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Students experience Raku artform
Sandburg High School resurrected a 300-year-old, ancient Japanese kiln-firing process at its annual Raku Fest, an outdoor, interactive ceramics event filled with flames, smoke, fun, and art.
Held outdoors, the workshop includes three portable kilns and glazes. Copper and crackle glaze is applied to ceramic pieces, loaded into a kiln and fired to a temperature of 2,000 fahrenheit for approximately 45 minutes. The red hot art is removed from the kiln and placed into metal garbage cans, where it ignites combustibles such as paper or sawdust. During the burning of the combustibles, the lids are placed tightly on the cans so no oxygen can fuel the fire. The compounds in the raku glazes react to the heat, depletion of oxygen and build up of smoke and carbon inside the enclosed can. Then, the art pieces are taken out of the cans and carefully placed into tubs of water to cool. Slight variations to this process can create unique finishes to the artwork.
To achieve a crackled glaze finish, glaze is cooled rapidly, forcing it to shrink on the outside surface and crack. Smoke and soot gather in the cracks when in the metal garbage cans, resulting in a crackled finish. Students also have an option to burn real horsehair on the surface of their heated pieces, making unique carbon markings.
Sophomore ceramics student Julia Lesniak participated in Raku for the first time and said, “This is really cool; I love the heat and the fire. We use kilns in class, but this is different. Not knowing exactly how the pieces are going to come out is the fun part.”
Art teacher Dan McCabe said, “The Raku project is dynamic and fun and produces really interesting results, but there is substance beyond the allure. Even though most of my students will not become professional artists or potters, the Raku project shows them, better than I ever could, the effort and process it takes to create.”