Jo Kamm

Kansas City was phenomenal! Besides giving a lecture about my travels of the past year, I also saw many friends and a few shows. Congrats to Anna Buckthorpe and Becky Schram for their show at the KCAI Crossroads Gallery. Both are Sculpture seniors who make amazing work in clay and other media.

Since I returned on Monday night I’ve been keeping quite busy. The last two days I’ve been working 9 hours at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), followed by another few hours with Heather in her studio. The ICA’s show will open on the 25th of April – the same day as Heather’s – so both places are running at a frantic pace. At the ICA I spent today putting up sheetrock. Because of the compressed time schedule (4 weeks), crew is already working til 6 on weekdays and coming in on weekends.

Over at the Clay Studio with Heather, I’ve been sanding and cleaning her work. This is the last step of an exceedingly drawn out production process. First a piece is cast, then cleaned, sometimes altered or assembled, and bisqued. Then it is sanded, waxed, glazed, wiped off, and glaze fired. After the final sanding and cleaning, Heather’s finally ready to start arranging the pieces which in itself is an endless task with limitless permutations.