meanwhile uptown

that's Kent McLaughlin
he's right up there with Tom and Bob on my list of favorite tinkerers and mad scientists

So we have now had two firings involving vegetable oil. the first was hosted by a 8ish cubic foot reduction kiln, downdraft, with two burners in the back aiming forward, flue inbetween two bag walls.. at cone 08 he replaced one propane with the rotary-style burner and it seemed to be burning all right- smokey, but improving over time. I was in and out of the area- it seemed to be going on a long time, there was plenty of activity and storytelling and at a certain point I saw that he'd gone back to two propane burners. turns out that due to the power of the burner and the tiny kiln, the fuel does not really have enough space to combust properly. not only that, but the cone of the flame exiting the burner is severely disturbed by the narrow channel through which it must pass to get into the kiln. then, once it's in there, it hits a target brick, intended to deflect the flame upward into the chamber, but placed, as it were, eight inches from the wall, fire side. so what happened is that the flame was first compressed, then smacked into a roadblock, and immediately jumped sideways into the pots right next to the flue, and out the flue. the pots in that area were subjected to a sudden and violent temperature increase which sealed the surface and then bubbled it well before normal temperatures.. and that side of the kiln was quite oxidized because the oil had no good way to combust.
round two: I load a soda kiln. crossdraft caternary, about 16 cubic feet. Kent has invented a little fry oil weed burner- 20 dollar propane torch weed burner, two inch cup. he drilled a quarter inch hole for a copper tube to be inserted through the back "wall" of the thing, so that the oil can enter above the propane flame, and burn simultaneously. so at cone 012, I replace one of the propane burners on this kiln with this new tonka burner. I also slide a split soft brick onto the floor of the burner port so that the oil can drip onto this "sponge" and have a wider surface area on which to burn. it burned dirty, belching black smoke. well, Kent's first experience with the fry oil was the same way, and he in love with carbon trap shinos was elated. but when he opened the kiln, pastey white. so somebody out there with a clue- could you weigh in? if there be soot, there be carbon dioxide and monoxide as well, correct? how could he have had a kiln in apparent nasty reduction yet have oxidized results? he was saying that it was in some way related to, essentially the length of the hydrocarbon chain- that with the heavier oil, the oxygen has a hard time breaking into the molecule-- exiting unburned.
the juggle this evening was the standard body reduction one, maintaining heat rise with definitive reduction, now with the extra ball of this wacky burner trying to smoke us out. The idea was to find a place where the oil could gradually phase in, and the propane out. but whenever we tried to make that shift, the smoke was just insane.. so then we tried to spray a little water onto the soft brick sponge as well, to assist in atomizing the oil- but whenever we did that, it was just so much hydrogen reduction too that the temperature would plummet. it was too much water- if we had a little valve by which to control it quite accurately, perhaps. But at that point, I would vote for doing the stair-step burner with the softbrick sponge.
so we dinked around with that for a good few hours, and then I made the call to get on with it, switched back to propane, and put the turbo on. within a few hours the bottom of the kiln was way hotter than the top, and now I've throttled way back to allow it to even out the top. to be precise, it is 4:43, I have my computer sitting on the damper of some other kiln and I'm listening to Aphex Twin. it's pleasant, actually. nobody around. kiln doing what I want it to do, albeit very very slowly. but writing takes time. at 5 am, my friend has a blow slot in the glass shop, and I'm going to go up there to see what he's up to. Once I'm done with the firing.

throwing coals, flogging molly

this here is a face mug. a spin off the face jug. I mentioned that we had a field trip to the Catawba valley pottery festival, and i was wondering about the historical origins of this phenomenon.. apparently they were made as grave markers for the slaves. not for moonshine. it is only in past two decades or so that they have become commercialized as kitsche. what a surprise. the kid holding this one also writes a blog- go check it out- potteryodessey. His name is Rob and he's in the upstairs clay class that is working with local clays. that class just organized a woodfiring that wrapped up this evening. the next photo is of a jar that was made by the teacher David Stemphly. sorry it's sideways. turn your head to the left and you can see that a joining point in a greenware piece opened up and continued to go as it was subjected to a whole lot of heat shock in the front chamber of their kiln. what a shame that it couldn't just freeze in that position- it died some time later.
the class did an interesting thing with the loading of the first full chamber. (this is a noborigama with a large "stackable" firebox, two chambers and a secret ante-chamber)- at about cone five, I think, one of the studio assistants, the honorable and extraordinary Josh Copas took a special shovel and scooped up a few loads of fluffy embers and ash from the pit of the firebox and threw them onto the ware in the first chamber. this would be a photo of that-
that whole chamber was loaded with the intention of being stoked not just in the regular small stoke aisle, but also in amongst the ware. "throwing" the coals was an exciting extra... especially in the somambulist early morning as I tended my own kiln long before dawn, wandering into Aarvo Part playing in the kitchen.


next post- fry oil in a soda kiln

Easter

Easter at Penland is a bit different- all the studios make eggs, there's an open invitation to the local families to join us, a potluck brunch, and then a mad free-for-all of egg hunting. They're on display for a while first- the textiles, (in this case, bead) class made felted eggs. the glass shop made some open-ended ones that they passed on to the books and wood classes who filled them with tiny letterpress messages, or woodshavings. we in clay had a deco party involving fake majolica and cheap beer. someone in metals jammed a bunch of puzzle pieces together and made a very sweet very heavy iron egg...

and then they are hidden. when the bell chimes, the "kids" get a head start, and I tell you, they are mean sometimes. One of my classmates had her hand on a glass egg, the only one she found, and some greedy little girl with a whole basketfull scratched her wrist in an attempt to wrestle it away from my friend. and I was introduced to another young lady- Sandra, who found mine- at some late hour I painted a dragon coming out of one of the ones I made- i was surprised to like how it turned out, seeing as how I rarely even draw anymore. she was psyched. here she is-

well, she's at the top of the page-

face jugs

I lay here in the fading light on a saturday marked by a cultural excursion, wondering why I can't fall into another nap, considering how little sleep I've had. It's just nonstop around here- I feel like a balloon filled nearly to capacity, stretching from inside, poked from the outside, patching little pinpricks, pliable in essence, but taut. So last night was a gallery opening of work from this year's instuctors, and the wine kept flowing long into the night. Full moon- we are laughing on porches and playing vollyball in the dark. We are talking about politics in art school, swimming in the dead sea, and bravery. In the midst of it all, Kent is firing the small kiln with waste vegetable oil! It got going late in the aftrenoon, a bit too much burner for such a small kiln but not an incredible amount of smoke... later in the night among all the mayhem, I saw that he had switched it back to two propane burners. They were finished at 1.30. maybe I'll see him at the party in the glass shop tonight- mojitos and appropriate vessels for it..
I'm sorry, I ought to have taken a few photos of the historical pots I saw today- I'm kind of aukward with a camera, and mine is too big to hide in a pocket.. we left the mountains, to the Hickory cultural center to attend a lecture by a folk historian, and check out the contemporary pots of the area. It was a craft fair of area potters, some of whom stick to the traditions of wood-ash glaze and strict function. It had a family feeling, as so with the lecture- tracing a few generations of men who "turn and burn". Light on history, warm of image. In the hall, lots of face jugs- the moonshine jugs decorated with frankly african-american features and snaggle teeth. disturbing. I am going to ask the other class' teacher about them tonight- I'll tell you about their evolution. Now it seemed every potter there and his mother was selling face jugs. And antique pots- with more character, more grit. Other than a few gems, it was not my cup of tea. oh well. me and the girls drove home in the sun, sleepy.
So life is good- great people everywhere, it's warming up- we're starting to sit outside at lunch and the conversation is shifting from "so, how's your class?" to amputees and how polar bears are breeding with brown bears. Our class is getting along well- morale is high, we'll unload the kiln tomorrow and i just did some castable repair on the soda kiln, so we'll fire that one next week.

klezmer

Klezmer music, as I understand it, is Romanian in ancestry. As with many other fascinating Appalachian cultural fusions such as the meeting of African rhythmns with the music of Irish immigrants, Klesmer came to the Blue Ridge mountains with the Gypsies who were gradually pushed west from the coast as this young country expanded.
So we all know about artisan this and that: cheese, bread, tomatoes. The remarkably young people (alleluia!!) who deeply care about these specialty fields of the so-called gourmet are, in my opinion, very clever in bridging the worlds of beauty and body nourishment. Lord only knows how many varieties of succulent tomatoes were discarded when the "need" for monocrops fell into place. I keep reading about so and so variety of wheat that is so much more hardy in, say, an alpine climate, but Monsanto is conning the farmers in India to buy GM seeds (with attendant fertilizers) from a variety that really isn't suited to the climate of the region, promising a great harvest which materializes the first year only, just long enough to hook the farmer on the magic seeds- I go on... my point is that there are places in the world where they see through the bullshit. I am lucky enough to live in one of those places, and there are many pockets of people who see the mad cycle of lies.
Again, lucky am I to be visiting in one of those places. Its fair to assume that people who value the function of art in culture would also value locally grown organic foods and historically relevant music. Klezmer, in the wikipedia, is jewish dance, wedding, and celebration songs. Tonight, I was invited to "sit in" at the practice of a group set to perform at a local dance hall (?) tomorrow night. Read: party at the house shared by the couple who teaches the upstairs clay class. Naomi Dalglish and Micheal Hunt are team teaching with David Stuempfle. I don't know quite how else to put this: Naomi and David are two of the most ernest, lovable, conscious, beautifully bonky totally collected misfits I've ever met. They are to the world of ceramics what the Portland pirate at the Pearl Bakery is to the world of bread. I pass no judgement on who works harder, I just know that these two are in deep integration with the clay they dig from the mama earth: they have devised an entire course about it. I walk upstairs to find oval plaster trays full of 15 varieties of locally dig clays, all rationed out for the initial sensory test in the hands of the classfull of potters who tend to their plasticity (or lack thereof).
Why is the party at their house? because they are as in the band as they are in the earth. Naomi plays violin and sings, Michael plays the drum, a little cymbal, probably a few other things, and there's also a cello (yes!), a clarinet, an accordion, and probably something else that I missed. they were rehearsing. their class was sitting around in love getting drunk on jameson, maker's and a few other things. we got to clapping. then there was dancing. there was a lot of stomping on the floor. we were shaking the floorboards. we formed a circle, then a spiral, and wound around the little house, through the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom in a 1-2-1234 stomp that I am certain will reverberate in the memory of us all. I'm telling you, I've had some maker's but still I assert, this is the stuff of artisan bread. this is it, folks. when this little house built in 1950 is stomped to the point of vibration, when it becomes a music instrument in itself- -
the last song was an atonal duet sung by Naomi and her neighbor. Haunting. in Yiddish, I think, and in so, removing any verbal associations I might have made- the melody simultaneously asking me to close my eyes and be carried away and also maintain how riveted I was by the fact of such a passionate live literally ethereal moment - in a little living room with a fireplace and couches full of drunk, dance-exhausted people, two ladies maintained eye contact throughout the entire three-minute sway of beauty. .

laughing yoga?

Penland.

this is a fraction of the view from the dining hall and many other places on campus. Llamas graze the field- their skinny front legs are so like that of a human in length and proportion that when they bend and walk around, they look exactly like two humans in a llama costume. The day the staff and helper students got here early it hailed in the morning and snow was flying horizontally all day. today we are treated to a dusty pink sunset as we dine on salmon and key lime pie. today also, some of us came back for a second helping of laughter yoga, which turns out to be laughing, fake or not, to exercise of course but more importantly, to trick the body into releasing endorphins. I'm not sure if it works so well because it only floods me with endorphins or because I make the choice to step so far out of my comfort zone as to fake laughter, for a half hour. one person laughs to laugh, another laughs at themselves which is real, another finds their inner cackle or snort, which amuses the rest of us. we all start laughing for real. we are given little exercizes, like acting class: paint everyone with you favorite color, throw laughing dust on them, share a flower- and someone will mock it and make faces, so then the next person you bump up against is surprised to find a genuinely amused smile on the face of their new partner. Its contagious. Offer up a plate of worms, laugh like a tiger-- what do I have to gain by being too cool for this? what's the critical mass of people willing to play along? I'm in love. today was better than yesterday. then we all laid on the floor to wind down and afterwards, tried to breakdance.
So that's day two of penland and this is a two month course.

thunder-trunk

Supposedly the speed limit on the Florda interstate is 70, and a person should pass on the left. But really now, 80 is soooo slow and the fishes pass wherever they feel like it, especially around Daytona Beach where a little BMW like me is navigating all manner of vehicles and pods of bikers. Stately old Goldwings and bedazzling Harleys are interspersed with the occasional lucky man with a little lady “2-up” behind him. And then at 130 mph come the rocket-propelled waspy ones threading tight spaces between the moving cars. One of them just about kissed my nose as he passed-

I'm in my Mam's old car for this trip. My brother borrowed in when he went to college and made some modifications. Like a blacklight. And apparently he was dissatisfied with the speakers so he replaced them. I open up the trunk to discover this:

so I'm flipping through the radio for good hip hop. Nhhh.. bla. Great salsa!... I revert to my favorite brazilians and bounce my way up north... the long-lost low end shuddering up from behind me like a good thunderstorm. You can imagine how hard it was to keep a lid on the speedometer as I turned onto the blue ridge parkway and plugged in the ragga jungle. There I was, remembering the same curves I had turned for a few summers ago, but now instead of a 4x4 pickup beast, I was at the helm of an ultimate driving machine. I slipped into zen mode: slow, controlled turns of the wheel, focussed anticipation of brake and gas, the rythmn of the road like that of a great ski run- sun through the bare trees like a bar code before me. Register. Contact. This is real.

It's good to get out and interact with the machine of Amerika every once in a while. The part that produces 8 0z bottles of water for Delta Airlines that doesn't recycle. The Amerika that doesn't give good health care to our returning vets, but does supply them with stuffed animals of disney characters. They should make prozac pez dispensers with stupid mickey mouse. Even when a person is paying attention to the world, one can never have too vivid of an illustration. It is written in the ads for gospel emblasoned on the side of a huge red Hummer, and the blood diamonds (“for your loved one”) for sale on the hip hop station.

Now I am sitting in Silvie Granatelli's new kitchen. Pots on display everywhere. Ferguson in one corner and Ron Meyers opposite (the rape of europa). She and her friend are having a conversation that moves like the waspy bikes. She sits on the counter and kicks her foot, her friend has three olives in her martini. I am “with my people”. Soon I will be at Penland and I hope that among all the millions of things to do, that I can keep up with this journal... I am very excited. I've been sleeping up for this time period.

On this blog, my dear readers, you will find ramblings about the intersection of claylife values with plasticlife values. I intend to be informative to my peeps who want technical info about our upcoming experiments and my ongoing firings in Portland. But I also travel a lot, I enjoy writing, and I wind up in some good adventures, so I'll share those fit for public consumption. I'll probably get on small tirades about things like bottled water but I won't be writing essays. I'd love to read your comments! If you have questions or ideas for my class, please write them up- we're going to have a fry oil rodeo and I think anything goes.

Much love to all! Careen