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Raku!
This pottery class is more involved timewise than
I thought it would be. We have spent all of our time on the
wheel,(making more and more stuff) and then we run out of time for
doing other things like trimming up the pieces and adding things on to
them (handles, decorations, etc) and glazing. Because of this, we
have had to go into the art center several times during the week to
catch up. The kids have been great about this. Artsy and I
go together, so our kids can play and talk. THey mostly play with
clay, and we have brought in other stuff like paper and crayons and
paint and pastels to give them something different to do.
Yesterday was really neat...a kid- pyromaniac's dream! (and an
adult one's, for that matter!) The art teacher, "R",
had fired up the raku kiln, and was going to glaze some pieces of her
own. So we each picked one of our pieces and glazed it up
really quick, so we could raku these pieces, too. Wow!!!!
Raku has it's origins in Asia, and is mostly thought of as a Japanese
glazing/firing method. It means "happy accident", and basiically you
leave the look of the piece up to an element of chance. The piece is glazed
with a special kind of glaze, and then placed in a kiln at about 2000
degrees F till it is red-hot. Then the piece is carefully
taken out of the kiln with tongs and heavy duty gloves, and thrown into
a container full of natural combustables...grass, leaves, sawdust,
newspaper, etc, and the smoke produced by the hot pot combusting the
natural clippings changes the look of the glaze. THen the piece
(while it is still hot) is put into a water bath for quick cooling, so
the glaze crackels.
So Artsy and I glazed up our coiled pots from the first night of our class.
The picture above is my funky coiled pot. We used glazes
called "copper penny", "saffire blue". and she also used a green.
We just kind of put the different colors on here and there...they
looked like camoflauged pots when we finished glazing. Then they
were put in the kiln for about an hour to 90 minutes. We and the
kids watched as R. took each piece out of the kiln...each one was
glowing translucent and orangy and metallicy. "Ohhh...ahhh" was
what we uttered exicedly. Then she put both pieces into a
metal garbage can full of grass clippings. THe clippings burst
into flames! More excited squeals. THen she threw
some more clippings on the top, and shut the lid for about 5 minutes to
let the whole thing smoke. Then it was time for a water bath in a
bucket. R. took out the pots (clumped with burning grass) and put
them into a bucketof cold water. We listened to the steam.
Then we tookthem inside, cleaned them up with water and a little ajax,
and voila! Beautiful, shimmery, metallic, mosiac, happy accident
raku pots! Artsy's pot was a coiled heart, and it turned out just
beautiful...you can really see the copper shining in hers. I'll
try to get over to her place and take a picture.
R. said she is going to do raku on Tuesday, and by then, we will have
had our last class to glaze all of our pieces. So Tuesday we'll be
bringing in the kids to the studio again to do the raku. More
artsy, metalic pyrotechnics to ohh and ahh at! 
I love the homeschooling lifestyle...it opens us up to so many
opportunities to do things during the day! I like being able to
share acitivites with my kids in easy, nonformal, spontaneous ways that the respond
to! I'm very happy that we are all enjoying working with clay.
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| | Posted 8/28/2004 7:36 AM - 8 views - 0 comments
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