"Meltdown Bailout"

Raku overfire/wood/broken kiln bricks/kiln slagg
22 x 12 x 5 inches

This is a whimsical response to a raku firing gone awry. I actually had a couple RISD friends over for a group raku firing with my Ceramics students-I was very excited to try the new kiln I had cooked up for the occasion. The top shelf of the kiln fired fine, but the bottom shelf got way too hot, and we had a minor meltdown on our hands. We had a fun time and most of the pots were just grand-the melted ones just sat on that poor ruined shelf until I decided a couple years later to respond to the latest financial fiasco that always seems to be on the horizon or knocking on the door. I used an assemblage approach and used the melted pots scraped off the ruined bottom shelf-the final result of the composition on the wood suggesting the title.