And I just spent the last few days at Kurt's studio prepping and firing some collaborative work (collaborative? I know its definately a new concept in clay for me).
I started slip decorating my own pots last year around April and Kurt saw some pieces and asked if I would do some decorating on his pots. I said I would and so we set out to do this a few weeks before the new year. We fired in his wood salt kiln (the one that I posted pictures of from this last summer) for two and a half days. Candled with propane on Tuesday night into Wednesday morning and added some larger burners, as we started with his weed burner, and did turn ups over the lunch time hours. The real deal started around 4 in the afternoon. We had help and visitors through out the firing as Kurt's home and studio tend to be a very active place (people are always popping by to see what he is up to, to lend a hand, or just to share conversation). Apparently he also had a visit from the cranky neighbor lady from last time (remember her, she needs to find a hobby other than terrorizing Mr. Brantner and his pottery) who didn't have anything nice to say, she even went as far to say she wanted to have him fined! Which we all know is nonsense... Kurt fired the kiln solo from about 3am to 11am Thursday morning. It reached a temperature of cone 11 (about 2400 degrees F). We also set up the door with a port so hikidashi could be performed. Unfortunately I wasn't there to help but from what I heard Kurt pulled 4 pots out of the port.
We are unloading this Sunday, the 23rd of January and I will try to document then. We did get some folks to take pictures while they were there and Kurt had some video footage taken at the end. There is a small preliminary trailer that is about 1 minute 45 seconds (actual footage is over a half hour). It was filmed by Nate, a friend of Kurt's. This video will most likely be replaced by another one but for reference its pretty interesting.
*Edit
Well here is a new video by Nate of the unloading that happened the 23rd. Its a pretty good little film. Gives you an idea of what kinds of things came out and shows a little bit of Kurt and I in the flesh.
Kurt Brantner Winter Sale Film from Cinemoxie on Vimeo.
