The Moon Festival

One year, long ago, ten suns rose in the sky causing great heat and destruction on the Earth. Hou Yi, a human of immense strength shot down nine of the suns and left one up for light. An immortal admiring Hou Yi gifted him an elixir with the power to give Hou Yi the strength to live forever. However, he did not drink it because he was deeply in love with Chang'e, and did not wish to live without her.

For the Mid-Autumn Festival, or the Moon Festival, our group decided to go out onto a lake on the outskirts of town late at night to admire the moonlight. After dinner we rented a bus for the group and drove twenty minutes to the locations. It was a park with a man made lake, hundreds of people were there lighting off small fire crackers and sparklers, eating food, drinking beer, and chatting while they watched their friends on the boats out in the lake. The Americans made their presence known by bringing some major fireworks that set off all the car alarms.

Hou Yi strength greatly inspired many people, he quickly accumulated apprentices, one of which was (super evil) Feng Meng who knew his secret of the elixir. One day, when Hou Yi was hunting, Feng Meng broke into his house to steal the elixir. Chang'e was home and knew that he could easily overpower her for the elixir so she drank the elixir.

The lake was far more pleasant at night. On the murky water I could see dead fish and trash floating on the surface, and transmission towers ran through the middle of the lake. But the buildings were beautifully lit and after about twenty minutes the smell of the water did not really bother you. The boats were a step up from paddle boats both in size and power. They had small electric engines that when running smelt like a burning toaster. Nine of us crammed into one boat, then me and two others into another boat. Our boats collided several times almost tipping but the large amount of alcohol consumed numbed the terror of falling into such disgusting water.

High above the full moon shone brightly, with wisdom and clarity, undisturbed by our rowdiness.

Great power flowed through Chang'e as she became immortal. She flew into the sky away from her husband. Still deeply in love with her husband so she went to the closest place immortals can reside to humans -the moon. When Hou Yi came back hunting he learned what happened and became deeply saddened. He began offering cakes to the moon where his wife lives every year on the day that she became immortal. The villagers learned of Hou Yi tragic story and became sympathetic, over the years they too began to participate and make offerings on the same day.

On our way back I looked out the window of the bus. First there was a police car. Then a scooter on it's side and a crowd of on lookers. Then there was a shoe. Another fifty feat down was a body of a middle age woman lying on her back in the highway. Her body seemed undisturbed, but her shirt was open from the use of a defibrillator, she was clearly dead.

Off to China (yet again.)

Sorry for the delay, I had troubles with my VPN, which inhibited my ability to blog.

So let's start!

I managed to pack the night before without sleeping at all and leaving my room a bit of a mess. Dad dropped me off at PMW and my adventure begun.

After a the second leg of fourteen hours the plane began to tilt down as it descended into the metropolis of Shanghai. The panels, seats, and people shuddered and shook with the plane as it barreled against the wind outside. The ocean went from blue, to chocolate-milk-brown, and then gave way to the partial land of shrimp and fish farming ponds. The runway passed underneath and we were suddenly back on earth.

The smell of the air in China slowly found it’s way to my nose. It is the smell of stale cigarette smoke, oil, food, and rot –similar to an old bowling alley. The unpleasant yet comforting smell welcomed me back for my third venture on the other side of the globe.

I quickly found Shoji, our group leader/professor, waiting for me on the other side of customs. We waited and collected about 80% of our group -the last few were on a much later flight. Our group consist of 11 students and four professors, some of which switch out during the semester.

We boarded the maglev, which would bring us quickly into town. We sat down as a group in a completely empty train car and waited for the ride to begin. You could feel the train jump up an inch or so when the magnets were activated and the train began to float off the ground. The train sped up to about 250mph, which seemed excessively fast and definitely a flash of Shanghai wealth. I looked out the window as things simply blew by and was surprised when the train slowed down just a few minutes from reaching top speed.

We found our hotel which is located near People’s Square, checked in, rested for 15 minutes, then went to a Beijing style hotpot restaurant (basically coal fired hot pots with volcano cones in the center which hold the coals inside a large bowl full of broth. It was an excellent first dinner and as I got to know my group more my confidence in having a good trip began to grow. It seems most people in our group –if not all- have really common sense/courtesy and no interest in dominating the group.

My roommate, Kaleb, who is from Alberta Canada, is an excellent match. There are 5 boys, and 6 girls (one boy dropped out last minute,) Kaleb and I drink similar amounts, and sleep similar hours of the night.

Shoji has been a fantastic tour guide. In addition to the normal Shanghai touristy stuff he took us to the black market where I got Light Room 5 for $8USD. There was also a movie store where you could get any movie (even just released,) for around $2USD.

We visited The Pottery Workshop location in Shanghai (which is the group we are partnering with,) who have a small studio in one of the art districts. It was enjoyable to walk around and look at what the locals were up to:

Home, Maine.

Returning home from school this summer I was instantly greeted by the familiar broken landscape of Maine. I had just managed to figure out my first summer job (later I picked up another,) and had a few weeks to rest after a somewhat stressful spring semester.

One of the things I have been dealing with the most recently, and will have to continue to deal with, is my stomach. It's been somewhat of an obsession, but constant mild pain in my stomach is really hard to divert my attention from. After trying out a series of different drugs for my stomach I have settled on one, but I also have to manage my stress to feel relatively normal. It has been a big part of my life for the last 8 months or so, and it finally seems to be getting out of the way of daily function --kind of. Without talking about it too much, my stomach is definitely bad partially to blame from being sick in Asia so much, and partially it's where my body decides to direct stress, it has been an interesting way of getting in touch with myself.

But back to summer, I unpacked:

It's good to be back.

I think I'm recovering.

Seeing, pace of life. 

Wood Firing Spring 2013

The incredibly active ceramics department and I went over from Hartwick College to Corning Community College where they have two amazing wood fired kilns. They have both a traditional anagama and what we refer to as a train kiln, which is a long box shape with a smoke stack coming out the top at one end making it look like a steam engine. The interesting thing about the train kiln is that as far as I know, it's one of two wood fired kilns in the world specially designed for blowing glass out of the side at peak temperature. The other, which is identical, is in France. Fred, the teacher at CCC with the help of the engineers of Corning Glass developed the design which is relatively simple but works very well. Fred's thing is wood firing, and building kilns, he also built the other glass/ceramic kiln in France.

Me, by the anagama.

This time we used the train kiln. It can hold roughly 200 plus pots while the anagama, which is relatively small compared to the traditional ones which are often over a hundred feet long, can hold around 500 pots. Additionally the train kiln takes a day to load, two days to fire, two to three days to cool, and an afternoon to unload, while the anagama takes two days to load, five to seven days to fire, another week to cool, and then a day or two to unload. We only had a weekend to fire, additionally we wanted to blow glass out of the kiln.

Below is the train kiln. Fred is in the kiln, which is roughly three feet wide and four feet tall. It's moderately uncomfortable to load, so if you build a kiln either make it taller, or have a removable roof. We're all standing around handing pots to Fred. We don't load because Fred has years of practice laying the pots in certain ways so the wood ash, flames, and glaze draws interesting patters on the pots.

We organized the pots by size, height, and how much they were glazed (because some parts of the kiln are hotter causing the glaze to run more,) then brought them over a few at a time for Fred to load.

This is what loading the inside looks like as we neared the end of loading.

About two thirds of the way down the kiln on each side there are two ports with two doors that slide open and closed. This is where we glass blow and one of the things that makes this kiln so unique. On one side of the port is a crucible full of glass and on the other is what we refer to as the "glory hole" (great name right?) which is where you stick your work in when you need to heat it back up to make the glass malleable again. 

Inside we had three crucibles of glass. The largest held roughly 40lbs. of clear glass. On the other side we had blue and green colored glass to mix with the glass pieces we were made. In the middle you can see our cone system to measure work heat versus the pyrometer which just measures air temperature inside the kiln. Each cone melts at a specific point  

We bricked up the entrance of the kiln and then went to main street Corning to find something for dinner.

The next morning at 10am we lit a small fire in the entrance and began to slowly heat the kiln up. Within the first few hours steam and water seeped out between the bricks as the last of the water left the work. We created shifts to watch the kiln and CCC had the afternoon, which allowed us to leave and go over to corning and blow some glass.

In the evening when we returned we began the process of feeding the hungry kiln ever ten minutes or so to achieve a steady temperature climb.

We also split two to three cords of wood with a hydraulic wedge. I think we burned around four cords. 

Elliot, Erica, Berky, and I had a shift from 6pm to 10pm. Most of the time we spent eating an excessive amount of food and throwing wood in. Steadily it grew hotter and hotter. First the pots glowed a dark red, then a bright cherry red, and then yellow.

You may recognize the photo from earlier. This was in the evening and we were riding around 2,000F with another 400 to go. As you can see some of the cones in the back have tipped over and the glass has turned to liquid. Interestingly, the higher you climb in temperature the more energy you need to keep climbing. So during the first twelve hours we climbed around 1800-2000F while in the second twelve hours we only climbed 400-500F.

I returned at 6:30 the next morning grateful that I did not have to do the midnight to 6am shift. Opening the kiln without gloves is uncomfortable, in the image below I burnt the hair off my hands. There is also flames coming out of the 20ft chimney and it's unbearable to stand close to the kiln for more than a few minutes. Good thing it's outside.

You can make out the rims of the colored glass crucibles. 

Then the glass students from Hartwick showed up, set up shop, and blew glass for two hours. Below is Erik Halvorson our glass instructor trying out the glass. The glass is a bit softer than usual since it normally comes out of the furnace at 2100F or so and this glass is around 2400F. 

We were also a bit cramped for space but things managed to work out fine. Elliot in the white t-shirt is stoking the annealer which runs on a separate wood fire to keep a box around 900F so our glass doesn't break.

Elliot blowing glass.

So what did all this fire make? Below is the blue glass crucible. It's actually a waste product of the firing since sadly, it's not reusable or safe to eat food out of it, but it is beautiful. We cannot remove all the glass from all the vessels, but we do our best to use as much of it as possible.  

Here's one of my mugs. Where it is redish is called flashing, or where it got blasted by flame. Where it is crusty, singed, dark, or glossy is where wood ash collected and melted in (mostly the other side of the cup.) I put glaze on the insides of all my cups to have a glossy texture inside (which also makes it food safe and easy to clean.)

Teabowl

Glassblowing at Corning

Dad came and visited me and we went over to Corning Museum of Glass, which is about two hours from Oneonta. It's a fantastic museum with amazing glassblowing demos, a glass school attached, and an open studio where you can blow glass yourself for a fee. Corning is where most glass technology is developed including the glass for the iPhone screens. Dad and I each made a flower and an ornament with some assistance. 

Then we waited a bit to make ornaments.

Making ornaments was a bit less interactive. Sure we blew them out and chose there color/style, but the shaping was done by the instructor. I cannot wait to take glass blowing at Hartwick.

Below is the final pieces. They had to be mailed because they need 24 hours in the annealer to cool slowly at an even rate. If the pieces cool too fast they build massive surface tension in the areas that cool faster and crack, or often explode. My blue and green flower reminds me of Monet's flowers.

New

So what's new anyways?

I've been in the sauna.

Taking care of my health.

And making Art.

I have also been spending time in New York City, Houston at the NCECA conference, and San Francisco to see my brother at SFAI.

Houston

San Francisco