Raku Project

Project Challenge: Develop 2-3 forms that relate through subject and surface: at least one must be thrown, at least one must be a realistically formed animal. 

Raku Research!

Raku is an ancient Japanese pottery firing technique dating back to the 16th century. It involves removing glazed ceramic pieces from the kiln while they are still red-hot and then placing them into a material such as sawdust, wood chips, or newspaper that can catch fire and starve the piece of oxygen. This reaction creates unique colors and patterns across the piece. By waxing parts of our pieces, it means the glaze would not stick to them and would turn black from being exposed to smoke and flame. We utilized this technique to create shapes and patterns on our bowls and animals. I used wax on the inside of my bowl to draw a starfish and then on the outside to draw seaweed. Then I waxed the dots on my starfish and they came out silvery, a nice contrast to the copper surface. I am mostly happy with my work on the two raku pieces. I struggled to form my starfish, making it look realistic was especially challenging, but I ended up loving how it came out. As for my bowl, forming it was less of a challenge for me, but designing and waxing it was difficult. I had to redraw the starfish on the inside multiple times and I wish I made the lines a little bit thicker so it would show up more and the connection would be clearer. I also wish I spent more time with the seaweed on the outside, as they were sort of rushed and I wanted more of an ocean theme. I’m glad I chose the blue copper for the star fish, the effect ended up being beautiful, but I regret doing two colors on my bowl. If I were to do this again I would have done solely tutti fruity glaze for my bowl because it would have given it more of a ‘water’ feel. The effect of white crackle is really cool, but I don’t think it matched my project very well and it interfered with my starfish on the inside of my bowl. The most informative part of this field trip for me was when Sarah showed us how the raku kiln worked. She first explained the difference between their walk-in gas kiln, which is a traditional updraft kiln designed for continuous, high-temperature firings and their raku kiln, which is an outside, box-like structure with an open top designed for quick, low-temperature firings. She explained the process while doing it which was really cool to watch. She lit the kiln by opening the valves on the propane tanks and kept the door open so we could see it ignite. Then she closed it and as it heated we could see the pieces start to glow red through the small hole at the front. I think this field trip was awesome and I don’t have any changes to recommend, that said I would definitely keep doing the tour of Portland Pottery and the walk around Portland to see some different shops and art(and obviously Forage!).