Getting Ready For North On 71

It's almost here.  North On 71 is about to open.  Let's take a look back and see what all was involved in making the show a reality.

There are a lot of moving pieces required to pull off an art show under the best of circumstances with plenty of lead time.  North On 71 has been brought to fruition in under 120 days.  That kind of turn around is only possible with everyone involved moving in the same direction and a ton of hard work.

Right out of the gate Brant Weiland and Tia Calkins took ownership of painting and organizing the pedestals for the show.  It is an easy sentence to say, but just those two tasks took these two many, many hours over the course of several days to complete.  Painting.  Drying.  Sanding.  Painting. Drying.  Sanding.  Stacking.  Organizing.......

......really, I mean organizing......

........and painting........

......and organizing.........

And that was just here at our home base.  We also made several trips down to the venue to build walls,  hang sheet rock, mud, sand, and paint.

Veronica Watkins making sure the new temporary walls are up to snuff.

Bobby Tso and Melody Monroe assembled, organized, and touched up the pedestals (also no small task).

David Harris getting in on the mudding and sanding action too.

The walls are starting to take shape.

Brad Watkins taking a quick break from mudding the walls.

Mr. Mac McClanahan, the gracious owner of the exhibition space (The Art Statuary Building), and a fellow artists/potter/ceramicist using his forklift skills to move a BIG table out of the way.

Mac has been extremely helpful, generous, and good-natured about this whole process.  A thousand 'thank yous' don't begin to do the job of conveying our gratitude to him.

A panoramic shot of the space as it starts to take shape.

.....mmmmmmm, more mudding.......

With the space nearly ready, it is time to start placing work.

The work is almost set.  We hope to see you at North On 71!

Exploring The Magical Soda Kiln: Vol III

With NCECA 2016 just a few days away, we had time for one last soda firing before the conference started and North On 71 opened.

But time was tight so we had to get things rolling immediately.

To add an extra wrinkle, Bob Schultz (our kiln-loading surgeon) was battling a post-travel head cold.  He just returned from attending the amazing Kate Horvat's thesis show Now THANKS, down in Arizona.  Even though Bob was probably operating at around 70%, he gave the loading of the kiln 100% of his attention.

Oh yeah, despite our best intentions, we still were loading the kiln in the dark......again......

Veronica Watkins grinding some of the schmootz off of the bricks so they could be used to build the door for the kiln.

Brick-by-brick the door goes up.

We also had Lauren Crawford, Tia Calkins, and Cassie Loran helping with the loading process.

The door is getting taller.....

We had time enough to light the pilot light and candle the kiln over night.  Bright and early the next morning Bob Schultz fired up the burners and the soda fire was underway.  It would be up to temperature and ready for the soda ash to be added around 10:30pm.

The kiln firing went off without a hitch.  We even added an OMEGA BURRITO to the firing process/sequence to make sure that anything that wasn't kicked up to eighty beforehand, did in fact, get kicked up to eighty!

Roughly 36 hours later it was time to dismantle the door.....

We try to document where the various ceramic goodies were positioned in the kiln so in case we have a certain result we wish to attempt to replicate, we know roughly where it was placed in the kiln.  Positioning and orientation in the kiln does affect the results.  Two identical cups with the same glaze can be placed in two different locations in the kiln and you will notice two distinctly different results.

Now let's see some of the results....

Cassie Loran.

Lauren Crawford.

Tia Calkins.

Veronica Watkins.

....and a close-up of one of mine.

Stay tuned for another artist profile and some more behind-the-scenes glimpses into the set-up of North On 71!