LOCH LOMOND– Cobb Mountain Art & Ecology Project (CMAEP) held their fall Open House over the weekend. Parking was at capacity along the forest road at the 80-acre facility in Loch Lomond as visitors watched demonstrations, viewed hundreds of pieces of pottery and ceramic artworks, visited with resident artists, and enjoyed wood-fired pizza.
Scott Parady, who heads the ceramics program at California State University Sacramento, founded the CMAEP in 2006. He built the impressive facility which includes extensive studio spaces, accommodations for up to eight artists in residence and a 2000 square foot covered kiln area. The largest kiln, the 22-foot long “tunnel” kiln gets fired twice a year for about eight days, consuming wood gleaned from his fire mitigation efforts around the property.
“We usually have 25 to 35 people on the top half with each firing. …So it’s quite labor intensive. We have crews and shifts, and shifts of people that are splitting wood. We have people that help out with making meals … it’s like a whole little village for 10 days or so.”
The kiln reaches such high temperatures that the ceramics themselves function as a catalytic converter, making most of the firing smokeless. The flames and wood ash are the primary glaze on the works. The 12 cords of wood consumed per firing produce almost no ash.
“We’re kind of a leader, in that we’re incorporating things like ecology and forest stewardship into this practice. I’ll be showing some work at the National Ceramic Conference, this year in Salt Lake. And then in May, (I’m) going to North Carolina to talk about this place and the process of stewardship and wood-firing at a wood-fire conference.”
It was the first Open House for Daiphi Postl who drove 50 hours from Rochester, New York to be an artist in residence at the Project. “I was looking for a residency on the West Coast, something in green nature. So, this was really the perfect place. A lot of my work is inspired by what I’ve been seeing. Lots of ravens and deer imagery.” Postl rotates a slender vase featuring outlines of a cobalt blue tree with black ravens in the branches and other characters on the ground, to show the storytelling in her work. She tries to get the cobalt to run so that it transforms into “a window or a shadow”.
Mykayla Timlin grew up in Castle Rock, Colorado and went to school in Austin, Texas where she majored in religious studies, studied environmental science and minored in art. She was working in a studio in Austin “…and I knew I wanted to go back to a mountainous area because I missed Colorado a lot.” Landing in California a month ago, she’s very interested in everything Scott Parady is doing with fire mitigation and reforestation, removing fuel load from the campus to fire the kilns. “So I like learning how to use all the power tools and everything.”
Lucas Schick, originally from Kansas, “…found clay in high school, and knew I wanted to keep pursuing that.” He found his way to Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina for a wood-firing workshop. He worked for two potters for two years in North Carolina before being drawn to Cobb for longer duration firings of eight or even nine days. “It’s very unique. And just having the quiet space to go inward and work on my clay practice. Being able to create in this environment is pretty crazy. “
Visit Cobb Mountain Art & Ecology Project at www.cobbartandecology.org.
