Art Chowder November | December, Issue 24 | Page 24

T
he Venn diagram of art and science in
this process is blatant and venerable. I got to
chat with Gina a little bit in her studio and
she showed me shelves and shelves of her
glazed ceramic art, the glaze coming from
different styles and combinations of ash and
chemicals… she tries her best to explain to
me, most of it flying over my head.
“This glaze will go red. This is a shino
glaze — it’s got a lot of salt in it — you can
tell it’s got salt by the crystallizations. Mix
it all up … and so that surface that you’re
seeing on all those pots down there comes
out of a bucket that looks like this. And the
ingredients in this are usually a couple clay
bodies; there’s probably some soda ash in
this glaze, and then something to stabilize
it. I’d have to look at my recipe. I’m testing
one this time and it has the flux, the clay, the
stabilizer, and then this is just meant to keep
the glaze from separating out. I put a bunch
of these in the kiln this time to test to see
what they’re going to do.”
I remark with awe that she seems to have a
great handle on the science; she’s showing
me a row of notebooks with notes about
chemicals, dates, temperatures, observations
… but she says she looks at it more like a
cookbook.
“I see recipes that I have tried. And then this
is what we do during a firing, too — ” she
shows me a specific notebook “ — this is
a firing log: ‘Gas on all day to keep warm;
closed it up at three; put the gas on barely;
turned it up; 0-12 is going down…’” (this
last part is referring to a small cone-like
object called a “pyrometer” which indicates
rising temperatures as it melts). And then I
can refer back and say ‘Oh last time it did
this and this and this, you may need to close
it down a little bit more or open it up a little
bit more, so you reference this.’ They’ll do
the same thing on that kiln out there.”
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ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE
They’ll spend four days of coaxing the flame as close to 2250 degrees
Fahrenheit as possible, and then they will let the entire structure and
its contents cool for about five days before opening the door and
gazing like archaeologists in on their transformed treasures, as Dennis
Smith puts it. Until then all senses are engaged as the artists/engineers/
anthropologists split wood, notate temperatures, and make observations
and comparisons between the progress of this firing versus previous
firings. The smell of woodsmoke hangs grandfatherly in the air; crickets
are chirping unobtrusively in the marsh nearby, and though the nights
are still chilly the kiln radiates warmth, especially when the small
door is opened for not more than four seconds at a time to feed the
flame. They check the thermometer obsessively, raising their eyebrows
in anticipation and hopes of faster heat. Conversations I barely
comprehend go by … a what cycle…?