Trails and Side-tracks

With the approach of Thanksgiving, the steady pace of production had slowed down a bit in the factory. On Wednesday before the holiday, the sense of excitement in the air was unmistakeable. Most non-essential associates left early for their holiday preparations and it became more difficult to get anything done that was not strictly limited to my studio.
For the first time in two months, I took a day off.

On Thanksgiving day, we went hiking to the northern section of the Kettle Moraine State Forest, around the Greenbush area. The Kettle Moraine has a unique and beautiful rolling topography (moraines) and pitted landscape (kettles).

trail in the Kettle Moraine

Terez, Kristen and me on the hike.

The plants and tree varieties here are distinctly different from those evergreens of the Pacific Northwest; there is a real sense of fall when hiking in Wisconsin. Another thing that signals fall around here is the deer hunting season. Only after we got out of the car in the forest we realized our huge mistake: did not have blaze orange vests to signal our human presence to the hunters that are undoubtedly out there hiding away and waiting for the bush to move. Hunting is as much part of culture in Wisconsin as concealed guns, motorbikes, cheese, the Greenbay Packers, and game day cupcakes frosted with frightening yellow and green.

cupcakes and buns in local colors (this pix is from some time ago, still during Brewers baseball season)

All week, the news is full with efforts to recall the union-busting governor; but Kohler Village is as dormant as the castle of Sleeping Beauty in the fairy tale. When we talk, associates grumble about the work and job security, about cuts to benefits and bargaining rights, about no pay raises for the past many years. There is a general feeling of the workers being taken advantage of due to the recession. Every day, at least half of the associates wear their UAW Local 833 T-shirts emblazoned with Harley-like logo of orange flames to work.

The issue of labor and unions is very complex, historical yet pertinent, and I don't claim to understand it. I listen when they talk to me and I answer the best as I can their questions about our sluggish economy in Washington state. On a funny note: Every time during our conversations, the workers are surprised when I tell them that I teach. In their minds, the artist who come here on a residency come to make money on what they produce. And in their minds, similarly to their industrial production, the more I produce the more money I make. So it makes good economic sense to them that I'm in the studio all the time.

How different reality is!
With a strong will I focus on the blushing plaster fragment project now. I cast all my molds on certain days, the smaller ones twice, which gives me non-stop work of filling molds and then opening, cleaning and reassembling them, taking out casts and fixing the pour-holes on the clay well into the night. The result is about 30-40 casts. Cleaning and glazing that many pieces takes another few days while everything else has to be on hold. This process feels very mechanical, (even to a discipline-queen like I am) and I'm aching to dot this schedule with at least a few side projects that yield to unpredictable results. Doing this casting routine once or twice a week takes so much energy that I always decide to do just a few molds next time, so that I can do other things during the workday. It has gotten so bad this last time with yet another new mold (plus the pedestal and tile molds), that I could not even open some of the molds in time, resulting in casts way too dry by the time I got to them, which cost me more time having to fix cracking around the tougher places.

Studio on week 10: pedestals, small pedestal mold and more molds. There is barely any floor space or work surface left uncovered with stuff drying, waiting to be glazed or finished.

I guess, because of the relative monotony of the casting process and also because my time at Kohler is drawing near, I could never not fully give up the interesting side-tracks. Let's admit it: I'm now finding myself looking for distractions. Whether it is digging up boxes full of discarded barcode decals from the trash, or going through the metal cull for interesting shapes to be used for making plaques for the pedestals, or carving pictures of the local weeds into tiles, or plotting a project that honors the individuality of the workers I made friends with; - I welcome the opportunity that arises to do something else interesting while I'm still here. It's too premature to talk about these projects. They are not finished yet, and due to the lack of time to really develop them, none of these would become a full-fletched project for the time being.

On the other hand, I'm getting beautiful results with the glazes. The colors are heart-stopping in a very bodily, and, as it was commented on, "evocative" way.

Just out of the kiln this week.

There are 4-5 layers of pinks and reds sprayed on very thin to get the blush and I never know what it will look like until it comes out of the kiln. So is the excitement of ceramics.

This past week possibilities for the title of the project occurred to me just out of the blue. I definitely have the words that would be used to describe what the work is about. I'm still trying them out in various combinations.

Colors of Autumn

After 2 weeks of stormy, windy and drenching weather an Indian summer is treating us all in Kohler with sunshine and warmth. The trees of the factory yard are turning color: intense hues of red, orange and yellow against the bright blue sky. During work hours, the warm weather is not a blessing though. Fans, heaters and humidifiers keep the casting room at a constant 80 degrees temperature, from which the only relief is to find a spot next to a slightly open window. On these warm days of late autumn, the air inside does not move and it's a numbing sweaty experience.
Funny side note: we had a group of distinguished guests visiting this week. By the time they were through with the factory tour and arrived to our studios for the "much awaited" visit and demo, most of the ladies decided that the heat and dust was too unbearable for them and took their leave.

Before I go on, I have to introduce my new studio and house mate, Mr Tom Spleth of North Carolina. Tom is a distinguished artist of many talents, and an seasoned mold maker. He came here to do color and got me swept up in experimenting with colored clay bodies.
Technical note: It is possible to put ceramic pigments directly into clay resulting in intense colors when fired. The advantage of this is that the piece does not need a glaze, the color is already incorporated into the form. For a studio artist, it's an expensive way of working but at Kohler there are available resources. 
Tom does a very interesting technique for getting a pattern onto his large vase forms: He pours colored slip on his disassembled mold parts so that the casting surfaces are covered with drippy dynamic lines, then he assembles the mold and fills with the regular slip to make a cast of the form.

Tom Spleth developing a new form by pouring plaster on the form then scraping and piling tall...

...there are many more steps to go but the form is starting to take shape.

On his first day at Kohler as I was describing my project to Tom, I realized that with all the delicate textures on my forms, glazing may not be the way to go. Kohler glazes are thick and meant to cover, they tend to make surface details disappear (see previous posts). What I wanted to do in the first place was contrasting surfaces of bone-like dry unglazed clay and high gloss glaze, white with a touch of a pink blush. After many disappointing results on test tiles and our conversation, it was easy to convince me to be sneaking up to the glaze lab and mixing bucket after bucket of color slips for "experiments".
So, the week started out with the promise of playful colors of blues, yellows, greens, as well as more somber grays and black.
Color made my casting process more complicated. I decided to do a double layer wall: by pouring the colored slip in and immediately pouring it out, I could get a skim coat of color to stick to the mold walls first. Then this is followed by pouring in regular slip in order to make a structural wall. This process means rotating the mold one additional time while a jelly-like thickening veil of slip if clinging to the mold wall on the inside.

the molds being filled with casting slip (on the cart in the back is the "library of forms" - the chunks of broken industrial molds that I would like to make molds of)

With every complication in the process you take more chances. And so it happened that I had to face the fact that there is a certain percentage of error in this process. Molds would blow up leaking slip all over the floor (this actually has nothing to do with color but a lot with the fact the the thick rubber bands that I use for strapping the molds together unexpectedly relax over time). The walls of the fresh cast would occasionally collapse together, making a sad deflated mess out of the form.  Working with so many colors all at once, it was also harder to fix cracks and flaws.
I tried to comfort myself with the fact that these losses were minimal and to gather enthusiasm by describing the potential with these colors to the factory tour groups that come around in the mornings.
Except, that I should have known better: I'm not really interested in getting a variety of colors. My pursuit is pink blush against pristine white. I don't know why. But I needed to get it.

And then my luck turned: I got into the spraybooth one night with all my pieces and started spraying glaze. I tried to be calculated and layer what in the tests had given me the best indication of some sort of pink... But then I got carried away (or went rouge?, or got greedy?). In addition to my own test glazes, I also scavenged some of the production glazes and at that point continued spraying with an abandon: thick coats for the smooth parts of the form and thin for the textures, layer after layer of a quick puff of color.

I put them in the kiln with dread the next morning. It's not enough that I went crazy with the glaze and could not even remember what I put on any of the pieces. But they may as well stick to the kilnshelf for good, or explode, or fall over in the kiln.
A necessary technical side note here: The firings are done in the factory's main tunnel kiln. This is a kiln that runs the entire length of the floor: could be as long as 300m  or more (I should really find out). Ceramic ware travels in it on a cars that run on a track kind of like a freight train. Each car has shelving set up to place the sinks, urinals and toilets. As ceramics travel further down the tunnel the gas burners pump in more and more heat, by the middle of the tunnel reaching cone 10, around 2300 degrees F.
When loading the kiln at Kohler, I have to make room on the shelf without interfering much with the loaders' work and the production schedule.  Carefully placing 22 little pieces with no flat bottoms while the car keeps jerking forward was an anxiety filled event to say the least. A good reminder that I have to plan for efficiency for the next round. But everything was on the shelf at last and my pieces went off on their scorching 27 hour journey.
They came out yesterday. When I went to rendezvous with them at the unloading station I could see from afar that all the guys were circling my cart grinning and pointing and probably making some jokes I rather not want to hear. What's really great is that they did not touch anything until I got there and then they handed me the setters with the pieces on. Wow!!! The late night rampage in the spraybooth was not all that crazy after all!  I got my pink blush, several different versions of it and I love it!!! It makes these clunky chunks of plaster forms look very feminine and sexy in a weird but not totally unexpected way. "Of course", - said Sandor, "you are making them, so even dumb chucks of plaster look bodily".