Eva Funderburgh

As folks who have been following my twitter might have guessed, I’m about to head out for a woodfiring! I’ve just finished packing up several months worth of critters, who will loaded into the kiln this Saturday and Sunday. They’ll be unloaded in two weeks on Saturday, November 28th.
Most of these guys will then be going directly to the Island Gallery on Bainbridge Island, for their December show, “Beauty and the Beasts”. I’ll be featured along side their annual fashion show. Some will be coming to my studio’s annual holiday sale and party. Stay tuned to my twitter for updates on the firing!

I have a whole selection of shows coming up this holiday season. Hopefully, it should be fun for one and all.  Here’s a quick run down of the line up. Further details will come for all of these as the dates get closer.

Eva Funderburgh at Snow Monkey’s House of Monsters!

1205 East Pike street, Suite 1A, Seattle WA

November 12th through December 3rd, opening reception November 12th

Snow Monkey’s is a new gallery that just opened in the Capital Hill neighborhood of Seattle.  It’s an awesome little place, focusing on strange great art,  handmade stuff, with a smattering of amusing things from Japan.  I’ll be showing off a selection of fun work, focusing on saggar fired stuff I made over this summer.

The Island Gallery’s Holiday Good Times

100 Madison Avenue, Bainbridge Island WA

December 4th through 31st, Opening reception December 4th

The Island Gallery is a long time favorite of mine.  They’re located across Puget Sound on Bainbridge Island, and focus on the finest woodfired ceramics, wearable textile art, and beautiful hand made furniture.  This December they’ll be displaying off a selection of my newest woodfired work – so new they’re still in progress right now! I’ll be sharing the stage with their annual fashion show.

Florentia Clayworks 4th annual Holiday Sale!

218 Florentia st, Seattle WA

December 11th, 12th and 13th.  Opening reception/ party on the 11th.

Florentia Clayworks is my shared studio space, where a total of 8 clay artists toil away making cool things.  We’ll be showing off (and selling) of those cool things over that weekend, along with consuming mulled cider, hot cocoa, and delicious wine.  Come by for a peak into the world of clay! I’ll also be holding a silent auction of one or two of my favorite pieces, and donating 50% to charity.

I’ve recently been putting together some timelapse videos of pieces from March 2009 firing. I have a couple more videos lined up, but they all still need to have the notes put in, the slowest step.  I’m also planning on making a few new videos of my saggar fire pieces – I’m looking forward to seeing the burnishing process via timelapse.

Anyway, for now, here’s a timelapse of the creation of “Berry Eater”

All of my newest work is now up on flickr. Enjoy!

We unloaded the kiln on Saturday, and it looks like a great firing. I’ve spent the last two days trying to clean up all of the work, and sort it as to where it will be going. Most of the beasts came off of their wads cleanly, meaning there wasn’t too much work to do as far as that. What was harder was deciding where each piece should go. I’ve set aside four to submit to jurried shows, another four or five to send to a show in Idaho, about 10 to take with me to Japan, and another 10 to 12 that will be for sale online. They’ll all be showing up online at around noon (PDT) on April 18th – so if you feel like buying a piece, check back near then!

I’m also finally all packed up for NCECA. I’ll be spending four days there, and then camping in the area with my dad, my brother, and my brother’s wife. It should be a lot of fun!

I’m back from the woodfiring, and have finally had a chance to relax, and get caught up email and so forth.  Overall, I feel like it was a pretty solid firing.  There were no crisis and no drama.  Everything went as planned.  We dropped cone 13 in the front of the kiln, and were probably in the cone 12 range in far back section of the kiln.  That’s fairly standard, and where we like to be.  We kept front of the kiln over 2300f for a day or two, though we would have liked the back to be hotter.  It was generally in the 2100’s for the last couple days, seldom staying in the 2200’s, which would have been nicer.  Regardless, there’s not too much point in speculating until we unload it on the 4th.

It’s going to take a few days for me to sort and clean all of my new work.  I need to decide which pieces will be traveling to Idaho for a show at the Art Spirt Gallery, and which pieces will be coming with me to Design Festa in Tokyo.  However, it’s my goal to to have all the photos go online, and new pieces for sale on the 18th.  I’ll post more information after I’ve unloaded the kiln.

All my firing photos are up on flickr now.  Enjoy!

By the end of the firing, everyone ends up so very tired. This is the last night. We’re just working on maintaining temp, especially in the back of the kiln. We’ve dropped cone 13 in the front, and it looks like cone 13 in the far back might be soft. It’s hard to tell, since cone 12 reacts to the ash or something, and doesn’t melt like it should.
Tomorrow morning, we’ll mud up the kiln, and reduce cool it for a few hours. That will probably start in about seven hours.
Here’s a photo of the wood at the start of the firing, and how it is now. We got a whole brand new cord of wood that’s unstacked in the “after” photo.
The other photo is of the night crew. They’re good folks.

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.