Eva Funderburgh

Day three went smoothly as well. I’ll give more details tomorrow, it’s been a long day… Here’s the short version

*spent the day fighting to get the back temp up. Fairly standard for day three. Front was in the 2300s, but the back was back to the 2100s.

*Teabowls were pulled from the front of the kiln in a sort of high temperature raku. Lots of folks came to watch.

*used a lot of wood. We got another cord delivered, and have used about half of the sidestoking wood split so far

*Got to see two of those noisy barred owls fly right past me. Awesome.

The firing is going along smoothly. Yesterday evening, we had a bunch of trouble with wet wood. Between noon and 6pm we just hung out between 800 and 900f, fighting to try and get it to rise. However, we found some dry stuff eventually (under the cords of wet wood we’d stacked infront of it on Saturday) and got the temp up to 1300 in a couple hours.
Since then thing have been going smoothly. They did body reduction during the graveyard shift – putting the kiln into heavy reduction to pull iron oxide (and others) to the surface of the pots. They also started side stoking today, so there’s more to do. Luckly we’re well set for side wood for now!

We lit the kiln at about 9pm last night, with the loading wrapping up smoothly. We keep the temp to a rise of 50 degrees an hour for the first 1500 degrees or so, which can be tricky. The kiln will want to take off at first. At this point the fire is outside the front of the kiln, with the flames being pulled up through the kiln. This also useful to keep warm!! It gets cold up here! However tomorrow night will be the cold one – the fire will be inside the kiln, but the kiln won’t be hot enough to give off radient heat yet. The kiln is a giant physical mass of bricks, and it will take a lot of time and a lot of heat to get those suckers warm.
I have a photo of Anthony lighting the fire, and of Rick feeding it, last night at 300f. The next photo is Beverly, this morning at about 800f.

We’re well into the second day of loading the kiln. Loading is always the slowest part of the firing, getting every piece just right. We also have a number of difficult pieces to load this time. Eric Nelson is leaving some pieces to be fired with us, and they’re so delicate and complex that they’re pretty tough to get into the kiln. I’m guessing we’ll be starting it around midnight.

Tomorrow morning, I will be heading off to my thrice yearly anagama firing. We’ll spend Saturday and Sunday loading the kiln, and start up the fire Sunday night. When will depend on when we get done loading. In the past we’ve started it at times ranging from 6pm Sunday to 3am Monday. Hopefully, it won’t be anything nearly so late as that.
Right now, it looks like I’ll be working the swing shift, 4pm to 12:30am. The schedules are still a bit amorphous, but I hope it works out like that. There’ll be nine of us, working three different shifts. We’ll fire for about 110 hours, shutting it down some time on Friday.
I’ll try too keep things updated on the blog, and I’ll also keep things going on twitter as well! Off I go!

Despite the late hours I’ve been spending in the studio, I’ve also been playing around with a twitter account. You can follow my twitter account here! It’s mostly photos of in progress critters, along with random observations and so forth. Now then, back to the studio.

I’ll be having a couple of pieces in a pretty exciting show in Sewickly, PA. The show is called “The Day after Tomorrow”, and consists of the work of five artists – . I’m really excited about it, but won’t be able to make it back to PA for the opening, which will be today, Friday, March 6th.  I’d put off posting it until I could find links for the other artist in the show. I think it was worth it, it looks like there’s going to be some really cool stuff!

Here’s the the other artists:

Michael Angelotti – Really incredible beautiful organic crystalline glaze forms.  Picture the most awesome geode ever, crossed with what you encountered last time you cleaned out the fridge.

Jae Yong Kim – I just linked to her profile at the Pittsburgh Society for Contemporary Craft.  Her piece there is an incredable wall installation of giant platinum snails.

Vince Palacios – a beautiful investigation of simple forms, with pieces that could be either teapots or machined parts for large machines.  They’re covered completley in intricate detailed decals and underglaze.

Gregory Byard is also in the show, but I couldn’t find a website for him.

Anyway, if you’re in the are, check it out! It promises to be an excellent show!

Since I’d pretty much sold out of work, I went to retrieve some pieces from a few of my galleries.  I now have more pieces avaliable for sale online!  Check them out here!

It seems like I have all sorts of shows coming up, all over the country! Between looking forward to my next firing, and planning my trip to Japan, it’s looking like it’s going to be some very busy months. I’ll also be heading to NCECA in April, which should be a lot of fun. I’m really looking forward to tracking down ceramics friends from across the country, and some even from around the world!

The first show to open is “Endangered“, at the Gloria Kennedy Gallery in Brooklyn.  It was an international juried show, and is viewable as of today, but the opening reception will be on February 5th, as part of a First Thursday art walk.  I will actually be flying out to NYC to attend it, along with taking some time to catch up with my New York friends. I will also be working on a collaboration sculpture with Dan Funderburgh, my brother, who’s also in NYC.  I’m going to bring bisque fired critters out to him to do underglaze designs on.  I’m pretty excited about it.

The day after I return from NYC, I’ll be heading across Puguet Sound to Bremerton, WA, to attend an artists’ reception for CVG 2009.  CVG 2009 is a juried show that collected submissions from more than 260 artists, mostly across the state of Washington.  The show will opening on Feb 1st, and run through the end of the month, at the Bremerton Collectives Visions Gallery.   The show will also be open late on Thursday, Feb 5th, for the local art walk.  I’ll unfortunately still be in NYC that evening.

Also in Washington state, I’ve been invited to a show in Tacoma.  “The Path of the Flame” is a show of Pacific Northwest woodfire artists at Gallery Madera from Feb 19th to April 4th.  The opening reception will be on Feb 21st.  I’ll have more information about this as it gets closer.  So far it looks like really great list of folks, including Terry Inokuma, Hiroshi Ogawa, and John Benn.

The last show is also far enough away that precise information will have to wait.  Jamie Adams, a cool print artist in Pittsburgh, who I really respect, has asked for me to be part of a show tentatively titled “The day before yesterday/ The day after tomorrow”.  It will be going on in March, in Pennsylvania. I will put up some more information about its post-apocalyptic goodness once March gets a bit closer.

Here in Seattle, we’ve been snowed in since last Thursday.  We’ve gotten a total of nine inches, with another couple predicted tonight.  In most cities, this would be no problem.  However, the city of Seattle has about 25 snowplows – less snow removal capability the the SeaTac airport.  Even as the city’s been warming up, the roads have been freezing again every night in to two inch thick sheets of ice.  Between that, the city’s use of sand (not salt), and the fact that no one up here knows how to drive in the snow, we’ll probably be stuck here until New Years.  Well, at least I’ve been staying useful.

I recently got myself a scanner (well, maybe it was an early Christmas present), and have been enjoying the heck out of it.  I’ve gone through my old sketchbooks, finding interesting sketches to scan.  I made one or two nice prints for people, recreations of early sketches of critters they now own.  I’ll upload a few more sketches the next few weeks.

I also took the time to finally finish up another time lapse video.  This the the video for the creation of “Conversation #3″.  The music from the soundtrack to “Paprika”, a truly bizarre and spectacular anime movie by Satoshi Kon.  I recommend going to youtube to watch the timelapse in higher resolution.

Of course, I haven’t just been spending the last week hard at work.  I’ve also been relaxing, making and eating a number of cookies, sledding down our street on a piece of cardboard, and introducing our cats to snow.

Happy Holidays everyone!