Mars Hill Ceramics in the News

The excerpt from this article is run with permission from Northern Arizona’s Mountain Living. To read the entire article, pick up the September 2005 edition.

Pluto and the Potter: Artist Maintains Ceramics Studio on Lowell Observatory Campus
By Rose Houk

For nearly 25 years, Jerry McGlothlin has maintained his pottery studio high on a hill overlooking Flagstaff. It’s the same hill where Bostonian Percival Lowell located his observatory for viewing the planet Mars in 1894. And while people still watch the wonders of the night sky from Lowell Observatory, most are unaware that a productive artist works behind the scenes at Mars Hill Ceramics.

McGlothlin is a potter. His studio is located in the C.O. Lampland Dome, known affectionately among Lowell staffers as “Jiffy Pop,” for the chrome-bumper-shiny aluminum surface. Others liken it to a venerable Airstream trailer and have affixed an Arizona license plate to reinforce the image. In the early 20th century, when the dome was canvas-covered, mathematician Carl Lampland came to Lowell to search for the so-called Planet X. He used a 40-inch telescope there. But after the telescope fulfilled its usefulness, it was removed and the dome was to be torn down. Jerry McGlothlin stepped in, and Lowell management agreed that renovating the dome was a good idea. It now serves dual duty as the observatory’s woodshop and McGlothlin’s ceramic studio.

Through the day, McGlothlin works as the observatory’s superintendent of buildings and grounds. But when he clocks out in the late afternoon and on weekends, he goes upstairs in the dome, sits down at his pottery wheel and fashions unformed mounds of moist clay into an array of functional and beautiful stoneware. “I’m not a real philosophical potter,” he said. “I’ll do something for a while, then try something new. A lot of times I sit down and what comes out, comes out.” Yet everything about throwing pottery on a wheel revolves around being centered. And so it seems only appropriate that the circular space of a telescope dome has inspired wonderful creations from this potter’s hands.

McGlothlin uses two wheels, an old one that’s pretty much “given out” and a newer “Cadillac” model. When he’s finished a number of pieces, it’s time for firing, the process that cooks the clay to a hardened state. Each piece is placed carefully on shelves in the kiln that stands just outside. Jerry made the kiln too — a downdraft style fueled by natural gas. The first step is bisque firing, baking the pots to 1,860 degrees Fahrenheit. This lower-heat stage imparts a light salmon color to the clay and removes most of the moisture.

Every pot is then taken out of the kiln, glazed, and reloaded for the final, hottest firing — 2,380 degrees — for about 18 hours. With the kiln’s reduction process, as opposed to one of oxidation, the clay takes on “nice toasty warm colors,” McGlothlin noted. The result is rustic stoneware with random speckles and dots. The finer porcelain clays that he works assume a glossier, more finished look that is different. The products of many hours of labor — mugs, pitchers, platters, vases and lidded jars glazed in terra cotta, smoky grays, and rich blues and greens — fill a tabletop downstairs.

As with most everything he does, McGlothlin is intimately familiar with the workings of the kiln. “I’ve gotten to know this one in the last 20 firings or so.” Yet, he expressed an amazement at how much heat is “inside this little brick house.” Preparing for a Fourth of July arts and crafts fair downtown, Jerry ran through four firings. For his larger, traditional winter show and sale at Lowell, he’ll complete five or six firings.

For McGlothlin, all of this is truly a labor of love.