Studio visit: The Clarks unload their kiln
Part II - Unloading the kiln
Note* If you haven’t read Part I about firing the kiln, head over here!
We came back at the end of the week of firing for the unloading of the kiln. Lee and Yolande were under the wire, trying to get pieces out in time for an exhibition in St. Andrew’s. The dates were such that they ended up cooling the kiln down and opening it sooner than they’d hoped, gambling that it was enough to get the results they wanted. Lee and Yolande were both gracious with us for being underfoot as they rushed to empty the kiln, along with their kids, dogs and a filmmaker doing a short documentary about the firing. I think the craziness was acceptable because it was a lot like opening presents on Christmas morning and who doesn’t love Christmas morning even when it’s chaotic? They took turns going into the still-hot kiln bringing out pieces that were warm and crackly, inspecting each one with a critical eye and often exclaiming with delight at the beauty of the finished product. Some pieces had experienced their second or third firing in hopes of finally getting the desired results. It was much like excavating an Egyptian tomb, going into this dark, cramped space and bringing treasures to the light. Each piece was carefully laid on the grass or on stones to be further inspected later.
Knowing what went into the firing process the week leading up to this moment, I could only imagine the satisfaction of seeing pieces come out the other side, glossy, warm and gorgeous. Some were cracked, some were unevenly glazed, but those unpredictable results are precisely what give these pieces their uniqueness and value. Worth every drop of sweat, every little burn, every lost hour of sleep, these pieces were more than just pottery, they were art.
If you’d like to get your hands on some of Lee and Yolande’s work, they sell at the Buckland Merrifield gallery in Saint John, on Saturday mornings at the Boyce Farmer’s Market in Fredericton, and they also have an Etsy shop.
Clark wood fire on Facebook
For more about the Clarks and their kiln, keep reading!
How did you learn to fire this kiln? Who else does it?
When it comes to the process of wood-fring, Lee is primarily self-taught —he basically built his first anagama from books and magazine articles, and his own essential understanding of structural engineering, and so learning to fire it was a similar process of trial and error. There are innumerable ways to fire a wood-kiln, and lots and lots of variation in terms of approaches to the process, which can differ greatly from potter to potter—also, clay artists often have very different objectives when it comes to what they’re looking for in their pots, so that will also make for a different way of doing things. When Lee and I were first together, everything I knew about wood-firing I know learned from Lee himself, but over the years, we have both attended conferences, and we have done residencies and traveled, exposing ourselves to a variety of firing techniques, and different strategies for getting the kind of colour and textures that we love. Especially in the last few years, as I have become really confident in my own skills as a wood firing artist, Lee and I have started to disagree more on how we want to approach each firing, which is actually really fun and exciting. Fundamentally, we work really well together, and the friction and energy that argument generates, tends to get us both thinking and considering options outside of what either of us might have opened ourselves to, without the other’s influence.
What is your favourite part of the firing process?
Three am, until five am. I absolutely adore stoking in the early morning, alone. I find that in that zone, I can be totally attuned to what is going on in the kiln, and in myself, and this combined with the sound of the wind, and the animals in the woods and trees around me, and the emergent morning…it's just magical. Also, after what is usually a flurry of last-minute making, and then concerns about getting the kiln loaded on time (usually on deadline for an exhibition!), once the fire is lit, and the firing is on, we get to just sink into the rhythm of it, and it’s a relief and a pleasure to have arrived. Also, once the kiln is packed, and we’re stoking, we certainly have to stay on the ball, and observe, and exert effort, but in a way it’s also out of our hands—at that point, we are just a small part of the outcome.
What is your least favourite part?
There is really no part of the firing cycle that I don’t like—some aspects are physically harder than others, sometimes the whole firing is a bust and that’s heartbreaking, sometimes our favourite pieces will explode or crack (that happens a lot) but there is nothing really that I don’t like. Lee and I have done multi-day firings in the freezing cold of late-November, and that wasn’t the best, but there is always something to love, absolutely.
How has using this kiln impacted your work as an artist, and who you are as a person, artist, family?
Lee and I are very different, but what we have in common is that we are both intensely curious, and we both require a challenge, and we both share a long-term commitment to making art as a form of survival and self-expression. And of course, one of the things that Lee and I feel most fortunate about, is that because we are so privileged to mostly be able to work from home, our four kids are part of every aspect of this work. It’s really exciting to see them grow up in an environment where they have a lot of freedom to explore nature, and I love watching how they pick up this arcane understanding of an ancient process, almost by osmosis. In a very simple, obvious way, wood-firing teaches us that the way we go about things matters. The best and most interesting pieces that come from the kiln, are not just objects unto themselves, but artifacts from an event in time—one can often see precisely where the flame licked over the piece, and where it travelled after that, and knowing that we played a part, along with the most basic and yet formidable forces that we know (fire, earth) in creating this object that was once quite literally mud, well, that’s pretty incredibl
e, and very humbling.
Where can people buy/see your work?
In New Brunswick, our work is available at Gallery 78 in Fredericton, the Buckland-Merrifield gallery in Saint John, and we have smaller pieces for sale every Saturday, at the Boyce market. We also have works available for purchase online, throughwww.yolandenorrisclark.com and www.leehorusclark.com, and our etsy shop, at www.etsy.com/shop/burntnormal