Making Garden Ollas

I have recently been working on making garden ollas. Ollas (pronounced "oi yeahs") are used as an ancient irrigation system that delivers water directly to a plants roots. The shapes that you see in the above picture are made out of terra cotta clay and they are only bisque fired. Since these pots are not glazed they are still quite porous. This allows water to slowly seep out of them. The idea is that you bury these pots up to their neck in your garden then you plant your favorite garden plants around them. Keeping your ollas filled with water ensures that on those hot days during the summer, your plants will have a nice steady water supply. The roots of your plants will eventually wrap around the ollas so that the water seeping from them is delivered directly to the roots.


The lids on these pots are to keep bugs and dirt out. Ollas are not meant for; bushes, shrubs, trees or any "wooded" plants. The best time to plant them is in the spring when you are planting everything else. Summer is almost over, so this is probably the worst time for me to be making ollas because it will be raining like crazy soon and they will not be needed. But, by next spring I will have a bunch of these fine pots and they will be ready to go in the ground. It may be a bad time to be making them, but that is okay with me because I find that I really like throwing these shapes on the wheel. It's fun! In the picture above I am working away in my studio making ollas while using my truck as an extra work bench (since my studio is kinda small).

My sister (who gave me the idea to start making ollas) sent me the following youtube clip about how to garden with ollas:

OPA Ceramics Showcase

Come and see the show!


I will be entering "Brutis" the zombie pig with hopes of winning the blue ribbon for "best of show" in this years Oregon potters Association Ceramics Showcase. The "OPA Showcase" is The nations largest show and sale of pottery, sculpture, garden art, home accessories and other works in clay exhibited in 150+ booths.

As well as exibitimg my scariest zombie pig I will be teaching anyone interested how to work on the potters wheel at the "adult clay area" on 4/30/10 from 7:00 PM to 9:30 PM. Then on 5/1/10 From 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM I will be working with children in the "children's clay area" where we will be sculpting all kinds of fun things out of clay.

This years Showcase is at the Oregon Convention Center. Admission is free. It Opens 10-9 Friday & Saturday and 10-5 on Sunday. Hope to see you there.

Kiln Firing 1/24/10

This was the wettest kiln firing to date. Not sprinkling but pouring! The rain wasn't evaporating fast enough off the hot kiln so I had to rig up an umbrella. It worked pretty good. And, unlike the previous firing I didn't have any casualties.

I was a little nervous but because when I loaded the kiln I broke my own rule and instead of 4 inches at the top of the kiln I only left 2. Normally, not leaving enough space for air flow is a good way to get your art blown up, but I was hoping that I would have enough air flow between my pottery on the top shelf (shown in the picture below) because of how I stacked it. The air flowed nicely through the plus shape (or x shape) made from the empty space between the pots.
The top shelf ended up a little cooler that the bottom shelf. I could tell this by the pyrometric cones. The cones on the top shelf were just barley melted over where as the cones on the bottom shelf were almost starting to pool up. The picture below gives you a better view of the cones.

Here is a picture of how the bottom shelf was stacked. All I had room for was the big pumpkin.


And now here is a picture of the bottom shelf's cones.


I think next time I might slow down the firing for the last few hours so that the kiln will come to temperature a little slower and more even. Some of my earlier firings have turned out a more even than any of the firings I have blogged about. Lately I have been speeding up the process a bit. Maybe I should slow back down. Here is the kiln data sheet.

Another problem I have been having is that near the end of the firing my 9 gallon propane tank looses pressure and I have to shake it to keep the propane coming out strong. I might need to get a propane take that is just a little bigger. All in all it was good firing. It came out fairly even and I'm happy because my pots are bisqued and I didn't have anything explode.

Firing in the Rain

Well, normally it is just fine firing my kiln in the rain because here in Oregon it rains a lot but it never rains very hard. So normally when the rain drops hit my hot kiln they evaporate right away. Not today. Today it is POURING! But that's okay because I rigged up an umbrella for my kiln. I also decided to write a song about it. Wanna hear?

A Murder Mystery

Who done it?

Well, I did.


What was the motive?

Really, there wasn't much of a motive. You may have noticed that I didn't make as many blog posts for the month of December. That is because I spent most of the month working on a big fountain. I have always loved making big things out of clay. I have been limited since I stopped taking pottery classes and I no longer have access to the big kilns. This fountain that I made was just barley big enough (once it dried up and shrunk) to fit inside my kiln. Firing it in my kiln was a risk because I have always heard that in a gas kiln your pottery should not be hanging over the kiln shelf, especially during the bisque firing. I had filmed myself making this fountain with hopes of turning the footage into the next "CodyO Show". However, I really wanted to show the working fountain at the end of the show so I am instead going to wait and try again.

How did the murder unfold?

This fountain did not die in vain because there is a valuable lesson learned here that might also help other potters out there who are working with their own electric-to-gas converted kilns. Other potters might have different opinions about what happened here but I think the problem had to do with air flow.

Some might say that I had air bubbles in fountain and that is why it blew up. While that would definitely cause my work to blew up I don't think that was the case here because I have many pieces similar to this fountain that were bisque fired in electric kilns and they did not blow up. Also, I was very careful when making this piece to avoid air bubbles, so I do not think that was the problem here.

Some might also say that I heated up my kiln too fast. However, I have used this same firing schedule for half a dozen successful bisque firings that go way back to even before I started my blog. This piece was the biggest piece I have tried to fire so maybe I should have gone even slower, but still I'm leaning towards air flow as being the problem.

It seems that most times I have blown stuff up in my kiln, it has been due to not having enough space for air flow. Times in the past I have tried to cheat this by putting taller pieces in the kiln that got too close to the top and inhibited the air from circulating evenly around the top. In those cases, the piece closest to the top blew up and all the others fired fine (proving my theory).

In this most recent case I believe the problem was that the base of the fountain was too wide which inhibited the air from flowing around the sides of the kiln evenly. If you look at the picture above you will notice that the side of my piece that got it the worst was the side near the bottom of the picture. This was the side closest to the burner. It would have been fine if the air was able to spiral around my piece like it normally does but the corner of the square base to my fountain was so wide that it blocked the air from flowing around upwards in a clockwise motion. Instead, the one corner got blasted with all the heat until it went boom at about 281 degrees on the pyrometer. After the base blew up I figured that I could keep firing the kiln because at least I would have the top part of the fountain bisqued and I could just make a new base. But, the air was still not circulating around my kiln evenly in a clockwise motion. It was being blocked off by my mostly crumbled fountain base on all sides but one (see the above picture). the heat was being directed just on one side of the top part of my fountain, which soon blew up at 332 degrees.

The evidence (from my kiln data sheet):

How can we prevent unnecessary deaths like this in the future?

Space out pottery evenly in the kiln with 9 inches of space at the bottom, 4 inches of space at the top, and make sure no pottery hangs past the shelves. Let that hot air flow evenly and No cheating!

My Photo Booth

My wife Leah mentioned something about my inexpensive but effective "photobooth" on a pottery forum somewhere and it has struck the interest of a few people.

Hi Cody,
I read your reply about the photobooth and I would love to hear more about it and how you set it up. I'm a tile artist from Israel and I would love to be able to take better photos of my work for my website. Thanks a lot and good luck with your work.

Hi, I am new here and while browsing discussions I saw the "drawer" solution. I would like to know how that works. It sounds creative :).



Here's how it works:


I went to the thrift store and bought a really cheap old dresser. The dresser is 48" tall, 34" wide and 18" deep. Then I went to the hardware store and bought a sheet of masonite that is 4' by 8' and 1/4" thick. While at the hardware shore I also bought a small can of flat gray paint and two lamp kits. A lamp kit usually comes as a bag full of parts.

First I took the drawers of the dresser out one of which I will be using later. Then I turned the dresser on it's side so that it is now 34" tall and 48" wide. As you might have guessed I painted the masonite gray with a rolling style paint brush. I screwed the masonite to the wall about 8' off the ground and then I screwed it to what is now the top of the dresser. I placed the dresser away from the wall that the masonite is screwed at my determined distance. I determined that distance according to what kind of curve I wanted the masonite to have.

The Drawer:
I drilled two holes, one in each side of the drawer, which I then ran my lamp parts through so that I had a two places on the inside of the drawer to screw in a light bulb. The bulbs I used are full spectrum bulbs which means that the light is more like natural sunlight and doesn't have any kind of yellow tint to it. I covered the inside of the drawer with white paper to help reflect light.


Finally I hung my drawer light from the ceiling. I attached cables, with hooks on them, on either side of the drawer. Then I hung chains down from a stud in the ceiling. This way I am able to move my light up or down so I get the perfect amount of overhead light on the piece I am shooting.



Although this worked good I found I was having some dark spots behind the piece, so I got creative with some tin foil. I made a tin foil lamp shade for an old lamp that I had. I set this lamp to the right side of my photobooth. Keeping the light turned on I adjusted the tin foil so that it would fill in any remaining shadows. I also put some tin foil on the wall to the left of my photobooth to reflect back the light that was coming from my floor lamp with the tin foil shade.

My Camera:
I have a Canon Power Shot 610. It is not the best camera in the world but it's not bad for a cheap little 5 megapixel. I use the built in macrolense for my camera. If you have a Canon just push the button that makes the little flower icon show up. I never use a flash. and I either use a tripod or try and keep real still when shooting. Dave Hupp says: "Manual focus your camera. Manually adjust your camera's exposure." I put the camera on auto and I adjust the exposure afterwards using the basic little photo program that came with my computer. I probably should learn to manual focus my camera. I'll have to get around to that.

I hope I have explained this alright. If anyone has any further questions please feel free to email.

*Special thanks to Master Potter Rhue Bruggeman for teaching me the art of the cheap photo booth.

Another Fund Raiser for Emme

Emme Ek, a 4th Grader at Forest Hills Elementary, was diagnosed with Medulloblastoma, a cancerous brain tumor.

Emme has been at Doernbecher Hospital for the last month enduring many surgeries to remove the high-risk tumor.
Eventually, she will have chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Emme's mom, Nicole, has left her job at West Linn Hairport, to care for Emme at the hospital and is uncertain when she will be able to return to work. Emme's big brother, Austin, a sophomore at Lake Oswego High School, also has been at his sister's side.

It's times like these when our community must come together to help a family that needs and is grateful for our support.

This is the second fun raiser for Emme. This is a good chance to help out a family that really needs it. Some of the pottery that my wife and I have donated was not auctioned off at the last fundraiser (see pics at this link), instead It will be auctioned off at a fund raiser taking place tomorrow night. Hope to see you there.

Where and where?

At The Hawthorn Theater 503-223-7100

1507 Se 39th Ave Portland, OR 97214

Thursday December 3rd starting at 6:00pm

There will be 5 live bands playing at this fundraiser. $10 at the door. So buy some cool homegrown Oregon art, listen to some music, have a drink, and donate to a good cause!


If you can't make it to the fundraiser and you still wanna help you can check out www.gooddeeds.org to find out where to send donations.