At the Temple Ambler Campout, students from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture Ceramics Program will be going old school — think ancient — as they present a pit firing demonstration that all campers can experience firsthand.

"Pit firing is a very old — one of the oldest — ways of firing ceramic work. When I say ceramic, I mean transforming clay, which is what we dig from the earth, and making that a hard, permanent material which is what we call ceramic — kind of transforming it back to stone," said Lauren Sandler, Associate Professor and Program Head of Ceramics. "A pit firing is essentially digging a hole in the ground, filling that hole with clay objects and covering it with combustible material, such as wood or dried food or dung, things like that. We ignite that and let it first do kind of a hot burn, which burns a lot of that material off, and then continue with a slow, long burn over the course of a day or so depending on the things that are that are put in the pit with the ware."

The Temple Ambler Campout will be held from 2 p.m. Saturday, September 21 through 10 a.m. Saturday, September 22. Registration is still open for the Campout and the Science of Scary! This family-friendly event is for all ages! During the Campout, experience tent camping in the relaxed atmosphere of the Ambler Campus. Registration is just $30 per campsite for visitors and $20 per campsite for Temple students, faculty and staff (six people per campsite).

On September 21, the Ceramics students will construct a "pit" with cinder blocks and load it with combustible material for a big fire — different materials create different effects on the ceramics, according to Sandler. Tyler students will then place ceramicware that they will have made within the "pit" — including some items created from clay from the Ambler Arboretum.

On September 22, the students will pull out their creations and show them to our campers. Ceramics students and faculty members, including Sandler and Natalie Kuenzi, Adjunct Professor of Ceramics and a program alumna, will be on hand to talk about the process during the Campout. (Please Note: The Ceramics Pit Firing is weather dependent. Heavy rain might prevent the firing.) View the whole schedule of Campout events here.

"I've been wanting to do something with Temple Ambler for the past five years," said Sandler. "It's a different experience, a different learning process and there will be different effects on the objects and materials."

According to Sandler, the Ceramics students are already getting ready for the Campout, making objects out of clay to fire at the event.

"We will likely be applying different liquid surfaces to those objects — one of those is called terra sigillata. Many people have seen terra sigillata but perhaps don't know what that is. Those old Greek red and black ware objects, they used terra sigillata, which translates to sealed earth," she said. "We put another material in that called deflocculant, which changes the particles within that liquid clay so that the fine particles rise, and the heavy particles fall. The fine particles that are on top is the terra sigillata. We siphon that out and we paint the ceramicware or the objects with that sigillata. Then we burnish it and it gives it a nice sheen."

Many of the students will be applying terra sigillata to their clay objects, said Sandler.

"We will then do what we call a bisque firing, which is an initial firing that makes the objects hard so that we can then take them and put them in the pit firing. We'll bring the objects that we've they've already made and we've already bisque fired to Temple Ambler," she said. "We will then construct the kiln out of cinderblock — you can do this in any type of container that can handle heat. Then we will fill it with a mix of the objects and different combustible material. We will fire it that day and then come back the next day, unload it and look at the things that we've made."

Being part of the Temple Ambler Campout, Sandler said, "I think serves many positive purposes."

"One is getting us out of our studio, which is always good, and having new experiences — something we might not be able to do otherwise," she said. "It's also a great opportunity to collaborate with other people, getting to know the community at Temple Ambler, what is happening there and what we might be able to do together. I think that just makes teaching and learning creative work more engaging and just more interesting for all of us — it makes it more dynamic."

According to Sandler, Tyler's Ceramic Materials class has incorporated the Temple Ambler Campout demonstration into their curriculum.

"The class focuses on talking about ceramic materials, clays and glazes — it's really teaching students the science of clay. Where do these things come from? What are they? How do we make them?" she said. "It also presents some of the history of ceramics but more as a way for them to think about how they might incorporate that knowledge into their own practice.

There are many different types of clays, Sandler said, "and there are many different types of glazes — that also changes depending on the type of kilns and firings one is doing."

"You're going to have a different clay body or glaze or surface treatment in a pit firing than you will do in a different type of wood firing or an electric firing or a gas kiln firing. The students in that class will be making some ceramics for this and talking about the things that happen within this type of kiln, the history of this type of firing, the materials that one might use in this firing," she said. "Those students will be making terra sigillata and applying that to the pieces. We'll also explore the ways in which you can place work inside these pit fires, which have different results. You can use a sagger — within a kiln, you create another enclosed space so you're creating an environment within an environment. Depending on what you put inside that sagger results in different effects."

For example, Sandler said, wrapping the ceramicware in toilet paper and then wrapping that with tinfoil, "causes the toilet paper, which is just carbon that is burning off, to be absorbed into the clay and it will turn the objects this beautiful metallic black."

Clay dug from Temple Ambler and the Ambler Arboretum will also be incorporated in the ceramicware projects, Sandler said.

"There's beautiful clay at Temple Ambler. It's already quite plastic, which means I can make a vertical, hollow form and it will stand up and hold its shape. It won't slump down," she said. "It fires to a beautiful kind of terracotta red, as many clays in this region of Philadelphia do."

Sandler said some of the clay from campus will be brought back to the Ceramics studio and the Ceramics Materials class "and we'll have the students do some research, some experimenting, make some things with it."

"Then we will bring that back to campus and put it in the pit firing, which I think will be this really lovely experience of taking material from that location, firing it and bringing it back to where it came from," she said. "Ultimately, I hope our students have fun with this project — fun is a great part of creative and learning practices. I hope it will be a collaborative and a collective experience for us and the people that come to the campout. I hope that the students learn new ways of working with the material and firing their work that they can incorporate into their own practice."

Temple's schools, colleges and programs, Sandler said, "exist within communities."

"We are not islands. Whether it's the neighborhood of Ambler or the community of North Philadelphia, we exist amongst other people. When any of us are able to create opportunities that bring greater awareness into our experience, that start a dialogue between people, that break down barriers, that's beneficial to everyone," she said. "For my students and for me, that brings us out of this very kind of hermetic experience of school or the studio. They will leave school, and they will become artists or educators, or whatever they choose to be — they will be community members in other spaces among other people. This is experiential learning, which is so much more impactful."