Eva Funderburgh

On Saturday, December 13th, 2008, Florentia Clayworks will have its second Annual Holiday Sale and Party!  This year, we will be doing a one night only celebrations of good times, from 7 to 10pm.  Come on by for a chance to check out my work in person, meet my studio mates, browse fun art work, eat, drink, and generally enjoy yourselves! We are located just South of the Fremont Bridge, in Seattle, Washington, on 218 Florentia St.  Stop on by and have some fun!

As a first this year, I will be doing a silent auction of two of my favorite sculptures.  I will donate 40% of the proceeds to charity.  Here are the two beasts, and the two charities.

First off is ‘Digger Beast with Ball”.  He is one of the best pieces I got out of this last firing.  I will be donating 40% of his sale to Child’s Play.  Child’s Play is a group that raises games, toys, books, and money for childrens’ hospitals world wide. I figured this playful digging beast would approve of the choice (as long he can keep his ball).

Second is “Discovery”.  I have to admit that I often wish I could just keep all of my sculptures myself.   I just really like the interaction I’ve capture in the piece.  I leave it up to the viewer as to how these two guys will behave, but personally, I picture the big guy sniffing the little one, and maybe being hissed at.  Nothing too sinister.  However, since real world interaction seldom end up as nonviolently, (especially between countries) I will be donating 40% of his sale to the International Red Cross.

In addition to using some of my new found free time to sign up for an “Anything-goes Art Event”, I also put together another bit of stop motion.  I recommend going to youtube, where it is possible to click on the “view in higher quality” option.

I’ve just now gotten my confirmation for signing up for Design Festa vol 29.  Design Festa is Asia’s largest freestyle art event.  The term “art fair” really doesn’t do it justice.  Twice a year, approximately 3,500 artists take over “Tokyo Big Sight“, the iconic Tokyo conference center.  Next May, I will be one of them.

The way Design Festa works is that anyone can obtain a booth.  It is then up to you as to what to do with your two tatami mats worth of floor.  Photos I’ve seen online range from people showing off paintings, selling t-shirts, jewelry, and vinyl figurines, rocking out on electric guitar, dressing up as a horse while painting a picture of a horse, doing crazy performance art, selling cardboard robots, metal monsters, and tiny faces painted on matchstick heads.  A personal favorite appeared to be a booth that sold or rented paper bags with happy animal faces drawn on them.  The idea, as described in an illustration, was that if you were sad, you would put one of these on your head, and it made you happier. As I said, anything goes.

The more I look around, the more strange and intriguing stuff I find.  (Beautiful tiny dyed fish skeletons!?) While I’m not too sure what to expect, other than an adventure, it is my plan to take myself and a large number of critters to Tokyo in May, 2009.

So I just now finished getting everything photographed and uploaded to flickr! (well, almost everything).  I had been planning on re-photographing a few things, but decided that it was more important to have everything up now.

Anyway, in order to celebrate all this new work, I’ll be hosting a slightly impromptu opening at my studio tonight.  It’s going to be pretty low key, but I will have all of the new work there and on display, along with food and drink of some type. If you’re in the Seattle area, I recommend coming on by! It’s at 218 Florentia st, just on the south end of the Fremont Bridge. We’re in the building with the crazy mural. I’ll be there from 6pm to 8, and maybe till 9.  Stop on by!

I’ve spent the last 48 hours rushing to get off an application for an “Emerging Artist” grant. Now, the light box is finished, a first round of work is photographed, and the CD with my images is burned and in the mail.

I’ve only had time to photograph a few of my favorite pieces, and looking through the results, I think I’ll be doing a few more tweaks to the lighting set up.  I’m pretty happy with it, but I feel like fussing with it a bit more.  Once I have all the information on the new critters up, I’m hoping to put together a howto on building the lighting softbox.

I’ll have my work cut out for me with documenting all of my beasts, though.  I’ll need to photograph them, record all the useful info for them, and price them.  I’ll also have to decide which to send off to galleries, which to sell myself, and which pieces will be not for sale, reserved to enter into shows.  Hopefully, I’ll have all of that worked out by the end of the week.  In the mean time, I’ve uploaded some of the photos I shot today.

So we unloaded the kiln yesterday.  All in all, it seem like a pretty good firing.  It turned out that we hadn’t dropped cone 13 in the far back, like we thought.  The cones were only viewable from a very strange angle in the back, and someone misread them.  We were only at cone 11 in back, which isn’t bad, but isn’t 13 either. However, we were right about the cones in the front. Cone 13 was completely flat, and cone 14 was starting to bend.

In general, the firing didn’t seem to be hurting from shutting down 15 hours early.  The back was much drier than normal, which was ok for everyone who glazes their pieces (I don’t), but resulted in one or two matte blue gray critters.  I might refirer those two.

Most of the pieces came out great.  I need to now work on cleaning up everything, which should be easy this time, and get photographing.  Unfortunately I need to finish rebuilding my lighting set up from scratch before I can do that.  Photos of the new work (and the new photographic lighting set up) will be coming soon!

It turns out that the rumors of cone 13 being down in back were true. We decided to shut it down at 4pm. We mixed up the mud (wood ash, clay, and water) and sealed up all the openings. We spent the next three hours reduction cooling. I’ll post more on that soon, because I’m on my way home! It will be very good to be back.

I’m still up at Ken’s studio, and haven’t gone down to the kiln yet today. However, one of the morning shift has just past on some crazy news. Cone 13 is down not only in the middle, but also in the far back. This hotter than we’ve ever gone before. Apparently, they’re struggling to keep the front from taking off even more. Going hotter is hard on the clay. I was about to go split some wood for the night shift, but with these temperatures, we might just shut it down this evening.
Here’s two shots from last night - the kiln at night, and my sidestoking duty station.

The kiln has been above 2000 degrees in both front and back for about a day now. It’s been keeping between 2200 and 2300 in front, and we’ve been fighting to get the back to match that. We’ll gain maybe 100 degrees over the next two days. It’s funny how you spend the first day or two working to keep it slow, and now we might have to fight for every 20 degrees.
For the next few days it will mainly be about what the cones are doing, and what the coal bed is like. Cones measure a combination of heat + time, and give us a better idea of how the pots are doing than just temperature. Last I heard, cone 13 is bending in front, and 10 is down in the middle. Not sure about the far back. The kiln will continue to feel hotter and hotter as we go on.
Flame and smoke from the stack with every stoke now. Also, it is a VERY beautiful day.

Second swing shift of the firing. 8:30, and we’re 24 hours into the firing. We’re at 1550 degrees in front, and 900 some in back. It will even out as we go along. Red heat in front.