Mud in the Blood Transcript
Transcription: Mud in the Blood
Hannah Tranynham: 00:06 Well, I'll play one called ‘Last Chance,’ something we'll all get before we die.
Josh Copus: 00:24 Wood firing is a little Luddite. It's a little middle finger to technology. Like, in a way, it's kind of a ridiculous way to make ceramics. I
Alexandra Barao: 00:49 This is the way pots have been fired for centuries. It's cool to connect to the roots of the craft.
Henry Crissman: 01:02 I don't know if ceramics is the key to world peace, but I haven't figured out anything better.
Josh Copus: 01:35 My name is Josh Copus. I'm an artist and creative entrepreneur. I right now make things that feel like rocks. I use materials largely that I am harvesting myself from the ground, and then I do wood firing. And those two things are collaborators in the process of making ceramics, so the materials and the firing process are not simply means to an end. I am combining my personal life experiences and ideas with materials that have a lot to say. North Carolina is the pottery state. We pride ourselves in having this incredible pottery history, and I think it begins with the materials. We have a lot of clay here. I also think the ruralness of this place helped preserve the necessity of making ceramics longer. There's a phrase that gets used, which is ‘mud in the blood,’ and it was such a part of people's identity that they found ways to make it relevant. But I think the key is they never stopped making. You know, wood firing is a team sport. I've always enjoyed sports, and it's a physical endeavor.
Alexandra Barao: 03:22 The part that I love most about the process is the communal nature, the community aspect of working together towards a common goal. It's labor intensive, but it's the kind of work that I like to do. Being outside, stacking wood, loading kilns and then keeping the fire going for days at a time. You can't do it alone. There's a group of, I think eight or nine of us here right now, and everyone working on various tasks, whether that's making glaze, rolling, wadding, cleaning the kiln, prepping all the pottery. Yeah, it's been three non stop days, like 10 till dark, getting this kiln ready to go, getting it loaded up, prepping the wood. And that's just the beginning.
Josh Copus: 04:15 The firing takes 72 hours, give or take, and that's continuous tending around the clock. So we run three shifts a day, so someone is here doing the work continuously for three days. The firing starts as a campfire, and the early shifts are actually fairly relaxed. By the end, you're really doing like an arm load of wood every three to five minutes for eight hours. I keep going back to this thing, which is like, you kind of just create the space, and then it is like a social practice installation where you just kind of fill it with people and sort of see what happens. And sometimes there's karaoke.
05:20 Wood firing is hard, so why not make it fun?
Josh Copus: 05:36 The spectrum is very wide in wood firing from complete and utter disappointment to total elation. One of the things that I love about wood firing is it can surprise you, like you can actually make things that are beyond what you could imagine.
Henry Crissman: 06:00 The melting ash, and then the sort of flame path, as this flame is wrapping around every piece in the kiln that's sort of running into one and moving around another. And we call it atmospheric. It's like the object becomes a record of the atmosphere. It's exciting in the end, when the object has some surface that is indicative of this story, because we've had this experience together, and in some way, it's recorded on the pot.
Josh Copus: 06:42 It's as old as civilization. All the origin stories like clay is actually at the center of that. The connection to who we are as humans is like a huge part of why ceramics has been such a big part of human existence and will continue to be.
Joseph Clayton: 07:06 My name is Joseph Clayton. I'm from Sand Springs, Oklahoma, and I'm here to fire with Josh for about 10 days. I've never met Josh before, and it's my first time firing with him.
Josh Copus: 07:19 I had so many great makers and mentors that took me under their wing and took the time and showed me, you know, how to do stuff. That's what I do, is just every day, try to pay that forward.
Joseph Clayton: 07:36 It's cool that they want to pass it on like that. They want to give back. You know, Josh has told me some stories, and other people have told me stories about what older potters did for them when they were my age. And so it's cool that they're continuing the cycle, you know, giving it to the next generation, just like a million other potters have done before. You know, without the older generation showing them, none of this would have been possible. Everybody has to show somebody, and they have to carry it on. So I think it's really interesting to attempt to carry on the torch as best I can.
Josh Copus: 08:14 Yeah, I mean, the way that we learn about ancient cultures is through ceramics, because ceramics doesn't rot. We're taking rocks that have been turned into mud over billions of years and then turning them back into rocks. And then those things break, but they never decompose, and so that’s what's left. Everything else rots. Not pottery.
