This week's Harvest Moon brought us to thinking about Johnny Ortiz (@johnnyadaoortiz @shed_project), who prefers to fire his micaceous clay pots during full moons. Glenn Adamson (@glenn_adamson) describes Johnny's practice: Artist and chef Johnny Ortiz digs deep in his work — literally. His primary ceramic material is micaceous “wild clay,” harvested in his home state of New Mexico. The micaceous clay he uses is from the same terrain his ancestors, Taos pueblo, have dug for hundreds if not thousands of years. When he first re-discovered this resource, his first instinct was to leave it in the ground: it seemed, he says, “too stunning to do anything with.” But he gradually came to grips with it, seeing in the clay a means of connecting to his own ancestral past, as well as to present-day aesthetic possibilities. He makes the material his own through an elaborate series of procedures, first sanding the pots with rough sandstone and then burnishing with smoother river stone, pit firing them with red mountain cedar he gathered from the mountains he inhabits, and finally, “curing” them with elk marrow and beeswax. We hope everyone is enjoying the start to autumn! Photo by Maida Branch (@maidagoods) and Johnny Ortiz. Words by Glenn Adamson.