The Wheels are Back

The electricians finished & we're back in business.

Trip to Fennville

It has become an annual tradition to visit Dawn Soltysiak's farm in Michigan every fall, and it's the highlight of our year. Dawn hosts our pit and smoke firings, bringing us back in time when ceramic work was fired in the ground with combustible materials, the way it's been done for tens of thousands of years before gas & electricity. Dawn's life is inspiring. She chose to leave her traditional job behind to pursue her passion for ceramics and farming. She now runs classes and a gallery in a converted barn, while working to create a healthy and sustainable local farm along the Michigan coast.

Yong Chung Visits Lane Tech

We had a day of great demonstrations by Yong Chung, our first visiting artist of the year. He shared a wealth of tips for learning the basics of throwing on the wheel and surface texturing. He talked to the students about his experiences learning ceramics in Korea, then at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His functional pottery, stacked vessels, and installations were very inspiring. Thanks, Yong, for an amazing day at Lane!

Spirit Day

Kiln-Baked Pizza

Here are Jessica, Tanzy, Breanna, Sabrina, & Ash w/their proud creations. We made the dough yesterday and baked over 100 pizzas in the kiln today!

Jay Strommen's Wood-Firing Workshop

Next weekend, we are going to camp in Galena & stoke the wood kiln there for a few days. I can't wait to mix the adobe and put the kiln together and stay up chatting in front of the fire all night. This is a picture of Jay visiting Lane to show his master potter skills & to tell students about the wood firing tradition.

Momoko Usami Visits Lane Tech

Momoko Usami is an artist from Japan who is currently the ceramic artist in residence at Lill Street Art Center. She showed the students her vast array of sculptures, pottery, and installations, and she demonstrated a really cool technique for painting images onto work by inlaying oxides into carvings she scratched through wax resist onto greenware. Her presentation was inspiring.

Snow Sculptures 2010

Here are some pics of the two teams sculpting snow blocks in Grant Park last week. They hacked away for three days in below freezing temps & sub-zero wind chills. Congratulations to the teams for their amazing dedication & final sculptures:Izabela Feret, Tori Rogallo, Erick Madrigal, Marta Kondratowicz, Alicia Sheridan, Danielle Larsen, France La, Noemi Reyes, Marina Diaz, and Maricel Tabalba.

Raku Firing

Hundreds of students participated in our raku-a-thon this year, from 8am until midnight. AP Chemistry students joined us in making ceramic works & watching the amazing transformation of copper & crackle glazes in the post-firing reduction.

Egg Drop 2009

Right before winter break, we had our annual egg drop off stairway "D" at Lane, one of the only stairwells that goes up all four flights. This picture shows Joanne's design, which I'm pretty sure could sustain a helicopter drop from 1000 feet in the air. We threw it hard around the room, and there's no way to crack the egg in this contraption.