This summer, art professor Eric Ordway was a studio assistant for his former professor and mentor Joseph Pintz at Penland School of Crafts in Penland, NC. It was a 2.5-week intensive workshop focusing on ceramic hand-building techniques that Pintz has developed as a professional artist. The workshop attendee’s also applied terra sigillata (terra sig) to the work that they made. Learning technical information on how to make a terra sig base, then altering the coloration of that base using mason stains and oxides. Applying patinas and washes to their work to give a depth of surface on their pieces. They then reviewed the results of their work from two different firings. Several were from the electric kiln, fired to cone 02. The other was a low soda-firing using a reduction atmosphere with propane.

All in all, Eric had a great time working alongside Pintz and the other work studies/studio assistants as well as pursuing a new avenue in his work that did not rely on high-fire, atmospheric kilns.