Wood 2022

Finally got my big kiln hooked up! First bisque, just in time to pack up my favorites for firing in the wood kiln. :)

Arrowmont Craft School is located in Gatlinburg, TN, which is kind of a touristy theme-park of a town; there's a chair-lift up to a mountain-top amusement park that flies right over the kilns...

There are bears in these woods! O.o Working in the studio one morning, maybe an hour after breakfast was over, one of my classmates happened to be standing at the table by the windows, and looked up just in time to see a bear casually strolling by. We all ran over to look, and someone spotted a second one.... They walked right across the front porch of that building - good thing no one was there! They were back again around the same time the next morning, but no one managed to get a pic that time... (screenshot of a through-the-window phonepic)

Silly Glass Experiments! A jar lid was probably not the best test subject - lids are fussy, and it really sucks when they end up stuck on - but it was a nice flat surface (which hopefully prevented the glass from running down the sides and sticking (once everything cooled) to the wrong things) so I went for it. :) I stuck the whole thing in a just-big-enough-to-catch-any-drippings bowl on some seashells; tomorrow I'll find out if I have a functional jar and a bowl with an interesting flame-painted design or just a giant paperweight... ;) [ETA: paperweight it is! but a really lovely paperweight... :) ]

Glazing day!

Our teacher starting to load the train kiln...

View of the first few shelves, from inside the kiln. :)

....still glazing.....

More silly glass experiments! :) I made a bunch of little pendants, and basically made those little platters at the last minute to have a "safe" flat surface to fire them on... ;)

Playing with combining clay and glass. The copper in those aventurine ribbons pretty much disappeared - or maybe that's what turned what I was expecting to be a dark green glaze on the body apple red? :)

Three of my classmates (one is sitting in the doorway) loading the kiln.

My turn sitting inside carefully arranging things on shelves - I was working on the still-low stack at the bottom of the image, I'd filled the first two layers and was waiting for another shelf (which I carefully balanced on those three posts, trying to align and level it without hitting anything or knocking anything over) to start the next.

Some of my work from the wood kiln. Lots of surprises, mostly pleasant ones. ;)

Fired this one on its side, perched on balls of "wadding" with seashells on top. This one's still stuck on, it'll take a bit of effort (and maybe power tools ;) ) but I think I can get it off without destroying anything... Even with the blob stuck to the side, though, it's definitely one of my favorites. :)