I am just recently returned from a very short trip to Seattle, during which I got into my car and drove to the east coast. I've never done the 'all the way across' thing before, and it was something of an experience, some of which I'd like to share.
I am almost certainly going to end up building this page in stages, and I hope that's not an annoyance. It seems, in any case, to be my typical _modus_operandi_. That may be partly the ADD at work (I have trouble, sometimes, sitting in front of the machine for any great length of time), and partly the fact that I don't always think of an entire page worth of things to say in one swell foop.
After I arrived, Vonda took me over to her parents's house, which is where my car was and where a lot of my stuff still is. She had started the car just a couple weeks before I arrived, and it started just fine, but of course when we tried it again, Murphy stuck. The battery was entirely flat. We jumped it from her sister's truck, and then I drove it off to get some gas.
It isn't generally too great an idea to leave a car sitting for months at a time; mine managed to grow a thin coating of mildew on its steering wheel. In other respects, however, I seem to have lucked out. When I took it to the repair folks the following Monday for a checkup they pronounced it fine, and sure enough it was its usual friendly self all the way from Seattle to Laurel except for a slightly leaky right rear tire, which required filling near Columbus.
...But before we get to Monday, we have the weekend. I
saw some folks, including the estimable Scott Scidmore:
Please note: with many of my pictures, you can change ".med." in the filename to ".lg." to get one that's 640x480 or as close as I can get. That probably won't seem like a huge increase in size, but the download time changes a lot, which is important for folks on slow connections.
I also got to the Seattle Art Museum, and saw the excellent porcelain exhibit there. Learned many things. Particularly liked the two "teadust" pieces and the copper red piece; also one coffee/tea/chocolate set from somewhere in Europe with scenes painted in a lovely coral-orange-brown sort of iron-based enamel. Yum. I'm not usually all that enthusiastic about pottery with paintings on it, except in the case of tile, but this was just fine.
On Monday after I got the car checked I got myself checked (results nominal), and that evening Ellen Setteducati flew back in from the Bay Area, where she'd been to some sort of conference and a visit with her Parental Units. I went and picked her up at the airport. Now, mind you, it was 11pm and she had had a long day. She asked me what the east coast was like, and I told her that it is rather bizarre. For example, Maryland is full of towns with names like "Cabin John" and "Seat Pleasant" and "King's Contrivance". Her immediate reaction was that they all sounded like toilets. Teehee. (Kids, be warned. This is the sort of thing you think of if you're a very tired poet.)
Finally, on Tuesday morning just before I headed out, I got my teeth cleaned. I like getting my teeth cleaned, for some reason. It provides a moment's diversion in an otherwise bland existence (ahem), and gives me a fresh and happy feeling. I also enjoy yacking with hygienists, who seem on the whole to be a reasonably interesting crew. As it happens, my memory slipped and I was half an hour late to this particular appointment, but the guy behind me, who is almost always prompt, chose that particular day to get caught in traffic on Beacon Hill, and was also late. One has no right, of course, to ask for Murphy-hits on others, but it really was entirely convenient, inasmuch as it may be a while before I can get back to my dentist.
Unfortunately, the poor hygienist had unset her stuff just before the guy called in, and was distressed. She was kind enough to reset everything and continue working on me, so I inquired whether she liked hot sauce, and as soon as I left I called L&L Gifts and Gourmet back in Laurel and had them send her a bottle of Waha Wera as a thankyou for her troubles. Waha Wera, which I've probably discussed elsewhere, is a magnificent kiwi-habanero sauce from the Kaitaia Fire people in New Zealand. It's not killer hot, though of course with habaneros driving the bus it isn't exactly bland.
Having finished with my Seattle errands as well as possible (there were, alas, lots of people I didn't get to see, and lots of things I didn't get to do), I was about ready to go. First, however, I stopped at Uwajimaya, in Bellevue, and got some things for the trip and some Mangosteen gum for Chris Daniel, who had asked me to keep my eyes out for it.
I broke the drive into two segments, more or less equal in length in a physical sense, though they turned out to be distinctly unequal in duration.
Something very strange is happening. I started to feel a bit odd, and then I began to lose names. For example, I stopped at The American Ceramic Society's headquarters on my way back from Minneapolis, but I couldn't recall the Society's name, and I still can't remember the name of the town they're in, nor the city it's a suburb of (I think it begins with a "C", but it isn't Cincinnati; perhaps Columbus? ...That doesn't seem right either). Inasmuch as I was there about two days ago, this is very disquieting. At the worst of it, about half an hour back, I couldn't remember clearly the names of some of the people I had dinner with yesterday. It was seriously disquieting. (Many names still feel strange, as if they were new to me rather than something I'm remembering.)
I also had two very short waves of nausea, coupled with fairly dramatic olfactory hallucinations and other bizarre sensory stuff. (When I say short, I mean 30 to 90 seconds.) Fortunately, there were only two of those. (I seriously hate nausea.) The sensory bizarrity was quite dramatic, but I hardly recall any of the content. In fact, the whole thing seems like some sort of weird dream.
I have no idea what's driving this, but I'm extremely relieved that it seems to be passing. I still can't remember names quite right, but I can type (after a fashion -- I don't remember any but the simplest HTML commands) and I can put one word after another.
Sorry to sound like some sort of wretched hypochondriac here -- at its worst, this was truly bizarre and even interesting... I just wish I'd been able to keep up a running commentary as it was happening, because it fades very quickly and I know I'm not doing it justice. Also because I seriously hope it never ever happens again -- it was extremely uncomfortable. Total duration, btw, on the order of two hours: it's a little after 9pm now, and I think I started to feel really weird around 7. I'm still having trouble remembering names... I can also tell you that it was not much fun sitting in front of two computers and knowing that I was in the middle of doing separate things on them, but that I couldn't completely remember what either thing was, nor which machine I was doing it on.
I think it's probably time to stop maundering; when I get another chance to work on this, I'll try to do more trip-report stuff instead of pissing and moaning.
(Short postscript, in case anyone was wondering: these symptoms were essentially gone within 8 hours. They could be considered characteristic of certain types of migraine aura... but as far as I'm aware, I get only common migraine and have never had aura. I am now thinking that I need to be looked over by a neurologist, because they don't match food poisoning too closely, and several of the alternatives are serious issues. Argh.)
Well, actually, merrily into Montana, which is wide open but certainly not wilderness along the I-90 corridor. I was thinking about possibly visiting some folks, but I reached the border late in the night. In fact, it was about ten minutes to three in the morning when I reached the bank of Glacial Lake Missoula Slip that Paul Lewing had told me about. The particular chunk of deposit I saw is just west of the Nine Mile Road exit from I-90, and is about forty feet deep at that point. Glacial Lake Missoula, for those who don't remember the car trips they took as kids a few million years back, was the largest freshwater lake in the history of the planet. The resulting clay beds are extensive.
So there I was in my raincoat, halfway up the nearly vertical wall like a cockroach trying to eat a wedding cake (forgive me if I've already said that to you), shoving my little trowel into the clay and flopping it into two plastic bags as well as I could. Several trucks passed in each direction, and the oncoming ones had their lights on me well before they could see my car. I was wondering what they were thinking, if indeed they noticed.
It was clear that I wasn't going to meet Rudy Autio at that hour so I continued on, passing Helena at a somewhat more civilized hour but concerned about arriving in Minneapolis on time, so I didn't visit the Archie Bray Foundation either. I hope there will be other occasions on which I can do so.
As I continued through Montana, I began to notice odd
rock formations. Here's the first one that really seemed
to stand out:
After I passed a few of these, I began to notice various
strata, some of which were more or less rocky, like the
stuff in the picture, and some of which were
substantially crumbly or decayed. These appeared and
disappeared as I drove, and I eventually figured out
that at least some of them were probably clay.
These don't look much like clay here, but there were places where the stuff was unmistakeable. I took a small sample of some of it, ranging from greenish to grayish, and I will be trying it in glaze tests to see what it does. The estimable John Ladwig suggests that it may have a high bentonite content, which makes it very different in behavior from, say, Embassy Slip.
Some of this material, by the way, was fairly brightly
colored, at least in comparison with the general
beigeness of the region:
I'm not sure I have any good pictures, but there were several vistas of distant hills with lots of color. I saw coral, as in the hill above; black, which I took to be veins of coal; various grays and purples; some pale greens; rather a lot of beige; and some snowy white, which I eventually concluded was alkali. Precisely what kind of alkali I don't know, but I bet the clay with the alkali in it would be interesting as an ingredient in shino glazes. Unfortunately I didn't take any of it, so unless I can find an obliging person in Montana or North Dakota, it will have to wait.
...As will more of this trip report, I think.
As I think I've already mentioned, I have been trying to get back to the "red tenmoku" glaze I had for a few minutes in 1998 or early 1999. (Almost literally -- I think I managed to make three pieces, and then I started fussing with the stuff and lost it.) Some people might argue that "red tenmoku" is an oxymoron, but if you read Robert Tichane on Ash Glazes, you find out that the ancient tenmoku sample he was privileged to examine was an oily yellow, and not black at all. (Tenmoku, at least what we call tenmoku, appears glossy and black where it is thick.)
I have made lots of glazes in my attempt to recapture this particular glory, lots of which were nice but none of which were red tenmoku. (Those burnt-gold crystals are a rutile and gerstley borate wash, which I learned at Seward Park Art Studio, in Seattle.)
My current thoughts on these are about as follows: the one on the left is tan and spotty. The tan comes from too much silica. The one in the middle is transparent in some areas, probably a good sign, but isn't dark enough, nor is it red enough. Think it needs more iron. Also, it should be opaque milk chocolate brown on edges and ridges, which it is not. The third one is still low in iron, and may be slightly low in clay as well.
Frankly, I'm not sure whether I'm getting any closer, but the next two or three attempts should tell me.
(Note, added in proof on Sunday, May 6th -- I made up another test yesterday, and applied it to a test tile today. There are lots of glazed pots out there at Glen Echo Pottery, and I'm hoping that it will get fired within a week or two.)
I was privileged, on my way across the country, to stop in Stillwater, Minnesota. That's where Warren and Nancy MacKenzie live. Nancy is a fabric artist, and Warren's a potter. I have only just barely met Nancy, and have seen only a few examples of her work; they looked good to me, but I'm not fully competent to speak to what she's doing.
Warren, on the other hand, is a bit easier. He studied with Hamada and Leach, and learned well from both; does functional pots; is now well enough known that he began to have trouble with people who would show up when he emptied a kiln and buy everything with his chop on it, which they would then drive off and resell at a profit, so he rarely (if ever) signs his work any more. An unsigned pot in the sales room could be Warren's, or it could be by any of the students there. Inasmuch as they're all very fine potters, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference.
In what seems to be a generally Japanese or perhaps
Mingei tradition, he doesn't charge a whole lot for his
work, nor do his students. He had just emptied a kiln
when I was there, and I wandered around the sales room
(which seems to be open 24/7) looking at things. As it
happens, a lot of the pieces that resonated most with me
were indeed marked, and almost all of those had a chop
with the letters "GC". Here --
I looked at the little identification sign over the "leave your check here" basket, and learned that "GC" is someone named Guillermo Cuellar. If I may quote from a Babelfish translation of a Web page about him,
"During the months of Julio and Agosto of 1984
and regularly from 1991 Mackenzie in Stillwater
works with Warren, Minnesota."
Ahem. Well, you probably get the idea.
I want across from the sales room to the workshop and asked MacKenzie about this guy; I was not particularly surprised when he said that as far as he's concerned, Cuellar is the finest functional potter in Venezuela today. Looking at the work, I can easily believe it. I bought a little pitcher that seemed to me to be particularly fine.
I also bought a couple things that are probably MacKenzie's work. What can I say? I like Leach's stuff pretty well, and I'm completely taken by excellent Japanese work of several sorts, Hamada's being no exception; people do not get to be Living National Treasures of Japan by accident. As I said above, MacKenzie learned well from both of those people, and his work is truly wonderful.
After I left Stillwater I had trouble sleeping. That night I think I got two hours, and some time the next day I pulled into a rest area at the Western edge of Ohio, where there was an area almost like a little store, full of Ohio products on display and a set of those tourist-attraction brochures... one of which proved to be from the American Ceramic Society. They are located in Westerville, just northeast of Columbus. I was on track to go through Columbus anyway, and this was too good an opportunity to pass up, so I visited their museum, joined the Society, and managed to sleep for another hour and a half or so in their parking lot.
As good as the museum is (and for something so small, it really is pretty nifty), it isn't a patch on the library. I'd like to spend a week or two in that library, just reading things and making notes.
After that it was a quick dogleg, after which I found myself on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It is probably not righteous to compare any eastern road with any western road, but I found myself longing for I-90 in Montana. The Turnpike is heavily under construction, with many signs advising lengthy delays. It isn't as bad at 10:30 pm as it must be around rush hour, but it wasn't much fun to drive in traffic in a sleep-deprived condition. Bleah.
In any event, I reached Laurel again around 1:20 am on Saturday, the 29th of April, about 32 hours after I left Stillwater, and I was travelling at appreciably less than the posted speed limit for most of that time. This is decidedly not the right way to do things; it should have taken me more like 50 hours, and I should have gotten at least one good night's sleep along the way.
Still, I made it back, essentially in one piece, and I
think that's a fair place to end this installment.
(Though I may succumb to temptation and put in some
changes later on.)
Pseudo-mailto: jon [at] bazilians [put it here] org
Last modified: Mon Jan 29 20:12:38 PST 2001
