The Raku Heist
A moonlit backyard pottery studio in Taos, New Mexico at 2:17 AM, where a homemade raku kiln built from a trash can and ceramic fiber is glowing tangerine-orange beside a kiddie pool full of sawdust and a garden hose that hasn't had water pressure since Tuesday.
A retired art teacher named Dolores has spent eleven months hand-building a four-foot raku sculpture of a coyote for the Taos Plaza juried show — the entry deadline is 9 AM today and the piece needs its final post-firing reduction in the sawdust pit to get the signature crackle glaze. The kiln thermometer reads 1,832°F, right in the sweet spot, but the tongs Dolores ordered are still on a UPS truck somewhere near Albuquerque and the only thing available to pull a sixty-pound sculpture from a live kiln is a pair of engine hoists, two oven mitts, and Double's absolute conviction that they did something like this once before. Double wants to lever it out with the hoist, swing it into the sawdust, and cover it — full send, one motion, no hesitation. Bust wants to let the kiln cool overnight, skip the crackle finish entirely, and enter the piece with a plain matte glaze that Dolores will hate but that won't shatter on the patio.
“Last time I touched a hot kiln it didn't go great, I'll be honest — but that was a PEEPHOLE situation, this is a HOIST situation, completely different physics.”
“You fused thirty-seven bowls into a tumor in Tucson and now you want to airlift a sixty-pound coyote over a kiddie pool using car parts and confidence.”
The engine hoist caught the coyote clean, but the swing arc was about fourteen inches too wide — the sculpture clipped the edge of the kiddie pool, sheared off at the neck, and the sixty-pound torso landed in the sawdust like a meteor while the head rolled across the patio and came to rest against Dolores's sandal, still glowing faintly orange and achieving, it must be said, a genuinely beautiful crackle finish.
The HEAD got the crackle though, Dolores — enter the head, it's a statement piece now.
Dolores is crying into a garden hose with no water pressure and you're workshopping a decapitated coyote as conceptual art.