April was a busy month, no doubt about it. The studio was a mess from
last year's activities, this year's disastrous junk removal antics, and
about 75 years of gradual buildup. The net result was a behemoth in
sore need of a bath. And a few other things.
I started
very early in the month with the clay room and progressed gradually
through the rest of the building spending no small amount of time on
hands and knees scraping up decades worth of caked on mud, oil (don't
ask) and who knows what else, loading junk into trash bins and carting
it all off to the dump.
Along the way there were some
repairs and maintenance that needed doing. The kiln needed to have its
ventilation system rerouted. After two years of venting into the
chimney, I made the startling discovery that the chimney actually went
nowhere. I don't know when that roof was sealed over, but it took me a
couple years to notice it.
Then I decided I needed more
show space. That meant shelves. And they had to be built before the
cleaning could be completed because all of the pottery in the current
show space was covered with wood ash secondary to the above mentioned
junk removal fracas.
Add in the passing of Sheila
Varnum and the fact that we are once again experiencing a wet, frigid
spring, and I have to conclude that April was a...challenge.
But the challenge was met in the end. Here are a couple pictures of the new show area:
The
item to the right in the top picture is a potter's wheel that hasn't
been used in about 30 years. But there it sits. I intend to remove it
and replace it with shelving, but that's a project for another time.
I don't want to gild the lily overmuch, but here are some pictures of the clay room:
You
can see the new vent hose slithering up the wall at the far end. The
hole was already in the wall thanks to a stove pipe that used to be
there. That pipe was intended to remove dust from the area while
grinding rock. It never really worked. Now that the rock grinder is gone
- thanks to said junk removal fiasco - the pipe could be removed and a
new purpose for the hole in the wall realized.
At
last the floor is visible. The filter press is long gone. That was
supposed to happen. But the table now sits where the pug mill used to
be. I am still in mourning for the pug mill. It disappeared during the
great junk hoohah despite the fact that the gentleman doing the work was
told to leave it alone. Never mind the additional work not having it
will create, I had grown attached to that old antique. Only the motor
remains. It can be seen in the first clay room picture above behind the
right hand end of the table. It's a 3-phase 5 hp motor and despite its
age, it still purrs like a kitten. But it's out of a job. Sad.
Maybe
I'm being overly sentimental, but that pug mill sat in that one spot
since the 1940s and was a work horse right to the day it was dismantled.
It deserved a better fate.
And I need a pug mill. But that's an issue for another day.
For
now, I await warmer weather. It's May, and despite record breaking heat
in March, temperatures have been in full retreat. But the studio is
ready and so am I. As soon as it warms up even 10 degrees, I'll be at it
again.
I can't wait.
