Rhubarb: No Rue and No Barb!

Here’s to the lowly rhubarb leaf! My octogenarian friend Ken called to ask if I’d like some more rhubarb. He was harvesting his patch and I happily said, “Yes! And please bring the leaves too!” Ken responded with a shocked, “No, they are poisonous!” Having been an extension agent for something like forty years, he knows what he is talking about. I explained that I use them on my pots, not in them. They have lovely veining—not as fine as that of the even-more-lowly burdock, but impressively dramatic and strong. Ken arrived on his 4-wheeler with an armload of magnificent rhubarb stalks with all their leaves.

Due to the thick center stalk in a rhubarb leaf, using the leaf as it grows can cut right through the clay when I lay it out. Hence, I trim that thick area down level with the rest of leaf with sharp scissors or a knife. This gets easier with practice and I go through enough burdock and rhubarb leaves in their season to have plenty of that. Then the leaf is laid on wet, rolled-out clay and I cut around it. (I never went to kindergarten and have been making up for that ever since.) Next the leaves are dropped inside a large, plastic-draped, aluminum bowl of a pleasant shape. I make sure the bottoms of the leaves are well smoothed (read that as “smooshed”) together and the upper leaves each free to show itself off. Two or three days later, I left the whole thing out of the bowl, clean all the many edges, and set it on the racks to dry. Those leaves are majestic! If I knew where to put it, I might keep one of these big pots!

Class act

My kiln is full of pots I did not make. Last Saturday was the final session of my class through Lost River Artisans’ Cooperative. We hold it at my studio, since moving wet pots bodes doom. Six students met two weeks earlier to make their coil and slab works of art. After those were cleaned, dried, and bisque fired, the students returned to glaze them. Most find glazing a trickier task than the building, since it is hard to imagine what the opaque glaze will look like after it is fired. There will be some grand surprises when they pick up their pots!

Some students had previous experience throwing on potters’ wheels, but few studios offer handbuilding classes. Perhaps we are a society too dependent on complex machines to think of rolling out clay and pressing leaves into it as creative. To handbuild, you need only your hands, some clay, and a sense of what you and the clay might do together. It is quiet and peaceful. Even my slab roller is a simple mechanical contraption. No learning curve there: turn the wheel and the roller squeezes the clay flat between two pieces of canvas. The potential is endless! 

 

Arctium Lappamay?

I found this year’s first haul of burdock leaves along the driveway where we recycle our non-compostables. I got some odd looks from drivers of big trucks as they drove by me merrily clipping the weedy leaves with my husband’s Leatherman.  Arctium lappamay may be maligned in the books as a “troublesome weed,” and it lacks any American botanical market or cultivation potential – although some Brits and Europeans make tea with the roots. It casts burrs (hence the name) that tangle into any passing animal’s fur, and is about as unpopular a plant as one can find. But those lovely, dark green leaves are big and leathery, and their beautiful veining makes incise fascinating ridges when pressed into my clay.

I made a dozen great platters, bowls and pots with my gleanings from the recycling center! Soon the burdocks will practically come to me in several places along our lane and then in the deeply shaded roots of a huge old maple beside the creek. I aim for the patience to let those leaves grow hefty and great. A weed may merely be a plant out of place, but I know where the burdock can find love.

Searching for something to do in July? Come and visit me at the Art on Cullers Run 2014 event.