PHOTO: Prue Cullen, Jamie-Lea Trindall, Anna Kaineder, Kevin ‘Sooty’ Welsh, Kookie Atkins and Sue Webb from the Coonamble Arts Alive Society are thrilled to finally have a kiln back in their studio after being without one for around six months. The new kiln arrived last week and was connected to power on Monday.
By OLIVER BROWN
LOCAL amateur and professional artists are looking forward to taking the new Coonamble Arts Alive Society kiln out for a test drive to finish off their latest ceramic projects.
The new kiln, which was delivered last week before being connected on Monday 27 September, will replace the society’s old kiln, which broke earlier this year.
The loss of the old kiln earlier this year has meant some of the area’s local artists have missed out on opportunities to create and sell their ceramics, creating quite a backlog in their work.
President of Coonamble Arts Alive Kookie Atkins said the wall of the studio needed to be temporarily taken out to remove the old kiln and install the new one, but she was pleased to see it arrive.
“It’ll be nice to get back to doing firings here because a lot of people have been waiting for a while, I think since about March,” Mrs Atkins said.
According to Ms Atkins, the delivery of the kiln was delayed by a variety of factors.
“There’s a huge wait on kilns at the moment – about six months – from what we can gather, there’s been a lot more demand for kilns, people are buying them themselves because of COVID,” she said.
“A lot of the parts do come in from overseas and then they’re assembled here – ours was made in Newcastle – I think there’s been a delay on a lot of the parts as well.”
The new kiln was partially funded by a crowd funding campaign set up when the previous one broke.
Mrs Atkins says the campaign raised about $4500 which was a big help in covering the overall cost of more than $12,000.
The new 340 litre kiln is slightly smaller than the previous one, although Ms Atkins pointed out a benefit of this is they would be able to fire smaller batches more frequently.
Jamie-Lea Trindall, Kookie Atkins and Sue Webb check out the inside of the new kiln.
This was welcome news to local artist Anna Kaineder, who said the loss of the kiln took away a source of revenue for local artists and the society itself.
“I think a lot of people have been waiting desperately for this kiln to arrive – it will help keep us going and bring back all the people who stopped making while they were waiting for it to happen,” she said.
“In that time as well, we had people from Tooraweenah and other places asking to hire the kiln. It was a source of revenue for us that we’ve missed out on, so it’ll be nice to be able to get that up and running again and offer the community that service as well.”
Though the studio was one of many things temporarily closed due to the COVID lockdown, several artists have kept up their making and have just been waiting on the new kiln to finish them off.
“I’ve got a whole heap of things waiting to be fired – I’d like to test some glazes and some new clay/glaze combinations,” Ms Kaineder said.
“And it’ll just be nice to have that magic feeling of opening up the kiln again – it’s sort of like Christmas every time we do it.”
Another artist who has built up quite a backlog of ceramic work is Kevin ‘Sooty’ Welsh, who said he was also excited to have local access to a kiln again.
“It’s been quite some time without us having a kiln and it’s affected a few of us in certain ways, whether it being just not being able to come in and get some things fired and then there are a few of us who have exhibitions coming up, so it’s definitely going to help us all,” Mr Welsh said.
Kevin ‘Sooty’ Welsh has built up quite a ceramics stockpile and looks forward to getting them fired.
Mr Welsh said he was excited to get several of his pieces fired before heading off to various markets in different parts of the state as well as prepare for the upcoming local Outback Archies competition.