Guess What I've Been Up To Lately

Does the photo give you a clue of what I've been up to for fun lately? 

Some of you may be thinking - is she going to audition for Stomp?  



Perhaps you're wondering if I'm considering becoming a waste management specialist?

Those of you who have played around with ceramics may recognize this as a firing technique called Raku. 

We basically put a few small clay pieces that we had previously thrown on a wheel, and took them up to 1800 degrees F inside of an hour.

When the ceramics got super hot, our instructor took them out and put them in these trash cans full of newspaper in order to expose them to carbon and darken them in color.  

There was fire, smoke, glowing hot ceramics...when I showed the below video to our 7yr old, he asked if he could come and take the class too.

More photos of the finished pieces later.  Once they cooled off, they looked quite pretty.  Dark, almost black in color, with rainbows all over.  Pretty cool...or maybe I should say pretty hot.

If you live in the California Bay Area, had have an urge to throw some clay around, Higher Fire is the place to be.  Awesome studio, super friendly students, good dirty fun.