It was a gorgeous day to be outside digging dirt, cutting wood, and walking with Jack. The clay pit in my filed has been neglected until today and I dug about 6 five gallon buckets of dirt, blunged and sieved it through my window screen sieve/box. It settles quickly and is in a garbage can and two galvanized tubs. Here's a picture of my sponge-siphon drawing extra water off of the clay tub. I thought of this after hanging a towel on the edge of my clean up water bucket one day. After a few minutes I noticed that the towel was wicking water out of the bucket and onto the floor. So her you can see where I've rigged a big sponge over the edge of the tub and held it in place my the angle iron. It really poured for a long time like this until the water level had gone down beyond the reach of the sponge. I know you're probably thinking that there has got to be a more efficient way for some one to process their clay!! I'm sure there is, but this is all on the fly so that I can get the clay processed for tomorrow's mixing. Usually I let this red dirt sit in racks for a couple of weeks.I have the girls to "help" tomorrow and will try to mix about 800 lbs of my red dirt stoneware.
I continued where I left off before the rains, with the kiln wood cutting and stacking. The wood's pretty soggy, but I think will be fine for #33 coming up on the 25th. It'll be a close one. I guess they all are. Maybe next year I will catch up.Ha!
My good pal IlaSahai came over to make some pots for the first time in a long time. Ila and I go way back to my earliest days in Worthington, Mass. Originally from Gloucester, Mass. Ila has been involved with the Penland School as a core student and later as a resident artist! Like many former resident's, Ila bought property in the neighborhood and now calls Bakersville home. She is currently on the faculty at ASU (Appalachian State University) in Boone, NC. It was great to see her making pots in my studio. She'll be back tomorrow to tend to the pots she made today. It's been a long time since we worked in the pottery studio together. Well, technically I wasn't making pots today, but you know what I mean, and I hope we can do it more often!
Here's an article from 2006 on Ila's residency at Raliegh, NC's Artspace Gallery 1
That's all for now, nighty night...
