helping with some painting and unloading of trucks.

So things have changed a lot for me, but they have also remained the same in many respects. I started the year out living in my condo and have ended the year living in my parent’s basement. I am still making lots of pots (no change there). I still work for Ceramics Canada, just at a newer location. Calgary also saw lots of change, there was the flooding, there was a train derailment over the bow river (no leaking of oil or explosions thankfully) and there has been record breaking snow falls.

So 2014 has a lot to live up to. It can’t be much worse than 2013 was (knock on wood).

How to lose 5lbs in 1 day

I went to Medicine Hat last Wednesday to fire the Salt and Soda Kilns at the Shaw Centre at Medalta.

I left right after work on Wednesday afternoon and arrived at our motel at 7:30. Kathy and I got up early and went to glaze and load the kilns on Thursday and turned the kilns on low and slow overnight to preheat. There were various issues with this round of firing. The cone packs in the soda kiln blew up during the preheat, so we were flying a bit blind. Aaron found us an optical thermographer called the Cyclops. He was not sure how to use it, so had one of the train kiln operators from the old IXL brick factory to come over and trouble shoot it with us. As this was our only guide for temperature, we used it as well as colour in the kiln. By the time a witness cone bent in the salt kiln we had finished adding the soda, so that was pretty much a shot in the dark. We took a reading when cone 7 bent, and it looked like the “cyclops” was out by a hundred degrees or so. I think we were slightly underfired in the soda, but got some decent results. The salt was much better, although it could have used a bit more salt. In total, we added about 6 pounds of soda ash, and 14 pounds of salt. I did not take many pictures during the firing as it is too hard to do that when there are only 2 of us. If I could find a way to grow a 3^rd arm, that would help. I would look weird though.

As to the weight loss, it was all sweat. The temp in Medicine Hat on the day of the firing was about 31 degrees Celsius (87.8 F). Without the kilns it was pretty darned hot out. The kilns themselves were at about 2385 F or so at top temp. We were a little limp with the heat by the end of the day. While we were waiting for the salt kiln to reach salting temp (it took until 9 pm or so), we ordered a pizza, around the time the pizza was to arrive, a torrential downpour sprang up. So we had heat, lightning, thunder, rain and pizza.

All in all I think the firings were OK. The soda was a bit dry in spots, but the salt was relatively juicy. There were some really nice glazes in this firing. I had some excellent carbon trapping in a Malcolm Davis shino, some good colour development in the yellow salt glaze, and some really lovely pink halos and blushing on the insides of some of my rice bowls where I used the Andrew Wong Lustre glaze. That glaze can come out quite boring and white if not reduced enough (?), but this time, I think we had good reduction. Not too much, just enough. 

Oh ya, I also saw the Medalta International Cup Show. The labels had not been put up yet, but I was able to recognize quite a few potters. There were several of Jim Gottuso's yunomis and beer glasses, a couple of cups from Zygote, a wall piece from Mindy Andrews and a ton of others that I just can't recall the makers of off the top of my head. There was stoneware, porcelain, low fire, high fire, salt, soda, functional and not so functional, etc etc...Very good show. Great job Carol for picking all of these amazing cups.

Flood Relief...

This post is for everyone that has offered to help me out with donations of stuff. By “stuff”, I mean everything that a person would need to rebuild their life from scratch. I really do appreciate all of the offers. However, at this point, my life is going to be a bit in limbo for the next 4 to 6 months while my condo undergoes renovations, quite literally, from the ground up. I am currently staying with my parents in their house in Douglasdale, so life is not so bad right now.

I guess what I am trying to say is that at this point, I don't know what I will need until the flood relief money comes from the government and I can put a list together of what I can afford to buy new, plus I just don't have a lot of room to store things until I move back in.

When I know more I will let you all know via this blog.

Thank you again,

Ashley

Flood mugs

Once the flood was over and as soon as I was able to get back into the studio, I decided to scratch a few mugs. Of course the only thing on my brain was water. There are 4 units in my building in Mission that were totally destroyed by the mighty Elbow river. It is normally quite calm and shallow, but on June 20 - 24th it was mighty indeed. Anyway, as a means to commemorate this life altering event, I created this mug, and am working on 3 more as gifts for my 1st floor neighbors. If you are in the Calgary area and would like a Flood mug  for yourself, I may make more of them if there is the demand. Rough guestimate on price is ~$40 per mug. The final colours will be black and creamy white. If you want to contact me regarding a mug, shoot me an e-mail at ashleymorrow@shaw.ca

 

There are 2 Kinds of People

Thankfully, this city (Calgary) is mostly comprised of the best kind, the helpers & givers.

The other kind of people are thankfully few and far between (in my experience anyway). They are the “tiskers”, complainers and are just generally mean spirited. During the time I was down cleaning up my apartment, the other units in my building as well as other buildings on other streets, occupied by people I did not know, I was surrounded by the best kind of people. The atmosphere was almost like a party, except we were all covered in river mud, and were throwing people's entire lives into the back of garbage trucks. The gawkers were out though, and although I tried to ignore it, it was probably the rudest thing ever. I understand the need to see the devastation with your own eyes, but these people were almost gleeful. Taking pictures of other people's despair is NOT COOL. If you are the press, that is one thing, but the busybodies that are so obviously not there to help were like salt in a gaping wound.

While I was in mid disaster clean up, I was keeping my eyes on the news, the blogs and the comments and there are some really really nasty people out there that do not feel our government should be giving out the disaster relief.. I wont name names, because both you and I know who you are, and naming names is not my style. However, you need to know how hurtful your comments are. Apparently, according to some, the prepaid debit cards being handed out by the Alberta government should not be handed out to people in my neighbourhood, and I am assuming other lowerv income ones, because the recipients will just go down to the bar and drink it all away. WOW, your sympathy knows no bounds. I am one of those recipients, and so far have managed to not drink it all away. In Fact, I have some amazing friends that have offered me their cards. They were displaced, but did not sustain damage except for rotten food and missed time at work. These are the very same people that are supposedly just going to drink it all away. So, in closing, SHAME ON YOU if all you did was prance around my neighborhood with your camera and designer clothes, but did not lift a finger to help, only to wag in a disdainful manner and made disparaging comments about the crap on peoples lawns. You can sure bet that KARMA is a B@#$%. Good luck to you when you need help.

Surreal, but not like Dali

Well, I went back to my condo this afternoon. Not much that I can really say about it though. Pictures say a 1000 words. So on that note, I will let the picture tell you this story. 

My neighborhood is like a war zone though. Dirt in the streets, heavy equipment, empty "bombed out" buildings etc. Anyway, here it is:

What I find really funny is that the salt fired cup on the dark ikea furniture to the left in the picture withstood the rapids and is still where it was before the flood. I should mention that that unit used to be to the to the right of the window that this picture was being taken from. It traveled diagonally across the room. Crazy...

under water

It's official. I am HOMELESS. This is an aerial shot from a highrise apartment just north of where I live. St. Mary's Cathedral is about 6 blocks north of my condo, and you can see it in the middle of the pic. So I am 6 block back from that. This is gonna suck.

OPEN HOUSE UPDATE!!

As you may be aware, the instructors and students at Fairview Studios are having an OPEN HOUSE on Saturday, June 8^th. I was speaking with our fearless leader (Dave) and he would like to offer a bit of a deal to any new students that sign up for classes on Saturday.

Classes at Fairview Studios run on a 4 week cycle and they normally cost $100 plus the cost of clay. This one day offer will drop the price of the classes to $90. What will your $90 get you? Well, it will get you 3 hours of instruction a week for 4 weeks. PLUS a ton of extra studio time that is FREE. To make great pots, you need to practice and the extra studio time will allow you to get really muddy, get your creative juices flowing and get the right side of your brain working.

So there it is, if you are looking for a new thing to try, or are just interested in learning a bit about how pottery is made, come out and see us on Saturday, June 8^th from 11am to 3pm. We would love to see you!

Spring has sprung....a leak

I am going to develop webbed feet if this rain keeps up. I think we have had ~100mm over the last week or so, and if that keeps up, along with the spring runoff from the mountains, we are all going to be learning how to quack pretty soon.

In non soggy news, the studio has been scrubbed down. Well, not precisely scrubbed, but wiped, swept, stacked and tidied in preparations for the OPEN HOUSE this weekend.

We will have 2 out of 3 instructors there as well as an assortment of students. We will all be ready and willing to talk pots, throwing, classes, etc. Ellen's famous carrot cake will be on the menu, as well as coffee. I will be firing up the raku kiln at 12:30 into which I will attempt to fit as many tea bowls as possible (if you come, you might just get to take one home with you as a THANK YOU for coming. I anticipate the firing to be over around 2:30, and the pots should be ready to take home around 3 ish.

So, if you are in the area and are looking for a fun and informative afternoon out, swing by the studio. You might just find the hobby/passion/obsession you have been looking for. The weather is supposed to be nice  (little to no rain) so the big door will be open wide. Come on in and check it out.

Fairview Studios Spring 2013 Pottery Sale

I know it's a bit early to post this, but I see that some people are already searching for this information when I look at my blog stats.
The Fairview Studios Spring Pottery Sale for 2013 will be Saturday, May 4th.

That Was Exhausting

I taught my regular Tuesday class last night and it was jam packed (14 people I think?) In contrast, I taught on Monday night, and there were only 5 people there, 2 of which are taking some time off to have a baby and were only there to finish glazing their pots. I like teaching smaller classes, but of course, that doesn't keep the studio doors open. Fairview Studios is in fact looking for more students as enrolment has been down for quite a while. This past summer we dropped the Wednesday night class as nobody was showing up. I know we would like to bring it back on line, but the demand has just not been there. Hint - if you are looking for classes and you live in Calgary, check Fairview out.

I can usually deal with large classes, but I had a couple of fairly new students, and I had to do 3 demonstrations when normally it is usually just 1. First the throwing demo (normal), then I had 2 new students from last week that needed a trimming demonstration, and finally I had students that had yet to glaze anything so they needed a glazing demonstration. I usually arrive at the studio at 5:30pm right after work so that I can get a few of my own things done before class begins at 6:30, and then I can usually continue to work on my own stuff throughout the class in between the odd question. Not so much last night. I was going to load a bisque last night, but that definitely did not happen. I will see if I can load it on Friday and glaze on Sunday. I really need to get some work finished to take to the galleries and complete commission work etc.

Another Trip to Medalta

It looks like I might possibly make another trip down to Medalta in the spring. My friend Susan and I are thinking of going down the weekend of April 27th to fire in their Salt and Soda kilns. Medalta is located in Medicine Hat, Alberta and is in the historic clay district. Back in the day, there was the Medalta pottery, the Hycroft pottery, and at least 1 brick factory that I know of. It is also where Plainsman Clays is located.

When I went down in Feb 2010, we had a very good tour of the Hycroft factory as well as the Medalta museum and the areas of Medalta that were off limits to the regular visitor. At that time, the new Events facility was still under construction. The facility was being constructed on top of some excavated Bee Hive kilns that you would then be able to view through the floor.

If we are able to book our trip for that weekend, it will coincide with a community clay event that Medalta is having. Their long term resident artists will be holding workshops for the public and it would be fun to be involved with that while we are firing.

I am hoping April will be much warmer than when we were there last. It was so cold that weekend that my power steering froze during the time we were glazing and loading the kilns that first evening (note to self: don't leave your car facing into the wind when it's -30 celcius). The temperature difference while we were firing in the kiln area was such that we created our own weather system. The skies were clear and blue, but it was snowing in the kiln compound..

So I am looking forward to that. Right now however, I am still not ready for the studio sale next weekend. I still need to clean out the car and empty out my boxes of pots and decide what is going and what is going into the trash to make room for the new stuff. Then I need to price which is not a science. I usually go on gut instinct for pricing. I ask myself “would I pay $xx for this?” then, do I really want to sell it (still precious to me)? If it is still precious, I jack the price up so as to alleviate the pain of letting it go. Otherwise, I try to price it fairly so that it doesn't make it impossible for the average person to buy.

Fairview Studios 2012 Christmas Sale

Now that I am back from my quick trip to Kentucky, I should let you all know that Fairview Studios will once again have their annual Christmas Sale on Saturday November 24th from 9am to Noon. There will be early bird draws to get you in earlier than the rest and door prizes as usual. I highly recommend this sale. It has been running non stop since before the dawn of time, well, probably the late 70's, but you would need to ask Dave about that. I hope to see you there!

It’s Here…

Thursday, July 5th was the first “unofficial” night of the Calgary Stampede. On the Thursday evening before the stampede begins they have a “Sneak a Peak” night that lets you get into the grounds to check out all the new and different ways you can spend your money and churn your stomach on the Midway before the official opening on Friday.

I may have mentioned before that I live very close to the grounds. According to Google, I only live (as the crow flies) 777m from the Grandstand (where they hold the Rodeo, the grandstand show, shoot off fire works etc). This is just over ¾’s of a km (just shy of half a mile). If the wind is blowing right I could spit that far. This short distance, and the fact that this is the 100th anniversary of the first Stampede, made for an especially loud evening. I think they also turned all the deep fryers on at the same time. I could smell deep fryer fat on my patio (must have been the mini donuts). The Coca Cola stage was in full swing, the rides were flinging screaming people around and the fireworks were, as promised, very, very loud. Even though I live close, I don’t get to see them. I face the wrong way. So all I get is the noise and perhaps some reflected light off of one of the taller buildings in my area. Not that exciting.

It’s not all bad. I do get to see some funny things while the stampede is in full swing. I was sitting on my patio on Saturday night, just reading a book and listening to the sounds of the inner city when I watched a “cowboy” walk by. Of course he was not a real cowboy. This was one of those urban cowboys that only dress the part for 10 days of the year. Anyway, the path he was describing was not the straight line of the sidewalk, it was more of a meandering swerving back and forth, and he was walking really oddly, more of a jerky shuffle as if his feet didn’t know when his body had stopped and vice versa.

On the clay front, I was in the studio all weekend, but it was just too hot to do much of anything. I decided to pack it in yesterday when the sweat began to drip down my face while throwing. I did manage to get the 2 extra mugs for the special order glazed and fired. They went into the test kiln, but they came out all gross. The ^5 BMix decided to bloat, and now they have little bumps all over them. I think the test kiln just gets too hot. If I had been able to fire them in a regular kiln load of pots I don’t believe this would have happened. These are the things that happen when you rush clay faster than it wants to go.

Mad Potters...we don't bite (hard)

I will be in the Mad Potters Sale on Saturday, May 26^th this year. If you are in the Hillhurst/Sunnyside area and want to see some excellent pottery, there will be all kinds of wonderful, functional and sculptural work by local Calgary artists ranging from Cone 10 reduction stoneware to mid range porcelain fired in oxidation. So come on down to the HHSS Community Centre and check us out, we would love to see you there!

Just when you thought it was over...

This is the view out the window at Ceramics Canada. If I took this picture yesterday, you would have not seen all this white stuff...
We have had a horrible winter here in Calgary, and we finally thought it was over, but Mother Nature had one last ugly surprise up her sleeve. This time next week it is supposed to be +12 celcius, so hopefully this is the last of the white stuff for the year (yeah right). They forecasted that the snow we are getting today will be the equivalent to the total average snowfall for April. 15-20 cm.
Oh well, I may get to leave a bit early today and then I can go to the studio and fool around there.

OMG

It's -29!

pots in progress

Except for those pitchers, it has been a while since I have posted any pictures. This is some of what I have been up to lately

This is one of the 4 large plates I threw this weekend with a lot of slipped dots etc. This was the 2nd reincarnation of this pattern as the first time was obliterated by the plastic when I was loosely draping it. After I got the slip on again, I concocted an elaborate tent for it to rest under over night.

This is a funky little butter dish I was working on last week

A tea pot from last week as well

A vase from last week too

A funky tray

More teapots in progress. I trimmed and assembled these on Sunday, and then I threw a couple more.

I'm still alive...

I priced and packed all my pots on Saturday afternoon/evening for the Calgary Clay Arts Association sale. I awoke bright and early on Sunday and made my way over to the sale. We got ourselves set up (there were 3 of us that did not participate on the Saturday). I think that for a fledgling association that is just beginning to get itself out there, we didn’t do too badly. We had a pretty steady flow of customers after lunch. The sale ran from 10-4 and I am not used to full day sales. The studio sale that is put on twice a year is only from 9-12 and we do probably 80% of our sales by 10:30.

Anyway, I wanted to cut my feet off by the end of the day, but I still had to make my way over to the studio and lock it up for the day. When I got home, I collapsed into my large leather chair in front of the tube, but by 9:30 I couldn’t even keep my eyes open so I stumbled my way to bed and that is all I remember until I woke up at 6:30 this morning. Now that this sale is over, I am all prepped for next the Big sale on Saturday. This Sale has been going on for at least 25 years and the following is large.

I only have 2 more teaching nights and then I am done with that and will be back on my regular Tuesday night schedule and maybe I can have a life again. It has been crazy the last couple of weeks and I am still not quite sure how I have been able to do it and work a regular day job to boot.

I managed to refire all of my lustred work for the “Turning the Table” show that opens this Saturday as well. I picked the lustre up on Friday, got everything redone and loaded that night, and when I got back to the studio on Saturday afternoon, I was very happy. Everything came out just fine. I fired it to cone 016 this time and everything worked perfect. I had fired everything to 018 before, and I just don’t think that the underlying glaze softened enough to allow for a good bond between the lustre and the glaze. Anyway, I got it all priced, inventoried and packed. I had to deliver it to one of my CCAA cohorts so that they could deliver it to the gallery this week. I am quite pleased with the overall outcome and am looking forward to the opening on Saturday afternoon.