Creating a kiln for making your own charcoal:
Materials: 50–55 gallon metal drum unlined and food grade, 22–30 gallon drum unlined and food grade with bolt lid, 1/4 a cord hardwood, lard, scrap wood, Wura Ogunji, Belkis Ayon, a BA in Anthropology, a multicultural background, and Victoria Finlay’s book Colors that describes the logwood trade and Europe’s appetite in the 1700s for the darkest black dye.
1. Finding your materials – This is probably the most tedious part of the process. Charcoal, as an ancient drawing material, provides an opportunity to travel through time, touch, feel, and contemplate sheen, weight, and emotional appeal. You can try calling around to numbers you find online from websites or postings but for central Austin, it’s not great. The most fruitful method is driving around in a rural area keeping an eye out for barrels at local stores. For the wood, get scrap from postings and hardwood from a local supplier that sells wood for smoking meats. Colors states “Many Belizeans today are descended from the slaves who were forced to cut down this heavy dye-wood. For no other reason than to help Europe be more black.” Lard is at your local grocery.
2. Prepping your barrels – If there’s liquid in your barrels, pour out and dry them with the sun. Then, do your first burn. Load both barrels with scrap wood and light a fire. Let the fire burn out (1–2hrs). After the barrels have cooled, drill vent holes around the circumference of the smaller barrel about two inches below the top rim. This helps with pyrolysis by allowing the gases released by the super-heated wood to escape. Do the same for the larger barrel but put the holes two inches above the lower rim. This helps provide oxygen. Make a lid for the bigger barrel by using a piece of sheet metal with a hole cut in the lid and a stack (hollow cylinder) to put on top. If you can’t assemble that yourself, get help or buy a large barrel with a lid and use a cut wheel.
I don’t know. This part would be complicated if you don’t have access to the tools. It’s important to stay motivated here. Seeking compressed charcoal’s blackness and saturation offers an intimate engagement with line and form. I investigate the use of line through a combination of cord and thread in collagraphy, bundling, binding and knot making. It becomes a medium and a rhythm for connecting spaces and objects. The lines use paths that are often non-linear, much like our own experiences of identity. I use form in both representational and abstract ways to depict a moment or offer contemplation.
3. Assembly – Load the smaller barrel with hardwood and bolt the lid on. Put the smaller barrel inside the larger one. Load the larger barrel with scrap wood around and on top of the smaller one. Drizzle wood with lard. Light on fire. Once the fire gets going, put the lid and stack on. Let it burn out and cool for at least 6 hours. While it cools, I reflect on the ritual breaking down and reconstruction of compressed charcoal in recurring motifs such as hair. Through these repeated gestures, I grapple with questions of heritage, fragmentation, and the labor of self-definition.
4. Charcoal – Remove stack and lid. Inside the smaller barrel should be charcoal. Focus on the color black and how the charcoal emphasizes its silky, matte quality, and its ability to absorb all colors from light. It connects to deeper histories of labor and desire.
Why a kiln? Charcoal is wood that is not burned and instead baked and deprived of oxygen.
5. Art – My work becomes a world of mythology where I’m describing myself and acting as an intermediary. Self Portrait #5 places a gestural portrait of hair and a brick of charcoal together to present a moment of internal cultural meditation. I use line weight in the hair to cross space, make connections, and form an abstraction of self. The compressed charcoal’s carved planes of varied saturations are symbolic of the multiple facets of black identity. The charcoal has been simultaneously destroyed and reconstituted. Next to each other, these objects depict the many forms of identity and heritage that exist within me over time. I’m looking ahead to further material investigations to showcase the multi-faceted nature of reconstructed identities. I’m committed to deepening my research in the pursuit of better understanding how fragmented heritage informs our views of labor and transforms the means of nurture.