A Potter's Notebook : July 2009
Another Story of Another Kiln
note: this entry is a companion to ‘The Story of a Kiln,’
which I wrote in August, 2007, during another major
transition at Green River Pottery.
Saturday, June 19, 2009: I wake at 4 am. I’m surprised, actually, that I slept at all. Outside, a light rain falls—hard to tell if it’s just a sprinkle or the beginning of a real storm—a reason to postpone? I ponder. I’ve rented all the equipment. Hired a crew of three to help. And I’ve already postponed things once.
I stand in the yard a moment, breathing deeply in the wet, pre-dawn air. Better just to let things go forward. The urge to cancel is just nervousness, I conclude. It’s time. Everything in my studio—and gallery, and house—is already boxed up and moved to Santa Fe—I’ve saved the kiln for last. Once it’s gone I’ll be ready (I tell myself) to say goodbye to my Chimayo home where I’ve lived ten years, and relocate to the city. As soon as it’s light I’m back out at the kiln shed, carefully wrapping the kiln in plastic, adding extra layers over the delicate parts: the gas valves, the switches and the microprocessor with its tiny buttons. Now the kiln just looks like a big square box, seven feet on a side; all its mystery and magic, its sensitive controls, its heavy, vault-like door and the flue, from which white-hot flames issue during the firing—are concealed.
Why am I moving?
For some practical reasons, such as the amount of time I spend maintaining the house instead of working in the studio; the constant commuting to town, which will only increase as my son hits junior high; the need to be closer to the galleries and to other artists. But the underlying reason is less precise: the time has simply come. Time for a new start. When I first moved here ten years ago I needed solitude and isolation. I was just getting started, finding my voice in clay. I never did workshops, never told anyone what I was doing, never went to shows. I used the freedom that comes with getting out of the loop to figure out who I was and where my work was going. I’ll always be figuring that out, of course, but in the meantime I have started to need a different kind of freedom, too—an opposite kind. I feel boxed in, living alone out in the country. Stretched thin. Things are getting threadbare. It’s been difficult to admit this to myself over the last six or eight months, but it’s true. Ten years ago, buying an old house outside town, staking a claim and assuming total responsibility for what happens here, was freedom—now, to simply rent a little place tucked among other little places, with no yard, no garden, no fruit trees and no commute—this is the new license for me, the new liberation.
I’m waiting in the driveway when the forklift and the big flatbed truck arrive. Ricardo emerges wearing Carhartt coveralls. He’ll drive the forklift. The kiln weighs 2,000 pounds and is set twenty feet back in a shed with little clearance under the roof—it’ll be nerve-wracking to extricate it and place it on the flatbed truck.
“It’s okay,” Ricardo says happily, sizing up the job. “I can do this no problem, seňor.” The harder the job, with Ricardo, the more interested he is. As he eases the lift toward the shed, one wheel in the lilac hedge and another just grazing the wall of the studio, diesel smoke fills the wet summer air and his face brightens. He inches forward and a chunk of plaster pops off the wall to reveal the chicken wire and old adobe bricks underneath. I stand in front of the forks, shouting directions over the engine noise.
Rob, who has helped me with this whole move, load after load, always adding a note of calmness to the endeavor, looks on. A drummer, fire-fighter, and white-water kayaker, he studies the situation with the slight abstraction of the problem-solver; he’ll be the one to come up with an idea no one else sees, just at the right moment, but for now he sips a truck-stop coffee, standing back and staying dry. And Jaime—the fourth member of the crew—Jaime is late. Very late. When he does arrive he had the very-recently-showered, very-pained expression of the very-hungover. As he lights a cigarette and smiles, I’m irritated. I’m paying him, after all. But more than that, the move is starting to go along okay without him and there’s always a limit to how much an additional person can help, even when the job is difficult; success depends on concentration, on everyone pulling in the same direction at the same time—literally, in this case. Sometimes an added person just tips the balance from coordination to confusion. I consider telling Jaime to go home.
But I don’t. I smile back, saying nothing. I don’t know him that well, and don’t want him to think I’m a jerk, another anxious, uptight Anglo (which I am today). I’ll show my cultural sensitivity by ignoring the fact that he’s an hour late. The rain continues, and we’re all soaked by the time the kiln finally rests safely on the trailer, ready for its 40 minute drive to Santa Fe. I breathe a great sigh of relief—my second mistake of the day.
I watch the load getting tied down, hands in my pockets. Everyone heads for a vehicle to drive and Jaime…Jaime gets behind the wheel of the truck loaded with the kiln. Is this a good idea? I wonder. Shouldn’t Ricardo drive it, at least? Or I could …but my own truck will be warm and quiet, and I’ll listen to my Ipod. Things are going well, I tell myself—why interrupt the flow? I start my engine. “I’m gonna go slow,” I warn, pulling away. “Real slow. I think we all should.”
My warning is unnecessary, it turns out; both the trailer pulling the forklift and the flatbed truck with the kiln on it are so overloaded they can barely get out of second gear on some of the hills. I putt along with my flashers on, checking my rearview mirror. I run the heater and my clothes began to dry. Even going 30, we’ll be in Santa Fe by noon, and unloading will be easy—the hard part of this is done! I think. I calculate that Rob and I could finish up and be at the river by mid-afternoon, taking the rest of the day off to kayak…
In retrospect of course, this moment, when I start thinking of the fun things I can do as soon as the stressful job is finished, is always the point of no return. The accident has already happened. Our little caravan—me, followed by Ricardo with the fork lift, then Jaime, and Rob at the end—eventually coasts down into Santa Fe. The traffic is heavy, and so is the rain again, suddenly. I’m the only one who knows where we we’re headed and I watch to make sure we don’t get separated. For some reason this task assumes undue importance—staying in the lead and keeping the group together—probably because if we get separated by the lights I’d have to pull over and wait, loosing valuable kayak time. Or maybe because I want to show everyone I’m in charge, having failed to properly do so before.
The light in front of me turns yellow as I’m just about to slide under it, and I hit the brakes. In my mirror I watch Ricardo struggle to stop, see him try to switch lanes to come along side me and gain a little stopping distance, see the trailer fishtail as it begins pushing the truck that was meant to pull it—then I see the trailer pop, jump forward and to the side like a startled horse—I hear the resounding boom of metal on metal. Jaime’s truck has plowed into the trailer. The light is red. Ricardo jumps out. I sit, unable to move, made sick by the adrenaline running through me and supposedly readying me for action, but I’m not taking it. Finally I force myself out of the truck. I run back to see the damage: the kiln slid forward and dented itself against the rails of the truck bed because it wasn’t tied down well. There was a pallet jack at the back of the bed, not tied down at all, and the pallet jack has flown forward, slamming against the gas valves and electronic switches of the kiln.
The truck’s bumper is crumpled, but driveable. The light turns green. Our caravan continues in first gear to my new studio. We park and I emerge, slamming my door, yelling, furious, hearing in my own voice the impotent rage of the really-at-fault. Ricardo and Jaime listen to me: how valuable the kiln is…how I told them to go slow…etc. They’re scared, they’re sorry, they listen like kids in school who must obey despite a teacher’s incompetent authority.
As we all sheepishly work to finish the move, the weather clears. The sky takes on a beautiful, cloudless summer blue, adding just the right note of irony to the situation, like laughter from the back of the classroom when the teacher turns back to the board. Rob engineers a way to remove the twisted bumper from the truck; one of its front tires, too, will need to be replaced. I race off to the hardware store for the gas fittings I’ll need in order to hastily hook up the kiln and ensure that it works. Once unwrapped, the damage doesn’t look so bad, and to my relief, it proves minimal. I’m lucky. The kiln works fine.
An hour later I’m standing alone outside the double doors of my new studio. Steam rises off the wet city street in the bright afternoon sun. Am I ready for this? Ready to leave the tranquility and isolation of my old place in Chimayo, with its thick adobe walls and heavy roof beams, practically a fortress against the outside world? Maybe not. It doesn’t seem like it. I’m still too busy being nice to people, making sure they like me, still too easily distracted. These tendencies are what kept me in the country so long, kept me needing to keep everyone—other artists, gallerists, even customers—at an arm’s length.
I take a deep breath and walk in. Before me rises a mountain of stuff: boxes of studio tools and supplies, glaze buckets, wheels, lumber with which to rebuild my workspace. But surrounding the mountain is a sea of blank concrete: the open floor of my as-yet undivided space. Nothing is written in stone, I remind myself. I can make this work, make the transition from cave-like safety to bustling, urban arts district, from the quiet country to a street crowded with live-work lofts and local businesses. I flip on the radio and start unpacking.
A couple hours fly by—uninterrupted—and when I look up I’m surprised to find that the sky has clouded over again. The rain has reappeared, with thunder this time. My dog hides under a worktable while I stand in the doorway watching a downpour begin. Water splatters on the street and fills the gutters, and as I push my new glass doors open wide, raindrops blow in, wetting the new, empty, concrete studio floor.
Theo Helmstadter
Santa Fe,
July 2009
