The will of the wheel

Appeal staff

Sharon Randall sets a 2-pound slab of wet clay on the wheel.

Stacked on the floor in cardboard boxes are some 2,000 pounds of willing clay. Crates of tools and wire sit in open containers. Pressing a pedal with her right foot, the wheel begins to hum. Sharon dips her hands into a porcelain reservoir of clay-colored water. The glint of copper oxide from overstocked shelves of finished inventory is the only taste of chaos in the otherwise well-organized quiet. It's as though a vault of white silence has fallen over the studio. Only the presence of a loaded mousetrap in the corner threatens to snap the dreamy morning into reality.

Trickles drip from the bowl as her hands meet the shapeless mass of clay with thick, watery slaps, both soft and determined.

As the clay spins faster, Randall explains her love of making pottery. Her hands begin to shape the pale mass. The clay rises, following her fingers as though enchanted by a spell. It quickly takes on the shape of a bottle.

Together with Brewery Arts Center teacher Jon Rotham, Randall is donating pieces of her work for a fund-raiser taking place Saturday through Feb. 12. The silent auction at the BAC artisan store will benefit its continued operation, and will be culminated by a session of raku pottery making on the final day, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Raku, explains Randall, is an ancient Japanese technique based on the Zen Buddhist idea of art as a "controlled accident" and normally is used to make one-of-a-kind tea bowls. After studying the process abroad in the 1970s, American sculptor Paul Soldner brought the practice to America.

Once brought to nearly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit in a kiln, the red-hot pieces of pottery are taken out of the fire with a pair of tongs and quickly placed in a barrel full of newspaper or sawdust. The work is then sealed in the canister and allowed to set. The results are often elegantly garish and unmercifully unique.

"The reduction creates these beautiful, unpredictable patterns of color and movement in the pottery," says Randall, showing some iconic pieces she's working on. One, a rabbit, has a dark fairy-tale quality to it.

Randall has been making pottery for more than 20 years and spends her time between her home in Fairbanks, Alaska, and her home and studio in Carson Valley.

"It started as a hobby," she says. "As a way for me to relax after coming home from work. A way to relieve stress."

Her husband, Rich, is a biologist.

"He's more cerebral," laughs Randall.

While her wares are available for sale at the BAC artisan store, she considers herself fortunate that she doesn't have to think commercially before artistically.

"I feel lucky I don't have to make coffee mugs with little golf clubs on them," she says, never taking her calm intensity from the spinning eye of the center, communing her vision of the piece with the vortex of the wheel.

n Contact reporter Peter Thompson at pthompson@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1215.