Playing with Earth, Color and Fire

 A few months ago, I was feeling like I needed more adult interactions. I found a pottery class here in town and it seemed the perfect solution - get creative (play with dirt) and hang out with grownups.. win-win! Sign me up. 

Pottery is a complex process with lots of different steps. First, on the potters wheel, you made your creation, dress it up with texture or handles, then let them dry (slowly so they don't crack):

Once it's air dried (leather hard), it goes for it's first trip through the kiln (bisque fire). Then, it'll be ready for glazing:

Finally, a second visit to the kiln for a glaze fire and boom!

Now, that's the typical path to pottery (you know, for beginners in a weekly class). Predictable, beautiful, very sedate. However, our teacher thought it would be fun to shake it up and organized things to set up a Raku firing - which is a whole other way to go. The first few steps are the same, throw something on the wheel, send it through a bisque firing and then glaze.... but then things go a little crazy. 

First, heat up the kiln, and set up metal garbage cans filled with newspaper, hay and shredded computer paper. Outside, behind the studio, is a little courtyard and an outdoor kiln, perfect for our little Raku party. 

Once the pottery is heated to red-hot, the pots are carefully taken out and put into the metal garbage cans. The stuff inside the cans immediately burst into flames, then a little more stuff is thrown on top, a little fan for the flames and pop the lids back on. Once the lid is in place, the fire sucks out all the oxygen and then it all sits and stews for 40mins.

Finally, carefully, the pieces are taken out and put into a water bath.. and check out how things came out!

Every piece comes out completely different (depending on where in the can it is, how the fire plays on the glaze and how well the lids seals) .. but they're all so pretty!

Raku is definitely quicker and you never know how things will come out.. there may or may not have been some fire that got into the bin holding the hay.. and the garbage can at the end.. but no people were harmed in our little party and we all came out with some unique pieces. There's even talk of trying it again and I'm totally in!