Sculpture, more wood fired pieces and yarn bowls

We opened another wood soda kiln firing last week. Above is a vase with roots. For other images, see my updated Flickr Wood Soda firing page. I've also created a Sculpture set.

This is my latest sculpture. She's a dragon lady. In her upraised hand is a heart with ventricles. Yes, I went there. I was in a rather 'dark' mood when finished up this sculpture.

Here are some yarn bowl kitties done for a friend. Black kitty above and a grey tabby below. They are glazed and waiting to be fired.

Slowly but surely, I am getting all outstanding projects done. I have to pick up the popover bowl that I have finally glazed and gotten fired.

Noborigama wood firing results 3/17/11

Mini teapot

Oil Lamp

Heart pot

Holey vase

The results.

More photos to come. I will be setting up a backdrop and taking portfolio photos of these Sunday.

Wood fired vase and pendants

The noborigama wood firing over the Thanksgiving weekend was a success for me. My carved Southern Ice pendants turned out fantastic! The one above and the one below had some bronzing flashing slip painted into the details The photographs do not show the bits that turned bronze.

Well, you can see a bit of the bronze in the heart.

In the following pendants, I brushed on a bit of pumice celadon glaze and then wiped away some of the glaze from the high points. The pooling of the glazed in the carved areas really made me happy.

The one above was placed higher up in the kiln, in the path of the flame and got a nice amount of contrast as a result.

This pendant was below the path of the flame and so, did not get as much color contrast. It did get some nice peach colored flashing.

One of my favorites. Higher in the kiln, and so more contrast in color. The thinner areas where the celadon has pulled are translucent. Love it when you can see the shadow of your fingers behind it when you hold the pendant up to the light.

I really liked this pendant, and so, I decided to keep it. I think that the design can be adjusted to look either like a bird or a dragon.

And finally, a wood fired vase that survived! Yay!!! I used a different clay this time, so it survived. And I like the shape of the vase better.

I've got a sale this weekend, so I will be taking photos of that and posting them later.

Big ole vase and some carved bowls

Here's a vase. It's a stacker made from 4 cylinders. I wasn't too happy with how it was looking, so, first I 'dinged' it a bit with a wooden stick tool. Still wasn't happy with it, so I cut out some holes in the neck.

I didn't cut the same number of holes into the neck on each side. There are either 1 or 2 holes on each side.

By the time this is fired it should stand about 20 inches tall. 12% is the usual shrink rate, but that's when you get the clay to cone 10 (about 2345 degrees). However, I'm planning to wood fire this, so the temperature is higher and this might shrink a good bit more.

And I needed to carve up some bowls that have been sitting around for a long time. Wasn't up to doing a lot of carving, but I figure some 'big' rather than intricate delicate work was called for last night.

Unloading the Wood Kiln

Some celebratory flame to mark the opening of the kiln.

First section unloaded, here's the stack for the second section

Third section stack
The back.

Yes, this is a very long kiln...

Wood firing

Isa, lit by the glow of the kiln as she loads the front with wood.

Inside the kiln itself. So fiery and gorgeous.
The hill behind the kiln, lit by the fire shooting out of the chimney. 30 second exposure, can't remember how wide the aperature was open.

My one angel sculpture in the wood soda kiln. If you click on the image, you can increase the size and see how one wing was stuck to the wall of the kiln. I would have had to have been very careful in removing the sculpture from the wall when unloading her but...

While helping to get an empty shelf and post out of the kiln so I could get to more pieces, I dropped the post on her. Darn my relatively short arm length! At any rate, she broke off from the side of the kiln very easily. The front wing was fully broken off and some shards of her hair. The longest wing came off as well, not sure if it came off because of the dropped post or the difference in clay body. (I used 3 different clays in this sculpture).

The angel was already broken and chipped when I put her in, so I wasn't too worried about it. Although I do care about this piece, this is the nature of the medium. Things break. Can't worry too much about it, just move on and make something else.

Phil wouldn't let me toss it, so we collected the pieces and he says he will glue it back together. Will take photos of that when it's done.

Wood Kiln pictures

The kiln before we unloaded it.

One of the shelves.

My favorite angel

The treewoman fresh from the kiln

Matt and one of my cats

Isa and her beautiful bowl

Van with one of the shelves. This is the bottom of the shelf. Pretty, yes?

A close up of the shelf. This would be a pretty cool abstract photo to put on display

Finally, the moon with the shadow of some trees in front of it.

It was a cold night when we unloaded the kiln, but what beautiful results and what a great time we had.

Woodfire Soda kiln results

Here are the results of my sculptures! We had a really great woodfiring this last time. Oh, towards the end of the firing, soda was added to the kiln and that caused even more fun effects. Not quite sure what effects exactly, but we had a lot of great pots come out of the kiln. I'll post more pictures of the kiln itself before we unloaded it later.

The best angel. It's hard to see here, but she has two blue glass eyes. Some of the blue came from the celadon I put on it. The rest of the color is from the wood ash and soda. Both the bottle and the angel are soaking in water to help get the wadding off of the bottoms. Wadding is used in wood firing so that pieces do not fuse to the shelves. I'll post a picture of the bottom of the shelf too.
More angels and my kitties. So happy with how they turned out!
The Treewoman's face. No glaze is on this piece except for some flashing slip. The white areas were where the slip was placed.
Treewoman. She shrank quite a bit in the firing, but she turned out fantastically!