A gather of those who cannot move their necks

I have been taking a wilderness first responder course all week. Here's a little preview of what we have been up to. More photos to come!

All of these funny hats/capes are various style of improvised neck braces. The one with the ears is known as the "flying nun."

 

First Batch of Ceramics

I am in a ceramics class and loving it. I wanted to share the process and some of my work with you folks.

Okay, you may recognize this piece from an earlier post. It is a Miyazaki inspired lantern/incense holder/bizarre sculpture that always makes my teacher laugh. I'm not sure if that's good. Anyways this is right before the bisque in an electric kiln, after that the clay turns pinkish, then after the final firing it turns dark and gritty where unglazed. The black and white is different slips which you can use to manipulate the color of your glaze.

I have to mention, the amount of cross over between various mediums of art is huge. My concept of form comes from my understanding of form in photography. It has helped me predict certain elements.

The highly technical process of glazing:

Below is the colors I glazed each piece.

We loaded the kiln.

Lighting the kiln is a process. It's actually light it the day before, but just the "piolet lights," which is basically a torch, not your typical piolet light for a stove. They slowly raises the temperature to around 1100F by the morning. Then the kiln is turned on, the two pipes about two inches wide blow large amounts of natural gas into the chamber raising the temperature to around 2450F. This takes about 6-8 hours based on how much pottery is inside the kiln and how it is stacked.

This is a spy hole to keep an eye on the cones, which indicate the temperature of the clay versus the temperature of the air. As certain levels of heat are achieved, different cones fall over. I burned off all the hair on my hand holding it about a foot and a half away from this two inch hole. I was trying to see if it would burn my camera. Turns out it would. I safely took a photo at three feet, which was much cooler. 

Finally, the pieces cooled off and came out of the kiln. It was like christmas.

This is my mountain figure. It is strange how the glaze bubbled where it overlapped but I like it. I was trying to make him look like a snow capped mountain.

This is my lumpy pinch pot figure. It feels really good to hold in your hand. Like really good.

Here is my Miyazaki thing.

I used a glaze known as Alfred Amber to cover this entire piece. The color changes depending if it is sitting on top of white or black slip, or just on the raw clay.

My first batch of ceramics!



[Notice the faint stingray on the box.]

Another Contra Dance

We're having contra dances as much as twice a month in the Vaudevillian. I think they are becoming more popular as the weather warms up. Nothing like live music and dancing!

Snow Storm and Indian Food

Well, it snowed very hard and we loaded a ton (yes, at least 2,000 pounds,) of pellets into our cabin. Then this week it's warm, and we will have to take out all the pellets before summer. Maybe I should not speak so soon... 

Zoë came and had a lovely visit to Pine Lake.

We went to the grocery store to get some vegetables for Indian food. Below is the Hannaford parking lot.  This is what it looked like as the storm came in. 

More Indian spices that Zoë brought me from New York City:

[ Random Stuff on a Shelf ]

And the cooking mess began...  and was definitely worth the food.

BOWLING

I love taking pictures at bowling alleys, I am not sure why. Maybe because bowling is ridiculously awesome.

This is my style. Also trying to get the ball to go to the left. I am beginning to experiment with spin.

Zoë's throw...

Waiting...

X

[Anthony]

Art at Anderson

Good thing Hartwick changed their seal.

 I can think of more than one thing wrong with this image.

Steel sculpture of crashed flying saucer.

The March Forest of Upstate New York

I love living in the woods. 

I have begun to find tiny buds dotting the end of each twig. Spring is almost here after such a mild winter. Don't get me wrong though, it's in the low 20's or high 10's in the morning, but it is in the mid 50's today. The lake still has a thick piece of ice coving half of it with paper thin ice that almost pulses out of it and recedes daily.

Yup, we're making maple syrup at Pine Lake.

If you big up this picture you will see the canadian geese who may have decided to nest right in the middle of the swamp. They start yelling if we get within a hundred feet or so.

Housing Rights and Responsibility Form

Now don't get confused. The four of us in Bailey are trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Wait, that is the boyscout laws. Well, take out the last two and we form some sort of brotherhood anyways -but nothing like a fraternity- maybe the opposite. 

In other words, we highly value community, respect our community, and rely on it. It simply cannot be written down on four pages. We are all capable of confronting each other about problems (and we certainly do,) so we decided to have a little fun. Plus this thing has spelling errors and the most bizarre categories.

Geese and Glass

We have had some Canadian geese move into Pine Lake. They are very loud and we hear them call late at night. I think they might be mean.

I have been playing with my different lenses. This photo was taken from the fourth floor of Smith Hall about a quarter to a half mile away.

Also now I can do super low light photos for the first time ever! This is Cob House in the evening.

Vat of molten glass.

My Miyazaki inspired lantern sculpture. It has windows on the side, two smokestacks, doors, and three legs.

I've gone pro! And there's Snow.

As a super early birthday present I got a new very nice Cannon T3i from my dad. 

 I was really hoping for a snow-day.

 This is Yager Hall (also our library,) in the mist of our heated steps melting away the snow.