<\/a>Mud Stories<\/h3>\n<\/div>loading slideshow...<\/p><\/div>
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\u201cMy husband died the year before the mud came to me,\u201d she says. It was 1996, her daughter was 12, and she was not looking for a new artistic direction that would further destabilize their lives. But when an acquaintance, a crane operator on a WHOI ship, brought her a bucket of mud, she was intrigued. \u201cMy kiln was on, so it was already incandescent hot inside,\u201d she says. She put a sample inside to see what it would do, and it melted into a \u201clittle glob,\u201d proving it could be used as a glaze. Lederman knew she was onto something, but she didn\u2019t know much about glazing, a complex process that requires precise measurement and expert manipulation of a\u00a0kiln\u2019s temperature and air circulation. Miscalculation will destroy a piece\u2014or a kiln-full of work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never studied glazes,\u201d Lederman says. \u201cIt\u2019s all just my fooling around.\u201d For the first few years, she lost nearly 70 percent of her work. \u201cI was putting the mud too thick on the outside; it would run on the shelf, it would break\u2014all kinds of reasons. I started to leave my mistakes around so I wouldn\u2019t do the same one twice.\u201d<\/p>\n
As she\u00a0fine-tuned her process, WHOI researchers continued to bring her leftover sediment from their voyages, captivated by the way she transformed the material. \u201cJoan takes the geological aspect of the sediments we collect on the seafloor and weaves them into her work to portray an awareness of Earth,\u201d says Dan Fornari, a senior scientist in the institution’s geology and geophysics department. \u201cThis gives richness to her work\u2014and to mine, because it puts people closer to \u2018abstract\u2019 science. Using the materials from the deep ocean in her work provides an opportunity to both educate and enthrall people.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Mud\"](\"\/cfa-magazine\/files\/2015\/08\/15-8933-SEDIMENT-007.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\u201cWhen I first get a bag of mud, I ask, \u2018Now what do I do with you?\u2019\u201d Lederman says. Sediments from around the world respond to firing in different ways depending on their composition. Lederman\u2019s newest mud is from the Havre Volcano, an underwater volcano just north of New Zealand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The garage that houses Lederman\u2019s kiln is packed with buckets of mud bearing the names of researchers, ships, and geographical coordinates. There is Mouth of Amazon, Phoenician Wreck, Pacific Monitoring of Fukushima Radiation, Red Sea. \u201cEvery one is from a ship that went out to sea where people were investigating things and archiving it,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s all about the stories.\u201d<\/p>\n
Collecting mud stories has turned Lederman into an amateur geologist. She strides from shelf to shelf in the garage, opening buckets, stirring slurry, rubbing sludge between her fingers. A sediment\u2019s response to firing often mirrors how it was formed by forces deep within the Earth, she says. Magma that bubbled up from a fissure on the planet\u2019s surface \u201ccrumbles and melts back into my kiln.\u201d Decomposed volcanic rock \u201cfires like the pounded rock it had been before wind abrasion and water erosion broke it down.\u201d Sediment trapped between two ocean plates and mashed into an oil-like slurry \u201cdries and curls and melts back down into something rock-like.\u201d This is a process \u201cI experience viscerally,\u201d she says. \u201cI feel like my hands are on the pulse of Earth, almost as if I\u2019m touching her blood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lederman scrapes lumpy mud from the side of a bucket. \u201cCan you see the little granular things?\u201d she asks, digging into the sludge with her fingernail. \u201cThese are foraminifera<\/em>, or forams,\u201d single-celled organisms with shells composed of seawater minerals. Researchers study the shells that have collected in seafloor sediment to learn how climate change is impacting the oceans. When exposed to the kiln’s heat, mud that contains forams creates branching patterns in the glaze.<\/p>\nShe digs a small jar out of a cabinet and opens it reverently. The mud inside is almost black, and so thick it barely moves when she tips it. This is sediment from the layer in the Earth\u2019s core that dates back 65 million years and is composed of dust from the asteroid that is believed to have led to a mass extinction. When Lederman first tested the sediment, she had no idea what it would do. When applied as a thick glaze, it separated, speckling the ceramic surface \u201clike mud clouds,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
This past summer, Lederman was working with a new material: sediment from the largest underwater volcano in the world, just north of New Zealand. Scientists discovered the Havre Volcano<\/a> in 2012, when they traced the source of mysterious pumice rafts floating on the ocean. Applied as a thin layer, the volcano sediment\u00a0reveals the porcelain or stoneware beneath it; when applied thickly, it fires like smoky glass.<\/p>\n![\"Joan](\"\/cfa-magazine\/files\/2015\/08\/15-8936-SEDIMENT-036.jpg\")
<\/p>\nLederman often inscribes her pieces with the mud\u2019s geographic coordinates. She tags a finished bowl with \u201cHavre Volcano\u201d; the sediment has resulted in a glaze as rich and smoky as the underwater eruption from which it came.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Lederman works from spring to fall, when her studio is warm enough for the clay. She begins with wheelwork to create the stoneware and porcelain forms. When she has about 80 to 100 pieces ready\u2014enough to fill the kiln\u2014she dries the raw pottery at low heat for about 15 hours, then raises the heat to 1,700 degrees for another 6 to 8 hours. She creates glazes by mixing the sediments with water to achieve different consistencies, depending on her vision for each piece. She often writes the sediment\u2019s geographic coordinates in flowing script across a\u00a0piece. She fires the pottery\u2014now glazed\u2014again at about 2,300 degrees for 10 hours.<\/p>\n
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\u201cMy husband died the year before the mud came to me,\u201d she says. It was 1996, her daughter was 12, and she was not looking for a new artistic direction that would further destabilize their lives. But when an acquaintance, a crane operator on a WHOI ship, brought her a bucket of mud, she was intrigued. \u201cMy kiln was on, so it was already incandescent hot inside,\u201d she says. She put a sample inside to see what it would do, and it melted into a \u201clittle glob,\u201d proving it could be used as a glaze. Lederman knew she was onto something, but she didn\u2019t know much about glazing, a complex process that requires precise measurement and expert manipulation of a\u00a0kiln\u2019s temperature and air circulation. Miscalculation will destroy a piece\u2014or a kiln-full of work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never studied glazes,\u201d Lederman says. \u201cIt\u2019s all just my fooling around.\u201d For the first few years, she lost nearly 70 percent of her work. \u201cI was putting the mud too thick on the outside; it would run on the shelf, it would break\u2014all kinds of reasons. I started to leave my mistakes around so I wouldn\u2019t do the same one twice.\u201d<\/p>\n
As she\u00a0fine-tuned her process, WHOI researchers continued to bring her leftover sediment from their voyages, captivated by the way she transformed the material. \u201cJoan takes the geological aspect of the sediments we collect on the seafloor and weaves them into her work to portray an awareness of Earth,\u201d says Dan Fornari, a senior scientist in the institution’s geology and geophysics department. \u201cThis gives richness to her work\u2014and to mine, because it puts people closer to \u2018abstract\u2019 science. Using the materials from the deep ocean in her work provides an opportunity to both educate and enthrall people.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n\u201cWhen I first get a bag of mud, I ask, \u2018Now what do I do with you?\u2019\u201d Lederman says. Sediments from around the world respond to firing in different ways depending on their composition. Lederman\u2019s newest mud is from the Havre Volcano, an underwater volcano just north of New Zealand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The garage that houses Lederman\u2019s kiln is packed with buckets of mud bearing the names of researchers, ships, and geographical coordinates. There is Mouth of Amazon, Phoenician Wreck, Pacific Monitoring of Fukushima Radiation, Red Sea. \u201cEvery one is from a ship that went out to sea where people were investigating things and archiving it,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s all about the stories.\u201d<\/p>\n
Collecting mud stories has turned Lederman into an amateur geologist. She strides from shelf to shelf in the garage, opening buckets, stirring slurry, rubbing sludge between her fingers. A sediment\u2019s response to firing often mirrors how it was formed by forces deep within the Earth, she says. Magma that bubbled up from a fissure on the planet\u2019s surface \u201ccrumbles and melts back into my kiln.\u201d Decomposed volcanic rock \u201cfires like the pounded rock it had been before wind abrasion and water erosion broke it down.\u201d Sediment trapped between two ocean plates and mashed into an oil-like slurry \u201cdries and curls and melts back down into something rock-like.\u201d This is a process \u201cI experience viscerally,\u201d she says. \u201cI feel like my hands are on the pulse of Earth, almost as if I\u2019m touching her blood.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lederman scrapes lumpy mud from the side of a bucket. \u201cCan you see the little granular things?\u201d she asks, digging into the sludge with her fingernail. \u201cThese are foraminifera<\/em>, or forams,\u201d single-celled organisms with shells composed of seawater minerals. Researchers study the shells that have collected in seafloor sediment to learn how climate change is impacting the oceans. When exposed to the kiln’s heat, mud that contains forams creates branching patterns in the glaze.<\/p>\n
She digs a small jar out of a cabinet and opens it reverently. The mud inside is almost black, and so thick it barely moves when she tips it. This is sediment from the layer in the Earth\u2019s core that dates back 65 million years and is composed of dust from the asteroid that is believed to have led to a mass extinction. When Lederman first tested the sediment, she had no idea what it would do. When applied as a thick glaze, it separated, speckling the ceramic surface \u201clike mud clouds,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
This past summer, Lederman was working with a new material: sediment from the largest underwater volcano in the world, just north of New Zealand. Scientists discovered the Havre Volcano<\/a> in 2012, when they traced the source of mysterious pumice rafts floating on the ocean. Applied as a thin layer, the volcano sediment\u00a0reveals the porcelain or stoneware beneath it; when applied thickly, it fires like smoky glass.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nLederman often inscribes her pieces with the mud\u2019s geographic coordinates. She tags a finished bowl with \u201cHavre Volcano\u201d; the sediment has resulted in a glaze as rich and smoky as the underwater eruption from which it came.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Lederman works from spring to fall, when her studio is warm enough for the clay. She begins with wheelwork to create the stoneware and porcelain forms. When she has about 80 to 100 pieces ready\u2014enough to fill the kiln\u2014she dries the raw pottery at low heat for about 15 hours, then raises the heat to 1,700 degrees for another 6 to 8 hours. She creates glazes by mixing the sediments with water to achieve different consistencies, depending on her vision for each piece. She often writes the sediment\u2019s geographic coordinates in flowing script across a\u00a0piece. She fires the pottery\u2014now glazed\u2014again at about 2,300 degrees for 10 hours.<\/p>\n
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