Fire and ice on display at Sisters gallery

Julia and Dan Rickards of Clearwater Gallery hosted a Raku firing party on the patio at their new Hood Avenue location last Friday - and it's set to happen again this week.

The contrast between the 1,800 degrees inside the furnace and the freezing 26-degree outside air was exhilarating for those that braved the cold to purchase a pot, glaze it and then have it fired and quenched right before their eyes in the ancient Japanese raku process.

Most waited inside The Open Door eatery, watching through the window until it was time to reclaim their striking cracked-glaze pottery.

The Raku process starts with the visitor's selection of an unfired pot. The ersatz artist then applies a variety of the available glazes, with some direction by artist James Sant if requested. The glazed pots are then placed into the fiery kiln and taken up to 1,800 degrees for about 30 minutes.

When the glaze looks right, he pulls the pots from the kiln at full heat, waves the bright red incandescent, translucent pots in the air for an artistic length of time, and then plunges the clay pots into a small garbage can full of leaves, smothering the resulting smoke and flames with a tight-fitting lid.

After another artistically judged length of time, the pots are doused with cold water, "freezing" the color changes and setting the now-cracked glaze. The result is often a beautiful, cracked-finish glazed pot of many colors. The colors change as the pot cools, and will respond to Brillo scrubbing while still warm with even more color and texture changes.

"This is a dance of oxidation and reduction, a chemistry experiment," said Sant. "Once the lid (of the garbage can) is on, the oxygen is depleted (by the fire). This robs the metal of its oxygen and reduces the metal, turning the copper glaze to red, and cobalt glaze to gun metal. When the lid comes off, the oxygen floods back in, the metals can bring back their oxygen (changing colors again). Plunging the pot into water freezes the color.

"The Raku process came out of Japan in the 1600s. The royal court came to appreciate the look of the tea cups an artist named Raku was making. When the royal court chose him as the official tea ceremony potter, Raku became very popular form of pottery in Japan," said Sant.

"But he was using leaded white with cobalt (which leached lead into the contents when hot tea was added). Needless to say that at some point they figured out that it was not healthy," continued Sant. "All the pottery in Japan at the time was still 'low-fired' pottery (1,800 F). Even the dragon kilns could not get to the 2,300 F it takes to vitrify the clay body to 'stoneware.' Low-fired pots are porous and will leak over time, so they are primarily decorative."

Tollgate resident Sharon Richenberg returned to Clearwater for a second Raku pot after taking home a beautiful shimmering green pot from last year's firing.

"It is a little more glitzy than I wanted but it is a beautiful pot," she said of Friday night's creation.

Sisters potter Karen Kassy said, "I have been doing this (Raku) for about five years, but I've learned a lot from James tonight. Any beginner could do it; he is very accessible and so open."

Sant returns to the gallery Friday, December 23 at 5 p.m.