How I Spent Two Months Not Making Pots. Chapter 3.

The next morning I called the surgeon and found out that he did not accept my insurance, which is crazy because I have the biggest insurance company in the USA, whom I quickly called. They verified that he was out of network, and that it would cost me $9,000 out of pocket if I went to him. So they gave me the names of some other doctors. The first number I called was out of service, and the second said they could see me that morning. So off we went.

The surgeon took a look at my fingers and said I would need pins to hold the little broken bones (cornflakes, he called them) in place, lots of stitches, and that he would have to remove my fingernails, clean up the nail bed, and put the nails back, to make sure my nails didn't die off for good. He did all this the next morning.

When I woke up from surgery, my hand was wrapped up halfway up my forearm with a bandage and rigid plaster splint, which seemed excessive for injured finger tips. The confused look on my face was noticed by the nurse, who said the doctor found that I had also cut the flexor tendon in my middle finger, so I would not be able to bend my finger or wrist for the next 6 weeks. Go big or go home, as they say.

The next week was awkward, but not too painful thanks to my happy pills. I even went to a broadway show, The Book of Mormon, which was excellent and everyone should see it. After a week in my bandage I was unwrapped to reveal my shiny new fingers. The middle finger looked pretty good, but had lots of stitches. The index finer had very few stitches, but there was no skin on the pad. Yuck-o-rama. I had to buy some $200+ salve (thank god for insurance!) to put on it that would allow the skin to grow back, which it did. Pretty amazing stuff.

I was then sent next door to get a splint made that I would have to stay in for the next 5 weeks, and to start physical therapy (PT). The splint was basically a big slab of plastic that covered the back of my hand and forearm, and was held on with velcro straps. I could take it off to shower, as long as I didn't bend my wrist or bad finger back, which would rupture the tendon.

I started going to PT twice a week. The goal was to keep my broken tendon moving so it didn't scar and sieze up.  So 6 or 7 times a day I would do my exercises, and twice a week I would show my therapist what I had accomplished, and get some new exercises. Two weeks ago I got to put away the splint for good, and the range of motion in my finger is about 80% of normal. They still swell up a couple times a day and are pretty stiff, but all that will go away with time. I should get back to mostly normal in the next few months. For now they're quite functional.

All this brings us to today, Pin Day! That's right, today the pins were removed from my fingers. The doctor just grabbed them with some forceps and pulled them out. Only took about 10 seconds. The X-ray showed that the corn flake bones are all solidified, but they may or may not be solid with the main bone. Chances are they are being held solid by cartilage, but that doesn't show up on x-rays. The doctor said most likely they are fine, as he's only ever had 1 patient that had a problem, but we won't know for sure until I start using my fingers. So we'll know next week after the pin holes heal up. If they aren't solid, he'll have to graft in a piece of bone from my wrist. Fingers crossed!

How I Spent Two Months Not Making Pots. Chapter 2.

We last saw me heading into the ER:

So I quickly found out that the emergency room is not a fast paced, exciting place like it is on television. After sitting in my room for a good long time, someone finally cam in and made me unwrap the towel from my fingers and look at the unholy terror that my hand had become. The pads of my fingers were totally torn up, but surprisingly, bleeding very little. I half expected them to squirt all over the room, but they hardly even dripped.

I don't remember exactly what order they did things in, but at some point the nurse tried to numb my fingers, which didn't work very well. They still hurt where I had injured them, but also hurt at the base of the fingers where she injected the anesthetic. So she tried again, and they still didn't go numb. Maybe it was her first time? So I asked if there was anything she could give me through the IV. At that point she introduced me to my good friend Dilaudid. The pain went away, I stopped hyperventilating and shaking, and started to smile. Literally. I felt great! At some point I also got sent for xrays, which showed that I broke the bones at the tips of my two injured fingers. Great. That meant an even longer recovery.

After cleaning off the fingers and loosely stitching them "just to hold them together till the you see the surgeon", I was on my way. Only 3 hours and $4,000 (thank god for insurance) to do 20 minutes of actual work. They gave me the name of the surgeon to call in the morning and sent me to Walgreens to get some horse-strength pain killers.

To be continued.....

How I Spent Two Months Not Making Pots. Chapter 1.

Fingers are pretty important nowadays, especially to those of us who use them to make a living. Brains are important, too, but for a potter it's more about the fingers. My fingers and I have always had a good relationship- they put food in my mouth and pick stuff out of my belly button, and I keep their nails chewed down to a nice length and put lotion on them when the clay dries them out. We have a good thing going. But on February 26th I put our relationship to the test.

It was the day of the last big snowfall we had here in the Chicago area. The snow was wet and heavy, and there was enough of it that I decided to cancel classes at the studio (which I almost never do) and head home to clear the driveway. As often happens with wet, heavy snow, the chute on my snowblower clogged. Little did I know that even when the blades are turned off, they hold some tension and can kick when the clog is removed. So when I pushed the snow out of the chute, the blades moved and caught the tips of my index and middle finger on my left hand.

NO, it didn't cut them off. But it really was pretty gory and very painful because it totally chewed up the pads of my fingertips. At first I didn't even know I had been cut. I t just felt like the blades had brushed against my fingers. But when I saw that my glove was cut I knew something bad had happened. When I pulled off the glove it wasn't pretty. I ran into the house and yelled for my lovely wife, who brought me a towel to wrap around my hand. She ran the kids over to the neighbor's house, then drove me to the ER in the snowstorm while I yelled at her to drive faster. She dropped me off at the front door and went to park the car. I had to give the front desk all my personal information while hyperventilating and freaking out, then a nurse put me in a room that would be my home for the next 3 hours.

To be continued....

Laurell Pottery Works

I just finished shooting some slides for my friends George and Elsie Laurell, and I thought I'd share a few with you. They make some of the best Arts & Crafts style pottery I've seen. Each piece is made by hand- no molds are used. Amazing work! You can see more of their work HERE.

New Year, New Work

A few of years ago I was doing some sgraffito and iron slip work on my pots, and firing them in reduction to cone 10 in my gas kiln. This worked great, and I loved how the slips came through the glaze:

I have been meaning to do some testing of this technique in the electric kilns, but of course I haven't gotten around to doing it. The main problem to overcome is that in cone 6 oxidation the iron oxide doesn't flux out as much, and therefore doesn't show through and mix with the glaze as well. So instead of doing this with slip, I thought I'd try doing it with layered glazes, using the technique I've been using to put stripes on my pots:

I am VERY happy with the results, and plan to do more. I also did another one with different glazes that did not turn out nearly as well. The top glaze was too stiff and didn't mingle with the bottom glaze very well. So now I have a good idea of what glaze combinations will work the best. The only down side is that I can't do this with these glazes on a vertical pot, as they will run and blend and wipe out the design. So platters are it for doing this with glazes. But now I'm really excited to start testing slips!

Raku Workshop, October 2012

So this summer I finally got around to scheduling a raku workshop. It's been two years since the last one. I had an opening in my schedule back in July so I set a week aside for a raku workshop. The plan was to make pots at the beginning of the week and fire them over the weekend. Attendance for the workshop was great, and we made a lot of pots.

Because my studio is in a business complex, there is nowhere to do raku firings here. So my raku kiln lives in Bristol, WI at Bristol Pottery, the studio of my friend Fred Gregory. Fred's got several acres of land, and open burning is not usually a problem. However, due to the severe drought that plagued the midwest this summer, the village of Bristol issued a burn ban two days before we were set to start firing. So the second half of the raku workshop was put on hold until the ban was lifted and my schedule opened up again.

So this weekend I finally had time to finish up the workshop. The kiln worked great and we got some wonderful pots finished. I'll post photos of finished pots as soon as I shoot slides of them.

For those of you not familiar with rak firing, here's how it works: We make and bisque fire the pots like always, but the glaze firing is totally different. After applying the raku glazes, we fire them up to 1850F degrees in 20-30 minutes. Then they are pulled from the kiln with long tongs and placed in a bed of combustible material (sawdust, newspaper, whatever) and covered with a can. We call this the post-firing reduction. 'Reduction' in this case means reducing the amount of oxygen- the burning material eats up all the oxygen in the can. This reduction causes the copper in the raku glazes to flash lots of bright colors, and causes any exposed unglazed clay to turn black from absorbing the carbon from the smoldering material. About 30 minutes later the pots are cool enough to be removed from the cans. Done!

My raku kiln

Moving a pot into the post-firing reduction.

My raku kiln is built of soft brick, with a hinged front door. In my opinion, this is the safest way to raku fire. From a safety standpoint, I have a real problem with the fiber-lined expanded steel mesh type raku kilns that require you to lift the entire body of the kiln off in order to access the pots. I think that opening one of those kilns and releasing all that heat is one of the most dangerous things potters do, not to mention the health risk of breathing the fibers that are released every time the kiln is moved. I honestly can't believe they are allowed in schools. My kiln allows someone to open the door just enough to get to the pots, and then close it again. Only the person pulling the pots is exposed to the heat of the kiln, and he/she wears protective clothing. The risk of getting burned is very minimal, and there are no fibers to breath. The other benefit of my kiln is that we can fill the kiln with up to a dozen pots, and the last one comes out nearly as hot as the first. The hotter it goes in to the post-firing reduction, the better is will look. My kiln has one power burner underneath, and the whole thing is on wheels so it can be rolled outside when we need to fire.

Northbrook Art in the Park

My next show. Just threw a bunch of new canisters today that I'll be unveiling there. Come see me!