“Raku Raccoon”
The Raku process is a dramatic, fast-paced ceramics technique where pottery is removed from a red-hot kiln and immediately plunged into a container of combustible materials (like sawdust or newspaper), and then covered (with something like a garbage can). This starving of oxygen (reduction) creates uniquely unpredictable metallic lusters, crackles, and iridescent finishes.
While some iridescence is visible in this work, my intent was to keep the raccoon dark, and more lifelike, so I used little glaze on the raccoon. [for contrast, see “Space Donut,” which was raku fired]
Always one for a visual pun, I like how the raccoon emerging from the newspaper and garbage can parallels the same way raku pieces are finished.
\”Sculpture\”
This started as a simple coil pot, and grew out of hand.
\”Space Donut\”
This piece was an homage to another work, by PCC student Ryan Gregory, that I had seen at the Student Art Show in 2025.
“Teap0t”
This piece grew out of my \”Space Donut\” experiments in trying to recreate Ryan\’s work.
What do you do with a clay donut? Make a fully functional teapot out of it, of course.
“Alien” (Cookie Jar)
I wanted to make a vessel, and my love of the movie Alien (1979) led me to this.
Below, I\’ve included a still from the movie, as well as images of a mask that I made during the pandemic. I decided that I would make crazy, functional masks, and this is by far the more elaborate of the ones I made.
The mask is made from a 2-part epoxy. After making a plaster of Paris mold of my face, I created the parts I needed in clay, made silicon molds from them, filled them with the epoxy, and then painted and assembled everything. Time during the pandemic was strange, but I\’d estimate that I spent a c4-6 weeks of actual work (over a longer period of time) working on this mask—experimenting with sculpting clay (I used Monster Clay—a moldable clay that doesn\’t harden), learning to make silicon molds, and figuring out how to make all the parts work together, as well as sewing together and attaching the straps so that I could wear it. The egg sacs (two lobes on either side of the tail) have filters on the back, making this a functional mask.
Odds and Ends
