RAKU

When we gave up potting 23 years ago we had primarily been making "domestic" ware; mugs, bowls, and that sort of thing, and it was either made of stoneware clay or porcelain. Sheryl had become quite efficient as a commercial potter, sometimes making dozens of pots a day.
Today making pots at the local community college she is no longer concerned with speed, efficiency and the sort of pressures she once felt and consequently she has branched out and is experimenting more. Yes, she has made some stoneware and salt glazed pieces, but her current direction is with Raku. Raku pots have first been bisque fired then she decorates them with various glazes. Next they are placed in a special Raku kiln that heats up very quickly. It is then opened and with flames licking everything and everybody she reaches in with tongs while wearing long fireproof gloves and snatches out her red hot pot and puts it in a large bucket filled with newspaper, sawdust, leaves...whatever and everything bursts into flames to the point it could be mistaken for idolatry of some sort. This burning material belches out raw carbon which blackens the clay and gives everything a distinctive "Raku" look. The drawback to this is that the pots are still porous and therefore will not hold water, but WOW has she ever got some stunning results. It's a slow technique that no commercial potter could afford but hey...time we got! She's clearly having fun and every evening when she comes home, covered in clay, she is juiced up with energy, creativity and excited to be potting again. Its been fun.

Thanksgiving

Kaylin enjoys doing everything with her BaDah (Early on she couldn't say "grandma" so BaDah it was.) Obviously she likes turkey as well.
When you lick the whipped cream bowl...Brooklyn REALLY likes whipped cream.
Kaylin learns new tricks all the time. She is in a Spanish immersion kindergarten but we can't yet convince her to speak in Spanish.
Early mornings watching the I-pad. Kaylin already has had to show me how to navigate around it.
Thanksgiving arrived on Friday once again, as we share the kids with the other side of their families this time of year.
Somehow I took no photos of Tyler and Meghan who spent many hours building frames and then mounting their Indonesian batiks. They have two large "pictures" and not only did they do a wonderful job of mounting them but it was a joy to us to see how well they worked together on the project. Gee wouldn't a couple of photos have been nice?
Andy, Madri and the girls were their usual high energy selves. Sheryl and Andy played golf one afternoon and the next morning their entire family got up and quietly sat on the couch and watched a movie on their I-pad. They are such a great little family.
As always, Sheryl supervised the feast and we were all thankful to have the family all here together.

Costa Rica

The River from our hotel
Our Hotel
Crocs!
Sierpe
Grant, aka "Mister Roosterfish"
Pablo's boat
Ed's Pompano
Dave, Pablo and trevalle


Last February my good friend, Dave Hummel, and I cooked up a scheme to go fish Costa Rica. We arranged to meet up with Pablo Chavez (who turned out to be a great guy) and fish out of the sleepy little town of Sierpe on the southwest coast. Grant Pine and Ed Holcomb agreed to join us and last week we were off. It was the rainy season and each morning was sunny but man did it pour every afternoon. We boated 6 miles down the muddy river to the ocean, crossed the bar, which was quite an undertaking, and fished the warm waters and mostly caught big eye tuna. Grant was the master of Roosterfish and caught a couple of 20 pounders chucking poppers as big as coke bottles. We swam from the beach in front of Mel Gibson's, saw lots of whales, caught a bunch of fish we had never seen before, spotted iguanas, talked to the howler monkeys, spied parrots, made friends with the locals, drank some imperial, and ate a lot of fresh fish.
Costa Rica is different. In Oregon when we clean our fish we toss the fish guts and heads to the sea gulls or seals. In Costa Rica it was to the crocodiles.
On the way home we all agreed that Sierpe was a nicer little town than expected and Pablo was a terrific guide, but the fishing was just so-so. Nevertheless it was a great trip and I think all four of us had a really good time.

POTS

Salt Glaze

Salt Glaze

Raku

Our New Mugs

Wally's Class






Wally's Pots

When we were first married in 1970 Sheryl and I began to dabble with clay here at the craft room at Oregon State. We liked it. Clay was fun, therapeutic, and something in which we shared an interest.

When we went to Australia in 1972 the art teacher at my school was a clay guy and we kept at it as raw beginners...then New Zealand hit us. The Biology teaching job I was offered in New Zealand had been vacated by Lynn Spencer who had resigned to become a full time potter along with her husband Mike, an Oxford educated English teacher who would soon resign too, to take up potting.
All of our mutual interests quickly morphed into a wonderful friendship that is as strong today as it was in 1973. With Mike and Lynn the four of us together built our first kiln, compared notes, glazes, techniques, and went to firings. Then we all simply immersed ourselves in pots as the 1970's were the golden years for potters as we could sell everything we made.

After a full year of teaching in New Zealand, Sheryl resigned too, and took up potting full time as I stayed in the classroom chasing a regular paycheck. We left New Zealand in 1974 and went to Japan claiming we were going to teach English, which we did, but mostly we wanted to investigate the world of Japanese pottery, which at the time was the best in the world (my opinion).

When we finally returned to Oregon in 1976 our goal was for me to find a teaching job and a place where we could build a pottery. That was Klamath Falls and for about ten years we developed a somewhat successful production pottery studio/business in which Sheryl did the majority of the throwing while I built a large kiln, developed glazes and played the role of kilnmaster as she kept making beautiful pots. It was a wonderful, creatively rewarding venture and meshed well with raising the boys. Then in the late 1980’s Sheryl threw her back out and that ended our days of clay and headed us into the book business which made better money but never had the intrinsic rewards that the clay had provided.

We were done. In recent years our friends the Spencers as well of the rest of that pottery world of the 1970’s also either gave up potting or reduced their efforts to smaller kilns, smaller pots, and smaller buckets of heavy stuff to be hauled around,which is essentially what potters do. We gave away our wheels, glaze chemicals and tools. We dismantled the kilns we had built and moved on with our lives…but somewhere in the back of our minds we never released our connection to pots.

So now we have moved to Corvallis and whallah! There is an active pottery world here and instantly we were invited back. The big question was whether or not Sheryl’s back could allow her to hunch over a wheel and once again throw a few pots. She decided to give it a go and signed up for a class at our local community college. Normally such classes have a bunch of energetic kids who are trying to center a lump of clay and struggle to make tiny bowls. Not at Linn-Benton Community College! It’s a mature bunch of very talented people who are friendly, helpful and understanding.

The first night that Sheryl went off to class I was interested to get her report on how it went. She had not touched clay for 23years! Yes 23! I knew I would struggle if I tried to throw pots but she reported it was OK. The next day I went in to see the pots she had made and I was astounded. Twenty three years didn’t seem to faze her. Her shapes were gorgeous, her eye for design and shape and form and the ability to produce it all, was still there. Wow. Knocked my socks off.

She is still trying to work out the glazes and the kiln as we have no control over that half of the production which is absolutely critical, but it will come in time. It’s been fun. We even attended a workshop featuring Wally Schwab who has been potting in Oregon for 50 years. The guy was amazing as he threw clay that was so very moist. I never would have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.

Anyway there are once again new pots sitting around our home and it’s been fun. Thank You Corvallis.

OH MY GOSH! How do I describe Burning Man 2011?

The alien bar scene in Star Wars?
Here we are below playing Family Feud Burning Man Style.

There are overtones of Mardi Gras, and the Circus.


Barbara and Sheryl were rapt observers, as were we all!


Did I mention shades of Halloween?

There is an ethic of "radical inclusiveness" (and I might add - more common decency than you see from those types who want to do away with Social Security and Medicare.)


Throw in some whimsical, fantastical and often pyrotechnical art works and large to monumental “installations,” sculptures, inspirational temporary architectural structures, roaming and even soaring art vehicles lighting up the night, lots of fire and noise, a bit of nudity, and a very polite and giving crowd of individuals doing their own thing, and you have Burning Man.

There is live music to be discovered of all sorts, as well as techno-music concerts/sort-of-raves, seminars to make you blush and gifting of all sorts. Here we are "gifted" drinks on Tequila Tuesday.

In a desert tent arrangement we listened to some great live music and relaxed.


Mike and Randy also participated in yoga here when there was no music on.
Did I say we were occasionally gifted drinks? At this "bar" Carlyle was gifted an entire mug full of Rum. The rest of us managed to get some Coca Cola with our rum. Nothing is for sale, but you will, for example, be gifted with more Happy Hour drinks than you will be able to remember.

You can participate in yoga sessions and unknown numbers of community sponsored events, and if you need help – there will be somebody gifting it somewhere on the Black Rock Desert.

Bryon was riding his bike along the playa one night and his seat up and fell off! We searched everywhere for the part that connected the seat to the post - but no luck. (The luck was that Bryon wasn't impaled by the post when the seat rocketed off.) The next day we found a "bike shop" that gifted Bryon a new seat and post. Shortly after that Carlyle's tire blew out the sidewall, and here he is at the same bike shop where they gifted him a new tire and tube. The guy who organizes this "gifting" bike shop must work and plan and save all year long to come here and do this for the people of Burning Man. It is a very sweet thing.

It is a remarkable, hard to describe, festival of free thinkers and accepting people, arts and artists, performers and performances from the mundane to the astonishing.

The whole community is stitched together by the bicycle. It is a bicycle culture of gifting, and a culture of accepting and acceptance of everyone.

Bryon had gone to Burning Man last year (you could see his earlier blog entry), and his reporting of it helped inspire our friends Carlyle and Barbara Stout to buy tickets for this year.
They encouraged us to join them. but I was concerned – dust, wind, desert heat in the summer – did I really WANT to do this? Oh – what the heck – it would be an adventure, I was sure – and it is soooooo hard to pass up an adventure!


We were happy that Mike Reeder and Randy Albert decided to come along too, and our tribe of six headed out in two motor homes and one truck with a trailer. Once reaching the Black Rock Desert, the three hours of S_L_O_W_L_Y creeping the short distance from the road into the dusty, wind driven, playa of Burning Man began our acclimatization.

Mike and Carlyle

Bryon and Randy

Bryon rigged up a tarp for our encampment that attached to all three vehicles and gave us shade all day long. The Stout’s wonderful carpet transformed us into a caravanserai where we could rest on cots during the heat of the day and share our stories of life and experiences on the playa.

Sometimes we were out all alone or in some combination of some or all of us together. There was so much to see and do at Burning Man that it was almost overwhelming. There is no way you can see it all. But we gave it our best shot. (If you enlarge this next picture you will see with a chuckle that it is The Naked Man Bike Ride.)

And this is a major facet of the entire Burning Man experience: