Kjell Hahn

my old friend john dix is having a show at the Kobo gallery in Seattle this month. also running a few pottery workshops- but they cost a bit of money to attend.

took myself a vacation. went to Oshima onsen, a hot spring bath town, in northern Gunma and stayed in the oldest ryokan, or Japanese style hotel, in the country. didn’t have the money to get one of the fancy rooms but staying there everyone had access to the same group of baths. and anyway, the cheaper rooms were in the oldest part of the building.. fascinating place, the original structure was began in the late 1600’s and as they added on over the years it has become this 8 floor complex built into the side of a mountain. kind of a confusing maze of creaky old halls and elevators and this strange cave-like tunnel linking the buildings.
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Of course there are older onsens in japan, but as the oldest hotel hey had all these original documents laid out in a long glass case in the front of the building- guests and bits of history about the place. they even had the original proposal to build the building from the 1670’s laying out.
impressive place.

hey now, over a week has passed since ive updated the blog. I can partially blame this on the weather. Last week it was in the teens and the bicycle commute had me pretty much brain dead by the time I get back home in the evenings.
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in any case, not much news.
Haven’t heard anything about the other kiln I put pots in- the one Waseda owns. im kind of giving up on the guy running the place. There are still a couple other kilns in the area I know about, so its better to just walk away if the guy isn’t serious about it. When I finally get the pots ill post images.
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Other than that ive been drawing a bit in the evening. have about 30 new landscape assemblage drawings on paper.
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Also matt craven has been working in the new site.. its slow but progress is being made.
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couldnt go but john sent me some pictures from the unloading.
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very good news–>the second chamber, the back part of the kiln i was in charge of, had the best results to date. that area of the kiln has been a struggle pretty much ever since it was built. ive been in charge of firing it the last four times and have learned a lot each time. its a huge relief to get that right.
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bad news–> my pots didnt come out so well. probably due to the clay body more than anything. no big deal really. better to have a good firing than a few good pots, especially since i could only send a few before we started.
other bad news: the temperaure was a little high in the first chamber and a lot of john’s pots a little too glassy for his taste. not a failure though.

PHOTO:second chamber with door taken off. usually there are more cold areas and many of the pieces get too much oxygen. oxidized clay has a washed out – somewhat sickly look to it . usually not desirable. the deep browns in the pots on every shelf show good reduction.

unloading two kilns this weekend. well, someone’s unloading them- probably not me.
since im back in onishi i cant travel across the country to help with the sasayama kiln.
i also havent been asked to help with the local kiln we fired before christmas at Waseda’s high school . I would seem like an obvious choice since i know more about the process than almost anyone living here, but the teacher who runs it is much too concerned with trying to get it on with my neighbor. (not sure how to phrase it.. he’s married and 60 but that never seems to be an issue with japanese guys). so hes asked the 90lb girl with no experience and or interest in ceramics to give him a hand in the hot dirty kiln. good luck dude. less work for me.
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heres a quick shot of the kiln being stoked at sasayama. i think the temp is about 1000 degrees centigrade… so still a fairly low temp. towards the end of the fire you’d burn your hands off if you tried to stoke like that.

went to the temples with fuyuko’s family for the new year. we went to an old capital of japan, kamakura. someone in their family was buried next to budda’s tooth at engakuji temple. so we paid our respects and gave the priest a lot of money to pray with us for a few minutes.

i survived the week long 24 hour work schedule at the kiln. wont know the results of our work for a week. everything went smoothly and pretty much as planned. well,the pyrometers (temp) werent working properly but we got all the cones( also a temp indicator) where we wanted them. the pots john pulled from the kiln were the best ive seen so far..
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heres a group photo at the end of the firing.

(from left to right)
chika dix, john dix, richie dix, shiro ikuma, amy farkas, kjell hahn