Children of the Sun

Here's a taste of my 24 hour comic. I may put more photos up. Let me know if you want a copy: lars.volta@gmail.com

I can't believe it's only been one day

I did it! I just finished erasing all the wispy pencil lines. Now it's off to battle with the scanner and to get this beast laid out.

24 hour comic

I'm going to do it. 24 pages, thought of, written, drawn, with a cover, and at least one copy assembled in 24 hours. I haven't started the official clock yet. I will soon, but even though this is absolutely harmless--I mean I know I can do it, but can it be done well?--I still feel trepidation in starting. And that I think is the fun, the challenge, overcoming a thing even if it's uncomfortable, especially if it's uncomfortable.

Wish me luck.

Robot's Errand

Here's my first venture into published comics. I made love with my pen and forgot to use protection. I few days later I get this call from some printer that I'm a father. It's 16 pages long, has full versions of two stories, a triple-stapled spine, and no clipping. One story is about flowers, the other is about war. Here are a few baby pictures:





If you like what you see I would love to send you a copy. Just hop on over to my etsy page or send me an email at: lars.volta@gmail.com

New Prints

Summer Prints

The first three pieces are inspired by sunsets on Lake Plantagenet during my time working at Camp Thunderbird. The last four pieces are part of a series of monoprints I did after my girlfriend gave me a fresh appreciation for fireflies, something she hasn't seen in Scotland.

New painting

This work was done for someone who works in a county office. It's titled, "Lake Bemidji, My City #2". I learned a great deal about media, application, technique, choice, and getting rid of my pride. I painted a portion of this four times before I came up with a match of color, shape, texture, and line that unified the existing elements of the composition.

pots!!

Here are some of the pots that came out of this work I've been describing. I sharded quite a few, and made some pretty poor glaze decisions, but without knowing how work would turn out I'm very pleased with this work and the entire experience.

Goodbye Mill Creek Pottery

Today Simon and I are going to unload the kiln, grind the shelves, and pack up our wares. Then I will leave Mill Creek Pottery. I had a great deal of fun and learned wonderful amounts, and varieties, during my time spent here. Thanks Simon and your family for letting me be a part of the experience.

After that excitement, I'm going to do one of my most favorite things in the world, surprise someone! I'm going to drive a bit south to my grandparents' house in Mauston, WI and I'm going to totally surprise them, it's going to be hilarious.

Prehistory and Me

I'm going to canoe the Wolf River and swim with the sturgeon today. I've got to watch to make sure Tom doesn't jump in and try any wild spawning action. The DNR were tagging the fish yesterday. I saw a fish that probably weighed as much as I do. I hope to post pictures when I get home.

Me-98.6, Fire-2400

So, we finished the the up-firing yesterday afternoon. We reached cone 10 in the front and back with, in retrospect, relative ease. Then we spent about 12 hours down-firing--a process of reduction cooling to bring out particular affects in the ware that is extremely amazing to watch. I got to see fire act like a liquid inside the firebox. Think about how mesmerizing staring at a regular campfire is and then multiply it by 100 and add a hallucinogenic drug of your choice. It's awesome. Now it's all about cooling, so we play the waiting game. I'll probably post again when we take things out of the kiln.

Fire

So Tom lit the kiln at 9:30 on Friday night. I had my first shift from 12:00 am until 5:00 am. I was pretty stoked with myself--I held the kiln at 250 degrees solid, I mean that needle on the pyrometer didn't move one iota, for two hours. Then I brought up the temperature 100 degrees every hour after that. I'm going back around one o' clock to do my next shift. The kiln will fire for about two days, that means a full day of firing now and probably a full day of firing on Sunday. Then it takes about two days to cool. I probably won't post in the firing time seeing as how I need to turn my sleep schedule inside out, but I'll give head's up on cool down time. Feel free to comment.

Mill Creek Pottery Excursion Day #4

Today Tom closed up the flue in the back of the anagama kiln, Tom and I got a trailer full of lath from a lumber place in Shawano, I finished glazing my pots, hauled brick around, cleaned out the cross draft kiln, made wading, ground more bricks (if you're reading this Ruby I always wore my mask.), and began loading pots. New stuff was coming down the pipe all the time. Simon sounds like a wood fire guru. What I learned in loading a very small portion of the kiln: the manner in which you load pots is extremely important. I got the idea not to think of the pots as simply receiving the lick of flame and intense radiated heat, but as controlling the flame and heat, directing it as you see fit--it's what you do with this ability that makes any differences.

Wood firing pottery requires much. It is a very time, labor, and mind intensive process. But it is also a very intimate process. It reminds me about pouring concrete and the ways you would handle materials--how you would touch something dozens of times before it was left alone and built on top of, or used to support something. You handle these things many times and out of that comes a great work. It's very much like that here. From raw clay to sanding a finished piece there is a special kind of intimacy you have--something that needs to be explored further.

We played soccer tonight at a school in Shawano. I am way out of that kind of shape. I definitely did not dominate. But I had a good time. At Bemidji State University my ceramics professor,Butch Holden played an insane amount of racket ball, and he was freakin' awesome at it. Simon plays quite a bit of soccer, and he dominates as well. I wonder if every potter has a sport they love to play? I wonder what Shoji Hamada played? Maybe marbles.

Weeeeeeeee, sturgeon

Hey I forgot to mention that I did check out the world's largest sturgeon run. I felt like I was creeping around rivers of a prehistoric era minus the smoke belching factory across the river and the shoddy gang tag scrawled on the sidewalk.

There were some real monsters cruising up that river. Some about six to seven feet long. They were all flapping around like, "What the hell is this dam doing here, fifty years ago I could totally swim to a better town and make sweet fish love to some random hundred year old sturgeon babe, but whatever."

I could only see a couple dozen pairs of fins poke above the water once and a while, but the river at the dam in Shawano is pretty wide and I'd bet the prehistoric beasts to be spanning the entire breadth of water.

Grind City

The first rule of brick grinding, you do not talk about brick grinding. The second rule of brick griding, you only do brick grinding. The third rule of brick grinding...I guess it's really the only thing to talk about because I think I've handled about four tons of hard 9x5x2.5" every day since I've got here.

But a pinnacle has been reached. Tom and I got to the 12' mark and here's how I'm feeling: You know that guy that's all pumped to tell you about his last excursion to some far away mountain that he climbed with a thimble full of gear and no oxygen, well I feel like that except I built the mountain that that dude will climb on.

Tom and I also trekked to Mill Creek and didn't drown. We applied our sweet architectural skills to bridge building and spanned that vicious gap with only wet feet to show for it.

We also played soccer with Simon and his daughters, Tom made one of them cry with his mad skills.

Mill Creek Pottery Excursion Day #2

Despite the snow in the morning, gnarly cold wind all day, gray skies, and four layers of clothes, Tom and I managed to get a fair amount knocked out of the chimney. Everything is pretty simple until you get to the parts where you need to figure out a geometric puzzle on par with Zen riddles in order to cut a piece of soft brick capable of fitting around the back arch of the anagama kiln while continuing the current course.

Today was largely another day of grinding. Grinding normal size hard brick, grinding large hard brick with mortar and concrete on them, grinding all the crappy imperfections in my bisqued pots, etc. But it was all fun. I think I might sign up to be in the masons' guild after this, maybe I could get a sweet pendant or something to put on a sweater.

The reason I didn't post earlier was because Tom and I were babysitting an electric kiln until 1:30 am. During that time I glazed some pots, played with Simon's dog, Adobe, and told Tom my crum was bigger than his.

So it goes.

That's One Small Step for Man...

I got to Mill Creek Pottery today after a long, gray drive. I saw a few dead turkeys in the road, but not a whole lot else. After meeting Simon and his family, we ate out of his sweet collection of pots, then I went to the studio and began sanding my bisque ware. Man, sanding is a lot of work--you notice so many more nicks and burrs and fingermarks and errant scrapes when you're looking to destroy them. Regardless of the large amounts of time that can go into sanding before firing, the resultant smoothness and relative unmarred beauty make up for it. I sanded a few simple pots and half a dozen teapots--I'm super stoked to see what happens to the teapots.

Tomorrow is going to be more sanding, soft brick grinding, chimney building, and whatever else comes along. In the morning Tom and I are going to check out the sturgeon run on the Wolf River. Supposedly, it's the world's largest sturgeon run, so I'm kind of excited.

Mixture set to maximum percent - recheck

So I'm totally done making pots. Now it's just a matter of bisquing and packing them to become beautiful in Wisconsin.

Clay Golem

So I've got a week until I go to Wisconsin to do a wood fire at
Mill Creek Pottery. I already have a couple dozen wares of different varieties bisqued, but I'll need to pump out a few more pieces to ensure maximum kiln occupation. Stay tuned art fans, when I'm in Wisconsin I'll try to blog at the end of each day on what's going on.

Pre-2008 Work

These are some simple utilitarian objects I made my second semester working in clay.

Bottles

Going to the ceramic studio is always nice because you'll usually get around to doing the stuff towards making pots, but it is exceptionally nice to go in when you've just had things fired. Yesterday I went to the studio to do some odds-and-ends things and before I left, Jason Clark tells me he really likes my bottles in the kiln room. "Bottles?" I ask, and he leads me back to show me. I'm thinking he's probably got someone else's bottles mistaken for mine, but lo and behold there are bottles I made to potentially go in my 2008 show! And to top it all off they're pretty nice. It was nice to leave the studio with a surprises in my arms.

Monoprints, Winter 2008

These are some of my first serious endevours into monoprinting. I was investigating subtractive and additive techniques. Using the palette knife to scrape ink off the plate, I noticed the prints had qualities of an urban landscape--tight, geometric vertical forms, various planes in various values, and a changing sense of scale. These works are for sale if you are so inclined. each print measures about 9 x 12 inches and is printed on Japanese rice paper with the exception of the first print--that one is done on a piece of newsprint. Each print costs $10 plus shipping and handling fees to be determined. Just send me an e-mail and I will get back to you shortly. Thanks for looking.