Firing up a party to cut clay studio debt

As Saturday drew to a close around the Palouse, the Dahmen Barn was just coming to life at 5 p.m., and guitar chords and the smells of savory food and wood smoke filled the air for the first Mud Slinging Extravaganza.

The event served a number of purposes, said creator and artisan Kassie Smith, from celebration to fundraiser to community togetherness.

"First and foremost it's a fundraiser for the building expansion," she said, noting last year's $10,000 project that added a clay studio to the barn.

The funds raised through $5 tickets, the silent auction featuring everything from glazed pottery to handmade jewelry and wallets, and a $1 pottery smash will go to reimbursing that expense.

There were a number of other reasons for the gathering as well.

"Our goal is to show people the magic of mud," she said.

That magic spread throughout the barn and outside, as students, artisans and guests got their hands dirty at outdoor pottery wheels, admired artists working in unlikely media and learned about the art of firing finished creations.

In the back of the barn, volunteers tended fires in metal barrels that would show beginning "mud people," as Smith called potters, an expensive kiln is not altogether necessary for the art.

"You can actually fire in your backyard," she said.

Nick Morris waited with a friend to learn his volunteer duties for the evening - which he anticipated would be minding the fires.

Morris, who recently moved to Moscow from Sacramento, said he came upon the Dahmen Barn on one of his long motorcycle rambles on the Palouse.

Volunteering helped him learn more about his new community, he said.

"I wanted to get out and do something different than going to the bars," he said.

Plus, the barn is a nice place to be.

"It's really pretty and cute," he said. "I like it here."

Inside, as the sounds of Eric Clapton's Wonderful Tonight performed by Bodie Dominguez filled the area, Josh Kirby, one of Smith's students, tried his hand at a different kind of clay work.

"It started out a kind of a joke," Kirby said, working to create a whistle with a green clump. "Using kitty litter as clay."

Although he and Smith had laughed at the idea, they soon found it worked.

"Clumping kitty litter is just bentonite clay," he said.

The main difference he has found is how readily it absorbs water, and as with many types of clay, firing it can produce interesting effects.

The first firing is called bisque, and hardens the clay but leaves it somewhat brittle, and in the case of kitty litter clay, a deep orange color. The second firing matures it, hardening it further and producing a deep brown tint.

"It's not glamorous," he said of the textured creations. "But it works."

Outdoors, David Roon engaged attendees in painting slip cast bottles with one of three glazes, producing vastly different crackle, marble and copper effects through raku firing in the burning barrels.

"You never know what you're going to get," he said of the ancient Japanese method. "That's the frustration and the fun of it."

Shanon Quinn can be reached at (208) 883-4636 or by email to squinn@dnews.com.