Odyssey Class : "Wood-Fired Micro kilns"

Wood firing produces a huge range of results. The piece above is from UNC-Asheville’s anagama in 2007, titled unglazed. It went in just raw white stoneware. I put it under the grate in one of the side stoking chambers and as the kiln was fired it was covered with more and more wood ash. You can see the three distinct wadding marks with a significant amount of wadding remaining on two of the areas at the bottom. This is one of the most beautiful pieces of my work to come out of a wood kiln. All the color, rivers of iron and caked on coals are from the wood and atmosphere of the kiln.

I’ll be teaching a workshop at Odyssey Center for Ceramic Arts called “Woodfired Micro Kilns” from April 8th to May 13th. This class will focus on kiln design. In the description it says we will fire mini pots and there may be time to do that but the intent is not necessarily for the student to leave with a finished piece of work. The intent is to gain a basic knowledge of kiln design and an understanding of how flames move through space and how to manipulate the flame path. Since the class is one day a week for 2.5 hours there’s not a lot of time to fully fire our wares. After all, heat work is a combination of temperature and time. HOWEVER, we will have so much fun building small kilns with scrap brick and firing them enough to observe the flame path and get a good, long fire going. We will see who gets a flame out the top of their chimney first! We will also play around with low fire materials like borax, oxides, melting glass and other fun stuff. Of course, I will be posting photos of our fiery research.

Contact Molly

poorepots(at)gmail.com