More Pictures at the Reitz Ranch

Click here for some more photos from last Sunday at Don's, courtesy Jon Peletier, Verde Independent photojournalist, as well as art faculty on our Verde Valley Campus.

And here is another link to Arizona State University's own article about the gift.

An Afternoon at the Reitz Ranch

The view from my house, looking from Jerome out over the Verde Valley. I can see the red rocks of Sedona to the right, and the San Francisco peaks above Flagstaff and Sycamore Canyon to the left. Don Reitz's place is on the Verde River on the way to Sycamore Canyon. (The red-tiled complex of buildings on the hill to the right is the Old Jerome High School where I have my studio.)

This afternoon we went to Don's to see him give his complex of kilns and his studio as a legacy to Arizona State University.  It was a fantastically beautiful, Arizona, January day. Here's Don and Larry posing for the cameras.

Don thanks his support staff, including local ceramic artists Larry and Brandi. Larry also works at the Verde Campus with me, and that's a pretty accurate halo over his head. Brandi has been at La Meridiana recently, and she is going back to work there in the Autumn. Everyone should go to La Meridiana. In fact, I think we should all take a field trip to Italy!

Clive keeping Giulietta out of the kilns. (Though I heard there was some discussion that she could be used to reach the far corners.)

Behind the kilns, on the cliff over the Verde River. A lovely afternoon.

New Year's Day 2011

Start something as you intend to finish it. Spent the morning sleeping and eating and the afternoon putting together a load for a soda firing.
Clive literally slid the jeep down Holly Street to the state park road, and it won't be coming back up again until the temperature finally gets above freezing for a little while. Everything from the park road down to the valley is fine.

In the spirit of the New Year, I loaded up everything from my studio that just isn't there yet to put into a soda firing. I'll fire pots repeatedly in different atmospheres until they either work or fall apart. After all, if it isn't working, then I have nothing to lose but an ugly piece of fired clay.

I had a lot of help loading pots and throwing snowballs.

 

View below from the Old Jerome High School Artists' Studios (where I have a studio) past one of Robin Anderson's sculptures and towards the former mining metropolis, then ghost town, now former ghost town of Jerome, Arizona, on Cleopatra Hill.

And disgruntled pots awaiting satisfaction in the soda kiln.

The top of the soda kiln, which has the highly unusual condition down in the valley in Clarkdale, Arizona, of a sprinkling of snow.