Raku Workshop
A couple of months ago, we offered a Raku pottery workshop here in the Art Village parking lot. Raku is basically a fast and violent way of firing pottery which results in some really cool effects. What happens is, we take pottery that’s already been fired once. Then we glaze it with special glazes and fire it in a kiln. We heat the kiln to temperature at a faster pace than usual. Then, once the kiln is at it’s peak temperature, we open it up, and take the pottery out while it’s still red hot. We then we place these red hot items into a garbage can filled with sawdust, leaves, or newspaper and the materials start on fire. We close the lid of the garbage can and let the pottery smoke for a few minutes. Then we remove the pottery from the garbage cans and place them in a bucket of water. The process creates awesome metallic colors of coppers, greens and blues.
We are going to be demonstrating this again at Art in the Park on September 15, 2007. Pfiffner Pioneer Park in Stevens Point. Here is a slide show of the workshop.
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