So here’s a quick peek at another wall installation I made for our “4×4 : FOUR MAKERS” gallery show. Each piece is handmade, stamped, glaze-inlaid & soda-fired. I love how a random “constellation” cluster like this can fill a wall so beautifully! Smaller wall?… fewer pieces!!! Easy-peezy!

Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall.

And here are the same tiles after soda-firing… framed & ready to be hung on the gallery wall. A fun collaboration challenge for each of us… making thematic tiles using our usual medium & techniques. So some are metal, some are glass, and mine are clay! We’ll have sixteen tiles in the collaboration wall installation. We’re pretty excited to see how it’s coming together… and we hope you can come see it in person this weekend in Evanston!

Okay, so a couple weeks back I made four tiles… as part of the “4×4 : FOUR MAKERS” collaboration project based on the four seasons.

Truth be told… these were made for the soda kiln… shown here glazed & stained ready to go into the kiln. But with the randomness & occasional “tragic” results of a soda firing, I knew that I had to have a back-up plan… or two. So this was Plan A : soda fired. But to hedge my bets, I also made Plan B : glazed. And just in case… Plan C : plain tiles with some separate parts & pieces I could stack & add-on to the base tiles. Luckily, Plan A seems to have worked out fine. So I’m going with the Plan A ones for the show!!!

Getting ready for this weekend’s “4×4” gallery show… so today there’s a good bit of glue & epoxy drying all around!!! Currently working on this large ClayQuilt with over 200 textured & soda-fired tiles!

Beautiful flowers in her new soda-fired vases! Looks like Rhonda is enjoying the vases she got out of the kiln from our LILLSTREET SODA-FIRING WORKSHOP. Such a beautiful combination of colorful flowers, wonderful textures & earthy soda-fired finishes. So glad you came to my workshop Rhonda… I hope you had a good time!!!

So when I said there were some “treasures” from the LILLSTREET SODA-FIRING WORKSHOP… I should have mentioned some of the TINY treasures too! Lillstreet has been offering some classes now using the miniature wheel making miniature pots. Lillie has been teaching them how to make tiny pots with tiny handles & tiny details. Well, Ruth took the class and decided to soda-fire some of her tiny pieces! And they might just be the CUTEST soda-fired pots EVER!!! Well done Ruth!

I mean… c’mon… could they BE any cuter?!

So here they are… after a very long wait… the pottery “treasures” that came out of the soda kiln Monday night during my LILLSTREET 3-DAY SODA-FIRING WORKSHOP. As with every soda firing, there area few hits, a few misses… and some crunchy chunks of kiln wash or brick flakes that “ruin” a few pots! There’s always a certain amount of loss during a soda kiln firing. But the soda-fired beauty of the rest of the pots makes it all worthwhile! And I think my workshop students were thrilled with their results as well.

Towards the end of yesterday’s LILLSTREET 3-DAY SODA-FIRING WORKSHOP, my students got the chance to load the soda mixture into the kiln. When the kiln gets up to cone 8, it’s time to mix it up and then start scooping & inserting the mixture into the kiln. I like to use a long angle iron to fill with the mixture – and then slide it into the kiln, dump it into the fire box, and then watch the flames shoot out!!! It’s a lot of work, but all part of the soda-firing process. I think they all enjoyed the experience. So now after several rounds of adding soda, the kiln has been turned off and it cooling all day today! They’ll return tomorrow night to open & unload the kiln… do some kiln cleaning & shelf maintenance… and then we’ll all get to look at their new soda-fired masterpieces!!!

Towards the end of the firing yesterday, the soda kiln is creeping into the cone 7-8-9 range… and the kiln is in full reduction at that point. Always exciting to see the flames shooting out everywhere!

Yesterday was the firing of our kiln for the LILLSTREET 3-DAY SODA-FIRING WORKSHOP. I started the kiln early in the morning… waiting for the pyrometric cones to start going down… and sometime around noon it was time to put the kiln into body reduction. Which is always fun because that’s kinda the first time you seem some flames peeking out of the kiln here & there!