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Matt Bukrey (currently Simon Levin’s apprentice) generously invited me to participate in the third firing of Gary the Groundhog. And I accepted. Also firing the kiln were two local ceramicists, Gail and Gareth.
This post is partly about the woodfire, and partly about how beautiful I found it to be up in Wisconsin for those few days. Bear in mind that it was cold and rainy the entire weekend: we jokingly and repeatedly inquired after each others’ sense of the absurd.
Absurd or not, though, for me those were some happy days.
I arrived the night before, in the dark, and stayed with Matt and his wife Jaime. This view beats my bedroom by miles; thirteen feet away is a bunch of vinyl siding.
Gary doesn’t have a kiln shed, so our first task, given the weather, was to make some shelter. I took this photo later; here’s the finished product, a tensioned-green-tarp structure. A marvel of improvisational architecture and engineering, if I say so myself. This architect had a lot of fun.
Since we had to build our gypsy shelter first, it took awhile to finish the first half of the loading.
And longer to finish the second half, though we could have used a couple more pieces. By the time the door was bricked, it was 4am, and I had the candling shift. A little tiny fire, in one of the primary air openings. For six hours. Fortunately I’d spent a couple hours dozing in the warmth of the studio. Wood stoves are wondrous; this was my first experience with one.
Sometime after I woke up and came to the kiln following my candling shift. Here’s Gary! My next shift was pretty easy, as we were aiming for a 50-degree-an-hour climb through quartz inversion.
I tucked an old pillowcase into the top of my jeans, just to shade my legs while I stoked. Early in the firing, it had a run-in with the jamb of the stoke door. Kind of pretty, though. The radiant heat was such that I had to shed my jacket, sweater, and vest… but a trip to the studio meant I had to put at least a jacket back on.
And absurdity returns. Day and night and dusty camera lens, we keep firing. Got some serious lookouts going with super-stokes.
For a sense of scale, here are Matt and Gareth watching the stack. (Bear in mind that the firebox floor is lower than their feet.)
Stoke door and primary air. I made a groundhog-ish head as a handle for the stoke door. Unfortunately it cracked, but it was pretty fun and cute. (Though it was cold out and after the 4am start, I lost all sense of time. But not my sense of the absurd.)
Gail and I tend the kiln and enjoy some shelter from the elements. I’m down to a longsleeve tee, though it’s chily out: radiant heat. We burned, I’m guessing, about six times as much cordwood as you see in the photo, and two or three times as much volume of lath. This was my favorite spot to sit, though I moved a little further back when night fell. The better to hear the kiln.
Matt and Gail under the gypsy tent; saw horses and a pallet made a makeshift table, which kept our snacks out of canine reach. Numerous guy lines keep tension on our fabric structure, which sheds water nicely. There wasn’t much breeze, fortunately.
Simon’s kiln shed. I love all the pines around here.
(What firing report is complete without a picture looking into the kiln?) Toward the end of the firing, the firebox was full of embers. We birmed up from the bottom of the door to the floor, nearly a foot higher. The firebox is about three feet deep.
Matt, Gail, me, and Gary. Almost done firing. We’re going to make it. Yay.
My favorite part of the drive to Simon’s was this hill, flanked by yellow-leaved trees. It was like something out of “Lord of the Rings.” More shots of the area after the break.
Damp road and glowing sky. I like the atmospheric quality of these shots.
Color composition. Luminous sky and a long view.
Trees. Time and distance are different in here; an hour to get somewhere isn’t a big deal, and it’ll take you fifty or seventy miles from where you are.
A bend in the road that I really liked. Had to stop and take a photo.
I was standing on Matt’s back steps for this one. That evening I cooked dinner for the three of us; it’s a rare treat to cook for others. Matt and I had a great time talking about ceramics; his experience is quite different than mine. In my spare time (with four of us, there was some off-shift time that wasn’t spent sleeping) I thumbed through some of the books and catalogs he’s accumulated. All in all, the weekend was a treat.
Finally, on Tuesday morning, a clear sky, and sunshine. Glory be.
We took down the tent toward the end of our firing (the weather obliged us by sprinkling again afterward; I was alone with the kiln and also ran around moving things into shelter). Matt made a flag for the kiln with a bit of tarp. We were all tired and a bit silly. Bye bye, Gary, see you soon.
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