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.

Pit Firing 2009

Here's a picture of students digging out the pit. We went on a fieldtrip to Dawn Soltysiak's studio and farm near South Haven, Michigan. She showed us how to do smoke and pit firings of the ceramic pieces we made in class. Pit firing is the most ancient form of turning clay into ceramic. It involves burying the pieces below ground and covering them with combustible materials and making a bonfire. There is no glaze used on the pieces, just natural materials like banana peels, straw, wood, and we even added dog food to get some vitamins and minerals to color the work. It rained all weekend, so it was a soggy adventure, but really, really fun.

Blindfolded at the Wheel

Here's a picture of the students today, trying to center & pull a cylinder without looking...

Karla's Window

Karla DePina was honored last week by the College Board with an announcement that the sculpture above will be part of a national traveling exhibit of senior work. 30 pieces were chosen among the nation's 35,000 students who submitted portfolios for review. The exhibit will travel to Princeton, NJ, Lake Wales FL, Dallas, TX, Baltimore, MD, and it will also be in Chicago at Gallery 37 in November. Hope you can be there. Now, after her second national award this year for an architectural sculpture, Karla has decided that architecture is indeed her calling. She plans to pursue architecture in college. I hope to live in one of her creative dwellings some day!

Oppenheimer Grant Funds Tea Party

Former teacher and current arts & education patron, Ted Oppenheimer and Foundation, generously granted our art department the funding to study and celebrate the history and art of tea and the teapot. We constructed panels for a mosaic mural, while each student created a teapot and cups from which we sampled teas from around the world. Students performed live music, baroque to contemporary, while we ate food from hand-made serving dishes and sipped teas. Thank you to the Oppenheimers for their amazing generosity and support to make school a creative and fun place.

Wood-Firing 2009

On the day our portfolios were finished, we went on a celebration fieldtrip to Galena to do a wood firing and a salt firing. We had SOOOOOOOO much fun camping for the weekend and stoking the kiln all night. Students made incredible food....Yum. Thanks for the tamales Aurora & family...We had great chaperones, too. Thanks to Mr. Couty, Mr. O'Carroll, Ms. Melendez, and Ms. Arter. They not only supervised so we could take the trip, but they brought art activities, stories, and camping expertise.
Jay Strommen led the workshop and he was a wealth of information and insights about art, ceramics, and firing. We plan to go there every year!!! The kiln will be cooled this weekend; we can't wait to see the work.
Click here to see pictures from the weekend.