In February, Lillstreet tore down and rebuilt the soda kiln. I participated in both phases, and am glad to have the hands-on experience. There was plenty of work to go around, and I think I did a bit of everything!

Tearing down a kiln involves a bit of sledgehammering. But mostly it’s about moving refractory brick.

And there is quite a bit of brick.

After the walls were down, we discovered a big goof in the previous build. The walls were only half supported – just the exterior wythe! Everybody had wondered and conjectured why the walls were bowing out, but nobody knew about this foundational problem. This was not a brilliant move by the previous kiln builder, but did explain everything. Of course the rest of the kiln had followed the walls; the roof looked a lot like a Pringle. Mystery solved. We did some unplanned work under the floor before continuing the build.

Building a kiln is also mostly about moving refractory brick.

The kiln was dry stacked. A bit of low-shrink refractory material was used to level on occasion, but by and large it was just… stacking brick.

A wood form was used for the arch, which was removed once the key, made of castable refractory material, was set.

But again, mostly it was about moving refractory brick.

However you have to.

I learned that kiln brick are not all exactly the same size and shape. Since we were dry-stacking, it turned out that flipping a brick over, or flipping it end-to-end, would sometimes gain that last 1/16″ that was necessary. Even though the kiln was built on the brick module, brick aren’t all the same length, either: we used plenty of shims. A rubber mallet did wonders, too.

What else? Oh yes, the brick saw. That was fun to use. For shaving, shims, and other brick-cutting needs!

A modified hand saw works well on soft brick.

The burner ports in the old kiln were a bit oversized. This made it tougher to get a good draw. The new kiln, with smaller burner ports and a larger flue entrance should fire faster.

Another way to slow a kiln down is to use two wythes of hard brick. Hard brick doesn’t insulate particularly well, but resists soda, so is the obvious choice for the interior. The exterior had hard brick header courses but is otherwise mostly soft brick. Dry stacked masonry. Good stuff. Hopefully I’ll be doing it again soon.

Just one photo of a brick from the old kiln.

Credits: Photos for this post were taken by various people and come from the cameras of myself, Doug Jeppesen, Morgan Lee Beryl, and Judy Cohn.

I stumbled across this thought-provoking article at Glasstire. It’s a quick read and I encourage you to spend a moment with it. The opening sentence: The worst piece of art I’ve ever made is also one of the most important pieces of art I’ve ever made. It goes on from there. This post won’t be a summary, though, and it’s more thoughts and questions than it is conclusions.

In the article, author Michael Bise talks about the worst piece of art he ever made. It was an object that he made as a means of dealing with another artifact – from a big, bad, and difficult event in his life. One of many artworks, actually: most were two-dimensional. “I made hundreds of these drawings. . . . None of the things I did with it either satisfied me or resulted in good art.”

I observe two things. Making art served as therapy – and I want to do nothing to detract from that as valid in its own way – and it failed to produce good art. This raises the questions: what is good art? And: what produces good art?

Related observations. Observation #1: I’m told that art, now, has an emphasis on the individual, the individual voice, &c, that it didn’t have in earlier times. Where this leaves the unknown craftsman and the beautiful but ordinary bowl, I don’t know. Bise’s work falls into the “deeply personal” camp. Observation #2: And then there’s the genre of art whose appreciation depends upon one’s reading of the placard on the wall. I don’t want to throw all things called “conceptual art” into this category, as there are artists whose work I find lovely and intriguing and that would make pleasant house-mates that is (as I learned much later) deeply conceptual. And, of course, we can’t get this neatly into a box because taste varies. Bise’s piece, pictured in the article, may or may not fall squarely into the “placard-conceptual” camp: since I knew the story before I saw the piece, there’s now no way of knowing. You can’t just close Schrödinger’s box back up again.

A reflection on process: making bad art can also simply be part of the process of making good art. It can be the drafts wherein the kinks are worked out. Ironically, I am at times hesitant to set pen to paper (or hands to clay) precisely because the kinks aren’t worked out. (Does anybody else have that?)

Oh, fail. (Dimensions: 5w x 5d x 3h)

I made this really bad piece a few weeks ago – got halfway through and realized that this wasn’t what I’d intended. Everybody loved it, but it wasn’t what I was after. The spikes were too even, the little curves too perfect, and it wasn’t quirky enough. I realized halfway through that it was all wrong, but was having fun making it. The piece that followed it was more in the right direction.

Nonetheless, I got some good information.

Odd number one: I added reCAPTCHA to the site. That was easy enough. (You’ll only see the word verification if you comment through design-realized.)

End number two: I made a shiny new contact page. It took more work than you’d think, but I’m pleased with the finished product.

And I made a speech bubble for it. This (getting the size and position right, mostly) was the most time-consuming enterprise of all.

Yay.

Okay, okay, it’s been a month. But I can explain! A week of warm weather meant a bunch of long days riding my bike and taking pictures. Then three weeks of more art activities.

For a couple months, I used this mug all the time. The other mugs were probably getting jealous. And I was starting to feel guilty for my favoritism.

But the reasons are more utilitarian than anything else. Mixing instant breakfast with milk means, first, that the mug has to hold enough liquid. Second, it needs a profile that’s good for stirring powder, which is prone to clump and settle and need to be whisked back into the fold. Third, it helps if there’s room to stir vigorously, without sloshing. So here we are.

Besides that, I have little to say. Oddly, though, I have little to say. Got the mug a couple years ago at an Empty Bowls. The surface demonstrates that much good can be made of an iron-bearing clay body, a white crackle slip, and a copper blue glaze. And yes, my kitchen counter really is that awful ’50s laminate.