Koetsu bowl at the Freer

"In the storage collection is the Koetsu bowl that was handed to me (casually) by the curator, in 2007. Remarkably small and light. I eventually responded to this experience by making hand-formed bowls. It is described as coil built, and the angularity and lack of rounded surfaces suggests it was formed using the paddle tool."

Good Read

"More and more I find myself identifying with Stonehouse, a Fourteenth Century Chinese Hermit, not because I live alone (which I don't), but because I proclaim a certain restraint in life end eschew the excessive materialism of our time. He always kept his gate open but only late in life did a few monks move up the mountain with him, building a temple which remained until the Cultural Revolution. The stone house is still there on Hsiamushan. We all prefer to lead unexamined lives and practice unexamined art, I suppose. The Kansas photographer Pok Chi Lau taught me so much about visual observation as a means of exposing ambiguities and questions, discovering meanings as well as enigmas. The studio here in Alexandrria has come to be called Stone House to honor the old monk. The publisher is of the book Mercury House. Here is the cover of the copy I have."

Freer pot

I've been posting about this collection for some time now - just wanted to touch bases with it again. Here is an excellent example of an ash glazed stoneware jar. My experience with ash glazes is that they work well in most kilns and especially well in wood kilns, even though it is not the currently popular trend in wood fire.

See the entire 800 item Southeast Asia collections of the Freer & Sackler now available at:

http://SEAsianCeramics.asia.si.edu

DIY potter, Free Glazer, Crazed Dripster, Wandering Poet

Just the other day I came to the realization that I embraced a number of conflicting points of view about art and clay. Had it not been for my studies here in D.C. I don't think I could have sorted out the philosophical elements involved. Especially the multi-museum event on dada 2 years ago and the literature in museum book stores at that time. I think my thesis is pretty much complete as far as that goes. I have seen so many go on to advanced degrees without a clue as to what they say or believe or do, its shameful. I have always believed a background in the humanities and art history is a huge plus. The issues surrounding contemporary art can't be ignored, that is just a reaction. What is true in clay is also true in life; we may live with more skill or less. It is what is in our heart, or soul, that counts. You can meditate forever and not see this. More stuff in our world isn't going to help. More money, and living faster and faster; it won't help. You have to make this moment count for something. Pilot Baba calls samadhi "the great adventure." My pots are the creations of a contemplative practice, but "every pot has it's own soul"

Dug Earth

Available to me is a cross section of earth about 6-10 feet in depth of the hill here. I have concluded that the clay undergoes a transformation due to organic growth - as minerals are drawn to the surface by plants. (More recently I have learned that the grey iron is due to FeO and the red iron Fe2O3 - so the surface action is oxidizing the iron) The red near the surface and grey under it are basically the same clay. They are cross bedded, so the stratigraphy does not reflect this coloration change; only proximity to the current surface. Ball clays in England and Kentucky are a product of this same phenomenon, they are bedded under coal and the plant growth has sapped all the minerals out of it. Thus it fires to around cone 10 rather than cone 6.

However, at 6 to 10 feet of depth, the bleaching of the clay stops, and a uniform brown stoneware clay is obtainable. It is much more compressed however and is beginning the process towards becoming a shale. It chips somewhat as I dig. I am mixing all the lighter-burning clays as though I were mining it. I have identified 8 different clays in this dig. This clay won't be available on a long term basis but the exercise is valuable educationally.

One of them is the light grey and red with marbling as they don't mix readily. Another is the light grey and gold marbled, which is what I have in my yard. I don't know why the clay dig comes up sometimes with gold clay, and sometimes with red, my guess is that it has to do with the original deposit from which the clay comes. The strata is cut diagonally, so from site to site there is variation.

The stoneware has a bit of sand as well as sand sized feldspar, so it has a "short" feel to it but works well. I have made several bowls from the more plastic varieties where the grey clay comes near to the present surface.

Koetsu style bowl by Hansen

Tea Bowl, by Hansen

This glaze is 50% my "Backyard Gold" which is a yellow pigmented fusible clay, high in what is probably mica particles, as it is a rapid "settle" mixture. The other %50 is mixed hardwood wood ash, unwashed, from charcoal burned until the ash is white. I added 3% Oregon bentonite which I also excavated and processed. Backyard Gold is only one of several clays I have found around the house. There is a strongly tinted red clay, and a clay that is halfway between the two. There is plenty of sandy soil available also. Loren Scherbak and her team fired the piece in her smokeless wood kiln in Rockville, MD. My design seems to work well in these types of kilns as the vertical sides seem to venturi the ash deposit into the bottom of the bowl, where it becomes trapped in the melt, and offers a ample visual element of it.