NCECA 2014: David Peters
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Emerging Artist: David Peters
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NCECA 2014: David Peters
- 1. David Peters
- 45. Thank You
Editor's Notes
- Hello and Thank you to NCECA for this opportunity, and to all that have worked so hard to make this conference come together. I would also like to thank all of my educators and class mates and peers for your support over the years…AND thank you to all of you for coming this morning.
- I live and work in Helena Montana and make pottery from the clays that I find there. Over the last 7 years my work has grown out of this beautiful place.
- I first came to Montana for a residency at the Archie Bray Foundation. Through the support of this great place I began the core of the research that has become the foundation of my work today.
- I had used a local brick clay during my undergraduate work at Utah State, so when I got to the Bray and explored the factory ruins and the piles of beautiful brick, I became curious about where the clay came from. Soon I began to search for interesting clays in the area.
- First, I just drove down dirt roads, looking for clay in road cuts, spitting on handfuls of dirt. It was slow going at first. I once dug 500 pounds of bentonite thinking it was just a nice plastic clay. I learned quickly from that kind of experience and I have found a lot of great clay since.
- So far I have located and tested about 30 clays. Half of them are suitable to use in ceramics, and about 8 are easy and safe enough to get to on a regular basis so that I can consistently use them in my work.
- During my time at the Bray I also met Tim Stepp, A geologist and engineer for the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, and part time potter. We have been working together for about 6 years now.
- Through him I began to study geology. While I am only an amateur at best, I really enjoy it and has become an essential tool in reading the landscape in order to find and identify good ceramic materials. One example of this is the Montana Clay and Shale Reports. Published in the 1960’s,
- This survey lists over 600 samples taken from all over the state. It includes a great deal of information on each clay such as shrinkage, firing range, color, mineralogy, and chemical analysis. I feel like I have a clay catalogue of the land itself, the trick is just finding a deposit in such a huge place with 50 year old directions.
- The clays of Montana are quite varied. There are primary clays that are relatively young geologically speaking, while some sedimentary clays, like the ones used to make this set of nesting bowls, where laid down during the Precambrian, roughly 2.6 billion years ago. That is an unimaginable length of time, in fact some of these shales contain fossils of the earliest known forms of complex life.
- I am inspired by the stories that geology tells of the clays I use, and this has moved my intention away from only making the material do what I want it to do, towards first getting to know it without preconceived ideas, and then respond to it in a way that brings out the intrinsic beauty of the material.
- The clay used in this jar, found southwest of Helena, is great example. Its a rocky volcanic primary clay that if ball milled, is a nice porcelain, great for celadons, but when left course, It can turn out a lot like Shigaraki Clay, most beautiful when fired with pine.
- Another favorite clay, photographed here in early summer to show off its brilliant color, is very high in iron and reminds me of Carbondale Red.
- It has an extremely rich color response, but it is very short, has weak green strength, and always keeps me on edge during a firing. Too much of it and huge cracks will rip open a piece, just as the kiln is getting nice and hot.
- The majority of the clays I use require preparation and how they are processed effects their working and firing characteristics a great deal. They all get treated according to their needs, but most are dried out, busted up into smaller pieces and then hammer milled.
- The batches are weighed out and slaked for a day or two, and are then blunged for as long as I can stand to hold the drill.
- This slurry is then passed through a corse screen to remove only the largest rocks and sticks.
- The remaining slurry is then laid out in squares, and wrapped in sheets to keep them clean until it is stiff enough to form. All of this takes a great deal of time and effort but it does produce clays with a lot of individuality.
- I enjoy it most of the time, however I do have a great deal of loss. We all know ceramics requires one to have a certain resilience to disappointment, but I find that if my body is worn out, my heart is a bit weaker. When I first started out with the large crucibles, I was loosing 9 out of 10, now I am loosing about 5 out of 10. Thats substantial improvement, but even so I’m usually not very much fun to be around for a few days after unloading the kiln.
- Helena, Shown here in 1865, was one of the richest gold rush towns in the west, and its history has been a big influenced my on work. Many of the clay deposits that I use were formed by the same processes that concentrated the gold here. I became interested in the material culture of this time period, especially vessels used in early industry.
- The gold pan was the first of these objects. I love how these tools of sifting gold from river sediment functioned. I imagined the miners starring down into them as they swirled them hoping to see gold flecks.
- I reinterpreted it as a serving bowl. Each gold pan here is an example of different clays found around Helena and the distinct surfaces they produce in the wood kiln.
- With the crucible I took this idea further. These humble ceramic vessels were used in a furnace to melt ore in order to distill precious metals. I was inspired to make some of my own from local clay when I saw that many of these antique crucibles have splashes of celadon like glazes on them, and I realized that these glazes were the melted rocks from near Helena.
- Those surfaces, like the gold, were a natural product of the geology of the area, and like the miners, I was searching for something precious hidden in the earth and transforming it with heat. The crucible became for me an symbol of alchemy, and an expression of the way I think about ceramics.
- In them I try to create strong and poised forms with surfaces that evoke a feeling that they may have been used for many smelting pours and bear the scars.
- This strategy has been a really exciting to me in that it can be very challenging to create a contrast between the refined form and the rough surfaces and still make it cohesive.
- Instead of making forms that might mimic or accentuate the patterns of flashing, I make forms that stand up to the violence of the wood kiln, almost ignoring what may happen in order to develop a relationship that has tension, or is evocative of something other than a classic wood fired surface.
- During my graduate research at Montana State University I designed and built a wood kiln. My idea was to blend the more gentle heating characteristics an Anagama with the shorter firing time of a train kiln. I wanted a kiln that could heat large work without breaking it, provide a wide variety of atmosphere to accommodate the diversity of local clays that I use, and do this within a manageable firing time.
- It was a huge challenge but I learned a great deal, and it works exactly as I had hoped it would. The kiln construction took a little over 2 years so by the time it was done I had little time to get to know it and fire it before I graduated.
- During that time I was also experimenting with Rhino to design new forms. I was exploring how my sensibility of form would change when put into a virtual environment, and was curious about what might be communicated when a computer generated design was wood fired. While I was thinking about this high tech/low tech interface, I got the idea to load the kiln virtually.
- This process allowed me to visualize the stacking of the kiln and passage of flame. The pieces could be scaled to fit perfectly into negative spaces and then color coded according to what clay body I wanted to use in that spot. Measurements where then taken and I made the work according to this blue print.
- In the context of local clay and wood firing it may seem a bit out of place, but it shortened the tedious loading process, helped me fit more work in each kiln load, and get better results in fewer firings.
- I enjoy wood firing, with all of it’s gritty romance, hard work, and tight knit community, but I do it primary for the surfaces I can produce with it.
- Each kiln load holds months of work, and 5 cords worth of trees are burned, so I am careful to create the best chance possible for the desired results.
- I fire at a lower temperature than many other wood firers, and build up large coal beds that burry most of the work on the floor. Im trying to deposit as much ash on the work as possible.
- The combination of lower temperature and large amount of ash encourages very matt surfaces, instead of huge glossy drips.
- Thick crusts of sintered ash, once sanded down, have an appearance of lichen, stone, and rust, evoking the passage of time and patina, not the exposure to extreme heat.
- I am careful to place each clay in the region of the kiln where it can produce the most interesting effects. This way I can utilize all parts of the kiln, and achieve a diversity of surfaces.
- For example, this clay sweats out a sticky black glass as it reaches temperature and this collects a lot of ash creating sintered crusts and splotches of color. I place pots made from this clay in hot coal bed regions and burry them in wood as I reach the end of the firing.
- This clay on the other hand does not produce color well in the coal beds, and is so high in rock that it doesn’t take surface in cooler areas of the kiln. I place it in the hottest zones and it develops this cream colored crust.
- A final example is this clay that is high in silica and tends to turn a flat gray when exposed to direct flame so I stack pots made from this clay tightly in the back of the kiln to protect them.
- Wood firing local clays has been a really exciting and rewarding experience, but the physical effort, and the high loss rate make it finically difficult, and emotionally exhausting. I am realizing now that if I want to keep doing it, I have to find a more sustainable way. It’s a point of transition that feels a bit spooky, and exciting.
- I am looking forward to when the snows leave the mountains and I can go dig some clay and find some peace and inspiration. There I am forced into a beginner’s state of mind, and I reconnect to the foundation of my work, the forming and heating of earth.
- If you want to find more information on my process and exhibitions you can visit my website at: davidpetersceramics.com and you can reach me at: [email_address]