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We're enjoying Spring Break! Spent a few days in Seattle for my mom's birthday. Leaving for three days in Sunriver in just minutes. . . Cheers!

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Al was kind enough to inform me that my brain activity actually started to decline at 27. Thank goodness I didn't realize it then! He also have me this lovely gift which I intend to sample immediately.
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AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Here in a few hours I'll pick my little sister up from school and drop her off at the airport so that she can visit her scum-bag-dope-peddling boyfriend before traveling to Mexico with a friend and said friend's family. I don't know why, but she seems to pick the lamest friends. They're "funny and sweet and nice" according to her. They also get their families evicted from their houses, get sent to other states to finish high school because they can't get their shit together and they drop out of high school to sell pot from their mother's couches. I don't understand why she makes those choices; she's otherwise very bright, witty as hell, emotionally stable(a miracle in my family) and fun to be around.

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I dropped Tiffani's car off this morning to have the bumper, I cracked, replaced. I Just got a call saying it was going to coast $60 more to fix because I'm missing a piece of impact foam. If I can sculpt an Crank Brothers Eggbeater bicycle pedal out of foam at 8X it's normal size, I think I could sculpt a piece of impact foam. Furthermore, I could do it for less than $60. However, if I did, I'd call it art and sell it for 10X that amount. . . Topsy turvy topsy turvy.

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Guy at the coffee shop is eating a bagel and reading High Times. I'm surrounded by stoners and drunks. Just now I exited a city bus 60 blocks prior to arriving at my destination. The cause: two drunk guys that smelled so terrible, were so dirty they had a sheen and (i think) had just pissed themselves as a joke. Seriously, douche number one says, "give it a squeeze" holding his finger out for douche number two, who laughes hysterically but sounds more liking he's suffocating. He squeezes the guys finger and almost instantly the bus is filled with a considerably more pungent cloud of slimy scent. Not a flatulence smell, but rather a urine smell. I pulled the cable to exit just as 19 or 20 other people reached for the cord or their noses. As I shoved my way out the back door, los dos douches exited the front, wheezing. Behind me, as I headed towards the coffee shop, I overheard one of them say something about getting another bottle of wine. I'm assuming it was MD2020 or Thunderbird. How awesome if they were drinking Pinot Noir.

So, the song I was talking about is finished and has been submitted, mastered and burned to a disc, then given to Dan Jones for his 40th birthday. A bunch of us were fortunate enough to have been invited to participate in this awesome birthday surprise. Saturday night we all descended upon the Wandering Goat in Eugene. Dan knew that he was having a birthday party, but not that he was going to witness a bunch of friends playing his songs. It was a really great night. There was delicious beer and food along with a lot of really great songs played by people that really love that guy. My favorite of the night was most definitely Brian's and Kelley's family band "Orson Wales", rendition of Walking Blue. It was so earnest and beautiful.  I am pretty sure most people thought it was the "best" song of the night. Brian played Vibes and Kelley sang and played the shaker. Overall the night was a tremendous success and ended with a drunken jam session.

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Sunday, I awoke to find that Tiffani had successfully navigated and piloted our vehicle to Portland in the night. I rushed to the studio to complete my sculpture final and finished just before the studio closed. That meant that I had Monday to work, study and catch up on some cheesy television via the internet. Finals week is nice when I'm feeling prepared. No class, except for finals and I get to sell a bunch of books back, which means maybe I can buy Tiffani something nice for my birthday.

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On that note, I had better get to campus for my first final.

Fried chicken

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Wood fire! ! !

It's 5 am and I just returned home after a shift firing the wood kiln at school. It was fairly uneventful, unlike two years ago. That time, I was just finishing my shift. I went to throw one more log into the firebox, and as I let go of it, I heard a very definite "clunk". Not a sound I was hoping to hear. As I peered into the firebox, my heart sank as I realized I was looking at the ceiling slowly collapsing. We were at or around Cone 6 Which is well over 2000 degrees, but trying to get to Cone 10 (2350ish). With a bit of panic and a fair amount of pragmatic dynamism we formulated a plan to prop the ceiling with a piece of very heavy duty angle iron, while two of us used Raku tongs to remove all of the firebrick on top of the firebox. After removing the firebrick, we replaced the kiln shelf that acted as a ceiling for the firebox, and replaced the firebrick. This all took place in about 20 minutes. I remember at one point looking down at my shirt, through sweat dropping off of my brow, and wondering if my smoking shirt and pants might catch fire. When we finished, we checked the temperature and were heartbroken to realize that we had lost over 200 degrees in the ware chamber. The heavy duty angle iron we had used to prop the ceiling which had been straight as an arrow initially, was now shaped like a banana and bloody red hot! The temperature loss in the ware chamber was later exacerbated by the fact that in rebuilding the firebox ceiling and roof, we had lowered the temperature of that space significantly! The firebox at the beginning of the ordeal was probably over 2300 degrees and when we finished it was most likely 1500. . . Bummer, seriously. We ended up taking all of the work out of that kiln with crusty half fired glaze, flaking off, ash encrusted but unmelted and loading it into a gas fired kiln. The end result was not what we were hoping for but offered some decent surfaces. My work then was so bad. Talk about some ugly handles! It's funny to think that I've gotten so much more comfortable and confident in my throwing in such a short time. Two years from now, I'll be blogging about how silly my work is now. Such is life, right? BTW, I've got some work from the kiln here at the house. It is glazed in my celadon -ish glaze which is based on Leach's 1234 celadon. I talked about this a bit before and my tests turned out pretty good. I ended up using a base as described before with Neph Sy as the feldspar. The glaze doesn't have the timeless luscious soft stone look of chinese celadons, but it is a very classy crackly greenish transparent glaze that I'm positive I'll call juvenile in two years. I'm going to post the pieces on ETSY, which is a online art and craft sales venue. It's very cheap to post items for sale and they take a very small commission from sales. It will take me a couple of days, but they'll be there. If you would like to purchase some pottery that I've made, I'll donate all of the proceeds to a few different cancer fighting charities. I won't even keep the cost of clay.

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Oh yeah, when I left the kiln, we were looking at Cone 11 down on top and cone 11 soft on bottom! In english, this means that the firing was a success as far as temperature goes. I was stoking twigs and small rounds in 6 inch diameter handfuls as fast as I could organize them into a stoke-able unit. I based my pace from watching fingers of flame escaping from just above the heat-swollen arch. I subsidized my handfuls with split lumber whenever necessary. When those fingers turned to jazz hands, I surrendered subsidy. My goal in adding the twigs and small rounds(1 - 2 inches) was to create a reduction atmosphere(lack of oxygen in a kiln affects the color of glazes as well as the color of the clay body) as well as get some sustaining heat. We stirred the coals every thirty minutes in order to release ash into the ware chamber. We checked rings every 3 hours and when I left we had a very delightful astroglide(think of the sexy swimsuit models in sports illustrated) sheen(rings are literally rings of clay which are pulled from the hot kiln to assess the quality of ash buildup - ash travels from the firebox to the ware chamber and covers the pots, then melts and forms a glaze). Cones(indicate temperature) were checked hourly so that we might figure out what our ramps looked like(ramp = rate of heat increase).

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I messed up. I didn't actually load any of my own work into this kiln! I was joking about this tonight. This is the third firing I've worked without having any work in the kiln! Bummer. I'm totally entitled and invited to load work. I have, probably 30 pieces of bisque-ware sitting ready, but I dropped the ball on getting it loaded. . . What a douche I can be. C'est la vie right? Is that french? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

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I should let you know that the recording from last post turned out pretty good and while the purpose of said recording must be veiled in secrecy in case a very specific individual ever reads this blog(unlikely), I look forward to mixing the recordings on Tuesday. If you want to hear and know, what this is about, drop me a line at my email address and I'll send you an explanation and a copy of the song I recorded. I didn't write the song and it's a great song. I did not butcher it too badly. At least the drumming and bass playing is great! Brian and Rob helped out there.

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Jesus, it's 5:35 and I'm exhausted! Did I mention that, now I've been awake for 23 hours? It's true. I'd better grab some beauty sleep so Tiffani can stand to look at me tomorrow.

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Cheers

-oh yeah, check back for a link to my etsy page and help me defeat cancer for people everywhere!

Trouble sleeping and motivating, but good things are on the way

It's a very busy time, and for some reason I'm feeling an acute lack of motivation. I studied today for a couple hours. Did some light(very light) cleaning and am getting ready to head to not one, but two studios. The pottery studio should have some work for me to pick up, assuming the kiln has been unloaded. I tried to unload it on Saturday but it was still about 600 degrees when I got there. After I check in there, I'm headed to the recording studio to lay down some tracks. That might be really fun. I'm having trouble sleeping at night and having a hard time waking up when I do sleep. It was going so well for about a week. Now I'm listening to a recording of Naum Gabo, Constructivist Sculptor, reading from his "Realistic Manifesto". What a weirdo. I like his work.

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I'm excited for the wood firing at PCC this weekend. I've got a Saturday shift from midnight to 5am. I like the late shifts. Something about chopping wood and stoking the kiln in the still of the night is a good thing. I have some pieces for the kiln and hope it all goes well. I've worked 3 wood fires at PCC and not one has reached cone 10. I have been told that they managed to rebuild the kiln and it has been getting great results. 

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There is a Anagama kiln in Astoria and there will be a workshop there in April. I'm trying to figure out how I can attend the workshop and miss a week of school and work. . . It's not really a reasonable thing.

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I guess that's it for now, I'd better hit the road to avoid a bit of the traffic.

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Cheers