Plumes and Pregnant Bellies

We finished firing the kilns for a 120 hours last Friday.  It was a hell of a couple weeks.  We were splitting wood up until the day Richard and Jesus finished loading the kilns. I was looking for a job so I could pay rent, Richard closed on a newly acquired home the 4th day of the fire, Jesus was working and trying to figure out his school schedule, and Jack, in stellar fashion, held down the day shift with gusto.  On top of all that we were firing with hurricane Irene just off the coast of Florida, catching some of her serious rain bands…(my thoughts are with you guys up in the northeast).  The temperatures fluctuated as our pine, oak, and the ground around the kiln flooded.  We continued to fire…  When it was all said and done, cone 10 was liquid in the front and cone 10 curled in the back chamber.  (I hate cone packs in anagama’s.  I prefer looking at the fire, the pieces, and the atmosphere as guides.) I have a feeling there is going to be some very different results.  Hopefully, we will all be pleasantly surprised.  We dubbed this firing the “Pregnant” firing.  I made a large pregnant looking vessel and Richard (his firing) and Courtney found out they are having a girl.   With all this talk of new life, it is hard not to think about the future.  I think all of us at Shoshin Studios are going through some transitions and are seriously thinking about where we are all going, as a functioning firing unit and individually.  I am so thankful for everything…  We have worked hard these couple of years, and I have learned so much…  I am looking forward to seeing many more plumes of thick black smoke coming from chimneys!! 

Transcendence

I recently watched a documentary called the Transcendent Man.  It is the story of inventor and futurist, Ray Kurzweil.  It tells of his vision for the future and his yearning for eternal life. He is a very intelligent and interesting man, but has some very real problems about not being able to deal with the death of his father and his own mortality. The world that Kerzweil  predicts for 2040,(a little to quick I think??!!), is a world where machines develop consciousness.  He argues that humans and artificial intelligence will meld via nanotechnology, wiping out all human tradegy, and ultimately turn humanity into gods..  When I think about how fast we have come from the Industrial Revolution to what I call the “Jetson era”, his predictions seem plausible.  But will we become Gods???  Immortals living in a mathmatical platform via the internet???  Sounds crazy as hell, but I can dig it.  I just doubt I’ll be able to afford it. 

Whenever I am presented with epic ideas I always think about how that translates to the arts, and more specifically my pursuit to make art.  What is my pottery, the marks I scratch on paper, the tubes of color i squeeze out, my simple sad melodies on the piano in the face of such grand visions of eternal robot life?  

I think about how, if humanity was able to attain immortality and all the knowledge of the universe was revealed, incredibly bored I would become.  More than half of anything I do is a result of my curiosity.  Which is why ceramic material suites me.  

There is a difference between Ray Kurzweil and I.  His transcendence exists off in the future dependent upon technology that does not yet exist.  Mine exists somewhere between the work of my hands and a primordial obsession with fire.  Technology that is very, very old!!  So maybe we can meet in the middle, maybe I can make a mold of Kurzweil’s face and fire it in the anagama.  Sometimes all that philosophical mumbo jumbo clouds my head, pictures of pottery clears it:)  So here is some pictures of work that is at Shoshin Studios!!

Alaskan Mud

 I spent the last five weeks commercial fishing for salmon in Alaska.  It was a season that was slow and rather uneventful. Typically a season in Bristol Bay is full of madness, a bit of danger, lots of work, and no sleep.  Still, every year that I have fished I have always left with a sense of newness.  At the end of the season I decided to bring back mud from the bay. My hope is that I can “cut” it with other clays and make a “Bristol Bay clay” that I can fire in our wood kilns.

I hiked out to the bay, where the tundra meets the ocean, and harvested.  It was a dismal day, rainy and cold, but my spirits were high thinking about what this earth could possibly do.  Will I put it in a shino, is it going to be plastic enough to throw, what temperature range will it fire to, what happens if i cut it with porcelain, how can I find out what exactly is in this earth???  So many questions, so many possibilities.  I stuffed it into ziplock bags and packed it back to the boat, into my duffel bag, to bring back to Florida…  

The one thing about the ceramic tradition that is very exciting is the science of it all.  I am no master of raw materials yet, or even remotely close to being a practitioner of the scientific method, but am endlessly curious.  We fire in two weeks and I will test a few very small pieces in this firing.  I’m prepared to find bloated or slumped test cups, but whatever happens at least I will know.  Here is to the search!!

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May Fire and the chocolate factory

I worked in a chocolate factory for the better part of 9 months.  During that period an idea was firmly planted in my brain.  The idea is not a new one, probably as old as the first blunt rock that was turned into a tool.  The idea is that we as humans find great pleasure in accomplishing tasks, making things, and enjoying the fruits of our labor with our friends, family, and whoever else is interested.  When a person is placed into an environment that reduces them to a cog in a machine, something awful happens.  The dynamic human spirit begins to die.  I have seen it in the faces of those who have remained in the factory much longer than they should.  Deadpan faces, marked by isolation and meaningless “widget” moving…  It is the kind of job that puts food on the plate, while the heart and mind is brushed into a corner to rot.  I quit that job in order to fire the shoshin kilns again in May.  It was a  four day firing, and all of us at Shoshin Studios came together in pursuit of work that is the antithesis of a factory.

It is one of the main reasons I choose to fire in this manner, (besides the sheer giddy joy that comes to me at unloading day).  Everything about the anagama runs in complete opposition to the vapid consumerism that exists in our modern ”throw away” world.  It is a powerful and beautiful thing.  I feel incredibly lucky to have stumbled upon it, and even luckier that I have found a group of friends that share my enthusiasm.  Is there a place for this kind of work in our increasingly static world??  I’d like to think so, but regardless my friends and I will continue to pursue it.  Even if that means I have to slug it out in the dank haunches of a factory from time to time.

holy blithering hell!!!

So much has happened and so much will continue to happen.  FIRE FIRE FIRE!!!  Cutting the fat from my “life diet” will mean more productivity in a more proper tranquil manner.  I will be pursuing ink washes, fire, and clay.  We finished a 150 hour firing.  We unload in 3 weeks.  We reload as we unload, such is the nature of our pursuits!!!  Above all, Love all.

Ian

Gardens

Gardens…

Among the lilies,  frogs, and the sun.

The gnats float above, the fish dance beneath,

and the thorns they tear.

Wrestle with dirt.

Curse with thunder.

The flag that is flying, means nothing to me.

 I take paradise down.

With a blade, determination, and the sweat I taste it.

And I thought of how you paint.

It’s sad on a small scale when compared to dreams.

Everything is tied to everything.

death and rebirth

The fast fire soda/wood kiln was destroyed today.  It was time, it was falling apart.  The empty space makes me sad.  It wont be long till the new one is back in action, but that ramshackle bastard of kiln will have a very special place in my heart.  By the end of it’s life it was giving us some very special gifts, I will miss firing it.  I do look forward to the rebuild and finding out about the nuance of this new kiln, the sweet spots, and the maybe not so sweet spots.  I am also very excited about the secondary chamber which will predominantly be used for salt firings.  Oh salt firings, how incredibly functional friendly you are!!! (swoon)  Richard Munster gets three cheers for successfully drop kicking a wood kiln to pure rubble!!!  HUZZAH!!!

Dear Clay

Dear Clay,

It’s been a while since we have spent some quality time together.  This summer we had with all our friends and getting to know your family was so great.  I hope you understand that I had to get a job and pay some bills.  I promise that I will do my best to get out of this situation, so we can be together again without compromise.  I want you to know that when I’m in that factory you are always on my mind.  I miss the forms we would make, the fun we had, the mistakes we made.  I know we have had some misunderstandings and our fights have been pretty brutal.  But those moments when we came together were really beautiful, and I wouldn’t trade them for the world.  I miss you very much and can’t wait to be in the garage with you very soon.

Love always,

Ian

Holidaze

The Jared diamond commercials and the Lexus with the red bow on top really piss me off.  Why???  I think, because, it caters to a middle class sense of luxury.  It also seems like a very boring way to spend a decent amount of money.  Anyway, the Christmas spending blitz is over, and all the reports say that Americans did their part.  I guess we filled the coffers of those selling, bringing us closer to getting out of this long, drawn out, economic slump.  That’s good, right?  I don’t know?

 I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for times of uncertainty and chaos.  The place where innovation, adventure, and newness is most likely to be born.  The book, “The Plague” by Albert Camus, has a character in it that is filled with a kind of happy madness, (insane some would call him), when his town has come under the blight of a plague.  I can sympathize, but it’s tempered with reason.  It isn’t just the chaos, suffering, and uncertainty that I’m interested in.  It’s also about what comes after all of it.  

I think about some of the worst hangover’s I’ve had.  Laid out on the bathroom floor underneath a cold porcelain toilet, curled up in a rat’s nest of towels and bathrobes, stomach bile in the tiny plastic trash can next to me.  It is god awful, lowest of the low.  When the onslaught of my self-induced sickness begins to subside and I muster some strength to enter the world of the living, everything becomes very lucid.  The world slows down, the lights become bright.  The conversation on the porch is about an evening of reckless abandon, a morning of pure suffering, and a coming day that is full of clarity and possibility.  There is never talk of diamonds, makes or models of automobiles, or brands of things.  There is usually quiet drags off cigarettes and togetherness.  Togetherness, that’s all I really like about the holidays.  All that other stuff is bullocks.

Passionate Meaty Curse

I love swear words, the real meaty ones.  I think it rather improper to say them around strangers, or people you don’t know that well, or to over use them.  When I drop F-bombs it is around those with whom I have a long and shared history.  I want my wood fired work to be exactly like a passionate meaty curse. (The more work I make, the more I will get there).  I remember two grannies coming up to my table full of pottery one evening and I just shuddered inside…I knew that I would have to explain the process in a way that was canned and hammy, covered with white lace doilies.  It was gross.  It was a defining moment.  It was good.  It has given me a stronger and clearer vision about my intentions.  We unloaded the back chamber today, it was a great 19 hour firing!!! Alot of diverse work from 5 different artists.