the professor I like, and the professor I don't like.

G.F. This guy is pretty much my favorite professor. I took just one class from him, my freshman year. I still talk to him twice a week. Usually we go out, have a smoke, and talk about our subject. We have similar enough opinions that we don't hate each other's guts, but differing enough opinions that we can argue about them. Both of us are very passionate about our subject, and so we have lively discussions. Him treating me as an equal and not disparaging me for being 10 years younger than him helps too. I have earned a lot from him,  and all that comes together to make him my favorite professor.

MB. This guy is just an adjunct professor, and I thank God for that everyday. Arrogant, insincere, condescending, and stubborn. Half of his statements are half baked generalization that he probably picked up in a hoity toity class somewhere. If his work was worth all those grand statements and generally obnoxious attitude  I would not mind. Everyone has a certain amount of douche quota, and if your work is worth it, your douche quota proportionally increases. This guy's work is mediocre and a freshman straight out of college could produce better work if the freshman smoked a little less pot.  

On a camera

 It obviously has a colourful history. You can tell just by looking at it. The Lens barrel has aluminum flaking out on the edges. The worker who worked at the Ansco plant back on the east coast obviously was lax with the sanding and the electroplating. I don't fault him. The camera was a simple and cheap product. Almost a throw away. The only thing comparable today to it would be one of those disposable cameras you can buy from Walmart, except they are a lot more high-tech.

On the inside, there is rust on the hinges, and the light proofing foam has all but rotten away. You con tell that the camera has seen some serious use. There is salt deposition and water damage on the innards. The family that owned it took it to the beach, probably in Oregon, or Washington. It took black and white photos of their family vacations.

It was there when the son of the family went abroad, for the Great War. It took a photo of the proud son, in a stiff Military uniform, standing in front of the stars and stripes, proud to serve his country. Or was he making a stoic expression to hide his fear that he was leaving his home for some godforsaken trench in Europe, in Dunkirk or Somme, to fight for some abstract idea, and maybe never return, except as a telegram delivered by a brother officer to the family, informing them of how he served the country and made them proud, and died in military action on a belgian field, killed by mustard gas, dulce decorum est, pro patria mori.

The camera took pictures of the young daughter, dressed in a flapper costume, with short hair, going to a dance at Pengilly's. She held on to the camra as she boarded the Interurban, excited for an evening out with her friends, chaperoned by her father and mother. They danced to Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin on record that night. Then as the sun started getting lower, they stood in front of a wall, and their father took a photo of all the girls with the Ansco Clipper.

The camera was there during the Depression. It was not used, because film was too expensive. It sat near the mantle, as the pater-familias worked all day in the farm, assisted by the only son, while the mother took in washing and worked hard to make ends meet.

It was there when Tojo bombed Pearl Harbor. It took another picture, of a son. He looked the same as his uncle who never came back from the Great War, or the Grand Aunt who had died from the Spanish flu. The newest photo was added to the mantle piece alongside photos of the Uncle, the Great Aunt, a photo of the family on the beach, and a photo of an Aunt standing in front of a wall, with her friends in Boise.

It took a photo of the son's triumphant return from the Pacific, with a uniform full of medals, in a second hand Oldsmobile Phaeton, which he had bought in California after the long voyage back from Bataan, for $500. His proud mother had taken the photo, and it was put on the mantle next to all those other photos. It took photos of his family as it grew. It was there when he got married, brandished by a proud father. It was there when a son come into the family. A proud Grandfather took a photo. All these photos went to the mantlepiece.

The grandson left for college. His father disapproved of his long hair, and his general lackadaisical attitude, but his son was going to college, and that was something to be proud of. A photo was taken in front of Sterry Hall. The first child in the family to go to college. His bell bottomed pants and hair flared in the wind, captured by the Ansco Clipper.

That was the last picture the camera took. There was no more film that would fit in the camera. Father decided that it was a gigh time to buy a new camera. So a newfangled Nikon was purchase. He grumbled about buying something Japanese, but it was cheap and took decent photos, so it didn't matter. The Ansco was put in a box with other nick knacks, and put up in the attic. It sat there until the proud veteran of the war died in the late 2000's. Finding no use for it, the family gave it to the Youth Ranch. It was put in a glass shelf in the back. Who would buy such a thing?

In October 2010, an Indian boy came to the thrift store to buy warm clothes for the coming winter. He wasn't prepared for the Idaho winter. He saw the Ansco Clipper in a shelf. He brought it, and put it in a shelf. It has seen no use for nearly 70 years. It just sits on the window still, a relic of days gone by.

History of Ansco

Ansco has had one of the most colourful history in the photography. Predating Kodak, It was called E. Anthony and Co. At the turn of the century, it was merged with Scoville Manufacturing, and became Anthony and Scoville Co. and shifted its base of operations from Chicago to New York. Involved in a trademark infringement case with Kodak, it suffered huge losses because of Kodak's market dominance, even though it won the case, the company merged with the German conglomerate AGFA to form AGFA-Ansco. AGFA-Ansco was renamed IG-Chemie, a subsidiary of IG-Farben, the German chemical giant.

Renamed General Aniline and Film in 1928, it continued producing film and cameras. It was the official film of Disneyland, and had Henry Fonda as its spokesperson, and offered Jodie Foster her first acting role. As of now, it is the largest Roofing Manufacturer in America, and has not produced any film or cameras for decades. It offers lifetime warranty on its laminated roofing shingles.

Why I go to the Darkroom

 The first thing you notice as you open the door is the smell. It smells like old urine, but not quite. Then another, a stronger smell hits your nose. You can feel it in your sinuses. But you get used to it by the time you turn on the red light. You see stained tile, and a spackled white wall. There is a center console and that is covered with the usual detritus that follows me around. There is a old pipe lying right in front of you, on top of a yellow box that says “DO NOT OPEN IN LIGHT”. There is a pipe fixture right next to it with so much salt deposition on it that it looks like it belongs in a coral reef. You turn to your left and you are in the Darkroom.

There are dark bottles marked with different coloured tape everywhere. Some are on the shelf, some on the floor, and some on top of a huge drawer. You open the drawer and it has no shelves inside it. It has wire strung up near the top, and there are long rolls of negatives hanging from it. Congratulations, you just destroyed a month of work. Those negatives were not supposed to be exposed to any light. Congratulations. You just witnessed on of the worst feelings you can ever have as a photographer in the darkroom.

I always think of traditional photography as blue collar work. You muck around in the dark, dealing with stuff that could kill you if you looked at it funny, and making stuff that brings you joy. Something like those yokels you see in town fairs making sculptures with entire tree sections using just chain saws. I always think of myself as a modern day Weegee. Running around campus smoking, with a huge camera, documenting all the messed up stuff that goes on. I see people doing drugs, making out, stealing, fighting, arguing, chatting about the strangest things. I take their pictures and go away. And then I go to my darkroom.

In complete darkness, with Yusef Lateef or Erik Satie playing in the background, I pull out negatives from their holders. While wearing latex gloves, I dunk them in a tray full of 1:1:200 Pyro-Galliol. Agitate them constantly for the first 30 seconds. Then agitate them intermittently for 5 seconds every 45 seconds for 6 minutes. Then into a stop bath containing 3% glacial acetic acid for 30 seconds. And into Sodium Hypo-Chloride, with constant agitation for 2.5 minutes. Wash in tap water for 1 minute. Finally, I dunk them in a tank of 1% Sodium Sulfite for 10 minutes, and to finish it off, wash everything in running water for half an hour.

It is relaxing being in such an environment. Everything is quiet, everything is dark. If you follow correct technique, there are no surprises. Everything turns out as you expect it. The only variable is you. Surrounded by all those chemicals, working in dark, while music is playing in the back, you think a lot. You can't afford to think about what you are doing, because it is mechanical. If you think about it, you will goof up. So you think a lot about other stuff. You think of the weather, of the dinner you are about to cook when you come back. You think about what happened at that one night when you had one drink too much. You think of what happened in class, when that one wise guy decided that he knew better than the professor. You think about home, you think of all the places you could call home. You think about people in your life. You think about people you know who died, people who you haven't seen in years, people you will see the next day at breakfast. And then the alarm rings, and you can turn on the light.

A lot of people ask me why I spend so much time in the darkroom, why I have my bed there. I think by now, you know why.

Why i take pictures: thesis statement of sorts

Photography has been a contentions subject in the art world. Ever since Henry Fox Talbot fixed an image of a window on a sheet of writing paper sensitised by silver salts, there has been a lively debate on the legitimacy of a photograph as a work of art. Who decides whether a photograph is a document, or a objet d'art? While I can not claim in any way to be able to answer that question, I can take a different approach to the making of an image, so as to legitimise its nature as an art object.

Photography is on a cusp of drastic change. Gone are the days where a photographer would smell of ammonia, deal with negatives that could explode, and spend most of his time in the near dark, bathed by dull red light. Now a photographer spends most of his time in front of a computer terminal. In my imagination, however romantic it may be, a photographer is a blue collar worker. He takes images by hard work, spends his time with his hands in chemicals, and produces a tangible result, rather than a sequence of bits.

Faced with a problem of how to replicate that feeling of working with hands, I looked back to the early days of photography. Photographers with hands stained with developer, hunting for images from town to town, working in caravans covered with tarred paper to make them light tight.

I decided that I shall use the most primitive approach to photography, Salt Printing. A process that was phased out 20 years after it was introduced in the 1840's. I decided that I will use the process to make images that were of the most interest to the people of its times, Portraits. In doing so, I adopted a different role than what is expected of a maker of art these days. I became a meta person, a split between an artist, and a scientist. I worked closely with the chemistry department at the college, and did tests that would befuddle normal photographer, or a layman. I looked at the rates of oxidation with permagnates, borates and other compounds for oxidation, spectrometric tests to see ultra violet outputs for various light sources, paper acidity tests. In effect, I modeled myself to the image of the older photographers like Ansel Adams, who made his own chemistry, Talbot, who made his own processes, Nieps, who gave up most of his life breathing fulminates of mercury to fix an image on tar.

I also brought in my background of ceramics into the picture. Repetition was very important in the process. Each paper had to be the exact same, otherwise the images would vary radically. Coating each sheet of paper was a process that took 3-4 hours, most of which involved waiting for paper to dry.

By the dint of repetition, I managed to validate what Walter Benjamin had said many years ago. “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.”

In making something tanglible by the work of my hands, I work gives the final product an aura of a flawed work. While there was an image fixed on paper, it was unlike any other. There was flaws in the image which made it unique. There were flaws in the paper, soft spots on the image. While being a reproduction of an image, captured by a camera, it was also its own image. 

On Hipsters using Film

We can look at the various trends that have taken up the public’s imagination as a symptom of modern times. In this digital age, with almost every house in this country having some form of connectivity, there are unparalleled levels of connectivity. Ideas go “viral”, and videos and images become memes. But those are just the transient effects of the information age, which while contributing much to image of our generation, contribute nothing to the zeitgeist. Somewhat like the long hair and bell bottoms of the 70’s. Sure, they were highly visible, but have cars or the brand of cereal you eat in the morning been affected by it?I want to talk about a thing, trend, if you may that I think will.  
I was rereading Bruce Stirling’s Dead Media Manifesto recently. Written in 1995, when the internet was at the cusp of becoming what we know of it as today, I find this quote precient.
“Listen to the following, all you digital hipsters. This is Jaqueline Goddard speaking in January 1995. Jacqueline was born in 1911, and she was one of the 20th century's great icons of bohemian femininity. Man Ray photographed her in Paris in 1930,...
Jacqueline testifies: "After a day of work, the artists wanted to get away from their studios, and get away from what they were creating. They all met in the cafes to argue about this and that, to discuss their work, politics and philosophy.... We went to the bar of La Coupole. Bob, the barman, was a terrible nice chap... As there was no telephone in those days everybody used him to leave messages. At the Dome we also had a little place behind the door for messages. The telephone was the death of Montparnasse."
"The telephone was the death of Montparnasse." Mull that Surrealist testimony over a little while, all you cafe-society modemites. Jacqueline may not grok TCP/IP, but she has been there and done that. I haven't stopped thinking about that remark since I first read it. For whom does the telephone bell toll? It tolls for me and thee -- sooner or later.”
There is considerable dissatisfaction these days about “hipsters” taking really bad photographs using film cameras, because they want the “retro look”. I myself am guilty of that, but not for the retro look. As Stirling mentioned, as newer technologies come forward, older technologies died out. Well, film photography, with the advent of technology is dying out. Look no further than our college for the best example. The Darkroom, which is a substantial complex, with three rooms and multiple enlargers light tables and the other flotsam of the wet darkroom, lies abandoned. I am the only person on campus who uses it. A place bigger than the house i live in, is completely abandoned. Until five years ago, that place was buzzing with activity. What goes on with all the knowledge contained in those walls, in the developer stained tubs, and the glow in the dark timers? It disappears. This gradual disappearance of knowledge is what is disheartening. Of course, legitimately speaking, the knowledge never disappears, it just sits in the dark recesses of the internet, alongside knowledge about such things like telephone relay exchange hackery, and blacksmithing.
Which is why I am happy that these Hipsters have appropriated film. They are keeping the knowledge,and the experience of fumbling around in a dark room, getting slopped by chemicals, and smelling like urine from wet chemistry vital, and alive. I guess it is one form of validation for Reipl’s Law, which states that new, further developed types of media never replace the existing modes of media and their usage patterns. Instead, a convergence takes place in their field, leading to a different way and field of use for these older forms.

  

Nick Cave and I

When I made my way to Boise Art Museum, I had no idea what to expect. I had always thought of Nick Cave as an Australian singer. I thought that the exhibition was one of those celebrity crossover things that people in the public eye do frequently. I was misinformed. Nick Cave, I discovered, was an African American multidisciplinary artist. And then I saw his sound suits.
His sound suits are a thing to behold. Towering over the viewer, they project an aura that is not commonly seen in art objects. I think their tangibility has something to do with it. These suits, or would we call them sculptures, are towering, and are made from material that ranges from hair, to twigs, to metallic objects. Vibrantly coloured, it brings to mind tie-die work from India. In addition, each piece, has a different texture, which is a result of its media. I managed to see some videos of the sculptures in performances, and they attain an even greater presence. The dancers movements give the pieces a vivacious energy.
All things considered, I enjoyed the exhibition. However, this paper is not about what I thought about the exhibition. It is about me drawing parallels between Cave's work and my work for the Advanced Studies course. To do so, I need to go into my work first.
I have been working with clay for a year now. In that period, I have constantly been amazed at the plasticity of clay. Clay, as a medium, is very responsive to the artist, and as such is a marker of the artist's state of mind. Its plasticity makes it a useful tool for an artist. However, its plasticity is often a means to the end. It is used to fashion large pots, and sculptures, that can have widely different qualities. Just looking at historical ceramics, a Jomon era pot has a very solid heavy set quality, whereas a Ming era pot has a transient, wispy quality to it. Most of it is due to the way the clay is worked, and the type of clay.
I decided that by looking into various methodologies in which clay is worked, I could look at the tangible quality of the finished product. Thus, I worked clay in many different ways. I coiled clay, I moulded it, I threw it on a wheel, I threw it from heights, I paddled clay, I punched it. By each method, I could achieve a different “feel” to the clay. I then used these artefacts to form modular sculptures.
I also looked at the very nature of ceramic work. Most of ceramics is dedicated to pottery, and making usable ware. Because of its utilitarian nature, we generally tend to ignore the compositional variables that are involved in making a pot. One of the major things that struck me was the relationship between the interior of the pot, and the exterior. For a viewer, the exterior of the pot is paramount, whereas the interior of the pot has many marks of its creation. I decided to highlight this  “negative space” in the pot by removing sections of the wall of the pot so that both of the spaces could be highlighted.
Nick Cave's work can be used to draw interesting parallels to my work in this class. I want to look at the very nature of his sculptures first. His sound suits are pretty non functional. Or to put it in a different way, I would not want to be seen in public wearing one of them. Their non functionality removes them from the usual category accorded to costumes, that is, Haute Couture. Instead, Cave's work almost transgresses into the are of sculpture. The sound suits have all the trademarks of a sculpture. They are tangible and in three dimensions. They posses texture and colour. However, they can be worn. They react to the environment, and the wearer, which draws them close to Alexander Calder's work. But they still blur the line between sculpture and clothing.
In a similar manner, my work lies in between the boundary of functional and non functional ceramics. My pots, made near the end of the term, are traditional pots, however the usage of shellac makes them useless for most of the traditional purposes pots are used for. Other pots have deliberate holes, cracks and malformed edges, that render them useless for functional purposes. My relief series could be called a series on wall tiles, however it is a sculpture in the round, thus making them useless as wall tiles. On the other hand, most of the works have functional aspects. All the containers do hold stuff, and are made in the tradition of pinch pots. The wall tiles can actually be mounted on walls, and have specific features that would make it possible to affix them on walls.
Also interesting is the performance aspect of Cave's work. I have seen videos of Cave's sound suits and think that the suits work best in the performance aspect. In a manner, they are both performance props, and the subjects of the performance itself. Each suit has its own characteristic quality that comes forth in a performance. Some suits have a rigid quality, which is a result of their metallic nature. This quality leads to a loud noise that is produced with every movement. Other suits, especially the ones made with hair, have a very fluid quality, which shows forth in the dance-performances. They have a very faint sound.
My work is is based on how clay reacts to different methods of working it. For example, a piece of clay has a different end texture if it has been dropped from a height, rather then being paddled. This difference in technique is also apparent in different types of clay. For example, brown  earthenware reacts differently to both techniques, compared to white earthenware. Similarly white and brown earthenware react differently to similar processes and yield different end products. Also interesting is the results when two different clays are mixed together. The different clays in the same piece react so differently that the end pieces actually show fault lines on the points where the two clay meet.
Also important is the performance aspect of my process. Working with clay is a very recitative process. Wedging clay, throwing it, joining it, et cetera, all involve repetitive movements. Over time, these repetitive movements have a tendency to become stylised. These stylised movements are mirrored in the work of Cave, who is himself a professionally trained dancer.
His pieces often contain aspects of African traditional dancing. Similarly, in reflection, my movements working on clay are somewhat akin to the dances of Kathakali, an Indian Classical dance, which rely on hand movements.
It is also interesting to note the verticality of Cave's work. All his works are taller then they are wider, which is analogous to my work. It is of course possible to draw many parallels between Cave's work and my work, but the same is possible for any artist. All the parallels are drawn post facto, and looking in hindsight, one could even draw parallels between artists as separate as Rembrandt and Margaret Bourke-White. What is important to note is the analogous methodologies and ways in which material is manipulated to create a unified piece of work. Nick Cave has certainly succeeded in creating a strong series for his show in Boise Art Museum. What is left to see is if I can do something of a similar nature.

In a Dark Room, With A Black Sheet Over My Head A Monologue on My Post Colonial Experience.

I have always been aware of the fact that I am in America, but I try to keep it in the back of my mind. I just go about my way, imagining that this place is back home, but full of white people. However, once in a while, arbitrarily, I get a strange sensation in my chest. I am in America. The feeling does not compute. Being here leads to a strange melange of feelings.

On one hand, I am happy that I am here, because back home, I sure as hell would not be allowed to do the things I do here. I get to take pictures, and work on my art, and read novels, and call it school. I like to think I have it good.

On the other hand, America feels alien. And I know that America stands for most of the wrongs that have happened in the last fifty years. How can I be happy and content here, when the country I am living in is causing death and destruction; and pollution, and economic collapse, and terrorism and all those multi-syllable words back home?

I heard somewhere that everybody has their place. It needn't be their birthplace, or where they live, or work. It is just a place where a person feels most at home.

This last term here, I spent a lot of time in a dark, overstuffed room, with two dolls and a really old camera for company. I got so familiar with my two dolls that I even had names for them. I ended up learning a lot from just looking at those two dolls for hours at an end. It was really surprising that two dolls, less then a foot tall each, could teach me anything, but they did. Before I digress too much, and run amock talking about agendas and biases, I do need to tell you about the dolls themselves. It is really strange, but what gives, right?

So there was this woman from Boise, who joined USAID. She was transferred to back home. This was in the 60's, early 60's. Back home would have been mofussil as hell compared to the raging night-life of Les Bois. But she came back in one piece. In her bags were 32 dolls. She had picked them up as souvenirs before she left or something. She had obviously sown her wild oats, because she settled down, and lived an uneventful life. And then she died. (Doesn't that remind you about a certain man form Nantucket?) Her Daughter, deciding that they could do better some place else, dumped them on the education department here at the college. They sat there, behind glass, gathering dust for the next two decades. And then, they were moved, to the college archives, where they gathered some more dust. All this was until I showed up in the archives with a chip in my shoulder about not being a serious photographer.

Because I had such a serious chip in my shoulder, I decided that I would use the most obscure camera I could find. So I got my hands on an 8x10 camera. Ansel Adams, and Edward Weston, and Paul Strand used that. I didn't want to be bogged down with a small camera. I leave that to people like Diane Arbus. What did she do anyway, except take pictures of freaks. No. I had a camera I needed a dolly to carry. Who could stop the creation of art now?

So I would go in every night and spend at least five to six hours in the archives. Out of which I would get roughly two pictures. On a good day maybe three. Most of the time was spent with me having a thick black sheet on my head, looking at an upside image of the dolls.

Most people would call it boring, but it was a really strange feeling. I was trying to make art there man. You need to cover all your bases with that stuff. I was trying to map out the history of the dolls. If I was taking their pictures (They were pretty much Portraits), then I might as well think of them as humans. Since when have we take portraits of trees? You take still-lifes of them. So I tries to think of them as these two little dinky women, manufactured in a doll factory back home. (It is really strange to think of people being manufactured, right? At the rate those Asian countries' population is increasing, they might as well be.) So those dinky little doll women were manufactured in a factory back home. This white woman from USAID comes to help the homeland out. She leaves with thirty two of these little dinky doll men and women. She just keeps them around the house, and when she dies, her daughter, finding do use for all them dinky little doll people decides to give them away. Sounds awful like some of the stuff I have read in those history books my room mate like to keep around.

Now sitting in that dark room, with a black cloth over my head for long hours with no human contact, I started getting all cabin fevery. You know, when I was younger, I used to read all kinds of books. My favourite ones involved all these intrepid type space explorers, two or three of them in space. These buggers would end up in a lonely outpost in space, surrounded by hostile elements, and all they had was each other. They would start going crazy, and do stupid stuff all the time. They would get all paranoid and start imagining stuff. Eventually they would all kill themselves by going out of the vacuum lock. And then the writer would write two three pages about the human condition and existentialism. Fun stuff. Did you ever notice, in those science fiction books that the guys would be all decked out in baggy space suits and what not, while the girls would wear next to nothing, and just have a glass bowl on their head? I used to get a kick out of that.

But yeah, I got all kinds of cabin fevery about how the transportation of the dolls was a manifestation of colonialist tendencies and how the dolls were symbols of my presence in this college, and how I was leading to the brain drain, and how the dolls condition behind the glass and my presence here was a symbol for the greater condition of people from third world countries. It was kind of cute.

No doubt, this was added to by all the books I was reading about at the time. I was basically reading on and on about how the white man had destroyed the coloured man by his control over him, and I was theorising about existential angst, psychological trauma, and alienation that was dumped on the coloured man just by the fact that the white man took over his country, killed most of his people, destroyed his religion, annihilated his social structures, transported him across the seven seas, and then subjugated him in the new lands. Heavy stuff, right?

I wanted to create this searing series of serious art photographs that would take two or three hours of looking at to understand, and would impart on the viewer a realisation of what harm and inequities and been done. So I spent more time in the dark room under the black cloth, looking at upside down images of dolls.

I decided that because I had the best tools possible, I would use them to the full degree. I had an 8x10 camera for god's sake. Ansel Adams used that. If he could make such great works about the American landscape, I could attempt to take a picture that was half as good as his. Because that guy pretty much made photography what it was, didn't he? I used tilts and shifts, drops and pulls, filters and small apertures. I went down to f64, because hell, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham did so, and if they were good enough for f64, I sure as hell was too. I did everything that all those great photographers did.

And so I went up to my darkroom, killed the lights and poured out the tepid chemicals in the trays. In complete darkness, I opened up the negative holders and pulled the delicate negatives out. I set up the timer in the darkroom, and started putting the negatives in the developer. Pull out the negative, reverse, put back into the developer. This routine continued until the timer's buzzer rang out, and it was time to put it in the stop bath. Repeat, and dunk the negatives in the fixer. Repeat, and dunk the negatives in hypo clear. Finally after a while, the negatives were ready for inspection.

I had in my hands beautiful prints. The tonalities were perfect, with just the right amount of greys. The shadows were creamy and the highlights detailed and sharp as a well honed knife. I gave myself a congratulatory pat on my back and pulled out some paper, so that I could get a contact sheet ready. Killed the lights again. And started the entire process of mucking with chemicals again. Until, finally, the prints were ready. They were technically beautiful prints. But they were horrible. I destroyed the negatives because I didn't want such work associated with my name. The dolls looked like they were in a scene of a murder. I had managed to use all the camera's advantages to my disadvantage. My fancy pulling and shifting and tilting had given me photos that even that blind photographer in the recent news would laugh at, if he could see them, of course.

So I started again.

I went to the dark room and put on the sheet of black cloth on my head. And I looked at the upside down image. But I kept Hemingway in mind. I have always been a fan of his precise and to the point writing. I remember that he said somewhere that for each good piece of writing is three times as much, omitted. So I decided to take as much time as earlier, but keep my images simple, and politics to the minimum.

I realised that the tendency to invoke multiple facets in my art, even though it might seem enticing, is not really the best thing to do. It is better to concentrate on a single facet and look at it in detail.

Which brings me back to my starting point. No, not the man in Nantucket, but about being brown in America. Yes, I do come from a culture that was exposed to colonial control. Yes my homeland was trifurcated, and yes, we had wars because of it. But I like to think of it as history. In the same manner as what happened yesterday, last week, or three hundred years ago. Yes, it happened, and yes, it affected me, and made me what I am, but I can not fight what happened in my past. What I can do is control my present.

This term, most of the books we studied were based on the colonial and post colonial narrative. What made the books in the second part of the term interesting to me was that they were aware of the colonial past, but their colonial past was not their identity. The books were obviously a reaction to what had happened, but they still retained their merit in other aspects.

So What did I get out of sitting in a dark room, with a black cloth on my head looking at upside down dolls, and reading about white people oppressing people of colour? That if I can not change something, there is not point raising my blood pressure about it. And how to actually use an 8×10 camera, which I had never really used before that first day.

Bob

There is a strange figure curled up on the couch. It resembles a baby in a fetal position, until you realise that it is just a person trying to make the most out of a sofa in a cold room. He wakes up, and the first thing he reaches for is a pack of Pall Malls, and a cheap Bic lighter. He gropes around the table and does not find them. His hand reaches his old fedora lying on the ground, and finds the cigarettes and the lighter inside the fedora. A second later, the room fills up with the aroma of burning tobacco.
The person gets up from the sofa and groggily walks over to the fridge. Pulls out a can of soda pop. Opens it gingerly, and takes a swig to wash out the taste of stale cigarette smoke from last night. The debris of last night's gathering are around him. The ash tray is chock full of brown and white cigarette butts. The trash can is full of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans, and on the kitchen table, lies a half empty bottle of Black Velvet.
He is wearing a name tag that says Randy Espinoza. He is not Randy Espinoza. His name really does not matter in this narrative. Let us call him Bob. You can replace Bob with any name that catches your fancy, whether it be Charles, or Henry, or William, or Balthazar. Bob is just easy to type. Bob heads to the toilet. Almost bangs into the half closed door. Cursing sullenly, he enters and rinses his mouth, and wipes his face with a wet towel. He then realizes that it is time. He can feel it in his body. A strange sensation goes through his body. He puts on his old shoes caked with mud, and leaves the place he woke up in. Outside is a bicycle that is so used that it looks like the Manhattan Project was a design committee for it. On closer inspection, however, it is just a poorly maintained bike.
Bob jumps on and starts pedalling. His destination is a few blocks away. He can feel the cool breeze billowing through his hair, biting his ears. He pedals harder and harder as his destination draws closer. He finally draws up to the building, and jumps off, leaving his bike to clatter down on the cement. He barrels through the door, and enters the final door separating him from his calling.
He takes off its covering, and starts stroking it. Softly at first, and then harder, with an almost animal intensity. When it (or by his bob's reaction, should it be she? My dogma as a writer should really not be toward absolute realism.) is plastic and flexible enough, he lifts her up, and carries her over to the rotating bed he set up only for her. If you would look at it, it looks like something from the 1960's, except slightly smaller. Bob is obviously dedicated to his cause. He slams her down on the contraption and bends over her.
He presses her and strokes her, pushing with all his weight. He feels the warmth on his hands, and stops to grab the lubricant of his choice, which strangely enough, turns out to be water. His hands wet again, he goes back to her and starts pushing and rubbing again, moving his hands up and down. When he is satisfied, he takes his finger and puts it in the mound. He goes in as deep as he can and pulls out. He dunks his hands in the water, and readies for the attack. He takes the middle two fingers of his hands and pushes them inside the hole. He lets them moisten the inside. He then rhythmically begins stroking the inside. First pulling with the two fingers in the hole in movements going outwards, and then he pulls up. He does it again and again.
Then, he draws out his knife and puts it where her body meets the slowly rotating surface. With a deep breath, and a note that was sadder then anything I have heard in the entire day, he pokes his knife inside of her. He makes a nice little groove of sorts (I apologize for being slightly macabre, but I am drawn to Bob's activities now.) and then pulls away. He knows the knife is not the way to finish the job. He gets up, and moves toward what looks like a garotte. He shows it to me. It is a length of fishing wire attached to wooden dowels at the end. He takes the garotte, and puts it on her body, encircling her, and pulls. The body is rend in half, but it is a clean cut.
He picks her up, and puts her in a box, where many others like her are sitting, drying out, in this room. He picks one up that is bone dry. There is no other ford for her state. It is as if all moisture had been drawn out from her body. I touched her, or should it be it now? And it felt warm. I was surprised because all others in the box were cold to touch. He took it back from me, and carried it to a box, and put her inside. He then started a fire in the burners that were concealed under the box. Soon, the box was full of flames.
Bob asks me if I want a cigarette. I do. It has been a sight to see him doing what he loves to do, even though in this world, not a lot of people do it. We smoke the cigarette in silence. In 15 minutes or so, Bob calls me from my contemplation of what I had just seen. He is wearing a mask and gloves. His body is obscured by an apron. He opens the door of the box, and looks inside. Picks up what survived the flames with huge tongs that lay by the side. He dumps what he pulled out in a garbage bin next to the box. He seems almost excited now, like it is Christmas.
He closes the lid of the garbage bin and leads me inside. We sit quietly and I wait for him to tell me when it is time for me to leave this place.
Finally after half an hour, he opens the garbage bin and pulls out the remnants inside. He goes to the sink and cleans them with a toothbrush. He then gives it to me. I protest that I don't want it. He presses me. I take it and leave. It is the last I will see of Bob for a while, unless he does something that demands my attention. Today was a ceremony of sorts. As I walk back to my lodgings, I open the box and pull out what he gave me. It still feels warm from the fire that covered it, obscured it, changed it, and rid it of the things that made it weak. I enter my room, and make a pot of tea to calm my nerves. When the tea is done, I pour it in what Bob gave me, and take a sip. It feels the same as drinking from a normal cup. Strange.
I always thought drinking from a pot that a potter made would be a much more interesting experience.

Why wood firing?

This is part 2 of my three pare series on Woodfiring. As it is supposed to be a part of a paper, it is still a first draft, so editing and adding stuff is gonna take up most of my week. But yeah, Why fire pots with wood?





Pottery , until a few decades ago, was considered a “craft”. There was a distinction between an “artist”, who made art, and a craftsmen, who made furniture and consumable goods. This distinction has been destroyed in most circles now, with pioneering work of Robert Arneson, Peter Voulkos, Shoji Hamada, Bernard Leach, Grayson Perry, Peter Voulkos, and many other pioneering ceramic artists and potters. However, to answer the question why?, we need to look at the roots of pottery, what it implies, its visual, and aesthetic underpinnings and its ethos. Rather than being factual as in the previous sections, I shall attempt to find a personal reason and explanation for the question. We need to keep in mind, that art is an intensely personal process, and there can be infinite reasons. I can only claim my own reasons.
The first question we can ask is, Why Pottery? In most cases, people take up pottery for the sole reason that it is a very enjoyable process. Most of these “hobby pots#” can be put in the category of art brut for reasons of lack of pedagogical underpinnings and unintentional and unsubstantiated choices made in the process itself. Simply put, if it is “art”, it is unexamined art. On the other hand, there are pots made by professional potters in large batches and for large scale consumption. These pots are mostly well made, and the potters are technically proficient. However, the aesthetics of the pot, the form, shape, style, glazing, are mostly conventional and conservative. This is so for the reasons of mass sale and ease of production. There is a small section in the middle of these two groups, populated by studio potters, who use techniques from both sides of the spectrum to make creative, technically proficient work.
The question arises, that what place does art have in such a utilitarian trade such as Pottery, which makes tools to make our life easier. An argument could be made that all a potter has to do is to make competent pots, that fulfill their function. However, the same argument could be made for a house painter, and an “art” painter. The major point of difference, in my opinion, that differentiates “art” pottery, from “consumption” pottery, is the intent. Does the potter make choices that lead to the creation of a “art” pot, or does he make no choices, and ends up with an “unexamined” pot. The thing to keep in mind is that pottery has certain processes that need to be completed before the potter can even start making the pot. The choice of clay is the first step. Each clay, stoneware, earthenware, other misc. clays, have characteristic properties. They behave differently in each stage of wetness, they behave differently when dry, and they behave differently in a firing. For example, stoneware clay fire properly at a temperature that would reduce earthenware to a puddle of weak glass.
I recently went out on a limb and decided that I wanted to work with something other then stoneware and earthenware, and so I decided that I will make my own clay. I was however constrained by the lack of material at my disposal. On further looking, I found a bag containing 5 kilos of pine ash that I had saved up from a camping trip. I decided that the ash would be the base for my new clay. That put some problems ahead of me. Firstly, the question of plasticity. Ash mixed with water would give me a paste that would be corrosive and unworkable. Thus I needed something that would neutralise the corrosive nature of the ash, and make it more pliable. The first thing that came to mind was Bentonite. Bentonite is a clay of volcanic origin, that expands on contact with water, which makes it an excellent sealant. Another advantage is the fact that it is commercially available as cat litter. A small amount of crushed bentonite was thus mixed with the ash. Now come the question of its heat stability. Ash has a relatively low melting point, which can easily be achieved in a cone 10 firing. I obviously did not want a glaze on the kiln instead of the pot, so I had to correct the lower melting point. I used quartz powder that led it to have a higher melting point. I also added coarse silica sand to the mixture to open it up. I made a few pots with the clay, with the intention of firing them in a stoneware kiln, because I predicted that the ash and bentonite would give the body a soft texture. I recently had a chance to fire a test tile with the material, and found all my predictions were correct, except the temperature sensitivity. The test tile had stuck to the trough I kept it in. This was possibly because the clay body was its own glaze. This tangent serves to show that even the process of choosing the clay body is one that leads to many choices.
The choices that follow are equally complicated. To glaze, or not to glaze? Underglaze? Enamel? The reader needs to keep in mind that glazing is not a simple chromatic process, but instead is a physical and chemical process, where compounds show colours in high temperatures, and undergo physical and chemical changes due to these temperatures. As such, they also react with the compounds in the clay. For example, Shino, a japanese family of glazes yields white to light orange colouration. However, in certain conditions, it becomes black, due to carbon trapping, which occurs in reduction stages of a firing. Also, the Shino can react to certain clays to give reds, greens and browns. ( In the anagama firing I took part in, the Shino pots were in a noburigama chamber, which reached cone 14. At this temperature, the glaze on the vertical surfaces ran to the inside of the pot, leaving a very thin residue on the walls, and the bottom had all the glaze. However, this glaze filled up half the pot, because it was mostly bubbles. Apparently, Shino takes on soap-like elastic tendencies under extreme high temperatures. The glaze on the walls was green, which is an uncharacteristic colour for a Shino.It could be argued that the batch of clay the pot was made from was adultrated by lead-oxide, but that seems implausible because the clay was sourced from a clay mine in Washington state.)
I realise that this seems like a continuation of the kiln firing variables mentioned previously, however, it is important to keep in mind that these questions all lead us the the movements that have made our art world as it is. I especially refer to Abstract Expressionism, and Process Art.
Process art can be called a thought process in which the objet d’art is not the principal focus. Instead of that, the process of making art itself has higher meaning, and value. Pottery, I argue, can be classified as an intrinsically process based based art. This is so, because of the various steps going into its creation. Again, I shall rehash a list of things that need to be done to make an ideal pot, with approximate times needed to make a pot from a kilo of clay.
1) Collection of clay- involves finding correct vein of clay, and collection. 4-5 hours
2) Drying and processing of clay- clay needs to be dried, ground, and sieved. 1-2 days
3) Mixing, pugging of clay- any additives like ball clay, kaolin, need to be added and mixed in. A mechanical pugger makes this easier. 6 hours.
4) Seasoning the clay for a year- Seasoned clay is always better. Hamada used clay that was 4-5 years old. Fresh clay can be used, but yields less than optimum results- 1 year
5) Wedging the clay- Clay needs to be wedged before use, to ensure uniformity in the clay body and to ensure there are air bubbles. I wedge a half kilo ball of clay for 15 minutes. Hamada got his balls wedged for 3 hours.
6) Adding any additives to the clay itself, like sand- This could be called a part of wedging, however it is a separate step, that also necessitates further wedging. 30-45 minutes.
7) Centering/ slab/ ball/ coil formating- Either the wedged clay can be centered, or it can be worked into slabs, coils or balls. Centering can take from 1-2 minutes, to hours depending on the size of the ball. For a ball of clay a kilo heavy, it takes me 40 minutes to perfectly center the clay.
8)Making the pot- Making the pot itself takes maximum 5-15 minutes.
9)Drying- Proper Drying can take a week.
10) Bisque firing- A bisque firing makes a pot workable and stable. It takes a day or two.
11)Glazing- Glazing can take up to an hour per pot. Most of my glaze work is done in 5 minutes per pot.
12) Drying- The glazes need to dry, otherwise they develop glaze defects like crawling etc. 1-2 days
13) Kiln loading- loading a kiln is an art, with an improperly loaded kiln giving defective results.1 hour - 5 days
14)Firing- The firing itself can stretch from a day to a month.

In the 14 states illustrated, the potter actually directly handles the pot’s “look” in two stages, making the pot, and glazing. The rest of the states influence the pot, but indirectly. If they are incorrectly done, they will yield a bad pot, and properly done would yield a good pot. Thus it could be said that making a pot is a journey, and not just a end product. Similarly, it can be argued that amongst the greatest catalysts for development in ceramic forms, the Japanese Tea Ceremony is itself a process oriented performance art.
Abstract Expressionism was an American artistic movement that mixed the radical subjectivity and powerful lines and colour of expressionism, exemplified by artists like Munch, Kandinsky, Chagall, and Otto Dix, and combined it with Abstractions pioneered by cubists (Gris, Braque, Picasso), Die Stijl (Mondrian, Doesburg), and Futurists (Boccioni, Goncharova). In making a mixture of these different styles, Abstract Expressionists came up with a style that was expressive, powerful and which symbolised the rise of America’s ascendancy in the art world. Artists like Motherwell, De Kooning, Pollock, Rothko and Hoffman took the art form and constantly explored their consciousness, and making strong marks on the canvas or the workbench.
It can be argued that each pot is a work of abstract expressionism. While throwing a pot on a wheel, the pot is extremely response to every movement of the potter. This starts off before the artist begins to throw the pot. The first step taken is to center the pot. For right handed potters, the wheel spins in the anticlockwise direction. The left and is used to press in the clay horizontally, and the right hand presses in the clay downward. The centering is a very important part of throwing, because a poorly centered pot will be off balance and, indeed, off centre. Also important is the fact that during this stage, the width of the pot’s base is determined. All these things are done by the simple actions of pushing inside or downwards. Next, using only tactile feedback, a hole is made in the centered clay’s top. This hole is then widened using upwards and outward motions of the hand. All these times, the traces of the potters hand remains as throwing marks. These dry into the pot unless expressly taken out.
It has to be kept into consideration though, that wheel throwing is not the only method to make pots. Entire styles are based on hand building of pots. Case in point being pinch pots. Traditionally Raku pots are pinch pots. A pinch pot is made by pinching into a ball of clay to make a bowl. This leads to a bowl showing the pinch marks and finger marks of the potter.
In both of these cases, the potter’s hand marks are intrinsic parts of the pots, and a major part
of using and appreciating the potis the visual and tactile exploration of the pot. This not only leads to a more well rounded experience of using the pot, but also leads to a better understanding of the pot and how it behaves. This step is an important step in the tea ceremony. The creation of the marks on the pot itself is strongly reminiscent of the action paintings of Pollock , and the visual exploration of the pot is analogous to the exploration of a Pollock. The piece is the actual account of the creators movements and actions, and can not be appreciated in proper gravity without the observation and analysis of each mark as a part of the greater scheme.
The rise of studio pottery in America was engineered by a handful of artists, including Arneson, Voulkos, and Soldner. Arneson used ceramics as a form of sculpture, whereas Voulkos and Soldner used Japanese techniques to make ceramic forms, that stood on the fine line between pots and sculptures. Raku and wood firing were brought into the consciousness of the American masses, and began to flourish. On the other side of the pond, Leach and Hamada had made made considerable inroads into the traditional pottery market with their Mingei influenced pots. The confluence of the european and the american pottery lead to the ceramic world today.
We have established that
1) “Art pottery” is comprised of informed and well examined technical and aesthetic judgements that may, or may not, be based on conventional pottery aesthetics.
2) Pottery, specially “Art Pottery”, is a process based art, and can be seen to have abstract expressionist tendencies.
We still haven’t touched on the question of why do wood firing in an Anagama (or any tunnel/ chambered wood-fired kiln for that matter). To answer that question, we will need to keep in mind the two assertions that I proposed in the previous paragraph.
As a part of my work with George, the wood firing potter in Payette, Id., I kept a diary to record my daily activities at his pottery. Presented here are pertinent extracts from the first four days. The next 4 days were taken up by the firing itself, which shall be discussed in some detail later.

Day 2: Wadding: 50% fireclay, 50% grain. Make lots of wadding.
Loaded kiln back. Rougher wadding on the supports. 3 levels.
Chopped wood into smaller pieces for firing.
Cleaned kiln surroundings to make circling it easier.
Chipped off old wadding off slabs.
Applied lots of wadding.
Day 3: Wadding tends to fall off. Removed and stuck on new batch of wadding on most pots of kiln load.
Loading Kiln. Anagama chamber almost full.
Make wind shelter around shed.
Carried wood for preheating.
Day 4: Increased height of chimney.
After the first 4 days, the remainder of my trip, 4 days, were taken over by 12-15 hour shifts at the kiln, stoking, and making sure that everything was as it was supposed to be. A log that I kept of the kiln temperature and the time is affixed in the appendix. After we stopped stoking the kiln, and sealed it up for cooling, we waited a week, and opened it up. The unloading took two days. All in all, two weeks of firing that took a full month of planning, 6 month’s worth of pots, 4 cords of wood, 12-15 hour shifts by 6 people over 4 days. Keep in mind that the kiln we fired was a small Anagama compared to most used by potters.
Diametrically opposite to this style of firing is the gas firings done at the college’s ceramic studio. The loading takes all of 6 hours, and after the gas is switched on, all that needs to be done are checks once in a while to see if everything is going as planned. After the firing is complete, the gas is stopped, and the kiln cools in a day and the pots are out. Making concessions for the size of the kiln, in my opinion, it is still a more easier, economic, and in all seriousness, sane method of doing a firing.
However, an artist is not often accused of sanity. In this case, let us refer back to my twin assertions. There have to be informed and well examined choices, and pottery is process art, with elements of abstract expressionism. Now we need to look at the disadvantages of wood firing.
It is Highly Inconvenient: The amount of wood that needs to be stoked is prodigious, and on top of that, the kiln has to be stoked at regular intervals. Thus there needs to be considerable manpower at the disposal of the potter.
It is Highly Expensive: The wood alone puts a steep cost on the firing. On top of that, the slabs used inside the kiln are made from a special compound, and are very expensive. They also progressively disintegrate with each firing. The kiln also gets damaged with every firing, due to excessive deposition of ash glaze on the walls.
It is Very Unpredictable: There are many ways to predict how the glaze will act on a pot in an Anagama kiln, however, it is never possible to predict with absolute confidence the final “look” of the pot. The kiln is a very dynamic system, and a simple error like putting too much wood in too fast could make it a reducing kiln, drastically changing the pots. In addition, a misplaced stoke could cause a pot to tumble off the wadding, or move it and make it stick to another pot, both of which are irreversible.
On the other hand, the advantages are:
The Ash Glaze: The ash glaze, and its characteristic effects are impossible to achieve on any other kind of kiln.
The Unpredictability: The very thing that is a disadvantage can also be an advantage, with the fire and the ash taking control of the pot’s “look”. This gives the potter a measure of uncertainty in his work.
The Process: Wood firing is the ultimate expression of process in the firing. The firing is dependent on every detail of the process itself, and each little thing leads to massive differences in the outcome.
The brief overview of the alternatives available to a potter are shown above. Each potter can do a cost benefit analysis of sorts, to see if wood firing is for him/ her. From my personal experience, and from my interactions with practicing potters, I have gathered that not everyone can work with a wood fired kiln. It is not an issue of technical acumen, but of personality and preference. In a manner, Anagama  firing strikes at the root of pottery. It is less of a profession as much as it is a way of life. A potter can not go back home and proclaim day off, pottery is too involved a process. It is a very hands on method of production, and the potter stays in the mode of production most of the time. A wood fired kiln is, in a manner, the potters style of pottery, for it is the most involved style of firing. It is hard, takes skill, patience and a personality that is rarely found amongst people who are not “in” on pottery.
Moving back to my personal experience with Anagama, after working at the studio for a week, and coming back, The first question I asked myself was, “Why?” Indeed, it was, and is a perfectly valid question. In the 4 days of the firing itself, I slept for 7-8 hours, and spent all my waking hours in the kiln, save for lunch and dinner breaks. In process, I lifted 4 cords of wood to and fro, personally chopped a cord, endured extreme heat and cold, built a 7 foot high chimney in a day, wadded and loaded an entire kiln. Was it worth it? I would say, yes. But then I am also an art student so it was akin to a class. And in addition, I got to take two weeks off from college. I pondered why would any sane person ever go through such a long convoluted process like a wood fired kiln, when there is a perfectly decent, cheaper, safer, and more environmentally friendly alternative in a gas or electric kiln. I talked to George, the potter I was working with, and I talked to my Japanese contacts. All were surprisingly cryptic on this matter, especially considering the wealth of information they provided to me on other matters. And one day, out of nowhere, which I was working in our college’s ceramic studio, I came across the answer, at least an answer that works for me.
An Anagama firing atleast in pottery is the ultimate expression of renunciation. It encourages you to do your duty and not worry about the results. The results of an Anagama are unexpected. They may not be perfect every time, but then, if everything was perfect, what challenge would there be in it? It forces the potter to do everything necessary to get the results. Most processes force you to get the results too, but in this case, the results are given to you, as a reward for your work. Somebody at George’s kiln said that each kiln unloading is like christmas. I would tend to agree.

A Brief Overview on Glaze Effects of An Anagama Kiln

So I am currently in the midst of writing a monograph on Anagama Firings. That is why I have been away, because the reading and research is just overwhelming. I am giving a talk about this stuff in the Student Research Conference here about this stuff. However, just for your reading pleasure, 1/6th of my monograph. It is kind of technical and really detailed, so unless you are a potter, or interested in pottery, you might find this a bit dry.





Even though the glaze in an Anagama is formed by the action of fire on ash that fell naturally on the clay body, there are many ways in which a potter can control the glaze effects. Before I go into the ways Glaze effects can be controlled, I would like to go in some depth into the effects themselves. I would also like to inform you that this is the first time, at least to my knowledge, that someone has compiled a list of Anagama kiln glaze effects with the technical names given to them in Japanese, which can serve as a useful tool to explain, and catalogue wood fired pots. I shall detail the formation of Shizenyu effects in the order of their achievement as the firing progresses.
Shizenyu:  This is the term for a natural ash glaze, which, looking at it objectively, is a kiln effect. The main component of ash is Calcium Carbonate, (CaCO3), which when pure, melts at 851*c. However, due to various impurities present in the ash, the rule of thumb says at least the temperature of 1100*c needs to be achieved. It is important to note that the very impurities that drive up the melting point of ash also contribute to the delicate colouration of the glaze itself. In addition, the higher firing temperature contributes to partial vitrification of the clay body, lending it more tensile strength and heat shock resistance.
Shizenyu initially appears in form of clumps resembling sesame seeds. This is called Gomabai. As the firing progresses, the areas between the spots is filled up with Shizenyu. Soon, the ash forms a web like structure around the clay body called Amibai. Soon, due to the excessive melting, the ash begins to run, and leads to Tamadare which is ash runs on vertical faces, and Yu-Damari which are ash pools on the horizontal surfaces. If the firing is continued at the same, or higher temperature, the clay body begins eroding, called Shinshoku which is followed by bloating, deformation and collapse, called Buku  and Tsubare. In areas that do not get ash deposition, Hi-Iro occurs, which can be called flame marking, which is due to the direct contact of the flame on the clay body. A lot can be told about a pot from these glaze effects, because they depend not only on the pot and the clay body, The various factors are:
The type of wood: each type of wood has a different chemical composition and thus behaves differently. Also hardwood and softwood burn differently and lead to different temperature changes per hour.
Temperature in the general area of the kiln:  The kiln temperature, contrary to expectation, is not always uniform, because the kiln is not an empty chamber. It has stacks upon stacks of pots. On top of that, there is considerable ash deposition. (In the firing I took part in, we went through 4 cords of wood in 3 days. That is 512 cubic feet of wood.) This leads to areas of unequal heating.
Position Of the pots: The way a pot is positioned will affect not only the pot, but also the entire kiln. This is so because the kiln is a dynamic system and each pot effectively serves to block draft. If the pot is too big and in the front, It can even stop the draft in conjunction with the other pots, which will result in a failed firing from under firing of the entire kiln. Indeed, the pots placed in a tunnel kiln show the direction of flame in their glaze formation, and someone with an experienced eye can tell where the pot was placed from the glaze formation.
Kind of firing: Using dampers in the chimney, a potter can control the draft and the airflow in the kiln. The airflow is important because if there is a lack of oxygen, the firing goes into the reduction state, which can lead to a large temperature drop. However, reduction gives the glaze a very interesting colour not normally expected from it. Correct usage of dampers is a art.

Considering that a kiln is so dynamic, I shall not go further into the variables that control the firing, but shall concentrate on the effects and how they are created more.  In doing so, I shall also give some pointers on how to identify the pot’s various effects and what went into achieving the said effects.
Gomabai: commonly referred as the sesame seed pattern, it occurs in areas of the kiln where there is low fly ash deposition, and where the flame rises slowly. It can be further divided into various subtypes depending on the colour.
Ki-Goma- has a yellow to reddish brown colour. It is indicative of an oxidising fire in the kiln.
Aoo-Goma- has a blue-green colour, and is indicative of a reduction firing.
Furthermore the difference in the gloss shows us the difference in the cooling. A glossy colour indicates a slow cooling after the kiln has been sealed.  This is called Kase-Goma. On the other hand, a glossy colour shows a fast cooling to 800*c and then a slow cooling. The 800*c limit is there to prohibit dunting of the pots#.
Furthermore, the matte texture of the glaze itself has categories. Enoki-Hada has a texture resembling tree bark, and indicates a low firing temperature of 1,100*c (cone 9). Melon-Hada on the other hand has a texture that resembles a melon skin, and also indicates a low firing temperature of 1,100*c.
The to and fro between the reduction and oxidation also leads to some dynamic kiln effects that are called Shimi. These occur in some sections of the kiln which are away from the stoke holes and the fire box. Here, the temperature in reduction can drop down to under 1,000*c in reduction firing and rise to 1,150*c in oxidation. Due to the reduction fire, the clay body acts as a carbon sink. However as the temperature rises in the oxidation stage, the clay violently releases the carbon, which oxidises, affecting the glaze by leaving pockmarks on the glaze surface, and changing the colour in the localised areas. The resultant area of Shimi  is inset. This is contrasted by Hanten, which can be classified as spots on the surface of the glaze itself. These are caused by external action like splattering, or getting hit by an external object. It is also different from Gomabai, which is ash spots on a clay surface.
Amibai is a delicate ash netting that forms on the clay body. It is only observed in pots that have high ash buildup, and high temperatures during the entire firing. Thus, it could be observed in pieces near the firebox and the stoke holes. The clay body also affects the Amibai formation. A clay with more grog or coarse sand will lend itself to Amibai rather then a finer clay like porcelain. Tamadare is the next stage, where running lines of ash glaze with a ball at the end form over the clay body. This happens in areas of very heavy ash buildup, and very high temperatures. This means it is most probable to find them near the firebox and the stoke holes. The temperature differences lead to different types of Tamadare, where the slower drops, formed in cooler (comparatively) environs are matte, and faster drops, formed in the warmer conditions are glossy. Also to be noted is the fact that the higher the temperature, the thinner the width and the smaller the ball at the base. Again, as with Amibai, a coarser, more grogged clay body is more suited to Tamadare. Biidoro is a special form of Tamadare. It can be translated as a “Kiln Teardrop”. It is characterised by glossy running drips with a glossy green/ blue drop at the end. It is a result of a long firing with fluctuating temperatures, and reductions, followed by a high temperature finish and a fast cooling. Tamadare  only occurs on vertical surfaces. If it meets a horizontal surface, it starts pooling up, it is called Yu-Damari. It again exhibits the usual characteristics based on the firing, i.e. a glossy surface shows high temperature and faster cooling, and a matte surface means a slow cooling.
As we can see, temperature is a major factor in the firing. Sometimes in a firing though, a pot gets covered, in part, or full by embers. They insulate the pot from the temperature, and can also contribute to a localised reducing reaction. This leads to a situation where an entire section of the kiln near the stoke holes will reduce when the rest of the kiln oxidises. This localised reduction is called Sangiri. Sometimes, the embers will cover the pot while Tamadare is occurring. In that situation, embers begin to stick to the running glaze. If there was a moderate ash deposition, the result will resemble a delicate moss. This structure does not have much strength and can break off very easily in processing, and thus is prized. It is referred to as Koke-Koge. If the ash buildup was higher, than the pots take on a rough stone like texture. This especially occurs when the embers also contain large amounts of ash. This effect is called Ishi-Koge. Sangiri and Koge effects are so prized that many a time, a potter will deliberately take a pot off its base, and roll it around in embers while the kiln is still at its peak temperature. This technique is called Korogashi.
As previously mentioned, a heavily grogged clay body will lead to more chances of achieving Tamadare, however, it has its disadvantage. Most potters do not have access to clay with coarse silica, quartz, or feldspar naturally in it. As such, most potters will add external grog or coarse sand or feldspar to the clay body. These materials behave differently under high temperature and cooling then normal clay, because their coefficients of expansion and contraction are different. Sometime, clay will contract around a feldspar or silica pebble so much so that it will crack. This fault is called Ishihaze. On other times, feldspar pebbles in the clay body will actually melt and raise to the surface. This leads to a shiny white extruded spot on the clay body, called Tombo-No-Me, which means dragon fly’s eye. In other cases, the feldspar will rise out, but will melt back flush with the clay body, leaving a black spot. This is called a Kani-No-Me, which means a crab’s eye. As is evident, Kani-No-Me occures at a higher temperature then Tombo-No-Me.
In some cases, the absence of Shizenyu can lead to kiln effects. At the rear of the kiln, where the least ash deposition occurs, a peculiar effect called Hi-Iro occurs. Somewhat analogous to flashing that is observed in western glazes, Hi-Iro only occurs on the clay itself. It can be explained as the result of the flame’s interaction with the clay, and its constituent compounds. Hishoku is a special type of Hi-Iro that has a carmine colouration. It is rarely seen, and occurs seemingly at random. The only thing known to cause it is high temperature, and even that alone can not cause Hishoku. According to my source, it is so rare, that it is regarded as a gift of the kiln gods. Hi-Iro can also be called flame marking. As such, the clay body actually needs to be in contact with the fire to show this effect. As such, areas that are not exposed to flame do not show Hi-Iro. This effect is called Nuke. To more precisely define Nuke, we need to take into consideration the fact that flame in the kiln has a direction. The flame moves from the firebox towards the chimney outwards, and always follows the path of least resistance. As such, if there is a pot that is obscured by either another pot, or wadding, or kiln walls, then it will not have contact with the flame. Similarly, if the pot is partially obscured, it will partially come in contact with the flame. The partial obscuring of a pot leads to Nuke. It is important to note the even the pot obscures itself, and the face opposite the firebox also receives Nuke. Nuke can be controlled by the wetness of the wadding, with wet wadding leading to sharp outlines and little to no colour variation. Dry wadding on the other hand leads to soft outlines and major colour variation. A special type of Nuke can be seen in ware with natural ash glaze, called Bota-Machi, which occurs when the wadding prevents the ash from depositing on a certain area.

With this brief look at kiln effects, I shall move on to firing schedules.
Phase one is the stage where greenware turns to bisque ware. Thus it first loses water, both free and chemical.  The stages in the first Phase are as follows:
1) Kemuri Toshi: removal of free water. The free water is water added to the clay while working and in processing to make it plastic and workable. When all the free water is removed, the ware is bone dry. This stage ranges from 0*c-150*c
2) Aburi: Removal of residual free water. This stage is a midway stage which serves to stop the rise in the temperature.
3) Seme Aburi: Removal of chemical water, quartz inversion and bisquing. In this stage, the water in the molecules of the clay constituent is removed, leading to the chemical change. Also the process of quartz inversion takes place. Quartz at room temperature is in its α state. However at roughly 600*c it inverts to its β state in its crystal structure. As typical in cases of isomerism, there is a change in size. Finally it turns to bisque ware.
  Phase two involves all the high temperature firing activities. Ash glaze is achieved in this phase. Side Stoking and sustained front stoking is conducted in this phase. There are only two stages in this state:
1)Seme: This state is when the highest temperature is reached in the firing. Constant stoking is required. This is the stage where the ash deposits on the ware in large quantities and starts melting. The peak temperature achieved depends entirely on the kiln and the intent of the potter, but it is not advisable to exceed 1350*c, because of the risk of deformed or melted pots.
2)Nerashi: This stage involved sustained high temperatures. This stage is important because this is where the bulk of the glaze formation happens. Side stoking and front stoking takes place, and, depending on a kiln, up to a day can be spent on this stage.
The final Phase is cooling. The kiln can either be sealed up and left to slow cool, or it can be left open to cool until 800*c and then sealed up to slowly cool. This is to prevent dunting when quarts reverts to its α state and shrinks.