Rachel Dorn Ceramic Sculpture: Palmer Martin Hall

Showing posts with label Palmer Martin Hall. Show all posts

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Raku Firing in the New Space

hot pots being moved with tongs into or out of the post firing reduction bucket (old building)

Last week YVC clay classes had raku firings all day on Thursday and Friday. In the new building, we are able to fire during during class time every quarter. We have a kiln yard on the south side of the studio that we can access through the kiln room. This space is a bit small, but it is away from air-intake, and its walls are tall so that the smoke is either inside the kiln yard or up and away from pedestrians.

new building kiln yard after the last firing

In the old building, we had to fire on the weekend, because the smoke from our firing bothered people in the nearby administration building. The old kiln yard had a lot of space, which was nice for hanging out and made it easier to be away from the smoke but still observing the firing. The new studio has a small space, but a few people can observe through the windows or can stand outside the exterior doors of the kiln yard to see without being right in the action.

a view of the raku process in the old kiln yard

Firing raku during the week makes it easier for all the students to be involved if they so choose and I prefer not to spend an entire weekend day firing after spending five days at school during the week. The firing doesn't fit well into a two hour class, so students from my morning class had to start early or end late if they wanted to raku. The afternoon class is longer, so some of them were able to fire during class. Even if they aren't firing their own work, all the students can see the process during class and those who are firing work can get involved.

fired sculpture from this quarter's class

This year I had quite a few students choose to participate on both days. We got an early start and were able to fire several loads in the morning on Thursday before it rained and before the rain got heavier. We ended earlier than planned to get ourselves and the kiln out of the rain. Yakima rain usually isn't quite as serious as Wisconsin rain, so being out in the rain wasn't too bad most of the morning. Rain isn't great for the kiln, but we need to replace the top anyway.

red hot pots after the kiln was opened (from the old studio)

The kiln in the new space is basically a revamped version of the same kiln from the old space. The old kiln had a base made of soft and hard fire bricks. The new one has the same arrangement for the base, but with fresh bricks. The top is still the same (and needs its fiber replaced), but the counterweight system from the old building has been replaced with a motorized lift.

the new kiln base with the old kiln top

Most of the student work came through the firing safely, but I didn't get pictures. One large piece cracked and broke near the top, probably because it was large and made with porcelain clay. Another piece lost its bottom in the reduction bucket because it hadn't been attached well at the start. One more piece was dropped or pinched too tightly with the tongs so it cracked and broke into more than ten pieces.

student work with horse hair from this year's firing

We had three students do horse hair raku (where you put horse hair onto a hot, unglazed pot so it will burn and leave black lines of smoke permanently on the clay surface) this quarter. The results are a little hard to see on small work, but the plate shows the effect fairly well.

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Palmer Martin Hall, in Use and Tour Next Tuesday

This coming Tuesday, November 10, the YVCC Art club is hosting a tour of the new art studios. We are meeting in the lobby of Palmer-Martin Hall at 12:30. If you haven't seen the studios yet, join us.

I am enjoying seeings student art displayed in the new building. Drawing, Design, Photography, and Painting classes have had work up on the walls for most of the quarter. I especially enjoy looking at drawings where the student are all working with the same subject. I think it is interesting to see the different students' approaches to the same view.

student drawing examples in the hallway last week

The wall displays are a way to show visitors to the building what our students are doing in class, they also offer students waiting for class more to look at and hopefully they inspire students in their own art making or to take studio classes themselves.

Palmer-Martin downstairs hallway

The clay students don't have as much of an opportunity to show there work. In part this is because there work takes longer to finish, but it also has to do with the lack of shelving for 3D work in the hallway. We are waiting on some shelves that can be put in the display cabinet, so I am hopeful that we will be able to display work later this quarter or in the winter.

clay studio student work shelves

Most of the other things that were not yet completed at the start of the year have now been finished or fixed. This week we fired the glaze kiln for the first time in the new building. Results seems good, though the firing was unusual. I've been firing this kiln for years, but in the new space it has significantly more venting, which impacts the pressure in the kiln and required me to adjust my firing this time around.

gas kiln in the new building

We also fired the large electric kiln for the first time this week. It had, oddly, shipped without a plug which took several weeks to be replaced, then we ran into another small problem with the controls that delayed the firing a few days.

electric kilns in the new building

Our mixer was finally fully installed a couple weeks ago. We've mixed several batches of clay and my students and work studies are starting to understand what the process is all about.

clay mixer and venting

The whole studio is starting to feel more familiar and more comfortable. Glazing started a little over a week ago and now all students have had a chance to used the glazing room and see the results of their glazes. This means, of course, that the quarter is coming to an end. The last day for students to throw is two and a half weeks from today.

glazing room

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Showing Videos in the New Space

We've just completed the fourth week of classes in our new Palmer-Martin building and I am mostly loving the new space.

On Friday, I showed a video at the start of my clay class. It was a compilation of Icheon Masters throwing, carving and decorating their ceramic work:

The neat thing about showing the video this quarter is that I was able to get it ready quickly and show it, on the large screen, with audible sound, as the students walked in to class. The students noticed the video and most of them walked over on their own and sat down to watch and discuss the video. Since the audio is just music, the students were able to discuss what was going on in the video while it was playing. It was a casual atmosphere and energizing to see the Icheon artists working. Additionally, students who were working in the space but not technically coming for class, were able to see the video without interrupting their own work (or keep working without being interrupted by the video.

In the old space, showing an online video at the start of class would have entailed about 8 steps and probably a total of 20 minutes of setup on my part:

Step 1: Get the Projector. I would have walked over to the Media Center (upstairs in the library) to get a projector before my first class or in the 10 minutes between my classes. I would have taken the elevator to the ground floor and pushed the little cart through five sets of doors and across the absolute bumpiest sidewalk on campus.(If I rushed, one particular bump would send the remote flying off the cart and, if I wasn't careful, threaten to send the projector off, too. I broke two water bottles by dropping them off the cart while I was trying to move it between classes or on my way off campus for the day.

Step 2: Plug in the Projector. I would have rolled the cart to the middle of the design studio, unrolled the plug, climbed under a table and plugged in the projector. Often I would need to move a second table so that the plug could reach directly to the wall socket. Sometimes, if I could find one with the right prongs, I would use an extension cord to read an alternate plug.

Step 3: Turn on the Projector and Computer. I still have to do this.

Step 4: Move the Screen. While I waited for the computer to warm up, I had to line up the screen with the projector. This classroom had no permanent screen attached to a wall, so I would pull down the screen on the back of the portable chalkboard (on wheels) and roll it to a place where the projected image would hit it straight on.

Step 5: Adjust the Projector Level. Usually, but not always, the projector feet needed to be adjusted or something needed to be stuck under them so that they would be level and high enough for the image to show on the screen. We kept little bits of illustration board specifically for this purpose. Erasers worked, too.

Step 6: Log in. I still need to log in to the computer in my classroom, but I can do this ahead of time if I plan well. I can't log in to a computer before it is plugged in. Often I also needed to fiddle with the connection between the projector and the computer because they didn't always communicate with each other on the first try.

Step 7: Light. Turning off the lights was actually easier in the old studio, but if there was still too much sunlight coming in from the windows I had about six semi-broken blinds that would need to be lowered and twisted closed. We now have three blinds that are easy to close, but the projector and screen are both far enough away that blind adjustment has so far been unnecessary.

Step 8: Collect the students. All of this is taking place in the design studio which is next to my clay classroom. The projector and screen won't fit in the clay studio so I have to invite my students to come next door. Sometimes I have to call them in more than once. Obviously they cannot watch from their wheels and must decide to come in or stay.

Post-Video Step 1-4: Shut Down, Unplug, Store and Return. Of course, after a video I would then have to shut down the computer and projector, rewrap the cord and wheel the whole cart into an office or storage room, since Media Services didn't want me to leave the cart in an unsecured separate room, but also didn't want me to leave the cart in the clay studio during class. After class I had to wheel the beastly thing back across the sidewalk of doom, back through six sets of doors (an extra doorway now, between where I stored the thing and where I used the thing) and up the elevator.

I suppose this means the new studio saves me about half an hour each time I show a video in class, counting travel time. I'm glad it does, but I'm also looking forward to the time when my time savings are not counteracted by the time I spend trying to fix or track down the things that worked just fine in the old space (kilns with erroneous gas lines, kilns with missing plugs, and mixers that still don't attach to electricity).

Pedagogically, the new projector, computer and screen mean that I can show student videos I wouldn't have tried to share during class last year.

Monday, August 24, 2015

New Clay Studio Tour (Mostly Moved In)

Last week a group of volunteers joined me at school to help put the new YVCC clay studio in order. Despite the fact that we had to spend some time at the old building moving boxes before we could finish in the new space, we made a lot of progress in the new building.

Main Studio

The main classroom has wheel-throwing and hand-building spaces, as well as a teaching station. These seem like the obvious things for a clay studio to contain, but the old studio combined these three functions into the same space as clay storage and mixing, glazing, glaze mixing, and the kilns.

the main clay studio from the back corner--photo by Richard Telfer

The new studio feels large. It was difficult to capture the sense of space in a small photo, but the wide-angle and panoramic pictures give a better sense of the space. If you are on the YVCC campus in the fall, stop by to admire the space for yourself.

a panoramic view of the main studio, from the black wedging tables on the left to the teacher station on the far right

This main room has plenty of space for 17 wheels entirely separate from the six hand-building work tables. There is also space for the slab roller (which hasn't yet made the trip across the street) and the extruder (ditto).

the main studio viewed from the hallway door--photo by Richard Telfer

The front area of the main classroom includes sliding whiteboards (ones that don't require me to climb onto the table to use them), storage shelves for my example pieces, and a teaching station with computer, DVD, VHS, and camera.

The main studio viewed from the door to the kiln room--photo by Richard Telfer

The projector screen comes down automatically from the ceiling, as does the projector, which is protected from dust behind a hinged ceiling tile. The camera is stationed on the ceiling above the teacher's wheel so that I can show a zoomed-in top or front view on the screen while I am throwing.

on the ceiling you can see the camera and five hanging reels for the pottery wheel cords

There are cabinets, counters, shelves, and sinks all around the main classroom. Right now most of the shelves have display items in them and items are beginning to be sorted for the drawers and lower cabinets.

all the drawers were opened by my daughter so we would know they worked

In putting things away it was nice to have built-in locations for everyday items like the example pieces, towels, and aprons, but it was also nice to find specific homes for things that have never had a real spot in the old studio. For instance, the extruder dies have always been kept in a box on the floor below the test kiln that was kept below the extruder. Now the extruder dies have a drawer to themselves.

a space for chucks and towels above the sinks; extruder dies in a drawer

In the old space there was one "library" area with three or four shelves for books and magazines. This space also stored chucks, tape, and paper. In the new space most of our magazines and clay books fit easily into three shelves in the main classroom. The glaze books are stored in the glaze room and some technical books can be stored near the kilns. In the main studio there is plenty of space for adding more titles and additional magazines over the coming years. Additionally, students can actually pull out magazines to peruse since the whole bunch isn't wedged in so tightly.

the new pottery library, with space to expand

While putting away the magazines, one of my volunteers discovered that we have magazines dating back as far as 1951. I joked that the new space should be able to contain our magazine collection for the next 64 years.

Glaze Room

The glaze room is the most exciting thing going right now. In the old studio there was almost no space assigned specifically to glazing. Glazes were kept under a table and pulled out for glazing. The buckets needed to be pushed back after glazing because there wasn't enough room to walk through the classroom with the buckets out. Sometimes students couldn't use certain wheels because the glaze buckets were in that space. When students glazed, they splashed on wheels and were stepping over each other's buckets to each the sink or their work space.

There was one counter with shelves and drawers for storing dry glaze materials. There were also dry materials stored in buckets under several tables and in cupboards and drawers in a variety of locations around the studio. Glaze mixing happened on a counter after students were asked to move their bags and coats. There was no ventilation for the glaze mixing area. Though students wore masks when mixing glaze, the airborne dry glaze materials were not removed from the space as they should have been.

a view of the glaze room from the spray booth--photo by Richard Telfer

The new studio has a glaze room. This is a long room with shelves, drawers and cabinets as well as work surfaces. The room was designed to be a much more appropriate size for storing our materials, mixing and applying glaze. The room has space to work and I could easily imagine half a class using the space without getting in each other's way.

moving the dry materials to new buckets

The best feature of the room, from my perspective, is the venting. The new room has a built-in vent system in the middle of the room that is so quiet you have to pay attention to notice it's on. Last week, when some of my students were transferring materials, we discovered that we can actually see the dust being sucked into the air vent.

the vent is pulling the cobalt dust into the slit and out of the room (but you can't really see it in the picture)

For the first time ever, I can see all of our dry materials. We replaced the cracked and breaking, small, white buckets with new blue buckets and lids that fit. Each of these is labeled and arranged alphabetically on shelves in the studio. For several ingredients, we had more than one container in the old studio. Probably this happened when we misplaced the bag of dry material and bought more. Now we have space for all the buckets, as well as the excess, on the shelf. Eventually we should be able to eliminate the excess because we can see what we already have.

in the process of replacing white buckets with blue

The glazes themselves have a new home as well. The new studio has a raised platform for glaze buckets underneath the wall of dry materials shelves. The step means we don't have to lean down as far to reach the buckets. It also means all the glazes can be kept visible and accessible at all times, rather than being pulled out and put away before and after every glazing session.

the glaze room, with glaze buckets along the left side on the raised step--photo by Richard Telfer

The class glazes have always been stored in old pickle buckets and scrounged five-gallon buckets from restaurants. We ordered new buckets to match and to because the old ones are also cracking and have issues with the lids not fitting right. I also printed improved labels for each glaze. Unfortunately all the new lids seems to have disappeared. I am hoping the lids show up before the quarter begins.

here's the new buckets, but where are the lids?

The drawers in the middle island in the glaze room are meant to store our larger quantities of dry chemicals. In the center of the island, there is a low section where a glaze bucket can go when glaze is being mixed. In this low section the bucket is near the sink and the ventilation and is at an easy height for adding chemicals and mixing the new glaze.

the glazing island with vent in the middle and sink on the right--photo by Richard Telfer

Next to the dry materials shelves and above the glaze buckets, there is storage space for slips, under-glazes, brushes and other glazing tools. The far end of the room has room for the spray booth and a smaller shelving section where I can keep glaze books, raku glazes and glazes for other temperatures than those we usually use in the studio. The advantage of a separate shelving area is that I can visually restrict access to these glazes for students who are not yet familiar with different firing temperatures in the studio.

glaze room from the doorway to the main studio, with spray booth (not yet vented)--photo by Richard Telfer

This room is already miles better than what I had in the previous studio. I have work yet to do in here, but I am excited about showing it off to students and seeing how the improved space impacts our glaze mixing and glaze application processes.

Clay Storage and Mixing

Next to the glazing room, there is a small space for glaze mixing. This space is currently the farthest from complete. We are waiting for the clay mixer to be installed and vented. There are a few items such as the pug mill, still to be put away. This space also houses the washer and dryer and some storage shelves. This room is entirely separate from the other clay studio spaces so that doors can be closed when clay is being mixed. This will help contain both the dust and the noise.

our (temporarily) very messy clay storage room

Kiln Room

a panoramic view of the the kiln room, looking into the main classroom (left) and the clay storage room (dark space in the middle)

The kiln room, next to the clay room and off the main classroom, is separate and spacious in the new studio. In the old studio, kilns were vented for safety, but the heat was contained in the main studio. The kilns were installed in the same area as the pug mill and rolling ware shelves on the side of the room opposite the wheels.

kiln room--photo by Richard Telfer

The kiln room now contains two electric kilns and a test kiln as well as the glass kiln. The biggest advantage of the new kiln room is that the heat and noise of the kilns should be kept separate from the rest of the studio, allowing us to regulate the main studio temperature. I look forward to teaching in May and June in a studio that is not sweltering. Though the kilns were part of the way we kept the studio warm during the winter, I suspect the new building has a more well-regulated heating system than the old building.

kiln furniture cabinet

In the kiln room there is plenty of room for rolling ware carts and a built in cabinet for kiln furniture (shelves, stilts, posts, etc). From the kiln room there is an exterior exit as well as an exit to a small contained kiln yard for the raku and pit kilns. The raku kiln needs to be rebuilt before it can be used. it is possible that it will not be ready until later in the year.

exterior kiln yard with pit kiln and raku kiln in pieces

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

(Basically) Out of Palmer Hall

gas kiln ready to move

Summer classes ended last week at YVCC. This week I think I can finally say that I am done packing up in the old building. I said that to myself on Monday afternoon, then remembered that I needed to pack the student work from the DoVA show (kept in the back room). I said that again Tuesday morning, then remembered the raku glazes. At this point, I think I actually am done. (Or did I forget the raku cabinet--I'll have to check).

old Palmer Hall with the clock tower and Glenn-Anthon in the back

For nine years, I've worked in Palmer Hall. It's not a large building, so I've also worked in other buildings for most of that time (I've also taught in Deccio, Glenn-Anthon, Prior, the Technology building and once in the old Anthon building). My office has been in four different buildings, counting the new Palmer-Martin building.

gas kiln moving out

Palmer Hall has been slated for destruction for basically all of that time. I was originally told the building was "condemned." The things I am most looking forward to leaving behind:

the bumpy walk from Media Services pushing the computer cart
the always light and shared room in which we show presentations
the tiny space I have to squeeze through to turn on the fan for the electric kilns
the one-room clay studio that gets noisy and hot when the big kiln is running
the small space that forces me to step over wheels when teaching a full class
the pug mill as our main clay recycling tool
the clocks that don't match from one side of the room to the other (even after we re-set them)
the tiny bathroom in the back room
the tiny TV for showing class demonstration videos
the increasingly quirky wheels
the small damp cabinet
the leaky ceilings
the awkward screens in the middle room
the office location that encourages students to interrupt me when they don't have questions
being far away from other instructor offices and our Office Assistant

the old Palmer clay studio

But I shouldn't be so hard on the old building. There are some things I'm going to miss:

the large raku area
the central campus location
the central location of my office, so I can see what is happening in the studios all the time
the breeze from the open doors (granted, we are usually trying to regulate the studio temperature by opening the doors)

the old Palmer design studio

So I am, if not done, at least very very close to done residing in the middle of campus in this quirky old building. I am completely moved in to my new office (sorry, not pictures). My daughter went with me to campus the other day to help me unpack in the office. My pens and scissors have never been so organized.

Palmer--I've always disliked that spindly tree thing

Next Wednesday I have invited some student volunteers to help unpack in the new clay studio. We have probably 60+ boxes waiting to be unpacked and put away. Some of them are still in Palmer, but I am anticipating they will be moved this week or early next week.

the new Palmer-Martin clay studio (wheel area)

Yesterday I walked around with post-it notes and identified where things should be stored. Unfortunately, there were some changes made in the original plans, so we may need to get creative in a few spaces. The space feels huge now, but we still have six ware carts, four sets of small shelves, and a slab roller to put away in this space.

the new Palmer-Martin clay studio (hand building area)

I anticipate that the biggest adjustment for me will be getting used to teaching across this yawning expanse of a room. Except now I think about it, this is probably comparable to or a little smaller than the undergraduate clay classroom I taught in during graduate school. It never seemed to be a problem.

the new Palmer-Martin clay studio (teacher area)

The accessible teaching station is pretty neat, too. I haven't played with the projector setup yet, but I did use the whiteboard for the first time (to write a note to my student helpers for next week).

the new Palmer-Martin glazing area

The glaze studio is certainly the biggest question mark for me. I am going from no glaze space to this beautiful glaze space, but the drawers are tiny. They were meant to hold 50lb bags of dry material and the sink spout was meant to be flexible so we could fill buckets without sticking them in the sink. Aw, stop complaining, Rachel. We'll see how it looks next week.

Palmer-Martin (picture from Bora Architecture)

Saturday, June 20, 2015

New Building Photos

I finally got myself into the new building with a camera. (Too bad all my iPhone pictures look blurry lately). So here, finally, are some pictures of the new clay studio (I didn't get pictures of the other studios, yet).

throwing space in the main studio

The main room is divided into two main sections with a throwing side and a hand-building side. The throwing side consists of 16 student wheels, plus an ADA wheel and a teacher's station wheel. All but the ADA wheel are Thomas Stuarts. The hand-building side has 5 or 6 work tables and lots of space to move around. In the old studio we had 16 wheels, plus one that didn't have a pedal, about 4 work tables, plus one that usually was over taken by kiln-related items or metalsmithing scraps.

studio from the teacher's perspective

The major improvement in the new studio space is the space! I am so accustomed to walking over students, asking them to stand up so I can pass, or rearranging shelves, boxes, etc, so that students have (temporary) room to work). The new studio boasts increased counter space by the wheels and an entire damp closet in which students can store their work, not to mention the simple fact of room to walk around, through and past work stations.

teacher "station" at the front of the hand-building space (incomplete wedging tables along back wall)

The teaching options are also greatly increased. First of all, there is a teaching station in the studio, complete with computer, AV and whiteboards where students can actually see them. I said my goodbyes to the projector cart in the Media Center and plan never to roll it on its tiny wheels across the cracked and uneven path to Palmer Hall where I then have to move my class to a different room in order to access a portable screen on which to project a partially visible Powerpoint. I am also looking forward to having internet access in the classroom where I can show a whole class an image on the spur of the moment.

glaze room with ventilation, sinks, (small) drawers and shelving

One of the reasons the room feels so much larger is that the glazing room has moved to a separate space. The glazes, underglazes, dry materials, spray booth and two sinks are all going to be kept in a glazing room. The old operating procedure was to store the glazes under a table next to the wheels. When they were pulled out, the students glazing inevitably got in the way of the students throwing, and vice versa.

washer dryer and (small) mixer in the clay storage and recycling room

Clay storage, mixing, laundry and kilns are also housed in spaces separated out from the main work space. This not only increases ease of navigation and use of the classroom space, but it should cut down on noise, heat, distractions and even dust in the main studio space.

the indoor kiln room (old gas kiln and new electric kilns)

The kilns are in a separate room with plenty of space. The main problem for the last month in the Palmer Hall studio has been the inability of the air conditioning to keep up when any of the kilns are running, or even cooling down. In the new space there is a door between the work space and the kilns, not to mention the fact that the AC and heating are likely to be more reliable in a new building, as opposed to a building which has been in its current state for 20 years at least.

the outside kiln yard with a pit and a disassembled raku kiln

I'm not entirely sure how old Palmer Hall is, but I believe it may have been the art building since the 1980s. I have been in it for 9 years and when I came to YVCC in 2006, there had already been one attempt made to replace the building. Before it was an art building, moreover, it was a library, which makes some sense out of the odd arrangement in the very middle of the building, which has been used for storage, office space and a teeny tiny bathroom.

YVCC Campus circa ? (16th Ave is on the bottom/right, Nob Hill is top/right)

When I was in the Facilities Operations office this week, waiting to discuss kiln placement, I noticed this picture on the wall. It is of the campus long ago, but unfortunately didn't include a date. If you look closely, you'll notice Palmer Hall, Prior Hall, Larson Gallery and earlier versions of what I'd guess are the HUB and Sherar Gym.

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