Penland Menagerie Ready to Fire

Week 1 at Penland yielded quite a menagerie of animal sculptures. Week 2 means firing them all. Tonight begins a very long 72 hour haul as the fruits of our labor undergo various types of firing - raku, smoke and, as a welcome surprise, salt. We're starting the salt firing tonight, divvying up shifts to babysit the kiln overnight. Tomorrow and Thursday we raku and smoke. I'm really looking forward to seeing how Susan Halls smokes her pieces and will post more on that later in the week. In the meantime, here is a small sampling of the pieces created last week in Lower Clay.
Elaine's first cat. (She made 4!)

Linda's feline....

...and her mule.

Pigs were a popular subject. Here's Mike's.

And here's June's (with her tortoise in the background).

Pam's rhino fairly commanded admiring glances from visitors to the studio.

As did Sunny's goat. I absolutely love this gal and can't wait to see if Sunny chooses to raku it or smoke it.

Jacob made a dog and this interesting creature. (Gotta love those TP supports!)

There were also lizards, horses, frogs and several types of dogs. And these are just the standing sculptures. Susan Halls also did demos of sitting and reclining forms. Most of those are still in the bisque kilns so no pix of them in this post.

I had to leave Penland over the weekend so I don't have as many pieces of work as most of the other students. But I learned a HUGE amount from the pieces I did make. Here's Brutus (the dog) and P. Doggie (the prairie dog).

P. Doggie is now in the salt kiln...which I'd best go check on now. More animals to come as we spend the next two days rakuing and sawdust smoking!