BBR Art Guild Visits Canyon Creek Pottery

Take the angular jog onto Cedar off the main street in Sisters heading toward the Sisters Library and keep going to where Cedar dead-ends. There, nestled in its own little corner of the world, you will find Canyon Creek Pottery.

The Black Butte Ranch Art Guild found Canyon Creek last month in their monthly excursion to visit a Sisters Country artist.

Kenneth Merrill has been a potter for 22 years, creating everything from lamps, to sinks, to dinnerware. His wall hangings are unique and inspiring. He has worked 12 years at his studio in Sisters. The stoneware, functional tableware for food, is both dishwasher and microwave safe. Like our ancestors, we are meant to use those pieces.

The shop also contains some Raku. The Japanese style with a glaze that glitters and shines are the only dishes not used for food.

Clay starts its life as rock, and when completed it has been vitrified or melted enough so that no particles go between the particles of pottery. In the end, after being thrown at the potter's wheel, molded and shaped into a usable form, dried, and fired, clay returns to the rock-hard form it was in when it began. In fact, Merrill uses a rock polisher to polish the bottom of the pieces before they are waxed.

In his high school days, when Merrill needed that one extra credit to graduate, he took pottery. Thinking of it as a filler class, he never knew he would fall in love. He started spending his free periods in the studio and found himself skipping classes to do pottery. His instructor put a stop to that.

In his youth he accepted work at Great Northwest Stoneware doing production work, throwing 500 pieces a day, still not knowing this would become his career. Now, he produces about 100 pieces a day. He allows himself time in the winter to take about a month to "play and have fun" trying new glazes, new sizes.

Throwing is the magical part for him. Creating the piece on the wheel, determining what base thickness will and won't work to support a much larger piece and designing the look of the piece before glazing.

Pit firing is a Southwest technique for heating the glaze. In the Southwest they usually fire with horse dung and sawdust. Merrill uses propane. Crystalline glazes are heated, cooled a bit, and reheated. Crystals form in the glaze and look like fireworks coming down the sides of pots

"We've learned how to imitate nature," Merrill said.

Lynda Sullivan, chair of the Art Guild said the women all separately commented on their amazement at watching Merrill throw two large lamps of identical size without looking at the first piece he had created.

"He took even our silly questions seriously," she said. "'We like it, we buy it,' they said, but we don't really know how it's made. He explained it so well."

The Black Butte Ranch Art Guild visits artists every third Monday of the month. These monthly excursions are now open to the public. Contact Lynda Sullivan at 541-595-2387 for more information.