Opening the kiln after a firing is a tense but exciting moment - what will be found? Will your hard work still be in one piece? and as anticipated? or will there be a lesson learned among the exploded shards or melted remains of your latest creative endeavour.
Thankfully, working with rock rather than fine pottery, my emphasis is placed on seeing what happens more than calculating specific outcomes. This allows me to work with the accidental and leads to all kinds of unexpected results, often taking me in completely new directions.
But for the moment, having opened the kiln, I now get to open the rocks…..
And I love what I find! The water saw slices through my fired geological mash-ups to reveal some completely unique, new stone specimens. These have been made in relation to the research I’ve undertaken into Joanne’s geochemistry work in Antarctica, which involves granite. I’m continuing to explore ways to portray the story of an invisible process that takes place within this rock and provides readable information useful to predictive modelling for climate science, in this case linked to sea level change.
These results have surpassed my hopes for what I wanted to achieve and will lead me to try something more in the development of ideas. But the next stage is to polish these samples and put them under the microscope for a close-up peek at those beautiful shapes and colours!
