Artist Feature Exhibition
Charlie Cummings Gallery, December 15, 2020
online at www.charliecummingsgallery.com
A year in the making… what a journey it’s been pulling this new body of work together. I had hoped to make all the pots for this exhibition in my studio in LaBorne, FR, but the universe had something else in mind for me, and the rest of the world. About a year before the world shut down I rented a small apartment and studio in LaBorne, FR, which I still have and am waiting to return to when the borders open up again.
My first wood fired pots were fired during the week of the Grands Feux 2018 at the studio of Claire Linard in Les Halliers, a few short miles outside of LaBorne. I had the great good fortune of finding myself wood firing in her Feller kiln with an amazing crew of some long time wood firing LaBorne potters. There are so many stories of this magical, centuries old pottery village located in the center of France on the Loire River, with amazing local stoneware, and surrounded by tall forests. During the next year we fired several times more and I continued to learn. I miss it all.
Being seriously bitten by the wood fire bug, I was certain that although I could not travel back to LaBorne, I wanted to continue to fire my pots for this exhibition with wood. I began to look closer to home, and found several wonderful wood firing potters in upstate NY and Vermont who were willing and eager to share their resources with me, including 3 different anagamas, a noborigama, a catenary arch kiln, and a gas fired soda kiln. It turned out to be a year of being on the go from one kiln to another…adjusting my making process to fit the different kilns and the schedules of my colleagues. My car was always filled with boxes of pots ready to fire and I averaged two firings a month from June through November. All this in pursuit of making the pots I really wanted to make. And although sending the pots off represented an ending…I feel I am just at the beginning of where I left off from the last firings.
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