Where have all the woodfirers gone?

...gone, gone soda-ing. 

Seriously, I don't think that any of the wood kilns have been fired around here this semester. Not that the interest isn't there, perhaps just the mix of students and the work they are churning out right now hasn't lent itself to burning up mass quantities of wood and the midnight oil! 

Robin hasn't abandoned his love of crusty, blackened woodfire ware just yet, but he's been working on a series of plates for the last little while and plates don't always fare well in wood kilns. They typically take up a lot of real estate and are subject to warping and gunk falling on them - which means the success rate is not always high. So instead he's been making good use of the soda kiln. He still plans to make and fire plates specifically for the wood kiln, but chose to explore what kind of results he could get out of the soda kiln this semester to avoid winter woodfiring nuisances like cold temperatures and snow dampened wood piles to deal with. 

The two third year grads that are graduating this year, Sunshine Cobb and Ernie Gentry are both electric firers. The next coming two weeks marks the end of their graduate school adventure, with Sunshine's thesis show already up and exhibiting in the Studio 102 Gallery on campus, and Ernie's to follow on its heels April 26th. We'll miss them both around here, that's for sure.