New Cob Oven

Puff, the magic bread oven, has been reborn. We reconstituted the cob at a workshop during the Arts Festival in downtown Eau Claire. We had help stomping and re-building from several young people and a group of elementary kids. Puff has different eyes and more spikes. He may look meaner, but a little bird perched on his tail testifies to his gentleness. The creativity of the group was exhilarating. Thanks especially to Elizabeth, Tom, and Simeon.

Hazelnuts

Last summer I tried to mud dye cloth. I was teaching an Eco-Art course for the local Summer Institute program and experimented with ways to paint red clay on cloth and make the dye permanent. I used these nut hulls to mordant the cloth; boiling the nut hulls and cloth together. I never got the great results of mud cloth in Mali, but the experiment was fun. Judy Dominic is quite the expert on Mali mud cloth and has tried many plants for the mordant. The plant used by dyers in Mali does not grow in North America. In addition, I certainly tried to make the process more speedy. Now, however, the hulls get a third life embedded into the clay of one of my sculptures.

Puff the Cob Dragon

Not satisfied with one bread oven, my husband decided we needed a traveling oven. He bought a trailer for the truck and we built Puff in a friend’s back yard. I supervised the cob mixing and building while some children and Steve made dragon models and drawings. We did the happy hippie method of mixing - barefoot stomping on a tarp. There are three layers of mud, each with a different recipe. The center layer has the most straw for insulation. The walls are not as thick as a permanent land based oven, conserving some weight. Aaron made some awesome pizza, and John made several loaves of bread. Puff may still get a layer of color and lime wash. We have yet to test out how well Puff withstands a trip.

New Vessel Piece

I took some images on a nice pleasant spring day. Inspired by Katy Bryce and Adam Weismann's Building With Cob book, I finished the outside of this piece with a plaster recipe containing sand. It truly looks like a gypsum plaster. The inside shows flecks of straw. The second view shows how narrow I made this piece. It reminds me a bit of an Irish drum, but opening on one side instead of the back of the drum. I am still deciding on a name. While creating this piece, I felt all of my processes gelling.