–An art show in a storm

What a windstorm we had just over a week ago!  Wednesday, November 30th, 2011 will be remembered by a lot of people in the Pasadena area…for a long time.

On the Tuesday evening prior, Tracy and I were getting ready for the ceramics showing at the Wheelhouse in Monrovia as we loaded our final glaze-firing for the year.  We loaded a full kiln (est.  85-90 pieces), knowing that we wouldn’t be creating at quite this elevated level until the new year.  So, that full kiln represented many hopes for a positive response to our newest work (and many hours).

Normally when we fire, we set the kiln to begin it’s slow heat-up process around 6pm (better energy costs in the evening).  The temperature builds and builds , hits a peak and holds.  Then it allows sufficient time for a slow heat reduction and finally shuts off and is left to cool for many hours.

That week, our start-time was 6pm on Tuesday, November 29  which gave us an unload time of Thursday morning.    On Wednesday night when the winds began their fury, we weren’t quite sure if the kiln had finished before we lost power–and we didn’t know what the situation would be if  the process hadn’t quite finished…had it possibly cooled down too quickly?…and would we open the kiln to a pile of rubble for our last firing of 2011?  (Ceramics crack and/or break when asked to do anything too quickly.)

So, upon waking-up to the destruction and still windy conditions of Thursday morning, we dealt with our personal and neighborhood damage and postponed the unload until that afternoon.  When we finally had the opportunity to open the kiln, we found that everything had proceeded normally–what a relief!  We were also happy to see that the kiln and surrounding shed were undamaged in the storm.

However, in the big scheme of things, a successful tile firing seemed less important once we ventured out of our own neighborhoods to witness the broad spectrum of destruction everywhere we looked…just everywhere.

Finally, after removing and boxing-up the contents of the kiln, we ran into a friend who suggested our power outage would not be  a mere 24 hours as originally thought, but possibly up to 5 days.  So, at around 3:30pm on December 1st, Tracy and I decided to go on an ice and battery mission–apparently everyone else had the same idea!

What an odd experience.   As we entered the first store (of many), we were met by exiting people with empty hands…relaying the fact that the store was out of both of these items.  We drove on…no parking was available anywhere and a sense of frenzy was beginning to pull us in.  People around us were frantic, distracted, and apparently under the spell of their primal brains that engage “survival mode”.

As we left yet another parking lot with nothing to show for it, we noticed the sun getting lower in the sky and a sense of urgency crept in.  We both thought of a scary film where you had to be indoors and locked down before sunset because the creatures were coming out to rule the night.  Okay–a bit overdramatic, but if we had let ourselves, we could’ve fallen steadfastly into that mindset and lost a bit of our humanity.

Eventually, we found a store where we could at least get ice, so ditched the idea of battery power in order to get home before dark.  Tracy dropped me back at my place with ice in hand, ready to load into my fridge  just about 30 minutes before complete darkness would descend on our little Mayberry village of Sierra Madre.

And I’m mostly sure there were no goblins ruling the streets that night…

Anyway…amazingly enough, The Wheelhouse got it’s power back before the Friday night pre-show so we joined the other artists and went about the task of setting up our display.  Many stories were shared amongst us and we all remarked on how miraculous it was that nobody was reported as seriously hurt.

In retrospect, Tracy and I experienced that palpable taste of mass urgency when responding to a calamity, entangled with our own tumultuous push into a creative deadline.

Wow!  What a mixed bag!

…One of these things is not like the others…