Through It All, Beauty

Raku fired sculpture made with clay slabs composing a stack of two tetrahedrons. A tetrahedron is a four sided solid. This piece is held together by a steel rod which is held in place with hard, permanent sculpture foam. The colors are vibrant and permanent, with a clear raku glaze over all. It has many rough qualities that come from the raku firing, including some scars from the kiln, and has not had the smoke cleaned off of the glaze, resulting in much variation of tone. The junction between the two tetrahedrons has organic flows covered in 22k gold leaf.

Raku sculpture is brought up to temperature rapidly, in 30 to 45 minutes. Then, when the glaze appears nicely melted, usually around 1800 F it is removed from the kiln, the rapid cooling causing the glaze to crack. It is then put into a reduction bin, with pine needles and paper which quickly burst into flame! The lid is now tightly affixed and the vessel is allowed to sit in a smokey atmosphere for approximately 30 minutes. This allows the smoke to permeate the cracks in the glaze, showing up as black lines which are permanent.