Women Who Wood-fire
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In 1991, I saw my first wood-fired pot.  Michelle Coakes began teaching at Western Kentucky University after my teacher Bill Weaver retired.  I approached her about being a special student for a year to work on my portfolio for graduate school.  I’ll never forget walking into her office and seeing her pots that had been fired in an anagama kiln.  I had never seen such warm, rich, and unusual surfaces.  I was instantly attracted to wood-firing.
          I wood-fired in graduate school in West Virginia and Bob Anderson taught me to make strong functional pots.  My summers were spent at Arrowmount and Penland as a studio assistant.  I fired my first two anagama kilns with Jack Troy and Chuck Hindes and made utilitarian pots with Clary Illian and Jeff Oestreich.
          After graduate school, I moved to a little farm in Casey County, Kentucky.  It was the perfect post-graduate school experience.  There was a studio, a small though dilapidated anagama kiln, and a phoenix fast fire wood-kiln.  People came from all over to fire at the farm.  We fired the phoenix once a month and the anagama three or four times a year.  This was a tremendous learning experience for all who participated.
          I also began firing a much larger anagama kiln in Danville which was an hour away. I had fired it while I was in graduate school right after it was built by Centre College.  When I moved back to Kentucky, I was asked to supervise and take charge of the firings.  This enabled me to invite professional artists to fire with students, which I feel expedited the learning process.  I’ve done this for about ten years now.  Between the firings at the farm and the Danville kiln, I was completely immersed in firing with wood.
          Five years ago, I moved back to my hometown of Glasgow to live with my sister and help her raise her two boys.  I reestablished my studio there and am building an anagama kiln.  I intended to build last year, but I was diagnosed with cancer.  I spent the next year not firing or making pots, but just trying to be healthy again.
          Since I’ve regained my strength, I’ve been firing a two chambered wood kiln at Bernheim Forest, which is outside of Louisville.  I also fire with a former student, Suzanne Renfrow, who lives near by.  Once a year, I try to get up to Wisconsin and fire an anagama with Simon Levin.  Matt Gaddie, the young man who fires with me at Bernheim, asked me if I would stop firing these kilns when I get mine built.  I told him I would fire any kiln, anytime, anywhere.  I love to fire unfamiliar kilns because it’s so challenging.  I’ve always felt that one of the best ways to become proficient at firing is to fire as many different kilns and with as many different people as possible.
          Initially, it was the mysterious surfaces of Michelle’s pots that seduced me into wood-firing.  The skin of a wood-fired pot tells a story about how it was made and its placement in the kiln.  It reveals how much and what kind of wood was burned and the direction of the flame.  There is integrity in this that is related to a truth of the materials and process.  The more I wood-fired the more I realized that it appealed to me on other levels as well.
          I enjoy the physical involvement required in every step of the process.  Days spent cutting, hauling, and stacking wood are as comfortable and familiar to me as working in my dad’s tobacco and hay fields, growing up on a farm.  I like working outside all day and going to bed completely exhausted.  It makes me feel strong and healthy which I don’t take for granted anymore.  After firing with wood, the idea of firing a gas kiln became incredibly boring.  It just isn’t physical enough.  I wouldn’t get enough exercise or fresh air.
          There is a sense of community in firing with wood that is very attractive to me:  friends coming together, making meals, and sharing ideas while focused on a common goal of firing a wood kiln full of fine pots.  The sharing not only in the labor of firing and the chores involved, but also in experiences and information has been very satisfying and enriching in my life professionally and personally.  After all, that’s why we are all gathered here at this conference; to share knowledge that will make each of us more enlightened about this intriguing process that we are all so passionate about.
          Wood-firing and making functional pots resolved a major personal conflict as well.  Before I had taken that first ceramics class in undergraduate school, I thought I was going to be a painter.  The more I pursued abstraction in my work, the more detached I became from my family and friends, because they didn’t understand.  Everyone understands pots, and at least in my world, everyone understands and respects an aesthetic of hard work.  Wood-firing is a good fit for me personally.  It allows me to be an artist without stepping outside the world in which I grew up.

                                                                                      Davie Reneau