Grunewald Week #1

We've arrived!

This year, there are three of us LSTC students experiencing the beauties and creative spirit of the great Northwest! When you arrive "here" - you find yourself in a wonderful valley in the Cascades in the town of Plain, Washington...but let us tell you the area is anything but plain! The mountains are spectacular, the view is amazing and the snow... well, let's just say there is more snow than you can imagine! The snow itself is about 3-4 feet deep and snowbanks are as tall as we are!

This is our home away from home - otherwise known as the Homestead. Our own rooms with sinks, bath down the hall, laundry room, eating area, common room and a kitchnette all help to make it a great place to stay as well as the fact that it's built out of amazing logs and lots of wood...and the mural on the stairway wall is amazing!

We started our first week here with class in the mornings led by Richard Caemmerer (the artist who painted the mural) who with his wife Liz, founded the Guild in 1980. Rich started us off by looking at the art and architechture found in churches from early Christianity on. We've made it through the Romanesque period with next week starting on the Gothic era. The amazing thing is how much time, effort and thought has gone into so many of the buildings and artwork through the ages. Things we often see as simply old churches! Rich is also helping us see the images around the images painted or carved - seeing shape and color and texture in form and light as well as the image itself.

Afternoons at the Guild are spent actually getting to do art! This week we started off in the pottery shop - first doing freehand and then we moved to the wheel - learning how to make bowls and such. Working on the wheel is not as easy as our instructor Scott, makes it seem, but under his tutelage we are all getting pretty good at centering our clay and making really fun things!



As we get better at centering and working with the different clays what we end up with looks better and better all the time, too! Once the pieces are all off the wheels and have time to dry, they will be kiln dried and then we will glaze them with a special glaze called Raku Glazing. Letting them dry once again.

On Friday it was time to finish all our clay pieces using the Raku method of firing. The pottery is heated in a kiln fairly quickly to about 2000 degrees and then it's taken out of the kiln and quicly placed into a metal can filled with paper strips. As soon as the paper starts on fire, you throw on the lid for a few minutes, then carefully take the pieces out of the metal can and place them in cold water. When they come out of the water they are amazing colors! It's a wild and fun process and the pieces we made came out great!

The weekend came fast upon us and we spent Saturday doing errands and spending time in Leavenworth a little Bavarian town nearby. We walked, shopped and ate some great German food. Sunday we walked down the road and across the foot bridge to worship at a great little church - Plain Community Church. After lunch we each took time enjoying the beautiful country God has called us to for these few short weeks.