As she carefully used large metal tongs to move molded chunks of hot fired clay to a tub filled with cool water, Shepard High School senior Ava Gliva joked she “maybe” found a career.
“It’s not difficult,” she said. “You just want to be cautious.”
Gliva and fellow ceramics students from Shepard, Richards and Eisenhower high schools gathered Wednesday outside Shepard in Palos Heights to learn more about Raku, a form of Japanese pottery.
The Raku process, Shepard art teacher Bridget Scales said, uses less time than conventional kilns.
“These glazes are formulated to melt at a lower temperature. It would take at least eight hours in electric or wood-fired kilns. It happens overnight, the kids don’t see it. It comes out beautiful and shiny. These are faster,” Scales said.
Gliva, 17, of Worth, said it “was exciting to see how our pieces came out and then to glaze them.”
She looks forward to the “super relaxing, hands-on class” each day.
“Instead of doing all this mental stuff in my other classes, I’m able to relax, unwind and use my hands,” Gliva said.
A few feet away from Gliva, two kilns that were each a scorching 2,000 degrees stood outdoors on a crisp morning just north of the Shepard football stadium.
Pottery that about 50 students designed and had glazed using a wide range of colors were in two kilns fueled by propane.
The intense heat over 45 minutes or so solidified the glaze over the hardened clay, resulting in shiny pottery.
Some students added horse hair or feathers to give their artwork extra texture.
After perhaps 15 minutes in a cooling bath, students were able to hold and marvel at their own works of art.
Scales said the session teaches the students that “glaze is not like paint. Glaze is actually glass particles suspended in water.”
Some glazes have more shine than others, she said.
“Any cup you buy at the Dollar Store has gone through a kiln at some big factory,” Scales noted.
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Percy Makert, whose father, Carl Makert, owns Chicago Kiln Services, Inc., walked the students through the glazing process.
“It is very vital that you have clean bottoms. Whatever the bottom of your piece is, whatever is going to sit on the table, on the shelf, needs to be clean,” Percy said.
“If you get glaze on it, you need to take a sponge in the water and wipe your bottoms. If you don’t do it, it’s me or Carl doing it, and it’s not our art,” Percy said.
Not wiping the bottom will cause the pottery to stick to a shelf in the kiln, they said.
“(The piece) will fall apart. Shards of glass will fall off. You’ll have to sand it. And my shelves are ruined. I’m not happy about that.”
Percy cautioned students that whatever they don’t cover with glaze will turn black in the heat.
Some students used that nugget of info to decorate their pottery, leaving parts free of glaze so they would turn black.
“If you brush, it’s three coats. Dipping and pouring (over) is one coat,” Percy said.
Shepard sophomore Auric Borland, 16, of Alsip, called the class “a lot of fun” because “it takes your mind off of everything else.”
Borland made a square piece of pottery that could be used as a vase or perhaps to store small items.
Borland, who wore his Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps uniform, was careful to remove his blue jacket so he didn’t get any glaze on it while dipping pottery into a bucket of glaze.
Eisenhower senior Trinity Lewis, 16, of Robbins, had an intent look on her face as she carefully poured glaze over her pottery.
“I like this class a lot. It’s really calming, relaxing for me,” Lewis said.
Carl Makert, 52, demonstrated to the students how to safely remove pottery and move it into paper bags sitting in buckets that are then covered with lids and a towel or two.
“We want to fully seal the atmosphere inside those cans. We don’t want any oxygen to get in. It also gives us a visual indicator of which cans are hot,” Carl said.
Steam rising from the cans mean they are too hot to handle, he said.
Students who donned thick insulated gloves carefully opened the cans after they stopped steaming, and then removed items with tongs, as Gliva had, placing them in the cooling water.
Carl, who builds his own kilns, said they are probably worth $3,000 each.
He and Percy are busy teaching the Raku process at park districts and schools throughout Chicago and the suburbs, he said.
Scales, who was “impressed” with the students’ creativity, likes how the Raku process results in “flashes” bright splashes of color that are unexpected.
“They make it more interesting, irregular,” Scales said.
Comparing their finished pieces of pottery, Gliva and Borland were surprised they had different colors.
“We used the same (glaze) and look, they came out totally different,” Gliva said.
“I love it. I think it’s so cool,” she said of the class. “It’s actually cooler than I would have thought. It’s so fun.”
Steve Metsch is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.