The sculpture yet to be named, but called Frank as of now.

I have slowly been working on dismantling and hollowing this piece – slicing it apart as if I was wielding a chainsaw at it was a tree – then reassembling the 2 inch hollowed chunks. The work hasn’t been hard, but is bordering on tedious. It takes A LOT longer to hollow 300 pounds of clay verse the smaller tabletop sized pieces.

Somewhere in the middle (literally) it occurred to me I have no idea how to fire this piece. I knew I had to cut off the neck and head – firing the piece in two sections. First the body, then the head – that seemed to be the best way to get it to fit into my kiln. But how to fire the body? How am I going to get it into the kiln? How am I going to get it into the kiln without the piece cracking or breaking?

The obvious thing would be to disassemble the kiln down to the kiln’s floor. Carefully move the leather hard sculpture onto the kiln’s floor, then reassemble the rings around him. The piece could dry in the kiln — no moving the piece in it’s most fragile state, when it’s bone dry.

Problem – I need my kiln. I can’t have this sucker taking my kiln out of use for the three months it’s going to take to fully dry this piece.

I could fire the body when it’s leather hard. I’ve got a firing schedule for this. But I’ve never tried it.

How many variables do I want to introduce at one time? I’ve never made a piece this large, never tried to fire one piece in two parts, never tried to fire leather hard work on a long firing schedule. And it’s a new clay to me. Did I mention that?

On the other hand there is no way to move this guy when he’s bone dry. He’ll never make it.