RAKU ISN’T ROCKET SCIENCE

But for Phil Green, the fiery ceramics process offers its own excitement

From wooden biplane models he carved as a kid to unique furniture for his family home to electronic systems for satellites and rockets, Phil Green has always designed and made things. Retired from Sandia National Labs and a previous career as a university physics professor, Green is still at it. Today, he makes raku clocks.

W hile his work in science and engineering required creativity, Green grew interested in more artistic endeavors as he got closer to retirement in 2004. He took some classes and began dabbling in ceramics. The raku firing process captured his imagination.

“I don’t know why I loved it except that it’s full of surprises,” he says. “Of course, a lot of those surprises add up to the fact that 30 percent of what I do has failed. It just doesn’t come out right. You can’t get these patinas if you don’t have the right temperatures and the right mix of oxygen and then the lack of oxygen.”

Green isn’t sure how he came up with the idea to make raku clocks. “I was doing pots and things in raku, and once I made a clock, I got hooked on clocks,” he says. “I love to take the extreme order of a clock face, surround it with chaos and yield it to the unpredictability of the raku firing process. The chaos is made from orderly geometric shapes such as circles, lines, and triangles coupled with irregular shapes and textures. The raku firing introduces metallic flash areas and color variations that are all colors of the rainbow.”

Green seeks asymmetry but balance in his designs. And the pieces must be functional. “No matter how I shape the clock, I will always have a nice orderly face on it to read. I don’t want the type of clock where the face is interesting, but the hands are sticking out there and there’s no marker on the clock at all. I do want to be able to read it and, of course, I want to make something that appeals to me.”

The raku firing is the second phase of Green’s process. The first phase involves creating the design in raw clay. Green inscribes the entire piece of clay as it will appear around the clock face. He then cuts it into smaller pieces that can be more easily assembled around the clock. He bisque fires the raw clay to transform it into a more durable ceramic. Next comes the raku glazing, which he does by hand. Some clocks require six or seven different glazes. Green likes to use accent glazes, as he calls them, which result in different colors and textures, such as one that results in a smooth finish and another that creates tiny crackles.

Unlike other types of ceramic firing, which could be done in stages over sev- eral hours, raku requires rapid firing up to around 1,800 degrees within about an hour. At that point, Green removes the pieces quicky from the kiln and places them in a “combustion chamber—or that’s what I call it when I’m lecturing, but actually, it’s a garbage can filled with ripped-up newspaper.”

The newspaper—or sawdust, pine needles or other dry flammable material—catches fire. After a few seconds of burning, Green puts the lid on the can. Fire requires oxygen, and after the flames consume the newspaper, they take oxygen from the molten oxides and carbonates in the glaze. That’s how the patinas are created. But if Green takes the lid off too soon, allowing oxygen back into the can, the glazes might turn to a flat black. Once the glazed pieces have cooled, Green reassembles them around the clock faces.

Green has shown and sold his raku clocks at shows, online and in galleries. Nowadays, his pieces are in Amapola Gallery. Most of his customers are in the United States, but he’s shipped clocks as far away as Australia.

He says it’s satisfying to create something that other people find appealing. He acknowledges his work in science and engineering also required a type of creativity that he found rewarding. “When I was designing electronic boards to make computers to go into spacecraft, doing the layout just right so you’re minimizing the space, that’s a problem-solving creative task. It’s just that the beauty of the result appeals to you and maybe the people who work on the board, but nobody walks into a gallery and says, ‘That’s a nice looking circuit board,” he says.

“ When you discover that you’re making something that not just your wife or your mother like, but a lot of people you never met before like enough to spend money on, that’s a very rewarding sort of thing.”

But it’s not all about money. Although he thinks his customers appreciate that his pieces are both clocks and artwork, “other artists have told me, ‘Get rid of the clock and start designing freehand stuff and your pieces could be more expensive.’” Green explains that consumers view clocks as functional pieces worth a certain price, regardless of whether they’re part of a piece of art. So-called art, on the other hand, commands higher prices, he says he’s been told.

Green has other projects in mind for the future, such as raku jewelry and crosses. But for now, it’s clocks. “They’re like an obsession.”

LISA OCKER