On Wednesday, February 27, I arrived in New Orleans to participate in the NOLA Fired-Up Conference.

I arrived at midnight. It is an easy city to drive in, so, I found my hotel alright in the French Quarter. It is an old city and where I’m building the kiln, the devastation of the Katrina hurricane is still everywhere. But it has a nice atmosphere with those old plantation kind of houses, small and big, with beautiful decorations.

I started building my alternative paper-clay Vase kiln. Wali Hawes taught me this technique at the Fantastic Fire Workshop in Mashiko, last October ’07.  http://www.walihawes.com/
I designed the shape of the “Vase Kiln”.

The NOLA Fired Up organization with Chris Brumfield and Bonita Day and Caroline Smith and many more volunteers did an incredible job with this conference and with helping me in getting all the materials for being able to build this kiln. Thank you so much. From rebar a friend welded the frame of this kiln. I put chicken wire on and built the brick base. Inside will go a wire horizontal tube, which I will fill with charcoal.

Meanwhile, Fred Olsen and Richard White had already started building their sculptural kiln.