Wood Fired Ceramics

Cliff Naylor | 1/27/2012 North Dakota is famous for producing fertile crops, the ground is also rich in minerals like coal, and recently, the abundance of oil in certain areas of the state has made select tracks of real estate very valuable. Clay is another commodity that`s plentiful, and for one shovel ready artist, it sets her work apart from any other pottery produced on the planet.Robin Reynolds travels all over western North Dakota with a shovel and bucket, digging up clay. The material she collects is used for glazes on the functional pottery she creates.”I can go out and dig clay in a cut bank and fill a two gallon or five gallon pail and I might have a lifetime supply of that material to formulate a glaze,” she said.Robin has unearthed dozens clay samples and each one has unique characteristics. “This is called school house red and it`s from a ditch around New Town. North Dakota clay does not come in blue, green, purple, I just end up with a lot of earth colors, reds, browns and tans.”She also uses native clay from discarded bricks at the Hebron brick factory as a base for all of her pottery. “The Hebron clay has a nice ring to it. it handles beautifully and it is a beautiful blond color, it does shrink a little more than a standard clay body.”Robin spent 18 years as a potter in Bellingham, Washington, before moving back to North Dakota. She returned with 900 pounds of Mount Saint Helens ash she shoveled into fertilizer bags. “This is some of my Mount Saint Helens ash, historically potters have used volcanic ash in their glazes it comes out of the ground ready to go and it came out of the ground this powdery.”Someday, Robin plans to fire the volcanic ash and use it as a glaze on clay dug up in North Dakota. “Once I build a kiln in my backyard, I`ll be able to bring those two forces of nature together in a single piece of pottery.”Until then, this village potter is content to throw clay and fire glaze on pots, vases and cups from the state she`s rooted in.You can see more of Robin Reynolds work on her website at www.ndclay.com or visit her showroom located in the old Texaco gas station on the south edge of Hebron.

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Off The Beaten Path: North Dakota Potter on KFYR-TV North Dakota’s NBC News Leader