Unpacking Dirt

For the past five years, I have been collecting interesting dirt in the Southwestern United States. This summer I plan to use it all up!

 

I've started by sieving and washing the various materials, and anything sticky I try to form into a little tile for the kiln. Here is some clay from a vein running from the Dragoon Mountains into the San Pedro River below Benson, Arizona.

 

This tile has subsequently been through a cone 06 bisque firing, and it feels pretty vitrified already. It will probably melt at cone 6, so it could be either a nice, low-fire, terracotta body, or a mid to high fire glaze. Or, if I bisque little, crumbled bits of it, I could use it as a nice, mutating inclusion in the higher firing clay bodies.

And here is our trusty jeep, Amanda, at the collection site south of Benson with the Dragoons in the background. 

I believe the geologic term for this, and someone please correct me if I am wrong, is the lovely 'autochthonous residue'.

Our preferred way to travel when rock and dirt hunting is to stay in little, old hotels. We weren't disappointed in Benson! We stayed at the Sahara Motel, just outside of Benson on Highway 80 to Tombstone. I highly recommend it, if this is your thing. Here I am collecting gravel from harvester ant mounds in the parking lot.

 

Photographed by my most trusty assistant, of course.