Kiln construction

I haven't blogged in a while because I've been away from the internet at our farm/studio in SE Minnesota. There's lots going on there right now. Donovan Palmquist and his crew (Al & Judah) are building a wood fired kiln for me. Very exciting!

I've been watching the progress for several days, photographing every few minutes and today decided it would be good to get out of the way for a while so I'm attending the Lanesboro Iron Pour. Very cool. Photos of both the kiln and the iron pour to follow when I'm able to upload photos from the camera.

Kiln Progress

Yesterday, the bricks for my new kiln were delivered. Yah!!!! Later this week construction of the kiln will begin. Bigger YAH!!!!!



We rented a forklift to unload the bricks and fortunately, the rental place delivered a large one than we needed, but didn't charge us for the upgrade. We took advantage of the larger lift to upright our old wind mill that had been down since we had some well work completed. Yah! It still need some work, but for now it is standing and that's a big, difficult step. Amazingly, the grape vines that had been growing on it previously made it through all the moving and are still hanging there.



Between all the delivery trucks and watching Kevin play in the forklift I couldn't help but admire these little lilies blooming in my garden. The colors are amazing.



I'll post more kiln pictures as I can. This is so exciting!

Colleen & Donovan's Kiln Opening

Kevin and I had a great time last night at Colleen Riley and Donovan Palmquist's kiln opening. After a 54 hour firing last weekend, they opened the kiln to unload hundreds of great pieces by several fantastic artists.

There was a lot of ooohhing and aaahhing as still too hot to touch pieces were unloaded, inspected and admired.

In this photo Donovan is admiring a piece he just unloaded from the first chamber of the kiln.

Their kiln has two ware chambers. In the first chamber, the flames passing through the chamber on their way through the kiln deposit wood ash on the pottery creating wonderful patterns, surfaces and toasty colors. The second chamber is a soda chamber where a combination of soda ingredients are placed in the chamber at peak temperature. These ingredients vaporize and interact with the clay and glazes to create gorgeous flashing, blushes and glassy surfaces. Here's a peek at the soda chamber before unloading.

It sounds like Donovan is planning to start construction on my kiln in the near future. I've done some wood firing in the past, but fairly infrequently and on a small scale. I'm looking forward to construction of a wood fired kiln at the farm/studio and creating a body of work that is very different from what I've been doing recently. I'm sure I'll still do plenty of Cone 6 oxidation work yet, but it will be wonderful to have this additional resource for a different earthy feeling pot. So... another opportunity to practice my patience. Yah!!

Rain, Rain, Go Away

The long weekend started out great. Friday evening I had half my drying boards already full and the rest got filled on Saturday. Saturday was another beautiful day and by mid-day, all drying boards and shelves were full. The excess was spilling over to the countertops and other tables.

Sunday morning it started raining and hasn't let up yet. I did manage to get most things to dry enough to trim, but that's as far as that went.

At one point, the rain rolling off the roof was so hard, it broke the new hollyhock plant that was just starting to bloom next to the studio entry. It still looked so pretty, but with a bent stem, I don't think it will last long.


Kevin had more than 40 bare root trees to plant, so he ended up doing much of the planting in the rain. It doesn't look like he's having fun.

Now hopefully, it will quit raining and all my leather hard pots will be able to dry so they can be fired and ready for my upcoming show in Cannon Falls, July 17 & 18th.

Be well.