The Summer In Review: REBUILD THE KILN

story by Eleanor Skelton
photos by Jim Oakes

Southeast Texas became known over the past five years as recovering “through hell or high water” after Harvey and Imelda’s devastating flooding and the TPC plant explosion. 

The Art Studio is no exception. Hurricanes Rita and Ike, along with the 2020’s record-breaking hurricane season, damaged the outdoor salt kiln. 

TASI Executive Director Greg Busceme said well-known ceramic artist Jim Leedy came to The Art Studio for a workshop about 18 years ago. 

“He built several pieces and we were about ready to fire them a couple of years after he made them, but the hurricanes hit and destroyed all my kilns,” he said. “Every time something happened, they all got more degraded.”

Since The Art Studio is a non-profit, Busceme said funding for new kilns was not readily available, but he started collecting brick and invited college-level ceramic instructors Tom Beldon and Gary Greenburg to help rebuild the kiln before any more hurricanes or tropical storms could damage the unfired pieces. 

“Jim Leedy is in his 80s now,” he said. “He actually could use these now because he’s not making art anymore. So this will help him out. The two sculptures, he can sell them for $80,000 each.”

“This is really great to get these made for him. Then also there’s pieces in the show that he made for us to auction off and allow us to raise, if all things go well and we do it online and get the right people, raise $30,000 to $40,000,” he said. “So we would match our goal for the matching grant (to replace) at least these two metal roofs, and that would make a big difference right there.” 

The Art Studio has been working to restore the roofs since earlier this year with a “Raise the Roof” fundraiser in January. 

Gary “Greeny” Greenberg worked alongside Tom Belden and Chris Leonard June 28 through July 2 to rebuild the salt kiln, cutting brick with a saw and showing volunteers where to place the bricks. 

Greenburg said he has been ceramic artist for 53 years starting in 9th grade. He completed his undergraduate degree in art with a concentration in ceramics. 

He described his work as covering a wide range of ceramic art. 

“It covers a whole lot of stuff from high-fired, wood-fired functional pots to sculptural earthenware pieces, large-scale and small-scale installations, pieces that are sculptural but also functional with social content,” he said. 

Greenburg said he did almost a year of salt-firing in undergraduate school. 

“It’s always a process I like because it’s very direct,” he said. “You can put them in the kiln raw and just run it up to temperature and throw salt in and it just comes out. The kiln will do a lot of the work, instead of sitting there painstakingly glazing things.”

Tom Belden said he has been working with ceramics for 58 years. He retired about five years ago, but he was an instructor and visual arts gallery director at Central Arizona College. Earlier in his career, he also taught at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.  

He said his work at the moment is hard to describe.

“It’s relatively low temperature, multiple firings, it is very simple three dimensional forms that are based on historical pottery forms,” he said. “Very simple but large, 30 inches tall and then I paint on them with colored clays, and then fire them, paint some more, fire them. Not unlike somebody would paint a painting, in multiple layers. But it’s done with multiple firings.”

The salt-kiln produces a more neutral look, Belden said, but his work is more colorful. 

“But the results you get here are unique,” he said. “You can’t get them any other way.”

The glaze produced in a salt-kiln is similar to the outside of a German beer mug. 

“When you fire those pieces, you fire them to temperature, you introduce salt into the kiln,” he said. “We can talk chemistry if you want, but the salt volatilizes into sodium and chlorine, it separates physically and the sodium attaches to any free silica and the clay is full of silica. 

“What that does is form sodium silicate, which is a glaze that is a type of glass.”

Art schools teach basic chemistry in their ceramics classes in order to do glaze calculation for their art, Belden said. 

“You could paint a reddish brown glaze on something and after you fire it, it could be red, it could be green, it could be brown, it could be yellow, it could be all kinds of things and that’s because of iron oxide,” he said. “And there are multiple forms of iron oxide. So that’s the chemistry side of it, which is not very complex. 

“Those are the kinds of things that are happening inside the kiln at 2400 degrees, so chemical reactions take place very quickly under those conditions.”

Chris Leonard said his work is also more low-fire. He is a ceramics instructor at South Texas College in McAllen and he previously taught art in a public high school. 

“I work with clay, but I’m mostly a low-fire guy,” he said. “Since I jumped into clay, it’s a really interesting and friendly community because there’s times that you need an extra pair of hands or times you need an extra pair of eyes or times you need years of experience. 

“I can throw a decent pot, but the technical side of the glaze and equipment—I’m a freaking mud guy. It’s kind of nice to see the folks with experience.”

Leonard said the kiln rebuild project was originally planned for last year but was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“I’m happy to be here,” he said. “I’ve driven through Beaumont on I-10, and I’ve poked around Houston, but to have some hometown hospitality on a project like this and this wonderful artist space—I can see why Chuck and Greenie have been saying, ‘You’ve gotta get up to Beaumont.’”