FLamER FLAME!!

After Last weeks adventures, with Mom's this week was back to work for all of OU students. Including myself, who would have thought that I still was going to have things to do after my show. Glaze calc, is comming into full swing with the start of our base glazes being formulated in preperation for the 66pt triaxel that we will be working on in the upcomming weeks. With the glaze calc class working in the glaze room there has been a slight battle with all of the other classes that are working their buts off trying to make as much work as humanly possible to fill the wood kiln. Yes that right FLamER FLAME!!! will be fired off this week however I think they decided to name it BUD which I think is a dumb name so I'll stick with ours. Brads class has been working their buts off to do all the nessicary preperations for the firing, which as we all know is alot of work. They have been heading out to nelsonvillle to load trucks with wood, spending entire class periods, chopping, splitting and preparing logs to stoke and working out the door. All day thursday was devoted to loading, stratigizing where to put the glazed pieces, sculptures, tea bowls and all other sorts of work that was going in. They had four ware carts of work to be
loaded. The back half behind the second stoke was all glaze work, sculptures in the middle and the front was mostly pots. Everyone was in and out helping to load even those who weren't in the class and were just putting work into it. Johannes had a bunch of work for it, and spent alot of time helping to load.
Thursday was one of those 85 degree sping days with not a cloud in the sky, which normally no one would complain about, but loading kilns, crawling in and out, carring work and building doors is not that much fun in the heat with not much shade. We learned that FLamER FLAME holds about three carts of work, so there was a whole other cart that was left to be loaded into a soda kiln. I can't believe that a kiln that huge couldn't fit everything they made for it, Brad must of been proud of his class to make so much work that it all wouldn't fit. They started firing Thursday night and had about a 42 hour firing, with loads of people taking multipule shifts. FLamER FLAME fires Ok, there was alot of uneven spots from front to back and in certin spots along the sides, Brad and Boomer were out there all day on Saturday with the class working on evening it out, but I think this was a case with to many cooks in the kitchen, because I'm not sure that it ever really evenend out. The front was cone 11ish and the back in spots was cone 7ish but who really knows what was going on back there. All in all for its first firing it went well and there was alot of nice work that came out of it. I think that the classes were gererally pleased, there may need to be some re-firing for people to get their pots to temp, but in general I think that most were happy with with thier results. Brad and Boomer are excited for this summers Jason Hess woodfiring frestival to try FLamER FLAME out again, and I'm excited to see how many shades of brown they can come up with.



And The Hand OFF!!!


Next Weeks News: The Brat Off!!!! - get ready for Brats and Booze!!!