Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Chapter III: Anagama

At the time the art department at UT was scattered everywhere while the A&A Building was being built. Ceramics was in a fifties style flat roof contemporary style house. handbuilding in the front room, wheels in the back, glazing in the kitchen, mixing on the patio, and a couple grads in the bedrooms. But it did have a nice sloping back yard with huge, mature pines over top of the kilns. All in all a very compact but busy place.

Finally A&A was ready and the whole undergrad operation moved two blocks away. Melrose became Ted and the grads studios with the salt kiln in the back. Now just before I got involved in the program Shiro Otani had been a visiting artist at school before he built the Big Valley anagama at Arrowmont during the summer, so when it came time to take a kilnbuilding class, David Kaufman and I wanted to build something wood fueled. Dr. Darrow had been to Europe for a symposium that summer, and suggested a trench kiln, dirt channel with kiln shelve top.

Well OK, so we strung it out and started digging, which did not take long, and we shaped it up nice and clean. We stood back took a good look, looked at each other, decided it was way too cheesy, now what? Next thing we know, ran the string farther down the slope and started outlining a baby anagama with old brick on the grass.

Next: "Back Up The Truck!"

1 comment:

  1. Hey Pat, loving the history. When did you start the digging? 1982?

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