From the Ground Up

Horse tail, steel wool, seaweed.  Pit-fire, sagar, raku.  Porcelain, stoneware, clay hunting.  Centering, burnishing, wax resist.  How sweet the sounds of these words to the ears of this dormant ceramist.

“From the Ground Up,” an exhibition featuring 14 central and Eastern Washington ceramists, opened yesterday at Larson Gallery in Yakima, the “Palm Springs” of Washington state.  My ceramic breast plates were among the featured work.

Half way into the reception I found my self in a group of exhibiting artists sharing not so secret, trade secrets.  Like how the minerals in kelp, depending on the season it was harvested, change the flash of color on a primitive fired vessel.  How horse hair leaves fine clean lines on a raku surface and copper key shavings thrown onto wet red glaze turn green at cone 06 but burn off at cone 05.

We talked about the merits of pit, salt, wood, gas firing, about the malleable world of clay until the exhibit closed.  We went out to dinner and continued a conversation, natural and unpretentious and one I didn’t realize I’d missed so much working to center myself around this writing business.

One of my breast plates, “Jason,” sold.  It is made from clay I dug at low tide on the Strait of Juan deFuca.