Longtin, Jeff on mon 20 may 02
I'll be offering a new service through my studio so I was doing a search for
possible names last night on the internet. I started at Dictionary.com to
get a definition. It then explained that I could look up historical postings
by searching in Google.com GROUPS section. I typed my search term in google.
Went into the GROUPS section and pulled up all sorts of references in
various chat rooms. Thinking maybe this is a way I could quickly pull up
previous Clayart postings I did a google/groups search on the "plaster
clayart".
I pulled up all sorts of postings with the term plaster in them. (I'm a
plaster man don't ya know) One posting in particular, from 1996, was from
an old friend Craig Edwards. After reading it I thought I'd do a search on
"Craig Edwards Clayart" to see the history of Craigs postings on Clayart. I
remember running into him years ago at Continental Clay and he mentioned he
found a chatroom that was really great. (I think he was referring to
Clayart.)
Lo and behold I find a posting from Lee Love referencing the fact that he,
Lee Love, was firing some of his work in Craig's wood kiln. Lee's acronym?
must have been Akita-jin at some point as well, he had a link to pictures of
his Akita dog.
Small World #1: I helped Craig build a Fred Olson fast fire salt glaze wood
kiln out at the Minnesota Renn Fest in 1984. Craig was responsible for
demonstrating kiln building and I was the "demonstrator". Craig invited me
to come back and fire it so the next year, 1985, I was the kiln firing
demenstration at the Renn Fest. (That was really fun!)
I met Craig years earlier when I was mixing clay for Bill Kaufman, on the
weekends, while a junior in high school. Craig was doing some production
throwing for Bill.
Small world #2: About six to eight years ago an Akita dog breeder hired me
to make a mold of a akita dog scupture he had sculpted. He bred Akitas as
show dogs and took them to Akita dog shows and he thought there would be a
market for his little sculpture.
His piece was really well sculpted but since he didn't want to alter it to
improve its moldability I was forced to mold it in three parts. One mold had
8 parts, another mold had 6 parts, and the third mold had 3 parts. As he
wanted to go into production he had me make 17 block and case molds. (Talk
about a nightmare!)
I now know the history of Akita dogs, really amazing stuff!
Small World #3: One day when I was working in the studio with Bill, in 1980,
I looked over and saw this funny looking wheel thing sitting in the corner
and asked "Hey Bill what's that?". Bill turned to me and said, "That's the
wheel I threw on when I was an apprentice in Japan." (I think he was there
in the 60's or early 70's)
Only now do I know it is/was called a Korean kickwheel because Lee Love
posted a picture, several months ago, of the wheel he's currently working on
as an apprentice in Japan and the picture was labeled as such.
do...do...do...do...do...do...do...do
Small World Indeed!
Jeff Longtin
| |
|
