Rachel Dorn Ceramic Sculpture

I was able to bisque and glaze almost a full kiln last week. Studio work this summer been slow, but work has gotten done. I used up all my porcelain clay and ordered more about a month ago. I ordered it from Tacoma and they sent it USPS to a different address in Yakima. Strangely they sent the other stuff I ordered to my house. Then they had to send they back to Tacoma before sending it back to Yakima for me. 50lbs of the clay made it to my house a week or two ago. The other 50lbs appear to be trapped in the USPS black hole. The clay has left Tacoma, but the tracking doesn't identify any more movement. I assume no one at USPS wants to pick up this 50lb box during the chaos and I don't blame them. 

Because I used different temperature clay for different projects, I wasn't able to fire the bulbs in the same firing as the plates, mugs, and citrus squeezers, so those haven't gotten done. I keep thinking I will make time to throw some more so I can fill a kiln to fire the mugs and bulbs I finished after this last firing, but I haven't done it yet. Instead I'm working on online classes, doing union stuff, and procrastinating. Today, I am also trying to calm down my kid, whose reaction to online school has been stomping, crying, and generally freaking out. First there was an error in the timing of the first class, then the link to the second class doesn't work. After solving the first issue, she allowed up to 12 minutes for her teacher to help on the second, but just in case he didn't reply, she started freaking out immediately. Um, so my hope for the school year is that this 7th grader learns patience?

I also changed the shape for most of these plates because they were done on request. The person who ordered them wanted small plates with a flat flared rim. She liked them, so three of the six porcelain plates have been sold since I took these pictures. Four of the plates were done in a groggy sculpture clay, which is serviceable, but mutes the glaze colors and doesn't look as nice.

I also glazed three screaming face mugs I made with the porcelain clay. I used dark glazes to highlight the features and wrinkles, and a semi-transparent glaze for the entire exterior. I am not excited about the result. The faces look too white and too plain. Part of the problem is the limited number of glazes I had (partly because I used some up on the plates) and part of the problem is that I didn't leave enough of the dark glazes in the wrinkles and indents. I have ordered some new glazes so on the next batch I can bring more color, assuming the glazes also don't end up in USPS limbo.

I think these faces would look better if I layered more colors. I usually do this with my underglazed sculpture, putting down a base coat on bisque ware before a second firing, then layering a wash of contrasting color over the first. I haven't tried that with these glazes, but I'm considering it. Underglazes and glazes handle differently, but it's worth a shot.

I did minimal mixing of colors in these mugs, but I was tentative compared to my "usual" work. I also did some mixing/layering in the new lemon squeezers, but for some reason the yellow and blue showed up best and overwhelm the other colors (or maybe I forgot to use much other than blue and yellow). I know I used the red/pink on at least two pieces and now it is barely evident.

 

Something else happened in the glaze firing for these citrus squeezers. And this requires a bit of back-story. When I was in college, my clay professor told us that anytime we had a contained air pocket, it needed to be pierced so that the air could escape. If not, it would risk blowing up in the kiln. This is pretty conventional wisdom in the clay world and I know I've repeated it often enough. I remember one instance when I remembered too late that I had forgotten to pierce an air hole in a piece. When I opened the kiln I was surprised to see the piece had not exploded. At the time, my professor and I guessed that it was because I was using a raku clay, which is more porous than other clays.

Many years later, I joined a clay community on Facebook. One of the regular topics that comes up over and over again is that air pockets don't cause explosions during firing, only wet clay does. The reasoning goes that air is so small that it either doesn't need to escape or escapes through the walls of the clay. I allowed students to test this theory in class. Usually the pieces didn't explode, but sometimes they did. When asked, the folks in this online clay community assumed that these students must have soaked the pieces before glazing, or the pieces were simply too thick, or there was unaccounted for moisture left even after a long candle (candle means preheating the kiln to drive out excess moisture) or long drying time.

It's difficult to rule out all these options with student work, but the results seemed inconclusive. This still bugs me, so I periodically test the theory. In my first citrus squeezers, I pierced the forms, leaving an unnecessary/essential escape for any heated air. This time around I did not pierce the forms. None of the pieces exploded in either firing, but in the glaze firing the bottoms of two of the pieces, which I had set on stilts in the kiln, expanded during the firing, going from a slightly concave base to a slightly convex base. Meaning that an air pocket inside did, in fact, expand during the firing and was unable to escape, suggesting that my online clay community, despite regular repetitions, is incorrect on this topic.

This week I finished glaze firing my boxes for Reminiscing On The Eruption: Mt. St. Helen’s 40th Anniversary exhibit at Oak Hollow Gallery, originally scheduled for April and May 2020. Now that we're all staying home, the show will have a virtual opening on May 18. Work is still for sale, and anyone interested can contact Oak Hollow Gallery for purchase and pick up.

I've made five boxes, though two are really alternative versions of one another. The boxes show the mountain at different stages before, during, and after the eruption of May 18, 1980.  Each of my boxes is about 5-7" wide and the tables is almost 7" tall.

I finished the boxes using underglazes, low fire glazes, and some volcanic ash (or pumice) glaze mixed by some friends. After the eruption in 1980, Yakima, where I now live, was covered in a layer of volcanic ash. I've seen photos of people shoveling ash from the streets and the local museum has a display of various products where people apparently collected the ash and sold it in commemorative jar and other novelty items. In ceramics, ash glaze usually refers to wood ash, while pumice or pumicite is a name sometimes associated with volcanic ash in glazes. Anyway, regardless of the name, this experimental glaze has some volcanic ash in it.

I used the volcanic ash glaze for the Eruption and Plume boxes. In both cases, I layered the under-fired ash glaze over some underglaze I had used to stain the cavities and intents of the sculpture. The glaze was under-fired because I fired it to a lower temperature than it was designed for. 

The ash glaze has a distinctive texture, especially applied and fired as I have done. It is semi-transparent in some places (probably because I combined it in some places with a low fire glaze). and the texture feels a bit sandy in others. There is a slight purplish grey color that may be a combination of the glaze itself and the underglaze underneath.

There was one piece that surprised me just a bit. I used a clear low fire glaze on the bottom of the Before box (with cats) but the lid of this piece has just a trace of the ash glaze mixed in. The difference isn't visible in the photo, but there is a very slight roughness to the glaze on the exterior of the lid when viewing or handling it in person.

I made two versions of the before box. One with the 16 cats that perished in the eruption and one without. The without version photographs a little nicer because of the matte surface, but I think I like the with cats version better in person.

I didn't use any of the ash glaze on the Before boxes, but I did add a bit to the crater of the After box. This ash glaze is mixed with the low fire glaze, so the texture isn't so pronounced as that on the Plume, but the slightly purple/grey color is visible in the photo and the slightly rough texture can best be understood through touch.

The Plume box was only finished after firing when I epoxied the plume in place. I fired the plume separately because I was afraid of damaging it during handling and drying. Inside there is a metal and wood support epoxied to the lid and inside the plume. 

I'm happy with how the plume turned out. I may have lost a bit of applied texture when I covered the surface with the thick ash glaze, but I like the complicated color that seems to show up on the plume and the cracks or gaps that show up in the glaze surface. The texture of the sculpture is more visible in the solid cloud of the Eruption box, which is probably my favorite of the set.

I plan to take these over to Oak Hollow this week, but first I've got to do my least favorite part of the process, price them for sale. 

Early this winter I was invited to make some work for a Mount St. Helens art show. The show date and location have been shifted to account for the pandemic. I was given a new deadline of last Wednesday which I have now missed. I don't very often miss deadlines like this. I think that with the spring quarter moving online, the general worries about the pandemic, and the specific anxiety of trying to work from home while my daughter is also home all day, I had reached a point of just not being able to make everything work.

I did get the work made and bisque fired by last week's deadline, but pure white wasn't really the look I was going for. I still have some serious uncertainty about the end results, but I glazed this weekend and I'm just about ready to fire the pieces. 

The reason I am uncertain is that I made a significant mistake when I began this project. I was anticipating being able to use some Mount St. Helens ash glaze made by some fellow artists, and though I knew this was cone 6 glaze, I started building with cone 06 clay. 

I had the low fire clay out to make a batch of sprigs and I simply didn't think before starting to build. I'm going to chalk it up to trying to squeeze in too much thought into my week. Usually I work on projects in the summer when I'm not teaching. Occasionally I work on projects during breaks or on the weekend during the year. I can honestly say that I've never worked on ceramic projects during a pandemic while trying to adjust to a fully online quarter and preparing for contract bargaining as president of our faculty union while my daughter is also home with me all day, every day. My brain was (is) full. I couldn't cope.

Since the work was made in low fire clay, I can't fire it to the higher cone 6 temperature without risking damage to the form. I also couldn't remake before the deadline, so I figured I should try some glaze experiments during my bisque firing. I had the cone 6 glaze, which I guessed was highly unlikely to melt at cone 06, but I figured I should test it anyway. I also tested a glaze that mixed one part of the cone 6 ash glaze with one part of a cone 06 gloss glaze. The third glaze I tested was equal parts ash and 06 glazes with some added red iron oxide. I used the sophisticated technique I learned in graduate school from my checked-out ceramics professor: scooping a random amount so that the results can never be replicated (see above re: no more brain space).

The results weren't particularly surprising. The Mount St. Helens ash glaze on its own didn't melt at all at cone 06. Cone 6 is roughly 2165 - 2232 degrees Fahrenheit, while cone 06 is only 1798 - 1828 (Cones melt based on time and temperature, so the range refers to a slower or faster firing), so the difference is significant. The mixed glazes also didn't melt correctly--again, not surprising. But the mixed glaze fluxed a bit, meaning the surface is starting to become glossy, and has a thick, semi-opaque texture. This texture reminds me a bit of lava, which seems fitting for this project.

Because I really want to use Mount St. Helens ash (pumice) in the finishing of these pieces, I'm happy to see what happens with minimal testing. If I were going to fire these pieces, as originally planned, to cone 6, I have a variety of colored glazes that I was planning to use. For cone 06, I have clear glaze in matte or gloss. So, I have used some of my underglazes to try to add some interest to the forms. 

I used cinnamon underglaze for the interiors of all the pieces, as well as for a wash on the textured surface of the eruption and venting. I usually like to layer two colors of underglaze over each other, but I simply didn't leave myself enough time for this project, so this will have to do. 

Usually when I layer underglazes, I fire them in between, which means I can wipe the surface after adding the glaze. Since I didn't have that middle step, I used some resist which protects the underglaze from accidental drips of glaze and then can be peeled off before firing, taking the over glazed mistakes with it.

I used underglazes alone in in combination for all of the pieces, but also left the bare clay color visible in several. I am concerned about how this will work, but time is passing and these are past due. I used a gloss glaze over the cinnamon underglaze inside every piece, then used a combination of my low fire glaze and the mixed ash/low fire glaze for the exteriors, leaving one without any exterior glaze for contrast. The underglazes I use are velvets, so they tend to look nice without a glaze anyway.

I have three strong clay classes this quarter. The hand-builders I've written about once this quarter, and when I get my act together, I share some more of their work from this quarter. The wheel class is unusual in that the class started full and ended full. Most quarters, a few students drop after the first day or two, once they realize what the class is about. I'm not sure if they go away because they find it too difficult, their schedule changes, or they don't want to get dirty, or maybe there's something I'm doing that they dislike. I usually lose these students so early that I try not to take it personally.

This quarter I have 16 throwers total in the beginning level functional pottery and the advanced wheel classes, which meet at the same time. The students laughed at me the first time I said we would need to hurry through critique because the class was so large. They're used to thinking of 35 students as a large class, not 16. (I enjoy working at a college where a large class is 35, not 100) With 16 student wheels, that's the most I can fit in a class without some kind of wheel rotation schedule (I like the pun, I'm leaving it in).

Last week was the last week of classes, with three days of finals next week. The last week is often crunch time for firing and finishing work, but the crunch gets worse (or better) with more students, especially when those students have more work. Since all three classes this quarter are composed mainly of hard-working, motivated students that just means there's more work to fire. 

Monday was meant to be our last bisque firing, but with both bisque kilns completely stuffed, we ended up needing to fire again once those were unloaded. In fact, we ended up firing two more loads. On Wednesday we unloaded the super last final (really, I mean it) load and then later that day the super uper duper last (now I really mean it) bisque loads. Because so much wasn't bisque fired on schedule, we didn't have a chance to fire our gas kiln (cone 10 reduction) twice last week and only fired it on Thursday. 

I had started having some back pain the week before, but I figured I just overdid it at boot camp or maybe had been sitting at a desk too much. My usual response is to walk or stretch or exercise it away. I also haven't really had back paint before. But by the end of the day Wednesday my back was really hurting and though I'm still not sure about the initial injury, I think the kiln loading exacerbated the pain. It probably didn't help that I was unloading hot kilns and that the one kiln is very deep.

Because of the late bisques and late gas firing, after the "super last" bisque loads were done on Thursday, we needed to load the equivalent of more than a full gas kiln load in the electric kilns. The hand-builder critique is on Monday morning, so I knew I needed to get their work into the kiln last week. I mostly unloaded and loaded both kilns (all four loads) myself because students were glazing, one of my studio assistants was ill, and the other had to leave early. I usually load with more help, so that I might lift out the heavy shelves from the large kiln, but then hand them over to someone else. 

I loaded these kilns carefully, since the hand-builders' work tended to be fairly large. In the large kiln, I put in the tall work at the bottom, but there were a couple of pieces that weren't ready when I loaded the bottom of that kiln. I saved room at the top of the smaller kiln and loaded the remaining large pieces as soon as the student finished glazing. Since throwers don't critique until Wednesday afternoon, I figured I could load and fire the remaining cone 10 work on Monday/Tuesday.

My back was starting to hurt pretty bad, so I was relieved not to have to unload and load again without help. (On Monday I should have plenty of support from students and work studies and assistants.) Then, I walked out of the kiln room and looked on one of the work tables. There were two hand-builder sculptures glazed, ready to be loaded, but not on the glazed work shelf. I could tell they were meant to be loaded, and one of them was very tall. It wouldn't fit in either kiln without unloading a serious amount of work. 

So, that is the story of how I ended up coming in on Saturday (with a sore back) to unload two full electric kiln loads and then reload two full electric kiln loads so that all the work could be ready by Monday's critique. (I neglected to mention that I also needed to fire a low fire kiln load with hand-builder work, but there were only about 6 items so that load was pretty small and easy to load--once I had unloaded the cone 10 stuff). I anticipate a fun, interesting critique tomorrow. And no more kiln loading for me until next quarter.