Martie (AKA the Kiln Priestess) on mon 29 may 06
"Memoirs of A Kiln Priestess" installment two, "Bad Karma in the Kiln Yard"
Before I came to understand the "Way of the Kiln Gods" I was a proverbial
student living on Smack Ramin and hopelessly trying out the ideas of other
potter's from dated and well thumbed copies of Ceramics Monthly. There
wasn't much of anything in that magazine that I didn't try. If someone put
knives and forks in their clay, I put knives, forks and even other
instruments in my work (note to self=97next time remove batteries from other=
instruments and devices before firing sculptures).
As an undergraduate student studying ceramics at Arizona State University
in Tempe, AZ, I was put through the paces of learning everything there was
to know about pottery back then, (which shouldn=92t have been too hard since=
we were just beginning at that time to emerge from the middle-pot-ages,
or, as it is more commonly called, the brown-pot-era). In addition to
learning about the dark-pot-age, (a term no longer used because historians
and collectors have concluded that this age was not all brown and that
there were small pockets of potters using other colors) I and my
classmates learned about other aspects of pottery such as glaze chemistry
(the coefficient of expansion equals the length of the pot times the
hypotenuse of the kiln, or something like that). For the glaze chemistry
final we were blindfolded and led to elephant sized piles of clay, where
we used our olfactory senses coupled with hands-on exploration to try and
correctly identify the difference between clay that had been initially
mixed and =93aged=94 with the addition of a bottle or two of cabernet
sauvignon, and clay that had been plasticized to its peak of perfection
using the old tried and true method of blending a pee spritzer into the
clay as it slowly churned in the cement mixer. I have found that several
liters of prime potter=92s pee collected after a night of bar hopping is
usually sufficient for aging even the shortest and most stubborn clay.
Alas, for those ceramists who seem to be allergic to good old home-made
clays, especially those of you who break out in mysterious rashes after
using clay bodies that have been organically cultured using the techniques
that I have just described, I recommend that you try slathering yourself
with copious amounts of cow udder balm before ordering up a delivery of
one of those pricey pre-packaged =93designer=94 clay bodies that has been
formulated and aged with heaven knows what.
As a student I felt that I couldn=92t get enough time in the clay studio. I
never tired of wedging clay or of trying to center it on the wheel. The
periods that I spent in the ceramic studio became longer and longer and
soon I was tending kilns late into the night. However, I quickly learned
that brick kilns, especially those fired in Phoenix during the months of
Jan., Feb., March, April, May, June, July, August, Sept., Oct., Nov., or
Dec., can never be cooled down in time for a 9:00 a.m. critique no matter
how many fans are blowing on it.
Although I greatly enjoyed all of my early ceramic experiences, especially
wrestling with clay on the wheel and pushing the damper in and out of the
chimney so that the kiln would switch between belching fire and belching
smoke, my greatest joy came when I encountered my first kiln god.
We (our class) had just finished loading the kiln and bricking up the door
when our crusty and well seasoned professor bellowed, =93Arg, someone hoist
me up a kiln god to stand guard over the firing!=94
=93Please sir,=94 I replied =93I would love to make you a kiln god, but firs=
t
may I please have some more grog?=94
=93More grog!=94 shouted the gruff professor, his face turning red with
rage. =93More grog =96 what impudence! I=92ll give you more grog =96 but fir=
st you
must learn to wedge your weight in clay.=94 And as he spoke he poured a
small trickle of grog from a chipped ceramic cup onto the wedging board.
Afterward, the professor glowered at the remaining students who stood
motionless because they were too stunned and scared to move, and then with
a cruel laugh he turned and disappeared into a cloud of raku smoke.
And thus my indoctrination into the world of ceramics became complete.
After wedging my weight in clay I was finally able to share in the small
daily allotment of grog that was passed out just before sunset to only the
most stoic clay students.
The next installment of "Memoirs of a Kiln Priestess" will be "Bad Karma
in the Kiln Yard Continued."
Respectfully,
Miss Kiln Priestess
(aka, Martie Geiger-Ho)
P.S. Please address all questions concerning proper kiln god and goddess
etiquette to Miss Kiln Priestess and she will do her best to answer you
with a written Clayart reply.
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