Here is one of my earliest mermaids, formed and fired years ago. Fired in a pit.
I made her from one chunk of clay, working as swiftly as possible to capture an essence or a gesture. (I was new to working with clay, and I didn't realize how easy it can be to add clay, to add limbs or features, and so I made everything all-at-once with an obvious lack of subtlety. Still, each piece possessed strength though, which is good when the form is going into a pit-fire.) Rough, ugly, perhaps monstrous. The Creature from the Black Lagoon is in her lineage.
Ocean Beach, San Francisco. Either in 1998 or 1999.
I recall enjoying digging the pit itself, a fathom deep into the beach, anxiously helping to place the pottery and sculptures. Many people had wrapped wire or ribbons of metal around their pieces, hoping for fortuitous effects during the firing. Others used organic materials they'd brought from home, leaves or branches, or from the beach itself; my art teacher pointed to some kelp that I could use. The iron in the blade just might do something, and just-might-do-something is part of the spirit or the point of a pit fire. Likewise, salts and other chemicals would be cast into the pile of art and wood at the beginning and at intervals throughout the firing for just such potential effects. Air flow and placement, say, of pot against vase would determine much of the colorful effects. I found a blade of kelp for the mermaid's fin, and I wrapped copper wire around two figures, a punkish/puckish female and an elongated-Don Quixotian-yet-nude male. I had another mermaid, larger, a Greek hero, and a rough pot or two also in the pit. I hadn't prepared enough pieces, I felt, but I hadn't known what to expect--and so what to prepare--for this, my first, firing.
After the clay pieces had all been placed and piled in the bottom of the pit, we balled up newspaper and scattered wood shavings for kindling, carefully piled the cut chunks of wood into the pyre, covered the whole pit (or trench, according to the rectangular shape, but we called it a "pit") with old sheets of metal, and then stood back as the art teacher started it all afire. Then, we watched, and we waited. Fairly bitter weather that year (unlike 2001 when we all went swimming in the somewhat unnatural heat and calm). I don't recall enjoying being bundled up beneath the fog and overcast all day long, but the company was certainly good.
The pit burned all day long, and only at sunset were we able to discover what had been achieved. We worked by the few still glowing coals and lantern light to pick out the newly fired pieces. Each marked by fire and wind, by salt and ash. Each hot to the touch, fragile, popping and creaking, shifting into the final shape with the cooler air. I had no idea what to expect when this mermaid--and a half dozen of my other pieces--came out of the pit.
I've never named her.
Her tail is red from the kelp that I wrapped around her.
