This autumn, my ceramic work has alternated between the glossy and decorative and the austere and natural. For some time now, I’ve been working on increasing the range of my ceramic ocarinas - which have been pit fired in the austere, zen-like mode. The examples here were made with some leftover raku clay. The raku clay was heavily textured with grog in order to withstand the thermal shock of sudden temperature fluctuations. This is not really necessary for pit fired ceramics, but I had a bag of raku clay that I wanted to use up, so decided to experiment.
These large ocarinas were made in response to a little mishap, in which a box of pit fired ocarinas went missing from the last exhibition venue. The center was absolutely certain that they weren’t there and I was absolutely exhausted turning my house and studio upside-down in search of a box that I knew was not there. At one point, I thought that my hapless husband, who was doing a massive amount of recycling, might have accidentally tossed the box into the bin.
If the box had gone missing under ordinary circumstances, like just a recently exhibited collection of things that was being returned, then things would be disappointing but otherwise not bruising. But contained in this missing box were two ocarinas that had been purchased, with clients eagerly looking forward to them being shipped. I offered substitutes, but my clients really wanted the specific art that they had purchased.
A few more weeks went by, and the box of ocarinas did not appear. So I resigned myself to creating new ones, making one as close as I could to the sold but missing one. For the rest, experimentation on the raku clay yielded some interesting results. Since the clay was already pitted and textured, I splattered on terra sigillata, oxides, and mica chips - giving the forms the impression that they were hewn from rocks - or perhaps were found cobblestones that you can just happen to blow into and produce songs.
Just for fun, I pressed into the wet clay forms to shape them to my grasp, making them quite comfortable to hold. This one was painted with designs reminiscent of Pre-Columbian the burnished ceramic vessels that I had enjoyed seeing in museum collections.
A friend and I put all the bisqued ocarinas into a pit fire, added some salt and copper carbonate and stoked a fire. The fire ended up not being quite reduced enough with the smothering, so I had to bake a second time and smother again - the air got to it!
In the mean time, the missing box of ocarinas was found, and now I have a new collection of ceramic ocarinas of many shapes and sizes to dispense with.
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