so, i mentioned ceramics is very different. In ceramics you are of course too able to express an opinion or similar, but we are mostly making pots and utilitarian things. Like something for you home. Pretty things, which of course would make Hitner puke.

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These things I do become very attached to. It is such a looooong and elaborate process making about starting with working the clay, sometimes even mixing the clay, and then going all the way through to mixing and applying the glazes and then the firing. It is like a nine month pregnancy in some ways I'm sure.

I like it just as much though, and I don't mind that I sometimes get to work mindlessly in must perfecting the shape or the color, where the two work only for the purpose of each other, one matching the other, and in some cases coming together in order to serve a purpose for someone.

This morning was awesome in the ceramics studio by the way. We started by firing the raku kiln, and then getting the pieces into the trash cans with the newspapershreds where they through reduction made all these beautiful colors. I love raku!!! It is an old Japanese technique of firing teapots and cups, of course you can firing anything, but that's ehat they were doing then. So yeah, I believe it's the oldest way of firing, and it's very quick, it only takes a goo 4 hours opposed to the 19 hours of  a regular kiln. You see the results immediately and you never can tell beforehand exactly what the results are gonna be like. The kiln gets fired up with gas, and you slowly increase the juice, and then keep it there, and as I said the colors happen when you move the pots into airproof cans where they set fire on the newspapers and reduction causes colors to form on the glaze.

 

It's like magic! And I'm lucky enough to be able to take ceramics all of next spring and work on this further. To really get into it- I am at the peak of my life, it feels.

I love living here, much thanks to good friends and good possibilities offered by my ceramics studio. Not to mentioned the mountains I get to climb!

 

We are going to try to conquer one of the 4 peaks holy to the Navajo; next week Conor and I and hopefully some other folks go to Flagstaff where lies the highest peak in Arizona: the mighty HUMPHREY'S PEAK!