(gentle music) - I don't mind putting in the work for it.

Maybe it's getting a big surprise at the end, what you're gonna get.

You just don't know.

(gentle music) I always like to do something a little different than everybody else.

I've been doing ceramics for quite a while and while I was working, I would get, take classes wherever I could, the community college, or just a local school that was giving classes.

When it came to retirement time, I thought, "Well, what do I really want to do?"

So then I went back to school, and got a degree in art.

It was a sculpture degree.

I did get interested in Raku pottery when I was in college.

I really hadn't seen it before.

It's something that came out of Japan, where it was used as a method for making pottery in the 15th century.

I just felt it was something that was a little bit more creative, and I liked the effects of it.

(gentle music) For Raku, you have to buy specifically Raku clay, and it has a lot of pieces of already fired clay in there.

It gives it an ability to withstand the heat a little bit better.

Raku pottery basically starts the same as any other kind of pottery.

You have to make a piece and dry it, and then you put it in the kiln, and you fire it, that's called bisquing.

And once you get done with that, you let the kiln cool off, you take it out, then you can glaze it.

You have to fire it again after you put the glazes on.

The glazes turn into kind of a glass on the outside.

The difference here is that with Raku, I take them out of the kiln when they're hot, whereas when you are just making any type of a traditional pottery, you just let it cool off in the kiln and take it out when it's cool.

I take it out when it's at its peak temperature, which is about 1,800 degrees, and I put it in a container that contains combustible material.

And that combustible material immediately bursts into flames.

You put it on the lid as tight as you can.

Anything that's on the pot that you have not glazed, it will take the carbon and make that black.

The fire wants to keep burning, so it steals the oxygen from the glaze itself.

So if you have a glaze that has copper in it, you have it probably as a copper oxide.

It steals the oxygen from that oxide, and it makes it pure elemental copper.

And you get all these little blushes of copper throughout the piece.

In the combustion chamber, everybody kind of has their own idea about what they like.

I do use pine needles for the combustible materials because it's kind of like an oil in there.

I think that helps to enhance the blackness of things, and it's easier to catch fire.

(gentle music) I can re-fire these a couple of times, but the more times you fire them, the less black will be accepted into the pot, because it gets more vitrified each time you do that.

The difficult part of my process is glazing, because I like to do a lot of detailed work.

I do flowers, and I do landscapes and I do different kinds of things.

The colors that you see is really not the true color of what's going to turn out.

I do a little test tile and do the same whatever I wanted to do on the tile and then put that in the kiln and fire it and all that.

A lot of the things that I make, I take little pieces, and I put them together to make a sculpture or something.

So I never know what this is going to look like.

You can imagine how it's going to look, but you don't really know until you've made 100 pieces and then you just try to put it together.

It's kind of a challenge, and you just have to kind of be creative.

All right, well, moment of truth here.

I have had good success with it.

People do come and look for my work now.

I'm always surprised when someone will come in, and just love it, you know?

It always surprises me, because it's like, well, it's just what I do, you know?

But it's a wonderful feeling.

(gentle music) I think I'm a very creative person, so it's an outlet for that.

It is very meditative.

The quietness of it is wonderful.

Everybody's got a little bit of art in them.

I truly believe that.

Being able to use your mind creatively is very important.

It is very rewarding.

I can't think of anything that is more rewarding.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

And by the members of Prairie Public.