More New Poly Chrome "olla's"

Olla update, new pots # 7 = # 10

I want to link this post to the one I posted on May 16 at this site.  If you haven't read it you might skip back and see where I was  heading with those 6 jars as I plan to show this summer at various shows.  However, I now have four additional jars I want to add to that list so rather than editing that post, I'll just do a quick posting and include
a discussion of what they represent (whew, was that really one sentence??).

The first jar of this group (or #7) is below.  I like to utilize Casas Grandes forms (jars, ollas, bowls?), Pueblo geometric polychorme designs to highlight the panels (in the tradition of Mexican pottery), and then kick in some panel designs that are based on the landscapes of the Yakima Valley.  Flip back to my post on the photos of Jo Miles for an idea of what I try to capture with these simple line drawings.  nothing too mysterious.  These jars are around 10" (tall and wide).  I start with a red clay form, cover it with a white slip, sometimes burnish the surface, and bisque fire it before applying the painted panels.

Let's look at another jar (#8)

Pretty much the same format.  Sometimes I like a progressive landscape, either throughout the day, season, or ridge (the development of a storm for example).  These simple drawings have certainly made me more aware of distinctive  local ridges and their character.  I like the way the scenes progress when you turn (or spin) the bowl or view it form different sides.  As I approach the forms primarily from the panel images, they are more like watching TV or driving than a single, framed, canvas?  The paints are ceramic glazes, fired at bisque temperatures, sometimes with a clear overglaze to bring out the colors. 

The next bowl (#9) is an open mouth bowl with an abstract panel design.  I like this format as it allows me a format for what I've been doing with water colors.  As mentioned above, these are low fire glaze colors, typical of Maljorca or festive, low fire ceramic ware.  I am trying here to complement the Casas Grandes forms, the polychrome styles, Mexican tradition and abstract painting that interests me.

One more similar jar is #10 below (the same jar at the top of this blog, different panel).  An interesting thing I have found is how expressive simple bands of color are with these pots. Add to those tri-color (polychrome) lines the geometric "puebla designs" in the round and you have the basic elements of "Casas Grandes" jars.  

I have never seen painted ceramic "panels" discussed as specifically traditional Mexican motifs. No doubt other cultures have utilized panels in their ceramic ware but it seems that Mexican native ware have utilized panels most effectively.  I like both the formal rectangular panels found on native cups and bowls and the sketchy panels defined by brush strokes, in conjunction with other brush stroke patters which define a lot of Mexican native cups and bowls.  Finally, not to repeat myself, the panels seem ideal for what would otherwise be abstract water color images, fire on the pot surface.  

To recap:  I feel a slip covered jar, based on native shapes, is a good starting canvas.  The polychrome convention gives the viewer a familiar art form, easy to relate to, and the panels, borrowed from functional Mexican native ware,  give the pot a timeless, traditional background.  Canvas is unable to present the "in the round" possible with these jars. 

Oh yea, at the Dova show reception we witnessed  a very funny thing happen as a result of one specific "Olla characteristic".  As can be imagined, these pots, though stable, are somewhat prone to wobbling a bit.  They don't fall over, but they do "come alive" if jiggled.  When Herb Blissard received his Larson Gallery award for living to be 150 years old, he casually leaned against the stands on which my jar was propped, with the predictable wobbling resulting.  Unaware that a (precious??) work of art appeared to be ready to crash to the floor while the viewers looked on amazed, the instant was uniquely charged, as if a panther was suddenly noticed, perched from an overhanging limb, ready to pounce on the unsuspecting Herb.   As an artist" I couldn't have planned a more fitting emotional moment of tension, or a more fitting memorial to our friend, Herb.  

And so, the final attribute of these pots is the slight wobble they all have when setting on a table.   Those who know the drill know the pot won't just tip over or roll off the table (Well, perhaps occasionally, but that just adds to the tension).  Usually, they are setting on a fulcrum point (?) and will spin very easily, displaying the timeless infinity of the panel's passing. Perhaps the Casas Grandes artists were hinting at this timelessness suggestion of the pecularities of time,,, or perhaps those artists just enjoyed the unsettling promise of catastrophe against the metaphor of the shards within all of us.  

Stay tuned for a 'smoke fired" update, a new post on washing unspun wool (for the buffalo farmers among us, and a long promised blurb on Raku.       

Poly Chrome jars in progress

Polychrome Jars: Ramblings

      AND a review of a few upcoming shows

Let's start with the most recent show.  This Tuesday (May 22) Larson Gallery in Yakima will host the annual "Department of Visual Arts" show for YVCC.  This show has the best work by students over the past 12 months.  The reception is that afternoon 5:30-7:00pm. 

Above is my submission to the 2012 Dova show.  It is a traditional pueblo jar shape with some traditional form to lend familiarity.  The panels however are anything but traditional.  It is about 11" in diameter and 9" tall.  The contrast of the abstract painting over a traditional Puebla (Cases Grandes) form was a lot of fun.  I'm not sure if I should apologize to the ancient Mata Ortez potters or Jackson Pollock, probably BOTH.  

The next traditional jar is a large smoke fired jar that I plan to submit to the Larson Membership show in June.  I show it to give my Puebla jars some context.  I started making these large jars some time ago and  was inspired by a jar Kristin and I found in Santa Fe some years ago.  By "found" I mean, in a shop.  Flip back a few posts for my "Jar" posting  It will give you some background on these large, open mouth, earthenware water jars. 

This jar is glazed inside and is probably suitable for making beer or pickles.  The surface was covered with a white slip and burnished.  It is about 15" in diameter and was constructed from a 16" form batt and it shrunk a bit in drying and firing.  Oh yea, this was fired at cone 06, then smoke fired in an old rusty barrel.  Here is another photo of the same pot, below. 

And now to the meat of this post; the jars I will be showing at Oak Hollow Gallery the 8th of June.  You are welcome to come to the reception,  I'll share the show with Stan Reynolds, the Yakima painter.  

The first pot is about as traditional as is possible without directly copying the ancient Casas Grandes potters.  I developed the graphics on this pot, minus the lines, which are ephimeral, ubiquitous, and polymorphous, not to mention expressive.  This pot was constructed from Dakota Red clay, covered with a white slip, and was fired about 6 times before I was (somewhat) satisfied with it.  These jars are relatively thin, light, and are around 8" to 11" in diameter.   

The next jar is also based on traditional designs but is a relatively modern Mexican panel landsdcape painting.  I like the combination of the two forms.  I used some girsley borate (a calcium borate???) glazes on this piece, but girstley darkens the red iron oxide and hardens the glaze surface so I gave up my old friend (Colemanite) and went back to commercial applications.  Thanks Amaco!

After toying with landscapes (above)  I dug out some old sketch pads and borrowed some "ancient" sketches I had made in years past, combined with some of the images I hold in my head of mountains and clouds without end.  This landscape wraps around the jar so it is essentially infinite, with a repeated, but sequentially connected graphic on the four side panels.  This jar is larger than its fellow "painted jars" in this post.  These jars all have round bottoms but they all stand up without difficulty.  I'm not sure of the physics involved in this phenomonia, but they don't fall over and they sit upright naturally, with a bit of lively wobble! 

Combining the graphics of the previous jars, I then tried a four panel landscape (below)  with different views, held in context with ancient graphics.  This "little guy" is getting down around 9" in diameter.  The red is Amaco "Terra Cotta" and the black is  Amaco "Black Velvet".  I think the surface of this pot is a white, porcelain slip with some burnishing.  

Going back in the evolution, I made this pot (below) for DOVA, thinking the traditional (but simple) Pueblo designs might ring a chime for the viewers.  However, at the last minute, in consultation with Rachel, I decided to try out a new form on the students so this jar migrated to Oak Hollow, not an uncommon displacement for flakey artists.  

This pot (below) has an interesting history.  Over the past few years I have come to see "Nueva Pueblo" potters as being just to dang perfect.  I'm often suspicious that some of the jars are slip cast, or at least hand thrown.  That takes out some of the original lopsided and organic feel of the old pottery, or even typical Acama pots from only 20 or 30 years ago.  In this jar I tried to reintroduce some of the antique feel of the old pots, not to "fake" it up, but just to give it more of a sense of the excitement (derived from use and age) of the ancient Casas Grandes pots.   If anything I went just a bit over the edge on this jar and will probably be accused by some of trying to replicate the antique feel artifically (see my previous post on "antiqueing" a guitar).  However, when you consider this pot was fired 6 or 8 times, you can see it really has aged in a trial by fire.  I like this pot a lot and if it doesn't sell at Oak Hollow I will probably keep it.    

Why would a potter fire a pot multiple times.  Well, first of all multiple firings give pottery a patina and a "used" or organic feel.  In using slips, stains, and colors on a jar I want to be sure they don't blend or smudge, so I first bisque fire the pot, then bisque the original colors and keep layering the colors with further bisque firings.  

The last of the Oak hollow jars is below.  This has 4 different landscape panels, illustrating the progressing of a mountain storm.  You can see the red clay body inside this pot. I'm going to say the slip covering is "OM4 ball clay".  

I will show several additional jars at Oak Hollow in June, but this post is stretching out.  Perhaps another post is in order.  But before closing I want to show a jar that I made to submit to "The Mighty Tieton 10X10" show in July.  I really like to revert to traditional graphics and this jar shows the understated polychrome style.  

Hope you liked this post, see you at the DOVA reception May 22 and at Oak Hollow June 8.  And, be on watch for a post on Raku, in preparation for the YVCC spring Raku firing. I plan to smoke fire some painted pueblo jars that day and see how the graphics look on contrast to the effects of smoke firing.  

    

Smoke Fired Ceramics

Smoke Fired Ceramics

Raku is a popular ceramic process whereby the red hot ceramic object is withdrawn from the hot kiln and exposed to organic materials. It blackens the clay body surface and contributes interesting surface colors to the pot, particularly if the  potter adds creative chemicals or organic materials in the process.  One other way to get a smokey surface, typical of pit fired native firing, is "smoke firing" the pot.  I would call Smoke firing a sub-process of Raku, but it is really different in a number of ways. 

Smoke firing is generally practiced on bisqued clay pieces, meaning the pot is fired to a low temperature to make it stronger and more resilient to the smoke firing process.  The low fired pot is then put in some kind of container filled with organic materials and ignited.  Often this "smoke fire kiln" is little more than a metal barrel with some sort of lid (to keep in the smoke).  The combustionable material can be leaves, shreaded paper, firewood, or whatever is on hand.  While Raku firing is generally in the range of cone 08, I am guessing the smoke fire environment is cooler than cone 010.  

The smoke fire process relies on the characteristic of the earthenware fired pot to absorb smoke from the heavily reduced kiln environment.  The areas of the kiln that have oxygen will fire cleaner than the areas where the smoke builds up, creating interesting responses to the process.  I have seen black ware from the Southwest called "Oaxian ware" or other local names.  If the smoke fire piece is refired in an electric kiln the smoke will be burned off and the effect removed.  Smoke fire pieces are almost entirely decorative and they don't make good kitchen ware pieces. 

Let's review a smoke firing

We will load two barrels, like those above, with shreaded paper,  stack some pots in the material, ignite the material, and then let it slowly die out from lack of fuel.  Then, we let the pieces cool for a while, remove and wash them, and perhaps treat the surface with some additional surface coatnig.   Here is a closer look at the loaded barrel. 

and a closer look at the shreaded paper

The pots are both filed with shreaded paper and buried in the shreaded paper.  The barrels serve as a saggar.  In fact, in some cases, potters have filled a saggar with leaves and a pot, and inserted it into a kiln to be fired normally.  When the combustionable materils is ignited by the temperature of the hot kiln, it slowly burns and creates the same smoke fired effect we will get from the smoke fired barrel.  

However, the reverse of this may also happen.  That is, the saggar is used to keep the pot clean and away from firing materials, particularly in a wood fire pit kiln where the potter wants a clean surface.  We can be relatively certain that Casas Grandes pottery was fired in a pit kiln with firewood (1200AD to 1450AD).  However, the only way the Casas Grandes pots could retain their clean surface designs would be for them to be isolated form the reduction of  the firing process.  Some CG pottery has smoke clouds, but the potters seem to have only accepted occasional occurances of smoke firing and probably isolated the pot surfaces from the firing in some manner.  I do not have evidence that the CG potters used clay saggars or even that archaeologists have found any saggars at CG.

Smoke firing can be enhanced with the aid of creative saggars also.  Some modern potters use aluminum foil to wrap the pots or portions of the pot to isolate smoke firing from  the surface.  And, in some cases, potters will wrap organic materials or chemicals next to the pot surface and hold it there with aluminum foil.  The relatively low smoke firing temperatures will not consume the aluminum foil.  I will conduct some experiments with Aluminum foil saggaring at the YVCC smoke firing, May 26. You are welcome to stop by and see the process.  Here is smoke firing in progress.

The barrels have just be ignited and covered.  I stop up holes in the lid with wet clay.  You can see small vent holes at the bottoms of the barrels.  Without the breathing holes there would not be enough oxygen for combustion and the paper would be extinguished. 

Regular iron barrels will last a number of firings.  YVCC always calls both Clean air Yakima to make sure it is an approved "Burn day" and also the city fire department so they know where the smoke is coming from.  Actually, if the firing goes correctly, little smoke escapes the ceramics yard. 

Here (above) the firing has been burning 3 hours and is almost completed.  Because the firing barrel is messy, I let it burn out and cool for a day or two before popping it open.  Then I remove the posts, wash them, and let them dry where they won't freeze.  Once they are completely dry, they will withstand freezing temperatures.  Here is another smoke fired jar.  You can see that the black pattern is not uniform. Subtle colors are and hues often result from smoke firing, 

and here is a more successful example (below)  that is now at Oak Hollow Gallery.  Personally I like the blacker jars.  Contrast can be enhanced by smoke firing burnished jars with white slip covering.  I often wax the jars at the end of the process to bring out the colors.  Sometimes I put a protective earthenware glaze (cone 06) inside the pot before smoke firing.  Technically one could make pickles or beer in one of these jars with the interior glaze but I never have?  Flip back in this blog to "Ceramic Jars" for more on this particular (unique, native) clay form.  

I hope to smoke fire a couple of my (fake) Casas Grandes copy jars.  They are smaller than the jars in this post.  I also hope to experiment with aluminum foil saggars on May 26.  I will have a set of Nuevo Casas Grandes" jars at the Oak Hollow show after June 7.  Stop by the show opening and chat.