Making the Crater Lake Art Piece

A collaboration using ceramics, wood, glass, resin, and acrylic mediums

 

 

First comes a nebulous mental image,
Ready for change, emergence and practicality,
With a life and growth seemingly of it’s own.
Sometimes art emerges.

The genesis of the Crater Lake  Art Piece

We started the Crater Lake  Art piece with some researching of Mt Mazama and the transformation to Crater Lake.

Seven hundred years ago, according to geologic measurements, there was a massive cataclysmic eruption at 12,000 ft high Mt Mazama. The entire top of the mountain was lost, not as a single cone, but as millions and millions of pieces of flying and flowing molten lava. The lava flows have been traced all the way to the Pacific Ocean and any one driving in the area will see many lava beds, slowly, very slowly, evolving to patches of vegetation.

The result is Crater Lake, the “the gem of Oregon,”. The caldera is filled with crystal clear water, always blue, but hypnotically so when enhanced by reflections of high, almost pure white cumulus clouds set in a field of sky blue.The water is cold. The summer surface can warm to 55-60 degrees Fahrenheit, and the rest of the 1,949 ft deep lake is at about 38 degrees year round. The surrounding rim is variable but about a thousand feet above the waters surface.

There is no known water exit from the lake, and it is filled solely from rain and local run off. It’s about 6,173 feet high. The slopes of Mt Mazama are laced with lava tubes, which collect water from the regions rains and snows. Some of the tubes interconnect and at places the flow becomes stronger, till at Boundary Springs the water emerges as a full river, the Rogue.

From here, the fully formed Rogue River starts it’s long journey to the Pacific Ocean. It starts not as

a small spring as many rivers. But with a torrent. And except for a flood control dam it rushes at top speed, with falls, rapids, and a few restful pools, all the way to the Pacific Ocean. It’s a haven for white water rafters. Along the lower section  is a 50 mile section designated as a wilderness area. Its ancestry includes gold rushes, Indian, settler, and Chinese battles – and massacres. Now it is home to all sorts of wild life including black bears adept at stealing food, and rattle snakes sometimes found sunning themselves on the hiking trail.

I hiked the fifty mile trail  years ago and have  been intrigued with the area ever since. And that sets the stage for this art piece.

We started with a Poem

A local poet put out a call for artists to create a art piece based on one of her poems. Barb , a raku artist, sent me an email wondering whether I’d like to do a fused glass collaboration with her using a particular poem.
“Sure,” I said.

We decided to make the piece as a clock, with a sculpted wood river (the Rogue), using some of my fused glass representations embedded, and a raku piece symbolically blue  and the roundish lake would be the background for the clock.
Redo:I won’t bother with the details, but that piece is still in slow process, because Barb drove over to my workshop, opened her Prius’s trunk to show me the crater lake clay work she had done as a start of the clock piece. I looked at it and said “I think this piece would be much better  displayed horizontally with an integrated support. She agreed, and we changed course.

A different course

So we sidetracked the clock piece, and the Crater Lake piece was started.

We wanted the lake to give off the essence of the deep blue of crater lake. So we brought in Sue, who happens to be my spouse and an acrylic artist, to figure out the color and how to apply paint to the ceramic.

In addition, we thought filling the lake with some sort of transparent medium would enhance the effect. Maybe crystal clear epoxy resin, an art medium that none of us had any experience with.

Research and tests of Epoxy Resin

I did a bunch of research and became intrigued with the potential of the resin material. I’m a bit frugal so the $70 cost of the resin was a blockage but my curiosity was whetted and I ordered a couple of quarts of the two part material and studied the precise mixing and application instructions as well as safety issues: Use rubber gloves, in a well ventilated room, kept above 75 degrees, mix the two parts, B into A, for five minutes, only do one-eighth inch layers, five hours apart, and let the completed application cure for 72 hours in that 75 degree room. These were pretty hefty constraints for my dusty, drafty workshop. The only criteria my workshop met was the well ventilated one.

How to get a constant 75 degrees in a 50 degree workshop?

Experimenting with the epoxy, glass, and clay was in order. I built a box above an electric space heater, used a temperature controller that I otherwise use for yogurt making and sous vide cooking to hold the needed 75 degrees temperature. Sue did various paint patches on both cardboard and bisqued clay, and I made small frames to layer clay, acrylic, glass and resin. Using my handy assistant, Alexa from Amazon, I made sure I adhered to all of the timing and waiting requirements and tried a bunch of combinations, cutting and layering glass to see how the resin, glass, acrylic and clay would work together.

The Raku Kiln is too small

We had another experiment in process. Barb’s raku kiln was not large enough for the piece. My glass kiln works fine for bisquing, (1825 degrees Fahrenheit), but there was no way we could duplicate the raku process with my kiln. Hence, the need to experiment with her low temp (in comparison) glazes in my kiln. The way raku takes on its beautiful hues is by creating an oxygen starved environment when the piece is at about 1800 degrees. Usually you remove the piece from the kiln and immediately put it in a container with combustible material, close it up, and the air is quickly used up leaving the reduction environment.

How about a blow torch?

We wondered if we could get some additional flavor on the piece by blow torching the low temp glaze. I tried it on a small piece. I thought it might crack, or worse, if any water were still embedded, blow up. So I wore a welding helmet and my leather apron.

Surprisingly, I had no problem with cracking, and I could reheat the glaze and push it around for design use, and possibly could have rigged up some CO2 and oxygen to get small areas of either oxidation or reduction chemical processes. The problem though, is it was very difficult with my small torch to do more than very small areas and so we decided to shelve the blow torch idea for now.

Using a glass kiln for low temperature (1825 degrees F.) Ceramics

Knowing we couldn’t predict the results and also knowing that the deadline for submitting the piece for exhibition was fast approaching, we decided to go ahead and glaze. Barb took the piece back to her studio and added the glazes. She brought it back and I ran it up to the 1825 degrees. She thought that maybe making it an oxygen environment might do interesting things, so when the kiln reached it’s 1825 degrees I cranked it open and marveled at the heat (I rarely open my kiln at these temperatures) and the fiery orange glow of the piece. I could not make out any colors or details  from the glaze.

It took the rest of the night to cool and in the morning I finally got to look at it. Nice, I thought. I snapped a picture and emailed it to Barb who was a bit disappointed. It wasn’t the colors she had expected. “But, they look nice,” I said, I think we’ve got a go. She drove over and when she saw it in person, agreed.

Using Acrylic paint on fired ceramic

So now it went to Sue’s studio for two coats of sealer and painting the slightly textured deep blue. We didn’t know how the resin and glass layers would effect the color and in retrospect we would probably have darkened the center blue, slightly lightened the edges, and decreased the depth of the lake.

 

Fitting the glass – nearly impossible (Maybe I “need” a 3-D camera and mill?)

Now back to my workshop. My job was to resin the entire painted area, and then to create a template to cut a piece of glass to exactly fit the lakes edge of the lake bed. That turned out to be nearly impossible, and I realized that I should have created the template while Barb was working with the clay. She then could have built the clay to  fit the template, and to provide me with a small lip to hold the glass on. Next time, if we ever do a similar art piece, that’s what we’ll do. So I worked the piece of glass, cutting and grinding to get the best fit I could. Finally it was close enough. I thought. I did the first resin pour and it dribbled through in a number of small and not so small openings around the edge.
What to do. I finally let the resin sit in the container till it was almost solid and then scraped some out and with a small spatula, and finally on the third attempt managed to clog all the dribble places.

There’s always a time crunch – Abandon the whole thing?

Now all this was happening just days before the piece was due for the “Celebrating Oregon” exhibit we were making it for. An unfortunate result of all the experimenting was that there was some resin pooled in the lower area, and the lake had expanded in size. It looked terribly sloppy. I was ready to abandon the whole thing. Barb said, “how about putting resin over all the inside cliff walls.” Bingo, I did, and then was able to weld the new resin with the old so it looks pretty good. And I like the cliff walls better this way.

So, we had the ceramic,/acrylic.glass/resin piece pretty much done.

Originally the base was to have a fused glass piece representing the gushing waters of the Rogue River headwaters and cutouts representing the trees of the forest. I also had the notion to build the base of three pieces of compound curved sections of Baltic Birch plywood. At this stage it was obvious that that was going to be way to “busy, busy.” We decided to simplify and leave out the fused glass waterfall and Doug Fir symbolism.

Compound curves in plywood – Many clamps.

I cut the pieces and glued, and epoxied, with quite a bit of difficulty, into the curves that I had envisioned. With lots of clamps, a small jig and some luck, I got it all together. Since Sue was going to paint the piece, I hadn’t worried about making all the joints perfect. “Do you really think it needs paint?” she asked. “I thought so, but we put the clay piece temporarily on top and the natural wood approach looked reasonable. Painting might easily detract. After more sanding, filling, and five coats of shellac it looks pretty sharp, or so I think.

The original method of attaching the ceramic piece would no longer work,so more experimenting. I also needed a base so that the unit would not tip. I built a pedestal, and in the sleek top, embedded a hefty bolt. This allows snugging the two pieces together very tightly, and also it can be disassembled for transportation if it is ever needed.

Taking a art photo of the piece.

Fortunately for this exhibition we did not need a professional level photograph. We did need a nice background. On another project I had hung a large piece of tan felt along a wall. I resurrected it, repositioned it, and put the piece on it. We had to wait for the direct sunlight to disappear, and then I took a few shots.

Due date!

So that’s today and the photo this afternoon, and we need to deliver it, if accepted, to the gallery in two days. The resin will just barely be cured  by when it is due at the gallery. After affixing some last minute felt pads and positioning blocks, and filling out the tedious paper work,  the three of us headed off for the gallery, Barb holding the ceramic piece separately from the rest.

Vulnerability, ego and collaboration.

Why did I think it necessary to write this? Partly because no one has any idea what goes into an art piece and while this essay doesn’t even begin to describe all the options and ideas we discarded along the way, it might give an inkling. There is personal ego in all art creation and collaboration exposes the vulnerability we each have in creating a collaborative art piece. There is synergy and camaraderie in collaboration. For me, it is the process which provides the artistic satisfaction, even while aiming for a particular goal. Will it garner any attention at the gallery? Probably not, and for me, it doesn’t need to.

But more importantly I thought it would be nice to give an example of one of the things that I and Sue do as “diy Elders.” During our career, family raising, days, we simply did not have time for this sort of art work collaboration. Not only do we enjoy it, even the frustrating parts where things don’t work as planned, I think that this sort of work/play is essential for good health in the aging and living process.

So what’s the next project? And what sorts of emergence will it take?

Time will tell.

 Post script – Things we’d do differently

We experimented with four different, to us, media types and procedures: Low temperature ceramics and glazes; use of ceramic stains; firing in a electric glass kiln instead of a ceramics kiln; using acrylic paint over ceramics for color; using a compound bending approach for the plywood; incorporating epoxy resin and glass to create the lake. Not everything worked as well as we wanted, but we now have a number of additional techniques to use in other art projects. Here’s some thoughts to keep in mind:

• Low fired ceramics might be useful in the future, but Raku gives a distinctive look, which we all like.
• Design the piece so that it will fit in the Raku kiln.
• Eliminate the lake bowl. The resin  and glass will give the feeling of depth.
• Make a template that  can be used in the clay molding, so that the glass will accurately fit.
• Experiment with color, resin, glass and raku to get a deeper eye catching blue.
• For gallery viewing, the  horizontal orientation makes it difficult to see until fairly close. My thinking, for now, is to not create any piece that does not have a vertical orientation if it is going to be shown in a gallery.
• Try and integrate some of the elements into the stand like the first model – only better. (A wider front, tree cutouts, and  fused glass  water  emerging representation.