Art Chowder November | December, Issue 24 | Page 23

“About a quarter of the heat of
the sun,” chimes Brian Joyce,
one of the artists. “I looked it
up one time.”
Anthropological industry has featured
heat-hardened clay since possibly as
early as 29,000 BCE, items like the
Venus of Dolní Vestonice — which
was most likely made by placing it in a
pit with some other clay figurines and
building a big old-fashioned bonfire on
top. The more ancient pit firings were
covered up with dirt to keep the heat
in for long periods of time, sometimes
weeks. Making ceramic stuff has
come a long way since then; there
are modern kilns that run clay works
through fire on what is best described
as a conveyor belt. There are also kilns
that heat and harden the clay with
electricity. Your microwave can’t make
pottery but that technology has also
been applied to the process.
Chris Kelsey and Mark Moore — two
Spokane-based clay artists and co-
owners of Trackside Studio Ceramic
Art Gallery — built their first wood
firing kiln up at Mark’s property back
in spring of 2009 as an introductory
crash course on the ancient process (no
better way to get good at something
than to do it!). “It was much smaller,”
says Kelsey. “We tore it down because
it was falling apart. So this is the next
entity…” (which Freuen agreed to host
on her acreage in exchange for getting
to use it.) “I was fascinated, and still
am, with wood firing. I like processes a
lot. A kiln like this just brings you back
to how they used to do it … I’ve had
good results in kilns like this, and now
it’s my goal to get those good results
with my kiln.”
November | December 2019
23