getting settled

Tip to my readers: I tend to be verbose in my writing. If you can't handle reading then just scroll down for pictures. I promise I won't be hurt.

I arrived safely on Monday night at around 1130 local time. Copenhagen International airport is nice but not somewhere I would recommend spending nine hours, unless you have enough money to buy Gucci handbags and overpriced Scandinavian knick-knacks. Of course I didn't have the foresight to plan an excursion away from the airport. I could have hitchhiked to my destination in the time it took to wait for my 45 minute flight. However, on that short flight I met a pleasant Danish woman who studies anthropology at the local university. Add that conversation to the one I had with the Japanese-educated Brazilian veterinarian who is moving to either Sweden or Germany to do post-PhD study on stem cell therapy for horses and I would say that my social interactions were pretty positive during my day of travel.

Speaking of social interactions, I have spent the last few days getting to know my hosts and their friends and family. Gregory lives in his home with his partner and studio assistant Janne Hieck, an enormously talented and classically trained potter from Germany. The two of them have been hosting a Japanese potter named Susumu Suzuka for some time; Susumu and Greg are close friends from the time Greg spent as a potter's apprentice in Japan in the 90s, and it is a special surprise for me to get some time to interact with Susumu. He made a deliciously basic Japanese meal for us last night. Greg has three sons here as well: Hamilton, who is 12, Aidan, who is 8, and Keiran, who is 5. Keiran spent the day in Hjorring with us, and he is a pretty great young guy.


Greg and Janne discussing the greenhouse they would like my help in constructing during the month of June. Greg is the type of guy who dreams big on every occasion, but I think we will actually take a shot at this project in between working in the studio and firing the kilns.


Janne can aptly be described as both the glue that keeps this home and studio together and the grease that makes the entire machine run smoothly. She is sort of a force of nature, and also an excellent potter. These guys make great work together.


Greg, Keiran and Susumu took me down to Hjorring for the day to help me get oriented. Susumu runs two small pottery schools in Japan.


Keiran doing what young boys do best. They ride the train so much that Keiran has actually driven it.


Gregory's home in Horne, Denmark is really quite wonderful. Horne is a "town", though really it seems that enough people built homes in one place to warrant building a train station, and Greg's house happens to be that very train station. Walk out of the back door and hop on the train once an hour to head to a more cosmopolitan city center! If things worked this way in the States, people might actually not bother with a car so much. In fact, no one in this family owns a car, just several bikes. With that in mind, everyone here bikes everywhere, and there are generally mini bike roads adjacent to most of the auto roads. See pics of the house and the train below. Also notice the images of the kilns on his property, which I will be addressing at length during my time working at his home studio in June.


Gregory's home, aka Horne Station.


The house is heaven for anyone interested in ceramics and especially pottery, as he has hundreds of pots made by several dozen artists all over the house. It is particularly challenging finding the right coffee cup every morning.


The gem of the property for me is the kiln collection.


The same site from the rear. The chimney stack to the right is really interesting. In 2007 Greg and Janne hosted a conference for wood-firing potters and constructed the entire kiln in one weekend using salvaged materials! I am recognizing this reuse/recycle behavior as a trend here, which I really appreciate.


The is the front of Gregory's anagama, which is a wood-fired kiln using a classic japanese design. The opening is about 3 feet tall, and this is a relatively small anagama compared to others I have seen.


This is the soda kiln, which is fired using natural gas or propane.


Mostly I have been trying to normalize and get on an appropriate sleep schedule, which hasn't been a problem but I suspect will become one soon. On Tuesday we went into Hjorring and picked up the keys to my apartment, and Greg showed me around the town a bit. It is small and quite charming, and I will post pics as soon as I settle there later this week. As a teaser, the museum itself seems to have the perfect little niche spaces I have been envisioning as I planned my project over the last few months. Today we took the train to Hirtshals, which is just a few stops north on the coast. Hirtshals has an incredible bunker complex constructed by the Nazis just before and during World War 2. It seems that Hitler thought Hirtshals would be the ideal location for Allied forces to land from the north in order to get to Berlin as quickly as possible, though we now know that was a misguided assumption. I enjoyed seeing the ocean, which was surprisingly blue, especially from the vantage point of a solid concrete bunker the size of my home which was designed to house an enormous cannon.

The details of my plans for my art efforts are forthcoming, and I will do my best to take as many in-progress pictures as I can. Check back often.

-casey