Jessica Rath

​When you live in Abiquiú, you probably drive to Santa Fe more or less regularly. Maybe you need to shop for groceries, or you want to dine at a specific restaurant, or maybe there is a special event at the Lensic. It’ll take you give or take one hour to get there, but that’s alright, no big deal. 

​If you drive one hour north on 84 instead of south, you’ll get to Chama. The drive is absolutely stunning, Colorado and the Rocky Mountains are right in front of you, traffic is moderate, and yet – I, for one, have made the trip just a few times, because I didn’t know any better. Which is a shame, because Chama is such a lovely, vibrant community. When I drove up there recently to interview Anita Massari, Executive Director of Chama Valley Arts, I thought of encouraging the readers of Abiquiú News to spend a day here.
 
While there are many other interesting reasons to visit Chama, such as the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, the historic downtown area, or the Edward Sargent Wildlife Preserve – a 20,000 acre area offering elk viewing, bird watching, hiking, and other fun activities for outdoors enthusiasts, my purpose was to learn more about this outstanding arts center which offers all kinds of art classes for all ages. And an annual Art Festival and Studio Tour. And Yoga. And Zumba. And Story Hour. And, and, and… How did this come about, in a town with little more than 1,000 residents? I had to find out. 

​It seemed to be a happy concurrence that brought together the right people at the right time, and to the right place. It all started with  “Diffendoofer Day”, based on a children’s book credited to Dr. Seuss. Anita Massari had moved to Chama in 2017 and together with an acquaintance, Bruce McIntosh, offered some events at the library, “Diffendoofer Days”, to bring people of all ages together. At the same time, because of a lucky coincidence the building where Chama Valley Arts  is now was bought by someone who wanted it to serve the community, to open an arts center. When a friend approached Anita and suggested that she’d make a great director, she gladly accepted and actively worked on getting more people involved.
 
“ I'm a special ed teacher”, Anita told me. “So I did some things that they didn't expect: I had them write down their hopes and dreams for themselves, for their family, for their community, on post-it notes. And I took those and then I got some people to start coming to a monthly meeting as volunteers and we looked at all of that and started to build our mission. And then 2020 began and the lockdown happened and we looked at what we could do to provide arts for kids who were stuck at home. We got people to donate art supplies and put together art supply bags for kids and we did some online art challenges. Meanwhile, Ashlyn and Dan Perry were fundraising and working on this building, which cost probably close to a third of a million dollars to rehabilitate. And at the same time we got the nonprofit founded and they donated the building to the nonprofit. They are still on the board currently, but they are not seeking to stay on the board and direct us in any way. They are really hoping that we can get as independent as possible and when they know that we're solid, then they will step off the board. So a pretty amazing thing happened – some people take a bunch of money and turn it into something good.”
 
Yes, that does sound like a wonderful coincidence. I wanted to know who the events at the center were for: kids? Adults? Or both?
​
“ We have a really broad mission, cultivating creativity, learning and community through arts and culture.  We have programs all the way from early childhood, through school age, that goes all the way up to age 18. And then classes for adults.”

“In 2021 the women  who had been organizing  the Chama Valley Art Festival for more than a decade  asked me to take it over.  So I got this huge event that happens on Labor Day weekend. At the same time, I had written a whole bunch of grants and had discovered that I enjoyed grant writing and was getting a lot of money that way. And one of those grants was to provide arts in the schools. And so I jumped right into providing the entire Fine Arts program for Chama Valley Schools, all simultaneously.”
 
Anita’s energy is contagious and it is obvious that she truly loves what she is doing. She is full of ideas but has a sense for detail which helps her to realize her plans efficiently.
 
Some of the local artists offer their services to give classes for kids and adults. “For the last two years, we have had Mary Cardin, who is in her 80s, and has 50 years teaching experience of watercolor. And she has been teaching watercolor. Last year, she did a watercolor series, and this year she did single day workshops, so that you come and you complete a painting in one day. And then we have a tie dye artist. We have really worked on the marketing for that class, because people think, ‘Oh, I'm not that into tie dye’, when it is really the art of folding in order to make patterns. It's much more of an art than people think. She teaches techniques from across the world. What we did this year was if you sign up, you just get a bandana. And then if you want to come again, you can choose what other types of textiles you want to dye.  We have a neighbor here, who brought her own huge  bolts of cloth that she can turn into curtains and tablecloths and sew into dresses, whatever she wants.”

I can’t hear enough about the rich programs being offered.  “There have been other painting classes and photography classes, and there's dance, Zumba, and Yoga every week,” Anita continues.  “And we did some belly dance, we did some salsa, and other different things. But coming up in October – every year in October, right when the leaves are changing, we have an art exhibit here. So this will be our third one. And this year, we're focusing on heritage arts, arts that are passed down through generations, really looking at cultural transmission and cultural heritage.” 

 “And then the first weekend of December is our Winter Art Market. And the whole place is full of people selling art!” Mark your calendars!
​
 This month on the last Saturday, they’ll start with a ceramics program which is  open to all ages.  For right now they’ll be using  air dry clay – it works the same as clay that needs to be fired, but people can just take it home. They do have a kiln, and in the future they’ll open a ceramic studio using real clay.

Anita has developed her own theory about art. “I've been around the edges of art throughout a lot of my life, but I've never said I am an artist. I don't actually believe in talent anymore. What you create comes from your spirit, your aesthetic, but how good you are at it is merely a matter of practice.”

“What I noticed about drawing in terms of talent, is that it seems easier for some people to make something that looks the way they want it to. When I look  at my two daughters, one loves to draw and draws constantly and of course is getting very good at it. And the other one almost never draws. But when she does draw, even if it's just a little scribble, and she goes, ‘Look at this’, everybody says: ‘that's an elephant’! “

“There’s one thing that I want to transmit to new people who come here to work with us.  If you're working with children, if you're working with this organization, I want you to know that we focus on process instead of product. It’s important how we speak to our students. Children will immediately begin to create for somebody else, and for somebody else's approval. So you can train yourself to speak differently about creativity and about what your students are creating. So that you break that habit.”
​
When I looked around me, when I looked at the walls which are decorated with children’s art work, I understood what Anita was saying.  I saw all these beautiful pictures. It would seem wrong  to claim that one of the creators is more talented than another; that would be judgmental in the wrong way.  And the idea that the process is more important than the finished product makes total sense. Drawing or painting, any artistic expression is a dynamic activity, a doing that changes and develops the artist as well; it’s not a static “thing”. 

I think that Anita has this fantastic job – a job tailored for her. It's not for everybody, but she has all these ideas, and she has initiative, and it seems she really has the freedom to manifest whatever she wants to create here. That's really nice,  compared to a lot of other jobs.

But she doesn’t do all this by herself. She pointed out to me that her work, and the success of the organization and its programs, depend on the support of the community. “Every year dozens of volunteers donate hundreds of hours of their time . Many people lend their expertise to us, teaching me valuable skills. I also must acknowledge the community members who donate money to support us. The generosity and support we receive mean that, in all aspects of our work, I dwell in gratitude.” And I bet that the success of her endeavors is directly related to her sense of recognition and connectedness. When people feel appreciated for what they do, when they know that their time, energy, and resources are being acknowledged, they’re motivated to do more. A win-win situation.
 
 “And I have got my assistant director now – so now there's two of us. Lisa Martinez is from here and works in emergency medicine.”  
​
Well, it’s easy to imagine that with TWO energetic, creative people the sky's the limit for the Chama Valley Arts Center. The best of luck for all your future endeavors!

Katie Sheridan donated the electric Bailey kiln that goes up to cone 10. It’s a lovely kiln. Because of the flood we no longer had a computer kiln. It’s really nice to have a computer kiln because if I can’t be there, that’s 4 or 5 hours I have to wait while I’m turning the kiln up before I can leave. One of our Jan Term teachers melted a batch of micaceous clay all over the inside of the Bailey kiln which totally ruined it, so we were down to one small funky kiln. It was then someone in Albuquerque, I can't remember who, had a computer for sale for $1,500. I asked our Program Director if the Ranch would buy it for us and they did.

Then, a year or two ago, Daniel Lauer from Albuquerque who works on kilns came up. Michael Thornton started cleaning all the melted micaceous clay out of the Bailey kiln. We kept one of the shelves that was completely destroyed. That shelf had the mica melted onto it like lava. There was one little space that was left bare and I found a lizard painted there, and a poem written by way of an apology. Michael started cleaning up the inside of the kiln. I asked the Ranch for the money to repair it. Buying a new kiln would be $3 or $4000 but we could probably repair it for under a thousand. Daniel Lauer came up and did an evaluation. I ordered all the parts he recommended. He later came up and rewired the whole kiln and put 2 courses of new bricks that were needed. He was the one who said you don’t want to be pulling a plug out and putting another plug in, on these other two kilns, he said, because it damages the metal, and eventually will start arching and you will burn up your sockets. They are really hard to get in and out and apparently it does damage each time you take it out. I had that happen to one of my kilns. My plugs are up high, under the eaves, because I have my kilns outdoors. Just the weight of the cord hanging, it eventually burned whole the whole plug and socket up when I wasn’t looking. Fortunately, it didn’t start a fire in my house, but it was all blackened. So, when I reinstalled it, I put a brace up there to hold the plug up so the weight wasn’t pulling. I understood the whole concept of that. We now just leave the computer kiln plugged in and we don't use the old small kiln that was so instrumental right after the flood. The small kiln was donated to the Ranch by Cricket Appel. I think it is time to pass that kiln along to the next person in need.

The Bailey kiln is hard-wired now. Everything is now working again. We also got the big gas kiln working. It turned out it was the sludge in the pipes leftover from the flood.

That’s the story of the maintenance. Everything is working now. Unfortunately, at the editing of this piece, we are having trouble with the gas lines again, and both the Raku kiln and the big gas kiln need some detective work on the pipes or basovalves or both. I will hopefully be working on these issues in the next few weeks as I have a throwing class starting on the 17th of September and would very much like to use the large gas kiln.

The Slip Trail: What a story. You also served on the board of NM Potters and Clay Artists. 

Barbara Campbell:  I did, I think I did a six-year stint and a year off and then another six-year stint. From the mid 90s until 2016 or 17 I can’t remember exactly when I went off the board.

The Slip Trail: So much interacting with Potters. If you hadn’t been chosen to replace Kempes, there might not have been such a great relationship. NM Potters had so much collaboration, gave so much hard work and time, and so much money was donated by them. And you were involved with NM Potters before the Ranch asked you to be coordinator.

Barbara Campbell: Part of it is that, and part of it was Judy, saying let’s get this going, and she was like the inspiration on a lot of the ideas.  I can’t remember whose idea it was to have a volunteer camp. We were going to call it Work Camp, but Linda Kastner said, “Oh no, that sounds like Auschwitz. Call it Volunteer Camp.” That happened during that period of time. Early 2000s. Now we call it V-camp. I hope we will be able to do it again next spring. I think it is time. 
It was Jim Kempes who needed to go back to work, as a teacher. He had been at the Ranch, he had taken care of Pot Hollow, all of the Festival of the Arts classes and all for more for many, many years before I came along. He had always been onsite when NM Potters did our workshops. We did a Spring one and a Fall one back then. He and Willard Spence. You know, Willard Spence was an older man who was part of the Bauhaus group from Taos, the two of them put Pot Hollow together to begin with. I would love to get Jim Kempes to tell his story. [see the interview in The Slip Trail here.]

The Slip Trail: Can you tell about the “TruGreen Pottery” course?

Barbara Campbell: Judy Nelson-Moore had done a couple of paper clay classes. You know with paper clay you can fire it/not fire it – deal with it how you want. She started talking about cold finishes and encaustic and she was always talking about this, that, and the other thing. And I thought, you know, wouldn’t it be fun to offer a class and call it TruGreen Clay partly because of the low carbon footprint because it is not going to be fired. But with Taxidermy clay you’re not supposed to fire it. That’s what I have been using. It’s very, very fibrous. And I don’t know what the fiber in it is. I should probably ask at NM Clay.

The Slip Trail: Sheep Dog?

Barbara Campbell: No, it’s called Taxidermy clay. It’s not to be fired. I think Sheepdog you can still fire it. 

The Slip Trail: I’ve never done any of Judy’s paper clay workshops unfortunately.

Barbara Campbell: I did several of Judy’s workshops – and I helped her do one at Santa Fe Clay as her assistant. Then she did one up here at the Northern NM College before we actually got a space at the Ranch after the flood. She had four or five students. I got into it that way. I was thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to have a class where we didn’t have to fire. We were also talking about a class that was one day shorter. Because one of the things the Ranch wants to do is take advantage of the weeklong classes, but also accommodate the weekend people that come up. If the class goes until Saturday morning, that means people can only come up for Saturday night. Cleaning crew has a massive amount of stuff to do, so with everybody gone by Friday they can do it. They were looking for classes that could be one day shorter. I thought, it’s taken me ten years to figure out how to get it into this five-and-a-half-day period. Turning it into four-and-a-half-days was just not going to work for me, with the time firing entails. They are very happy to have a class that could be done in four days with no firing. 

The Slip Trail: I love hearing about that. And it’s true, we need to learn how to not have to fire. I’m going to take it. Tell about the other classes you teach. Do you have a favorite?

Barbara Campbell: This year I’m going to be teaching Micaceous clay for one week, then Raku for the second week, then I’ll be teaching TruGreen for the third week. I think my favorite of course is the Raku always. I also like the Micaceous. What I’m going to do for that this summer is fire in the round brick kiln we brought up from Pot Hollow. And I will be using cedar for the firing. That will be fun.

You know, I like all of it. 

A few months ago, I had a workshop in April with the TruGreen. The next week they called me and said there would be two groups of 20 ten-year-olds, and would I come give them a taste of pottery. They were going to go to Tony Roller’s down in Santa Clara, but he canceled. "Can you do something?" So, I said, "Sure." I only had them for three hours. Tomas Wolff, at one of our Potters Association workshops with 30 or 40 people, did this one drill where he had us take a piece of paper, write our name on it, write favorite color, favorite animal, something else, and something else - I can’t remember exactly what. Also, if you were introvert or extrovert.  He then divided us into groups, and told us to build a village as a team using the information on our cards as a starting point. So, I did this with the kids. First of all, I asked these ten-year-olds if they knew the difference between an introvert and an extrovert. They were right on. First day it was word perfect, the second day it was just a little off, but it was close enough to be fine. Anyway, they divided up into groups of 4 and 5 and received a circle of clay or a square base slab of clay. I had them build animals while I was talking to them. They divided into the aquatic ones, four-legged, etc. They had a great time. They got finished about 45 minutes before the end of the period. Each group had a spokesperson and everybody crowded around and the spokesperson said what the village was all about, whether it was Romanesque or an under-seascape or a farmyard, or whatever. Everybody asked questions. First of all, we talked about how it was conceptual art. So, once they were done, they were done. They could use rocks and sticks, anything they wanted to incorporate into their environment. Then after they were done … I said, “Okay I’m going to give you a different kind of clay.” They were looking like, OMG. Aren’t we done yet? I handed them this Taxidermy clay and the minute they touched it, each and every one of them was totally back into it. It was kinda sticky, it was a way different texture than the clay they had been working with. Just to watch that transformation really delighted me. I told them once the pieces are dry, they’re finished. You don’t want to leave them outside, but you can take them home, you can paint them. They got to take something home. That was one of the most fun classes I have taught in a long time. 

The Slip Trail: I think it’s brilliant that you gave them clay again. These are stories that needed to be told, Barbara. You are really there for the Ranch and ceramics education. I say, brava, Barbara, excellent job! I just want to say thank you. You are fabulous and we are lucky. 
​
First two questions were presented by Barbara in written form. Interview for the rest of the questions took place on June 22, 2023 via Zoom, online. 
-       This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.    -
-Cirrelda Snider-Bryan, Slip Trail Editor

I don’t know, but I thought robots and AI would be just a perfect combination. What could go wrong?

Robots have been around for a long time. A really long time. You should look at the history of robots HERE. It’s a great review of some of the inventions through the ages considered to be part of the robot’s making.

I like the Automatons the best. Very mechanical, clockwork mechanisms, especially the one’s that write and look a bit human. Check out Wikepedia’s story of them  HERE.

Okay, so the reason I’m writing this article is because a reader of the AI article mentioned the replacement of human jobs by AI. Since it’s already happening, and since robotics have been replacing humans for decades, I thought I’d poke around for some interesting things that have happened and I found one, in particular. One of my favorite YouTube science people had a video purported to be of an Elon Musk related robot. This particular beast was doing some things new to the humanoid robot world, and I thought I’d put that video HERE.

So what are some real world applications for robots taking away human jobs? Certainly the car industry has been using robotics for decades to help build automobiles. The mining industry has been using robotics as well, arguably, that one is great, but there are thousands of jobs lost to robots for people who may not readily be able to be retrained to do something else, and where would they do that something else anyway? It’s not like every mining town has a whole other industry for folks to work at.
​
Robots are entering the food production market. Watch this short Pizza video. 

~Cirrelda Snider-Bryan 
New Mexico Potters and Clay Artists

Barbara Campbell currently serves as the Ceramic Arts Coordinator at Ghost Ranch Conference Center north of Abiquiu, NM. Here is the story of her life in clay and her work with it at Ghost Ranch. 

The Slip Trail: Tell the story of how you came to be a clay artist. Along with that, tell how you became a production potter living in El Rito, NM.

Barbara Campbell: Between high school and college, I took a year long trip to Europe. At the time I spoke passable Spanish and enough French to get into trouble, but I really liked languages so off I went. While living in Paris I honed my French and started learning a bit of German. When I returned to attend college, I thought I would like to be a foreign diplomat, so I started taking Russian and going after my Bachelors, still fooling around with this direction. In my third quarter of college, I took a pottery class and got totally snagged.

I think part of my decision to transfer to an art school was that my mother went to an art school in the Bay Area, and I had a boyfriend in the Bay Area so it was an easy decision to transfer. My education became very non-traditional very quickly. The boyfriend disappeared and I was sent by my college to a rural village in Mexico to help set up a branch campus there. It was an amazing experience and I learned to be more of a self-starter. We had to do everything without much mature adult supervision. It was a fabulous experience. I had to return for my final semester to the Oakland campus and there I worked with Viola Frey. Once out of school, I headed off to NYC and got a job teaching pottery at the Cooper Square Art Center. I only lasted about eight months in NYC before I felt I was completely losing myself. I took a three-day train ride back to San Francisco and joined the Berkeley Potters Guild and from there went full into production pottery. 

About this time the powers that be were demolishing all the old Victorian homes in Oakland and I started making little houses out of clay. This sort of took off and I got into all sorts of different styles of house replicas and fantasy castles and planters and it became very popular to the point I was supplying shops all over the country. I had patterns for certain styles so just started cranking out the work.

Berkeley decided it needed the area where our guild was located for a redevelopment project. It never actually happened, but they gave us all about $2,000 to move. I used mine to invest in all the equipment I would need to set up my own studio. I had a friend who got the same and we moved into a caretaking position up in Jenner, and he helped me build a downdraft gas kiln before moving on to his own place up near Fort Bragg. I saved up my money that year and found a property I could afford in Sebastopol, CA.

I lasted there for four and a half years when I was missing the mountains and blue skies of the Rockies where I had grown up. I sold my house and moved everything except my huge kiln to Boulder, Colorado where I had grown up. I couldn’t find what I was looking for anywhere in Colorado, but I had an opportunity to drive a friend to New Mexico. I did a search when I got here in early 1978. I found and house in El Rito and made an offer on it that was accepted. I moved from Boulder on Easter weekend of that year. About a week after setting up my studio, I met a guy right here in El Rito and we were married about a year later. 

His property and my house were really inconveniently located so after a big show, I had enough money for us to go together and buy a property in the middle of town. We had this town property and the property up the Potrero canyon. I built a studio up there and had the one in town so we were able to come back and forth while raising our son. The town property was crucial for when he started going to school. 

Meanwhile when my son was about three years old, I can remember hating making these stupid little cookie cutter houses and one morning I woke up and decided I would never make another little #%$* house. I got my wheel out and started honing my throwing skills. I had been fascinated with the Mimbres culture from the moment I got to NM. I wasn’t able to find a lot of information about them and the two or three books that were out there all seemed to contradict one another. I started collecting their very graphic wonderful designs. About this time, I had to paint my window frames and doors on the house we had bought in town and my neighbors said I had to use this certain color of teal as it was what would keep the brujos away. 
So here I am an Anglo living in a Hispanic community thinking about using Native American designs on my pottery. As I was designing this line of work, I needed to get the Hispanic element into the dinnerware I was preparing to make. I worked on the blue slip recipe from Daniel Rhode’s book until I got a really deep lovely teal. Now I had the tri-cultural intention working for me.

The Slip Trail: I remember you selling your pottery at Ghost Ranch in the 1990s at the local craft market held on Friday evenings. What was that like? 

Barbara Campbell: Somewhere around the mid 80’s I started selling my work at the Mercado on Friday evenings at the Ghost Ranch. It was a captive audience and very lucrative. That is what I spent my summers doing every Friday evening for about ten weeks per summer.
I did American Craft Council shows as well as small local shows and managed to make a reasonable living.

 The Slip Trail: You were hired for the Ghost Ranch ceramics education coordinator position in the early 2000’s, was that first year a full schedule? As you come close to teaching there 20 years, what has changed?

Barbara Campbell:  I wasn’t hired, I was asked to volunteer. Around 2004, Jim Kempes, who was the Arts Coordinator and main ceramic artist running Pot Hollow at the Ranch, decided to go into grade school teaching and left the Ranch. I had been on the board that runs the Mercado at the Ranch and I was asked to take over the Ceramic Arts department. By that summer or the next, I started teaching several classes during Festival of the Arts. Soon I was teaching Jan Term as well.

When asked if I would be coordinator for the ceramic arts program, I wanted to know what it involved. They said, “A lot of work and no money.” I said, “Sure, why not.”

There was an Interim director named Mary Ann Lundy. Judy Nelson-Moore and I actually initiated doing some renovations with Pot Hollow.  We went to Mary Ann Lundy and made a proposal that we have a volunteer camp. And so we did. That was the beginning of V-camps. First of all, all the wheels were on tiny pads of cement that were sticking up and one would trip over them all the time. If you dropped a tool it went into the dirt or the sand and if you didn’t pick it up right away it got stepped on or lost. It was pretty funky down there in Pot Hollow. So, the Potters Association raised enough money to pour a slab and that was the beginning.  Then, there was this program coordinator named Jim Baird. I had been told the best way to approach him if you wanted anything was to kind of come in from the side, so he felt like it was his idea in the end. So, I kinda got good at that. There was no cover over the two raku kilns and trolley kiln. You know the tubes that ran the gas were in the sun. In the winter they were in the snow. We suggested that the Ranch put up a pavilion roof. And they did, that was the result – the Ranch paid for that. The Potters Association raised enough money to do the cement. Then Potters raised enough money for half of the big gas kiln, the West Coast 24 cubic foot gas kiln.

The Slip Trail: The one that’s there today?

Barbara Campbell: Yeah, just got repaired this year. It’s now functioning perfectly well with one glitch, that’s just a get-it-going glitch, the electronic ignition doesn’t actually work because the striker doesn’t work, so somebody has to be there to do the switches while somebody’s under the kiln with a torch. There are eight burners. You just have to keep working at getting it going. The gas doesn’t seem to flow well at first. But once it gets lit it works, it goes up to cone 10, in 6-8 hours. 

Almost every year after that, we did a volunteer camp where the potters would come and renovate, repair and take inventory. One year we had this woman named Judith Baker who took the class and really loved it. Her husband was quite wealthy and he made a nice donation to us. I asked him if he would buy these Advancer shelves for us because I was getting to the point where lifting heavy things into the back of the kiln was becoming too hard for me. There was a potter in El Rito who was going out of business. He had 16 of these shelves, and he sold them to us for $1200, which is a third of what they would cost new. We now have all these lovely Advancer shelves compliments of the Baker’s. 

So, it turned out, somewhere in the 90s, somebody else made a donation. It could have been the Bakers. I can’t remember. But anyway, I didn’t know about it until this year. Apparently, what the Ranch did in the meantime was to invest it, earmarked for the ceramic arts program. It has now earned to around $28,000.
​
Then Debra Hepler came along and she was there ten years. Tom Nichols who ran the welding department wanted to put together a Peace Garden in honor of Barbara Schmidtzinsky, Archivist and Assistant Program Director, who had recently lost her battle with cancer, and Ed Delair, Program Director, who had died suddenly of a heart attack. From the patio at Headquarters, you can’t really see the Peace Garden down at Lower Pavilion, so we had the idea that if we put a mural that reflected those Fibonacci spirals in the Peace Garden, it would draw people down to the Peace Garden. Dean Schroeder, Tomas Wolff, Judy Nelson-Moore, and I got together to plan it out. Judy and I did the design and decal work -- Judy, Dean and I did the tile work. Then Tomas and Dean installed it with the help of Tom Nichols and some help from me and Judy. 

​I offered a course on “How To Build a Wood Fired Kiln.” We had four students - two of them were not pulling their weight, the other two were really into it. I had to keep taking stuff apart and rebuilding it. It was somewhat frustrating; however, in a week’s class we rebuilt that kiln.

So, I decided it needed four feet more stack. One of the reasons it wasn’t firing correctly was because the stack wasn’t high enough. I went down to Santa Fe Steel (the Potters Association raised the money for this, I think it was 400 or 800 – I can’t remember --somewhere under $1000). Then my son rented a cherry picker, and my brother-in-law and my son brought the cherry picker and installed it on top of the other piece that we already had in place. We now had 11 feet of stack. I had previously fired it once or twice with a few people and we were just stoking and stoking it, it was insane and it was hard. It was also very aerobic. I still wasn’t happy with the way the temperature was so uneven. So, I called Betsy Williams and she said, “I will come over and help you.” We were getting mill ends from Moore’s Lumber Company, so when the guys from the Ranch would take the recycle into Espanola, they would stop at Moore’s and pick a couple of these huge bundles for 30 bucks, deliver them to the Ranch. Potters Association people would come saw it up into two-foot pieces. There was lots and lots of firewood. Well, for two-fifths of a cord of wood, cut into two-foot pieces, Betsy showed me how to fire the kiln gently. When the pyrometer started to go back down, you throw two pieces in and it will keep going down, and then it will start going up a little higher. The minute it would start to come down again, throw two more pieces in. It was so civilized and it was so easy, and could easily be done with just two people. We didn’t need four teams of people to take turns, we just needed a couple people in an easy chair or two out there, and some lemonade or cold water. It worked beautifully. We got to cone 10 in 8 hours and it was fabulous. With this technique, we did two or three workshops. We could go from clay to wood-fired, finished pieces in less than a week. It was amazing.

The Slip Trail: I am so glad this story is being told. 

​To be continued Next week ... 

​​By Tamra Testerman

There was no cell phone service, no way out except by a river flowing at a brisk 3500 cubic feet per second. Too fast for this swimmer, though I managed to wade to the edge of the surf one morning, tethered to a red willow branch for a very ‘cold plunge.’ On the first night we slept in the eerie light of a penumbral lunar eclipse. And you could feel wildlife nearby, coyotes howling, echoing in the canyon. ​

There is a rich legacy of artists interpreting the remote landscape surrounding O’Keeffe’s homes overlooking the Chama River Valley. The winding 135-mile Rio Chama is a tributary of the Rio Grande begins from high alpine headwaters of the glaciated San Juan Mountains in southern Colorado. The dramatic beauty crescendos with the Rio Chama’s bone bleached sandstone, siltstone, and gypsum cliffs carved by wind and time, now homes for nesting birds and wildlife. ​

Our river guide, Elyssa Clement, confirmed the elevation and presence of water make for a mixed desert fauna — “Cottonwood for large specimens, a few firs and spruce here and there too. Juniper, red willows, box elder, hackberry and willows. It’s a mixed desert overall. Geologically, it’s a part of the Colorado Plateau. The most prominent layers we were seeing in the wilderness section of the Rio Chama include Dakota Sandstone, which occurs during the end of the Cretaceous period. Beyond that, starting from the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, we move deeper in geologic time with the exposed Mancos Shale at the beginning of the Triassic.”
​

Moving from one geological time zone to the next, stratocumulus clouds slung low overhead, bathed in a mercurial light, we were immersed in O’Keeffe’s color palette; cerulean and cobalt blues, raw umber, silver white, alizarin crimson and viridian green. The banks were lined with stalwart cottonwoods, and willow, and pine trees veering off in angles. There were beavers coasting along. And we spotted herons, kingfishers, swallows, and warblers. 
​

And geese racing overhead, skidding into the river and taking off. If there was a soundtrack for this adventure, it would be geese honks in the morning, crackle of campfire, and sound of the night wind in the trees. And our guide’s river navigation lesson. – (have a listen below.)​

Video Credit Tamra Testerman
 
After three days on an explorative journey through a painting, I gained a profound understanding of the muse in O’Keeffe’s ‘Blue River’ and what moved her to harness the power and beauty of the Rio Chama with the potency of her brush and oil paints. 

By Brian Bondy
 
I talked about AI last week, and I had some more thoughts about it. Some great things AI is already working in is science. AI is used to work on genetics, to help solve puzzles of not only illnesses but their cures, and of course in space study.

Back at home, my immediate sarcastic response is, “and what could possibly go wrong?”  Well, everything, of course. That’s how humans are though, and we haven’t caused the end of the world... yet.

AI will likely continue to bring great things to life, just like GE. And just like GE, they will also make some destructive things. Having Henry Fonda hawk their products was a good choice. Who doesn’t love Henry Fonda? Elon Musk hawking AI is a bad choice. In fact, I’m sure someone could come up with an AI commercial hosted by Henry Fonda, using AI. I digress, but only a bit.
I found an article about the 15 most dangerous concerns of an AI world. What? Only 15? That’s a start. Don’t get me wrong, I think AI is a great thing. Potentially. The only problem, like guns, is that humans have access to them. Remove the human participation and we’re all just dandy.
That, of course, is what the Terminator movie was about. You could argue the same thing for nuclear energy too. That was a topic of the movie Oppenheimer. It was also a discussion I had with my friend Grizz. Ultimately, are we humans mature enough, individually or as a populace, to have weapons, of any kind? Are we ready for AI? If not, how do we get ready, because it’s here.

Read this great article on the 15 Biggest Risks of AI and note that neither Siri nor Alexa was mentioned once.   Click to Read