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Natural Ash Galleries
A Collaboration
Firing the anagama is a collaboration. I work in partnership with the clay, heat, flame, and ash deposits. Examining past firings each one distinctly stands out. With every cycle specific choices are made about what clay to use and how to cool the kiln. New ideas for stacking are tried. The weather is never the same. All affect the palette achieved. Each cycle of work has its own dialect. Each is a recalibrated search for feeling. With evolving materials, shapes, volumes, and textures each firing becomes individual in flavor and in the execution of specific ideas.
Firing
Our anagama (hole or cave) kiln has a gentle slope which creates a strong natural draft as if a chimney were lying on its side. We usually take three days to stack the kiln. How objects are placed affects how the ash will flow and what markings will be created. There are stacks of plates with dust prints placed on the cooler floor of sand. Large jars are in front becoming partly covered with the large coal bed created during the firing. Other pots are upside down, often stacked on each other leaving distinctive shadow markings from the deposits of the natural ash. Ash carried by the flame flows through the kiln adherring to the pots as they become molten hot. We often compare the flow to a rapid coursing stream filled with boulders and rocks causing the sediment to fall out. Firings usually begin Friday morning after an overnight preheat. There is someone in constant attendance, feeding the proper amount of wood every fifteen to twenty minutes until sometime Sunday afternoon some 56 hours later. It takes one week for the kiln to cool before we can unstack. Each firing holds around 500 objects.
