ASH & EARTH: INTUITIVE GLAZE MAKING WITH NATURAL MATERIALS
Sunday, May 3 · 1–4:30pm
$90
Explore an intuitive, material-led approach to glaze making using natural materials gathered from the landscape.
In this hands-on workshop, we’ll work with ash, clay, and locally sourced minerals to create ceramic glazes that embrace variation, unpredictability, and discovery. Rather than focusing on precise measurement or fixed recipes, this class invites a more open-ended process—one that begins with curiosity rather than a predetermined result.
We’ll start with a simple, beginner-friendly overview of what makes up a glaze, then move into working directly with raw materials: handling plant ash, wild clay, and mineral sources, and learning how to process and combine them for use on ceramic surfaces.
The workshop will function as a kind of shared, informal laboratory—each participant contributing different materials, questions, and outcomes. As we mix and apply glazes, we’ll observe how small shifts—differences in ash, proportions, or application—can lead to dramatically different surfaces, building a collective understanding through comparison and experimentation.
While these approaches have much to offer those firing in atmospheric or reduction environments, they can be especially powerful for artists working in electric kilns—opening up ways to achieve more varied, responsive, and “alive” surfaces within an oxidation firing.
This approach emphasizes observation over control, and experimentation over certainty. Instead of aiming for a specific, repeatable result, we’ll explore what happens when we allow the materials themselves to lead—treating unpredictability not as a flaw, but as a generative part of the process.
We’ll also discuss how working with locally gathered materials can carry meaning into the finished work, embedding traces of landscape, ecology, and transformation into the surface of a piece.
Participants are encouraged to bring materials from home—rocks, clay, ash, or plant matter—to share, test, or incorporate into our collective experiments.
Firing:
Participants who would like their tests fired here can opt into a $30 firing fee. Finished work will be available for pickup at a later date.
Please note:
This workshop will take place outdoors. Please dress comfortably and be prepared to work with raw, sometimes dusty materials.
ASH & EARTH: INTUITIVE GLAZE MAKING WITH NATURAL MATERIALS
Sunday, May 3 · 1–4:30pm
$90
Explore an intuitive, material-led approach to glaze making using natural materials gathered from the landscape.
In this hands-on workshop, we’ll work with ash, clay, and locally sourced minerals to create ceramic glazes that embrace variation, unpredictability, and discovery. Rather than focusing on precise measurement or fixed recipes, this class invites a more open-ended process—one that begins with curiosity rather than a predetermined result.
We’ll start with a simple, beginner-friendly overview of what makes up a glaze, then move into working directly with raw materials: handling plant ash, wild clay, and mineral sources, and learning how to process and combine them for use on ceramic surfaces.
The workshop will function as a kind of shared, informal laboratory—each participant contributing different materials, questions, and outcomes. As we mix and apply glazes, we’ll observe how small shifts—differences in ash, proportions, or application—can lead to dramatically different surfaces, building a collective understanding through comparison and experimentation.
While these approaches have much to offer those firing in atmospheric or reduction environments, they can be especially powerful for artists working in electric kilns—opening up ways to achieve more varied, responsive, and “alive” surfaces within an oxidation firing.
This approach emphasizes observation over control, and experimentation over certainty. Instead of aiming for a specific, repeatable result, we’ll explore what happens when we allow the materials themselves to lead—treating unpredictability not as a flaw, but as a generative part of the process.
We’ll also discuss how working with locally gathered materials can carry meaning into the finished work, embedding traces of landscape, ecology, and transformation into the surface of a piece.
Participants are encouraged to bring materials from home—rocks, clay, ash, or plant matter—to share, test, or incorporate into our collective experiments.
Firing:
Participants who would like their tests fired here can opt into a $30 firing fee. Finished work will be available for pickup at a later date.
Please note:
This workshop will take place outdoors. Please dress comfortably and be prepared to work with raw, sometimes dusty materials.
