Mask:  Ice Queen, raku, approx. 10"t x 5.5" w, wall sculpture, by Tammy Vitale $110

It was 96 degrees out yesterday and very very (did I mention very) humid.  So what was I doing?  Why, raku of course, putting myself next to hundreds and hundreds of degrees of open propane flame concentrated in a kiln, opening the kiln, and reaching in with long sleeves and long gloves overtop them to get out red hot sculpture pieces.  Ah, passion.  Only passion could drive one to do this.

Joined by the ever faithful Dhyana, who had a bunch of rattles in the making, we fired for 3 hours, dripping wet from sweat.  It was worth it.  Both of us got some really nice pieces even though we were using some glaze that wasn’t marked and even though I think all of the pieces could have stayed in a while longer.  This mask has some crackling around the lips and left eye, but I was after crazed all over and didn’t get it, even using a top coat of clear crackle glaze.  I forget that crackle needs to be overfired, oxidized (left in the air) for about 5 minutes, put in the organics, the organics allowed to really blaze away before covering.  None of that was done.  I did use the new cover that Husband made for me for pit firing and it worked wonderfully.

Here are some photos of before firing and after firing:

Oddly enough, and true to form for raku for me anyways, this mask, Amazon, has 3 different glazes on it but they all came out looking the same.  I know I’m missing something here, but I’ve yet to figure it out.  You can’t really tell from the photo, but this mask came out with lovely peacock feather hues everywhere, lots of shiny green and metallic.  The rattles could only be glazed on one side because glaze will glue itself to the shelves, and the back sides of these came out really nice with heavy black smoke markings against plain white clay.  They rattle really well too.  Putting them in the cooling water directly from the fire made them spit and sputter water, like scallops when you pick them up from the sound in North Carolina (Daughter always swore they were spitting at her, but I don’t think it was personal).

This morning I walked the dogs outside to no humidity and what feels like weather in the mid 70s and no sun.  We should have waited a day – but who knew?

This evening is the reception for the community show at Arts Council of Calvery County’s gallery.  I put in 2 pieces.  It’s only $10 for the month and that’s worth it.  I’m meeting up with Stacy of Bay Arts – the gallery is half way between her place and mine – to pick up some ware to be fired.  That helps me fill the kiln so I can do some more word and prose tiles and maybe even some fish and an Ugly Fish or two in preparation for shows this fall.  I also need to get out and buy storage containers so I can start stacking all this work away and labeled and get it out of the way because all of my shelf space and most of my flat work surface space is taken up with what I’ve been making lately.  But it’s all good.  I’m in production mode and not even minding, too much, the finishing.  That enjoyment arrived right in time to keep me on track production wise.

thought for the day:  Ordinary education and social trianing seem to imporverish the capacity for free initiative and artistic imagination.  We talk independence, but we enact conformity.  The hunger in many people for what is called self-expression is related to this unrealized intuitive resource.  Brains are washed (when they are not clogged), wills are standardized, that is to say immobilized.  Someone within cries for help.  There must be more to life than all these learned acts, all this highly conditioned consumption.  A person wants to do something of his [sic] own, to feel his own being alive and unique.  He wants out of bondage.  He wants in to the promised land.

The artist and craftsman, however far he may be from an ultimate liberation, is continaully willin his work.  He devotes his life to acts which are a personal commitment to value.  He is, to varying degrees, an example of a practicing intiative.  …Using his lifetime to find his original face, to awaken his own voice, beyond all learning, habit, thought:  to tap life at its source.  M.C. Richards,  Centering:  In Pottery, Poetry and the Person