Land Monitor / Fired Volcanic Boulder

Performance kiln/furnace, 20 ft. long, steel, ceramic fiber blanket, propane, earth, borax, lava boulder, near the J volcano outside Albuquerque, NM, 1980.

Left: night firing, kiln in place

Middle: molten state, kiln removed

Right: cooled, fused state

Land Monitor/Fired Volcanic Boulder is the second large environmental performance/ kiln work after Fired and Glazed Earth Piece, 1979. The steel and ceramic fiber blanket kiln was removed at the peak of the firing to expose the mafic (high iron/magnesium – low silica) basalt boulder, from the adjacent volcano, fired to a near-molten temperature, in an attempt for the viewer to physically re-experience the boulder's birth/origin by returning it to a molten state.

The cooled, altered, boulder and fused volcanic sand remained after the firing as a “land monitor,” of similar proportions to the monitor ships (ironclads) of the American Civil War, see: .

Furnace Projects, Constance Lewallan;

Kiln Projects: Material and Process Experiments in/of the Landscape, John Roloff