Current work in the Studio on the farm in Iowa – update to 2024
Since finishing up at Dordt College in the spring of 2014, I’ve been geared up for more production in the studio on the farm and organizing my books and materials, print/drawing archives and paper stock in flat files, and collecting framing material and canvasses for on-site painting. I expanded the studio several years ago in anticipation of both retirement from teaching and more studio production. All the work for the Angel/Beast exhibit was produced in my studio space in 2012, 13; etchings and lithographs were pulled from my Wright combination press there and all clay works were made, dried and bisque fired in my wood-fired kiln on the farm. That 24 cu. ft. kiln was originally built for the studio in North Carolina in the 80s using propane, used at Dordt for 10 years with a outdoor cover and then stored on the farm for 10 years till 2010, when I had an advanced ceramics student willing to help me rebuild it and I designed a fire box underneath based on Fred Olson’s writings on wood firing. I use wooden pallets, which are cut up into 2 ft lengths and will burn fast and hot given the smaller, kiln dried nature of the wood. It saves gas of course and will fire quickly to bisque temp. if I stoke it accordingly. The fire box gets very hot to stoke after 2000 degrees, requiring a fire suit and given the labor and constant stoking involved, I will only fire there occasionally. I’m scheduling a high fire wood burn with Dordt students this fall; burning wood creates fly ash on the glazes altering them with unpredictable effects. I conducted several workshops in printmaking and hand-built ceramics at both the Onslow and Beaufort County Arts Councils in North Carolina in 2015 and have a few galleries in Eastern North Carolina and along the coast and was able to clean up and do some maintenance on the studio near our cottage on the inter-coastal waterway near Belhaven. We maintain a cottage on the intercostal waterway and the studio nearby, which was constructed from old tobacco barns in the mid 1980s when we were full-time residents. I last used the studio in NC in 1991, when we moved to Iowa and it has served as a storage facility since then. After the fire in the studio in Iowa, the NC studio was sold to finance the new studio in 2020.
I’ve had good response to my work back in Iowa, with several local displays in Sioux Center and in the new studio in Ireton and the surrounding area with more sales than I expected, finding what people liked to collect by way of new and older prints, with brisk ceramic sales; especially functional ware of course, but a number of special orders for larger clay works and communion sets. I have a restored turn of the century barn I completed in 2007, and have displays there, kiln openings, and studio tours. I do enjoy both the variety of representational and abstract work methods and experiments, as well as functional and sculptural work in clay. Answering questions about my work, how and why it was made helped me to continue to connect with people, get them into original art, and actually sell more work; the same idea goes for this web site and all the support material. After a break of 2 years teaching full semester classes, I taught introductory ceramics at Dordt, Northwestern College in Orange City, for two years, as well as a community adult classes. Students respond well to my extensive experience in clay, love visiting my studio with ongoing work, and seem motivated to produce more quantity as well as quality work as a result of working under a master potter. Their energy always motivates me as well.
