A New Shed

Well, we got a new shed up just before the first snow. Unlike the old shed it's 12 feet high the whole length of the pad. In the foregeound is what remains of the smaller glaze kitchen shed -
the red stain on the front joist is just under the spot where 50 pounds of Albany slip was stored.

This is a shot from what will hopefully be the workshop end.



the tarps at left center cover the remains of the small gas kiln, and the bricks from the chimney for that kiln. In the rear center of the pad is the wood stove, sans pipe.
I'm thinking about the possibility of using SIPs
to enclose the workshop. It seems that I could save a lot of labor that way, and could probably also do a lot of the simpler electrical myself. We'll see. This much progress is encouraging though. If I can get enough dough together, I'll hopefully get building in the spring.

This Friday, our good friend Shawn Ireland stopped by for a brief holiday visit; he also brought a fabulous gift - eighteen 12x24 shelves, a box of half posts, and several different size plate setters.
These all came from Rock Creek, so they come with good karma attached. If I had wood (and pots), I could fire now. A good start to 09.

Back in the (electric) saddle

Well, I made some pots for the first time in a year or so. I didn't do much last winter because of relocating my real business - an audio/video production studio - it's all good now, though, and I am getting ready to move in to new space in December, merging with another studio that serves
similar clients, and is headed by a guy I like a lot, and who has been very enthusiastic about undertaking this new joint venture.
Back to pots - after the fire at the workshop in the spring, I was kind of derailed in terms of
making anything. Earlier in the year, my wife Marilyn had begun organizing an Empty Bowls event for this weekend, and I had contacted some potter friends during the year about donating some bowls. I had about thirty bowls left after the fire, and I donated those, but this week I thought maybe a few more wouldn't hurt. I thought about making some earthenware, slip type
bowls (probably because I'd been reading Ron Philbeck's blog for months), but among the stuff that got burned up were most of my recipe books, so I don't even have good white/black slip recipes to make. Lame. I do, though have a few buckets of this and that in the basement, and some commercial cone six clay laying around. I used some really red looking clay (Miller 40?) and a batch of Blair Meerfield's yellow slip, and made some hakeme bowls, then got my copy of Mastering Cone Six Glazes out and mixed a small batch of High Calcium Semi Matte #1. Used my workhorse old L&L bisque kiln; did a quick bisque, glazed reloaded and fired, amd the bowls
turned out really nicely. Who knew. There are two of them in this shot of one of the tables at the event:
one at the lower right, and one on the right four bowls up - you can only see the inside- I was in such a rush to get things together that I didn't take any pictures of the individual bowls. I still have one that I forgot to put in the bisque firing, which I will shoot when I fire it.
Anyway- it was nice to do some throwing, trimming slipping, etc. and to get a good result.
Anyway the Empty Bowls event was a huge success, we had really nice pots from potters who make a wide variety of work, and we sold 150 bowls in 45 minutes. Then folks paid 5 bucks to get some soup in a paper bowl and hang out. There was a silent auction of some bigger pots, and altogether we raised about 2 grand for the local food bank.

Pottery studio in a box

A really big box,that is, like thirty yards. Our friend Greg came out with his front end loader and
scraped most of the debris off the pad and deck, then loaded that and all the other detritus iinto this dumpster. I'm at around $1775 for debris removal at this point.






This is a shot of what used to be the workshop/woodshed - the little tarped piled are the remains of kilns, mostly. Over on the right is the (formerly) computerized electric, behind it is the raku/test kiln, which will probably be fine, and to the left is what's left of the gas kiln- the tarp behind it is the chimney.




Here's what's left of the glaze kitchen shed, and the deck (actually, there's even less of that left now, as I removed all the charred decking this weekend). Art, my bud who built the original shed, says he can save the joists, maybe just sister a few, and put new decking on top.


The back part of the floor of the glaze shed collapsed because it rested on a big lintel piece that
was attached to the wood shed, which vaporized.

Here's a nice shot from the deck of the cabin, which, thanks to the efforts of the firefighters who
put the fire out, didn't burn.


So this weekend, a big pile of trusses, poles, and tin was delivered, and Art's going to start Monday putting up a new shed - be nice to get a roof over the woodkiln before the real snow
comes. About three grand in materials for that. Then it will be time to take a minute, or a few months, and think about how to put the workshop back together.

This Memorial Day weekend I thought would be a good time to begin blogging in earnest about my pottery activities, since my other business involvements seem to be winding down, boding well for more free time, and I've been feeling pretty healthy lately, able to do my normal amount of work around the pottery and feel good. Seemed like things were moving towards a reinvigoration as far as making pots. So Saturday I started taking pictures as I began the process of pulling the pottery out of its winter sleeping bag.
This is what the kiln shed and shop looked like at about 1 pm.
I was working mostly on organizing- getting the glazes re-sieved, making
a pallet-base to put the buckets on next to the deck to the left of the kiln,
sorting wood, and cutting up some deadfall to burn for glaze-ash.
That didn't work out so well, and by 3 pm this is what the pottery looked like:
Pretty grim, and pretty heartbreaking. Seven years of work gone in a few minutes.
Men and women from three fire companies responded, Springville, Elk Lake and Montrose.
They were all amazing, and kept the fire from spreading to the woods or our house. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude. The 500 gallon (full) propane tank next to the shed was a pretty
alarming aspect of the whole conflagration. One of the guys from SVFD grabbed a hose and walked right over and started hosing it down. It didn't go up, which we were all happy about .

I'm still sort of shell shocked from it, and can't quite believe the whole thing is gone.
The wood kiln is fine, but everything else, tools wheels slab roller electric kilns and of course
the building, is destroyed. All the CN-192 shelves from the wood kiln are cracked.
I have to see what if any help I'll get from the insurance company, and then how far that will take me in rebuilding.
What a spectacular mess.

Flounder

I started making these ( I call them Flounder Vases because they're flat and have a sort of fishlike "mouth")
last year. The pot is about 20 inches high, and an inch and a half thick. I think they're interesting, and I've sold a few, but I'm not very happy with the wood stand. Lifts the pot up too high, and you can't see the bottom. Trying to come up with a notion for something much less obstructive-
plexi, or metal- something that conforms more to the shape of the pot....

oh boy

That's about 100 pounds of Avery kaolin. It's an really generous gift from potter friends who know what it means to a wood/salt firer.
There's another 100 pounds underneath.
It's likely enough to last me therest of my potting days.
Oh boy.