BLOG/Haystack
Summer of 2024 I had the wonderful opportunity to spend 2 weeks making pottery at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, in Maine. I attended a class lead by Sarah Hussaini from @notworkrelated_. Spending time at Haystack was a truly magical experience, it was both creatively and emotionally fulfilling for me.
Take a browse through my photographs and read about my time at Haystack below.
Not winging it
Sarah's course at Haystack was about not winging it... and calculated uncertainty. We would spend a week creating all of our pots, they were to be fired in a special kind of gas firing called a Soda (or Salt) firing. This type of firing introduced a lot of natural and organic uncertainty into the final results.
After spending hours fussing over something in the pursuit of perfection, it takes a lot to let go and hope for the best!
I learned a wide variety of new techniques for surface design, the idea of decorating the surface of pots in either addative or subtractive ways. The FabLab at Haystack had a laser cutter we could use, allowing us to cut out patterns with super duper precision.
Water etching using stencils can be used to erode clay from specific areas of the pot, leaving the areas under the stencil untouched. Simply by repeatedly wiping a damp sponge over the exposed areas is enough to etch into the clay.
Stencils can also be used to mask areas of the pots when applying the final layers of glaze, intended to control which parts of the pot will be coated in glass, and which will remain as exposed bare clay.
Soda firing is an interesting type of ceramic firing, where some form of sodium is sprayed or released into the kiln once it has reached over 2000ºF. At these extreme temperatures, the sodium will react and bind with silica in the clay to create glass.
This newly formed glass will dance around the kiln and fall on pots in an organically. The glass can pool around texture, landing on pots in unpredictable ways. Pots without any glaze on them at all may come out of the kiln covered in glass.
