This past Spring I took the chance to catch a ride out to Rough and Ready, California where I grew up.  I was able to visit family and stay with my Mother and Father.  While I was there I saw some of my early pottery proudly on display.  The sight of it made me cringe.  I tend to look at my work with a very critical eye.  There are very few pieces that I have made that I can look at and go, “That actually is very nice”.  When people hear me talk about my own work this way they give me the *hairy eyeball* and tell me I am crazy.  Maybe it is because in my mind I am nowhere near *arriving*, I would hate to think that in my short career as an Artist that I have “Made It” already, I still see the potential for so much growth in the work I do, whether it is wheel thrown functional ware or the abstracted figurative sculpture that has drawn so much of my attention as of late.  While the early work may make me shudder to look upon, it is also motivational for me.  It provides me with a benchmark, some tangible work that I can see and compare with my current body of work.  It helps me to see the progress I have made in technique, design, and skill as an artist.  It gives me a measure of my growth, and so in the end I am grateful to my mother for saving those hideous pieces, for storing them away where I could not get my hands on them, to give them the “Hammer Treatment”, and break them in a fit of shame.  It is important for us to keep a record of where we have been so we can see where we are going, and the path that has brought us there.

Replacing the elements in my Skutt Kiln was not as arduous a task as I thought it would be.  The kiln is actually pretty easy to maintainance once I got into the task of replacing them.  I bought the kiln used almost a year ago, despite the obvious wear I could not pass up the price that they were asking for it.  Most of the firebrick is in good condition, except for the top ring where there was some wear and tear.

Besides getting power to the kiln, there was one other obstacle in my way of using the kiln.  It was rated for 208 volts  single phase and a quick check with the local utilities verified that we have 240 volts single phase here at the studio.  So I called up Skutt the kiln’s manufacturer to find out what I needed to do so I could safely fire the kiln.  Skutt informed me that all that was required was a change in the elements rated for 208v to 240v. Once that was done the kiln would then be rated for cone 8 instead of cone 5.  I ordered the elements, 2 per ring, and a few new bricks for the top ring to replace the ones that were in really bad shape.  A few days later the replacement parts showed up to my delight.  Unfortunately that was during the middle of the spring semester and I would not have enough free time to change out the parts until this past week after I had gotten home and settled from my study abroad to Italy.

I took a few pictures to help illustrate the steps involved in changing the elements in a Skutt Kiln.

The first picture is of the kiln before I started the project.

I decided the easiest way change the elements was if I had the kiln disassembled and worked my way up from the bottom ring to the top.  As you can see in the image the kiln has been constructed in 5 major pieces, the bottom, 3 rings that hold the elements and the lid.  There is a rod that hold the kiln’s lid open on left side that is held to the lid by a thumb screw, once removed the rod can be taken off an the rod that holds the hinge together and the lid can be lifted off the kiln, I suggest that you get someones help when lifting these parts and moving them as the firebrick is fragile and easily broken, it is also very expensive to replace.  After removing the lid, I had to take the controller off the front and separate the rings.

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I have a few pieces of green ware patiently waiting for me to get my kiln finished so I can start firing them and treating their surfaces with vitreous engobes.  I had an assignment from one of my teachers this past spring to work in a series and he wanted me to work in clay since that was my strength, which is funny to me because I was in an interpretive drawing class at the time.  After many hours of doodling in my sketchbook I started to notice a pattern to my madness and settled into doing Kiln Gods.  In my line of work no matter what preparations are made, there is still a lot left up to chance.  We prepare our work to the best of our ability, and try to control the firing process as much as possible, but in the end there are some things out of our control, in a way it is analogous to life and there comes a time in life when we have to say that we have done all that we can do and place the rest into the hands of a higher power.  For me that is what the Kiln Gods represent.  They have been used by potters the world round to watch over their firings and help them get through the process with the best possible results as then can.  The ones that I sculpted are not modeled after any specific cultures existing Kiln Gods, but are symbolic to me or my interpretation of what I think may be important to the culture that influenced them.  Part of me hesitates to share this work in progress, but I want to share something with you that I have been working on recently: