Every year, as the summer draws to a close, ceramicist Joy Brown lights a fire. That fire is at the heart of her forest sanctuary, as well as the heart of her yearly traditional clay firing and the community of like-minded artists that has grown during the almost 40 summers since its inception. “The firing is a core part of my work,” says Brown. “It’s where clay comes to life. It’s exhilarating, stressful, and thrilling all at once and it’s a communal effort that brings people together.”
Nestled within the lush embrace of woods, her five-acre property outside Kent, Connecticut, is where nature and human creativity converge. Her Japanese-inspired home and studio blend into the rocky landscape and her whimsical, earthy sculptures peek out of the greenery. At the edge of her property, the traditional 40-foot kiln is the site of the property’s yearly firing, a ritual that brings young and old, friends and newbies, artists and the merely curious, to participate.
The cycle of the summer firing dominates her entire year. “It’s like a farmer’s cycle,” she says. “During the year we prepare the wood and clay, sculpt and throw pottery, and then load the kiln and fire it. Then comes the harvest. By the end of fall I move back toward the studio to start crafting again.”
Thrown into the Fire
Brown’s connection to East Asian cultures runs deep. Brown’s grandparents lived in China, where her father grew up and lived for 40 years. After World War II, he moved to Japan to found and run a hospital and brought his young family with him. Brown spent her formative years outside Osaka where she had the space and freedom to play. “As far back as I can remember, I’ve played with clay and fire,” she says. She and her brother would spend their free time digging clay from the earth, then experimenting with fire, burning the clay shapes she formed.
Brown moved back to the US for college but then returned to Japan, where she took an apprenticeship with Toshio Ichino, a 13th-generation potter. During the day, she was a traditional apprentice, but in the evenings she began experimenting with her own practice, throwing and re-throwing forms to internalize the process. The traditional apprenticeship was extremely challenging, akin to a trial by fire. However, it had a transformative effect on her work and identity as an artist. “I developed an intuitive connection to the clay and the capacity to be present in the process,” she says. “It’s the process that’s most important and the quality of attention that we bring to it. The pieces that result reflect the spirit and skill. ”
Afterward, Brown studied with potter Shigeyoshi Morioka and developed a creative rhythm that shapes her work and life today. “He’s a free spirit in clay,” says Brown, who also learned from Morioka’s low-temperature-kiln techniques by working with his anagama, an ancient wood-fired kiln. “I learned a way of life from him,” says Brown. “Clay and wood fire became a center of my life. ”
Earthen Where
Brown returned to the US in the early 1978 and moved in with ceramicist Paul Chaleff in Pine Plains. The region’s working artist communities and long tradition of supporting creative endeavors suited her. She soon rented a studio in the nearby Webatuck Craft Village, where she lived worked as a potter for five years, developing her distinct creative style. “At that time these little figures, first puppet heads then animal forms, started to evolve,” says Brown. “Those figures are the ancestors to the sculptural forms that I make now and install all over the world.”
Brown met and married woodworker Al McClain and the two made their way to Kent, where her childhood friend Shin Watari owned land. Watari offered to sell them five undeveloped acres for $10,000—well below its market value but an amount she could afford. “It was basically a gift,” says Brown. “He admired my work and has bought and commissioned pieces from me over the years since.” The land itself, completely wild woods and rocky outcroppings, was well off the main road. However, Brown sensed that they could forge something special from the landscape.
Many Hands, One Sculpture
“We built the house and studio like planting seeds,” says Brown. “We allowed it to grow and evolve, finding just the right spot for each cupboard, each window, each door.” They began that first year with their two-story cottage, focusing on hand-building a functional, aesthetically simple structure. They constructed the 1,500-square foot house from rough wood beams and topped it with a steep Japanese-inspired pitched roof extending into deep overhanging eves. Inside, the first floor had a bare-bones, open-concept living room and kitchen, as well as a bedroom and bathroom. A simple wooden staircase leads upstairs, to a loft style bedroom with vaulted ceilings.
Next, they built Brown’s studio—the same architecture, but within a smaller footprint. In the studio building, the first floor was left open for Brown’s kick and electric wheels, work bench and walls of shelving for tools, clay, and drying racks. Another wooden staircase leads to an office with vaulted ceilings, McClain finished the rudimentary structures that first year, but had to cover the unfinished windows and doors with plastic and left the interiors unfinished.
Two years later, the couple built a third structure on the property—this one a woodshed with another unfinished second-story space. “We’d been part of a meditation group for years,” says Brown. In order to create a shared meditation space on the forested property, the group pitched in. “Our meditation group helped finish the second floor of the wood shop with sheetrock, painted walls, and added windows,” says Brown. “It became a little beaming light to the rest of the property, inspiring us to finish.”
Other friends pitched in to finish the home and studio. “Many people came in to help,” says Brown. “Together, we eventually added real windows and doors, proper interior floors, and finished the interior sheet rocking—it felt luxurious.” Inside the house, they added an open kitchen with a small wooden island and left exposed wood trim and exposed rough edged wood beams. The loft-style bedroom upstairs soon became home to the couple’s son. Friends also helped finish the building exteriors with shiplap siding. “It’s all very functional,” says Brown. “But it’s also funky, wild, and wooly, and simple and elegant, too.”
The Fire Next Time
Brown and McClain’s marriage eventually ended and McClain moved to a property nearby. (The two remain friends and continue to support each other’s creative endeavors.) A longtime friendship with woodworker and tinkerer Jimmy Griffin, who had also added his carpentry expertise during the early stages of building, evolved, and Griffin moved to the property with Brown, adapting the wood shop and adding a covered garage where he restores classic cars.
The beating heart of the property, the wood-fired tunnel kiln, came in 1985. The anagama, or tunnel kiln, is 30-feet-long with ascending interior steps and a four-by-four-foot mouth. Based on the traditional clay-firing technique Brown learned as an apprentice, the style originated in ancient China and was brought to Japan in the fifth century. The kiln’s construction, like the rest of the property, involved the many helping hands of community. “I built it with the help of whoever I could get to show up,” says Brown. “Plenty of friends and my ex-husband got sucked into building this.”
Since its construction, the kiln’s yearly firing has evolved into a ritual that brings fellow sculptors and potters, friends, and students to the property to participate. “We have a whole community of people that comes together to help fire the kiln,” Brown explains. “It’s a crossroads of wonderful, creative artists and people from all walks of life.”The cycle begins long before the kiln is lit. Brown spends the colder months planning, crafting her small figurative sculptures and pieces for her large sculptural forms in her studio. Over the years other ceramicists have added their own pieces to the mix, and in the month before the firing they come together to prepare. Loading the kiln is an intensive process that spans several weeks with each piece carefully placed to optimize its exposure to heat and ash.
The actual firing takes nine days and requires round-the-clock tending to stoke the flames and maintain the interior temperature. (As well as seven cords of wood.) Afterward, the kiln and its contents need a week to cool, before being carefully unloaded. While the art leaves, and the participants go home, Brown hopes they take a piece of a fire they’ve all stoked with them. “Through the process our creative spirits grow and are nurtured and challenged,” says Brown. “Many people come for that and it’s why I’m here.”
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This article appears in September 2024.
