2015 Warren Mackenzie Award Progress II: Stuart Gair

For the second leg of my trip on the east coast, The Warren Mackenzie Advancement Award enabled me to take a workshop with John Neely and David Peters at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine. Both John and David are well-versed in the process of reduction cooling, a technique that I have been interested in for a long time. The workshop gave me the chance to learn many of John and David's processes, which included throwing techniques, materials analysis, and kiln firing.

John Neely giving an incredible demonstration of some of the techniques he employs in order to produce highly considered and refined forms. Here, John is making a tea bowl. He rolls a textured pattern onto the exterior of the piece and proceeds to bow it out from the inside so that the form is accentuated by the texture.

Two teapots made and fired by John Neely in a reduction-cooled wood kiln. I enjoyed hearing John talk about the subtleties of a teapot as he was making them throughout the week. He also gave me great feedback on some teapots that I was working on in the studio.

David Peters loading the train kiln at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts.

Here is one of my wine bottles nestled inside a crucible made by David Peters.  Nesting objects inside of each other was a great technique I learned to gain variation on the surface of specific pieces.

These are some new jar forms that were fired inside of the reduction cooled wood kiln. I really enjoyed the subtle variation  in color that occurred throughout the kiln. The forms are my first attempt to convey my interest in similarly shaped Korean jars that I was able to see during my museum visits earlier in the summer.