Join us for a lively talk about the lure of atmospheric firing and a virtual hands-on tour of the national juried exhibition PLAYING WITH FIRE: Altered Atmospheres with the juror himself, Massachusetts potter, Mark Shapiro. Mark, SCAC Director Jill Fishon-Kovachick and SCAC Artistic Director Leigh Taylor Mickelson will talk together about why potters notoriously love playing with fire and why clay lovers keep buying their pots. We will also reveal the winners of the Juror’s Choice and Director’s Choice awards and hear why those pots stood out. Lastly, we will take questions and comments from our audience to continue the dialogue.
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In his curator’s statement, Shapiro states, “Artists’ relationship with their materials is at the heart of the creative process. Regardless of the discipline—be it based in installation or social practice, old-fashioned easel painting or any of the material-based crafts—how we relate to the materials from which we make things is fundamental to the nature of the work.
“Potters have lots of materials to choose from. Clays and firing methods present an astonishing range of visual and tactile possibilities, from porcelain to stoneware to earthenware and even paper-clay and from electric to gas to wood firings. And that doesn’t even get into kiln design and packing and firing routines. While potters render their imaginations in form, they always start with clay and end with fire.
“Ceramics is an art of speculation: the clay in the raw state little resembles what we see upon the unloading of the kiln. We enter the kiln twice—loading and unloading—but not, alas, when it is sealed and hot. Just as we cannot breathe underwater, the interior of a glowing kiln precludes our particular biology—its extremity in fact precludes all biological life. One of clay’s unique and seductive qualities is its plasticity, its unmediated responsiveness to touch. We revel in the immediacy and variety of its record of our grip, our tools; every inflection of pressure applied on the state of its hardness—from soup to leather—is a celebration of the possible. But while the kiln is performing its hardening alchemy, we are barred from such play. The die is cast: we cannot enter to alter shape or surface. The kiln’s transformative logic has the last say.
“But the extent to which firing demands and engages the potter varies broadly, depending on type of kiln, its design, how it is loaded, fired, and even cooled. The continuum from computer-programmed electric top-loaders to gas kilns (in their heating and cooling and reduction cycles), and the many configurations of wood kilns from small “fast-fire” to subway-car length anagamas that fire for a week or more, demand increasing preparation and commitment. Before pots even go into the kiln, there is wood to split, stack, and season, as well as teams of stokers to recruit and organize.
“In physically building the fire and manipulating it as it unfolds—adjusting burners and dampers, varying stoking rhythms and wood types, and playing with the atmosphere—we come closer to the impossible: we stand at the mouth of the forbidden chamber of the glowing kiln and actively alter the surface of our hardening wares. Physically engaging the firing at its source (the burner and stoke ports that make the heat), at the primary and secondary air vents that mix the combustion, and at its exit (manipulating passive and active dampers that control the flow), not to mention introducing sodium or building charcoal, we become palpably connected to the unsurvivable interior of the kiln. Our fiddling, stoking, adjusting, and throwing stuff into the fire touches something transgressive, elemental, and essential. These firings perhaps enact the universal myth—Promethean and global—of stealing fire from the gods. We potters are really trying to get away with something.”