This weekend, I have a two person show opening at the Northwinds Art Center and Gallery, in Port Townsend, WA. It’s a neat little gallery, in a neat little town. Port Townsend is the city that thought it was going to be Seattle, back in the 1880s, before railroads. Once it became clear that Seattle was to be the major port for the area, all development stopped in Port Townsend. In the late 1980s, everyone realized that there was a very cool perfectly preserved Victorian seaside resort two hours from Seattle, and it’s been hopping ever since.
The show will be with Don Tiller, and will be up for the whole month of August. There’s going to be a a variety of events going on during the month, with an art walk reception on the 1st of August, a Saturday, and a coffee talk on friday the 7th. I won’t be able to be there for the art walk reception, but the coffee talk should be fun. Don Tiller and I will both take some time to talk about our work and the process of creating it at 7pm at the gallery.
I just swung by the gallery dropping off work, and everything is looking great. My work is a selection of some of the best larger pieces from the past year or so, along with some new, saggar fired work. Saggar firing is a technique that is very reminiscent of the pit firings often seen in southwest native American pottery. It’s a technique that I’d long been curious about, and have finally been exploring. It serves as a good counterpoint for woodfiring, since it very similar in unpredictable nature. I’ll do a post about the whole process pretty soon, assuming I can stay out of the studio long enough to write it up!
I’m also trying something new this show. I’m making a flickr set of all the work, and making everything available for purchase online. Each piece will have its purchase information and the contact information of gallery manager listed in the description. If you see something you’re interested, just send the gallery an email, and they’ll take if from there!
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.
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.