Eva Funderburgh » woodfire

A Bevy of Shows

Eva — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:16:34 +0000

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.

New work up now!

Eva — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:01:41 +0000

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

Kiln Unloaded and Off to NCECA!

Eva — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:09:54 +0000

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!

Back from the firing.

Eva — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:08:17 +0000

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!

Firing day 3

Eva — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 08:34:37 +0000

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.

Firing, Day 2

Eva — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:23:14 +0000

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!

Firing, day 1

Eva — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:30:45 +0000

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.

Loading

Eva — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 22:47:11 +0000

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.

Off to the woodfiring

Eva — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:41:27 +0000

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!

Saturday Show at Madera Gallery

Eva — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:56:10 +0000

I’d mention this show a while ago, and before I knew it, it’s almost the opening!

This Saturday from 3pm to 8pm, stop by Madera Woodworking in Tacoma, WA, to explore an amazing collection of Northwest Woodfire. The opening is longer than normal to accommodate everyone who might wander by. I’ll probably be at the gallery between 5 and 8. I think I’ll even try and finally explore Tacoma’s famous glass museum!

The line up for the show looks incredible: John Benn, Colleen Gallagher, John Harris, Sam Hoffman, Terry Inokuma, Chris Knapp, Jen Lee, Andy Lewis-Lechner, Susan Lochner, Hiroshi Ogawa, Reid Ozaki, Erin Solberg, and Natalie, Warrens.

I’m also going to be using the show to unveil “Glowback”, a creature that I’ve been working on for a while. I teamed up with my husband to wire up LEDs and a microcontroller to cause the back of the beast to glow. I have an entire flickr set up documenting the whole process. If all goes as planned, we’ll finish up the last bit of work tonight, and I’ll take it to the gallery tomorrow.