Week 16 - Prepping for Final Crits

Sorry for the late blog post! I’ve been focused on getting my work together for final critiques and totally forgot about my blogging duties.

My big propriocepta ring had a pretty quick turnaround from being finished, to bisqued, to fired in a soda along with lots of GH pots and a couple of Max’s sculptures and cups. It was a smooth load into CC, but I was forced to rush the drying time in order to meet deadlines, so some avoidable cracks unfortunately appeared as it reached bone dry.

I also took a little solo field trip to Cherokee park this week and observed some pretty awesome rocks.

GH and I loaded up the soda on Sunday- I loaded my ring on the bottom and used shells for wadding.

We had a beautiful firing with a 1.5 hour downfire. It was a similar firing schedule to the last two reduction cool sodas I’ve done, aside from a 25 minute soak after the final spray instead of an instant crash cool. GH and I reached a compromise for this firing as well - he wanted to spray all the soda all at once at temperature, and I like to introduce it around cone 9 and disperse it in multiple sprays, so we bricked the door so that there was one big porthole for me to spray my sculpture on the bottom layer without hitting any of the pots above. It worked wonderfully.

weekly gratitudes

• spending time in nature, slowing down to reflect and observe

• my cohorts, for helping me load and fire my sculptures

• goldilocks (the soda kiln) for chugging along and firing beautifully despite her injuries