Clay Festival Students Destroy their Work to Build Something New
Photos and Article by Shirin McArthur
Friday was the concluding day for this year's four Silver City Clay Festival workshops. At the "Raku: A Deconstructive Approach" workshop, held in WNMU's McCray Clay Studio, students had created, broken, and glazed their pottery pieces, which were being kiln-fired before being reassembled with fast-drying glue.
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
Larry Pelter of Lincoln, NB, breaks one of his pots into pieces.
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
Broken and glazed pieces waiting for the kiln.
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
Larry Pelter sprinkles salt and copper carbonate on a glazed piece of pottery
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
One of Patrick Crabb's finished pieces.
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
Workshop teacher Prof. Patrick Crabb judged the reconstructed teapots; and this teapot was the winner.
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
Other reconstructed teapots.
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
Syzygy Tileworks employee Jared Carpenter shows off the teapot he reconstructed.
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
Patrick Crabb and student Dawn Renee of Tucson unload a kiln, placing the pottery pieces on top of shredded wood and paper to obtain a smoky coloring.
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
Dawn Renee unloads the kiln as Patrick Crabb spreads more shredded wood.
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
A student places hair on top of a hot pottery piece. As the hair burns, it leaves a decorative pattern.
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
Daniel Lauer and Jared Carpenter unload another kiln, placing the pottery pieces inside buckets of water to cool.
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
Shredded wood is placed on pottery pieces straight out of the kiln, adding additional smoky color.
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
Cooled pieces are examined and discussed.
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
Dawn Renee and WNMU assistant professor of ceramics Jessica Wilson load the kiln again.
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
The smoked pottery pieces are uncovered.
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
The smoked pottery pieces are uncovered.
2014 Clay Festival Deconstruction
Students begin reassembling their deconstructed work.
Larry Pelter, a ceramic artist from Lincoln, Nebraska, was enjoying his first visit to the Clay Festival this year. He explained that the goal of the Deconstructive workshop was to create artistic, rather than functional, artwork by intentionally deconstructing pieces of pottery and then re-assembling them with five-minute epoxy after they had been decorated in various ways.
Jared Carpenter, an employee at Silver City's Syzygy Tile, appreciated the opportunity to experience a different type of work than his usual routine. The work at Syzygy is production-based, focused on creating large quantities of very similar, functional tiles. Carpenter has a background in ceramics, and the image he shared to explain his feelings about his work at Syzygy was that it was like creating fish eggs, which are identical to one another, then scattering them out into the world.
All the students in this class had at least some ceramics experience, including Dawn Renee from Tucson, who came prepared to unload kilns, with goggles, a set of heavy gloves, a scarf to keep her hair from catching fire, and a bright yellow work shirt given to her by a firefighter. Others who assisted with the unloading wore sunglasses, a knit cap, or borrowed gear from the WNMU McCray Clay Studio.
Jessica Wilson, Assistant Professor of Ceramics at WNMU, was enjoying the class, especially the opportunity to learn new hand-building techniques from the instructor. She noted that there was a lot of exchange going on, including new glaze recipes.
While some pieces were being glazed in traditional fashion, a number of different glazing and firing techniques were being used to decorate the various pieces of deconstructed pottery. Slip resist, or "naked Raku," involves painting clay "slip" onto the pieces before firing, then placing them on a bed of sawdust, shredded wood, or other combustible materials immediately after removing them from the kiln. The pieces are then covered and the smoke permeates the areas of pottery not covered by the slip, or seeps between cracks in the slip as it cools. Once the pottery has cooled and any remaining slip or ash is washed away, interesting patterns of black and white are revealed.
Another decorative method involves adding salt or copper carbonate to the pottery before firing. Salt forms a distinctive round circle, much larger than the grain of salt, while copper carbonate turns a beautiful red color after firing.
Horsehair is also used to create intricate lines and patterns on the pottery. The hair is laid over the pottery immediately after it is removed from the kiln. As it burns, the hair curls up and blackens, creating the designs. One student discovered that human hair also works, but the patterns are much thinner and finer.
In addition to the broken pieces of pottery being fired on this final day, students had also each crafted clay teapots, which were then split into three pieces using a thin wire or knife to cut the still-damp clay. Students were instructed to share two of the pieces with others in the class, so that each student was left with three unique pieces from different teapots. They then used those three pieces to create one-of-a-kind reconstructions, which were judged by Santa Ana College (California) Professor of Art Patrick Shia Crabb, the workshop instructor. The student with the winning teapot was awarded with one of Crabb's own completed art pieces.