Christine Merriman, Experiencing the Arts' Spring Artist In Residence

Experiencing the Arts Spring artist in residence was Raku potter Christine Merriman of Merry Woman Studios. Christine introduced examples of her work and explained that Raku pottery was discovered by accident -- literally. When a potter's kiln collapsed, the potter struggled to save pieces from the disaster. The orange hot pots ignited anything they came in contact with. Surprisingly, the resulting glazes showed fantastic new results from the shock. Iridescent metallic sheens, crackle patterns and patinas of fantastic colors caused the potter to recognize that something good had been discovered from the accident. The word Raku means happy accident.

The Raku kiln is designed to allow the potter to take the ceramics out at their peak temperate. The pieces are put in a pit and sprinkled with combustibles, leaves, sawdust, some potters even use newspaper. The combustibles burst into flame but the ceramics are quickly tightly covered forcing the oxygen hungry fire to pull the oxygen out of oxides in the glazes creating fabulous metallic sheens and iridescent colors.

Experiencing the Arts Director, Christopher Morse, describes how he found the Spring guest artist, "I watched Christine Merriman demonstrate Raku pottery last August at the League of NH Craftsmen's Fair at Mt. Sunapee Resort. She had a very enthusiastic and easy going delivery which I thought would work well with the students at Mascoma. We worked out a schedule to allow her to help us in the clay, then return after we had bisk fired the pieces to prepare them for the Raku firing. Science classes, students from Indian River School, all Mascoma's Art students and many curious people during Spring Fling watched the Raku pottery. This summer, Christine will return to demonstrate again at the League of NH Craftsmen's Fair at Mt. Sunapee Resort, August 6th - 14th -- this time, she will also demonstrate with Richard Foye who was the Experiencing the Arts' resident artist two years ago. This year, we had two very successful residencies with League of NH Craftsmen artisans, (Christine Merriman, Spring, and Sarah Heimann, Fall), I am very pleased about the relationship between Experiencing the Arts and the League of NH Craftsmen." Morse will also be showing his etching at the League show this August making his 18th year showing at the Fair.