Jennifer Firestone Gallery
"Saggar Fired Vessel 1"
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My family instilled appreciation and love for Mother Earth in me from the time I was very young. I happily learned to use her gifts to enhance and beautify my life. When I took my first clay class in 1990, I felt like I had come to my true home! My real passion is primitive firing. I like to make traditional and elegant forms and submit them to low tech firing processes, letting them smolder in a wood fire in a pit so that the final result clearly shows the patterns and tracings left by the fire itself. I have refined this process to firing ware in saggars (enclosed clay vessels) in my kiln, the results are pottery with flame etched designs and colors! Each one is totally unique. Raku firing, in which the pots are pulled out of the kiln at 1800F, glowing hot, provides the same excitement and immediacy for me. Whether they are placed in combustibles, or decorated with horsehair, or sprayed with soluble salts, I feel like I am participating in a magical conjoining of earth, air, fire and water. The Art of Alchemy...of the Spirit as much as the Earth. Some of my heart goes into every piece.
My ceramic education includes college courses in Texas and California and at Birmingham Bloomfield Art Association in MI, and numerous workshops by ceramic art masters around the country. I am a member of Michigan Ceramic Art Association and Brighton Art Guild. I am former member of Texas Clay Arts Association, and served 4 years as an officer (2 as president) of Salt Grass Potters in Houston, Texas. My work has been shown and sold at The Arts Alliance at Clear Lake, TX; The Art Studio in Beaumont, TX; October Gallery, Houston Heights, TX (voted "Best in Houston"); Texas Clay Art Assn.; West of the Moon Gallery in Chelsea, MI; and Gallery 105 in Marshall, MI.
For custom horsehair pottery made with your horse's hair contact me at J3nnifire@comcast.net.
