The third event is WHEEEEEEEEE. I’ll be driving the Blue Bean at Rallycross Fest. It’s Saturday and Sun, two full days of watching folks hoon around some dirt/ gravel tracks. Also, it’s at Dirtfish, which is also where they filmed part of Twin Peaks. www.nwrallyassociation.com/spectator-ev...

The second is cultural. It’s the annual Seattle Art Fair. I’ll be there for the grand opening tonight with J. Rinehart Gallery. Come see this giant baby beast! The fair is tonight - Sunday, down at Lumen Field.

I’d had the phone out because we found an incredible mouse nest after moving some lumber. There was a stray little pup, with eyes still closed, perhaps dropped by a startled mom mid move. I shepherded it back to its siblings, gently covered the nest with a piece of bark, then washed my hands.

I put my phone in my pocket with the camera on, and actually got some cool photos.

My feed served up a surprise doppelgänger for the owl friend this morning.

One last Ozette post: one of our favorite pieces of art in our house is this metaphorical portrait of Ozette by the amazing @pamwishbow.bsky.social. Pam took our brief, and gleefully returned with this perfect painting of a demon queen, just and vengeful ruler of all she can see.

She got meaner since that comic. She’d chase pet sitters straight out of the house. She’d trap visiting friends in the bathroom - we told people to bring their phones so they could text for help. But she’s remained our darling. She’d endlessly demand to be held and bounced like a baby by Ben

She gave @shing.bsky.social such a stink eye when they visited, that it was memorialized in a comic.

We’re saying goodbye to our sweet cat Ozette today, after nearly two decades. She’s the sweetest, softest, meanest beast ever, and definitely appears in my sculptures.

The repair held up great!! My friend and I both podiumed at the NW Rally Assoc. women’s clinic this weekend. To be fair, we were the only two in the stock front wheel drive class. But also, to be fair, we were fast. We beat the whole stock RWD class too! Photos by @benhollis

This was the process! 1: The original damage. I clipped it with a car trailer while loading it for rally cross. 2. Plastic weld staples from the back 3. JB bumper weld epoxy (which has some flex) 4. Two coasts special gold leaf primer (in red) 5. 23k gold leaf ($10 worth) 6. Automotive clear coat

I kintsugi’d our car.

We wrapped up the firing yesterday after 50 hours. We then controlled the amount of oxygen in the kiln as it cooled - reduction cooling. This should give us really nice colors in all of the clays. It also produces dramatic flames. We won’t find out until we open it next week after it’s all cool!

We had a crew of about six this firing, all working 8 hour shifts with two people. After my shift, I stuck around and “supervised” the next shift for a bit.

The next 24 hours, after body reduction, is about keeping the kiln full of wood, happy, and not too hot. We put small pieces of wood in side fireboxes (getting ash throughout the kiln). The front firebox gets large chunks. We use about two cords of larger wood and one cord of kindling every time

As I woke up the next morning, I spotted the graveyard crew hard at work. “Body reduction” is where you starve the kiln of o2 at a lower temp for 30 min. The result is toastier looking pots, and also lots of flames and smoke for a little bit.

We generally load in one day, then start it the next morning. We’ll slowly heat the kiln (aka candling), bring up the temp gradually to not shock the work. We’ve been experimenting with using a propane burner for the first couple hours. After that, we switched to our standard “campfire”.

Just wrapped up the 9th firing of my wood kiln. It went super smooth! Here’s some highlights of the last 50 hours. First off: loading.

If you’re in Seattle, my solo show will be opening this Thursday night from 5-8pm! Come say hi at the J Rinehart Gallery in pioneer square.

I need to start new sculptures, but instead I deep cleaned my studio and organized my tools. Behold!

Presenting the final sculpture!! It’s hilarious to be able to look back to my first sketch and track the progress of this beast. My instinct is was right. A pain to sculpt, but worth it! It’s titled “Storyteller”, and will be part of my solo show at J. Rinehart Gallery, opening April 2nd.

I built a wood hutch for the side stoke wood at the kiln. Super satisfying to make an improvement in a few hours that I’d been considering for months.

You never know what you’ll get out of a wood kiln. All of this color and pattern on this sculpture is just wood ash melting into a natural glaze during a firing. I know the process well enough that I can *ask* the kiln for certain results. But you never know until the unload what you’ll get.

I’m so excited with my work from this last wood firing! This sculpture, “Squish”, is going to be part of my solo show opening on April 2nd at J. Rinehart Gallery in Seattle.

QRP with your skull art

The colors of the firing were great! And I didn’t lose a single beast. We went a bit hard on the reduction cool, which bubbled some of the natural ash glazes

After reloading and restarting the wood firing, it went super smooth. We wrapped it up in 48 hours, with cone 11’s everywhere in kiln. I woke up for my shift on Tuesday to find an unexpected 3” of snow on everything!

This morning, in four short hours, we carefully placed all the sooty pots back into the kiln. There were marks from the feet of each pot, showing where it was before. We kept joking that it was a kiln so nice, we loaded it twice. It’s now running nicely, almost back to where it was before.

So… the wood firing’s been spicy. A giant refired pot exploded at 700f, hour 10 during the firing. The crew heard it go. We peaked, and shards of pot were *everywhere*. We had no real option. We shut it down and unloaded the work. Any pot fired with a shard in it would be ruined.

Starting off the morning by lighting the Cloud kiln for its 8th firing. We loaded it up yesterday, with the help of a full crew!