Last week was our first week back at Summer Camp!!! Lillstreet Art Center is finally re-opened for classes & camps… and it was so fun & exciting to have “people” back in the building. The energy. The creativity. The smiling faces… or well, at least I assume they were smiling behind their masks?! Anyway… summer camp was AMAZING as always. I had a wonderful time with a wonderful group of kids!!!!

Okay, so YES… I do watch far too much Reality TV!!!

But, is anyone else watching “ALONE” on the History Channel? It’s kind of like a real-life “Survivor” where ten contestants need to survive the arctic wilderness for a hundred days… hunting, gathering, building a shelter & self-filming the whole time. On last week’s episode, one of them dug up some clay and was making her own pinch pot dinnerware!!! Very cool… very resourceful. I would have of course pressed twig & leaf impressions into them too!!! Cuz’ more is more!!!

One of the best parts of “kiln firing day” is I can also get a lot of “busy-work” done around the studio. Like spraying these baby building blocks with a layer of clear glaze. If you remember, these were leftover from the end of our Winter session and my Lillstreet Throwdown class. We made them as a surprise gift for Molly & Jacob who are expecting their first child. We finished building them at the end of class, and they were bisqued soon after that. And there they sat on the shelf as the pandemic took hold.

Sure, I was working in the studio. Sure, I could have glazed these any time over the past three and a half months… but of course I kept putting it off. Well, they’re FINALLY glazed… and ready to be fired again! The “Team Lavender Baby” is due in six weeks… so I had plenty of time. Could have easily procrastinated a few more weeks!!!

So I taught my new Intermediate Wheelthrowing class yesterday in the new wheelthrowing room at Lillstreet Art Center. I was stupified by the amount of natural light coming in through the windows!!! My studio has no window access so it was all new to me. It was kind of amazing… huge windows along the wall above the wheels… then I realized that I typically teach night classes… and that might be part of it too?!

After a full day of firing, it’s always a little nerve-wracking to me to turn the kiln off. It’s been going all day, flames shooting out everywhere with the fan & gas valves making a good amount of noise. So it’s a big change when you turn it off and it’s suddenly silent!!! Just hope you’ve actually done all you can.

Also great to look at the digital pyrometer kiln at the end to see the difference top-to-bottom… for this firing it was just 15-degrees! Sweet!!! Can’t wait for it to cool now… so I can unload to see the new “treasures” Monday night!

Pretty exciting when you’re adding the soda mixture into the kiln… it’s already in reduction… and somehow the flames find their way of to shoot out of every nook & cranny!

What a difference a day makes…
barely a cloud in the sky after yesterday’s cloud-cover.

Three stacks of pottery, shelves & bricks from tonight’s loading. A lot of work “crammed in there”… hoping that the soda atmosphere can still make its way around inside to move the soda around!

If you look close, you can also see where my flock of birds have landed!!!

And then the front stack…
which is actually a “square” made of two shelves side-by-side”

An empty kiln filled with potential.
Tonight I loaded it up with LOTS of pots!!!

Feels so good to be getting back into a more “normal” routine. Classes have started. Summer Camp has started. And I’m firing my first “post-quarantine:” soda kiln. Sure, masks all the time is NOT “normal”… but I’m more than glad to do my part to keep our numbers down!!!

Just a few of the pots that made their way into the soda kiln last night. All glazed, wadded & ready to go. I’ve figured out that a “full” cart of glazed & wadded pieces pretty much equals a full soda kiln… thanks to my handmade studio cart with adjustable shelved made by my Dad several years ago!

The strips of masking tape work as a “seat belt” to keep the pots from jumping off the cart as I roll out of my studio, down the freight elevator and along some uneven flooring to get to the kiln room!