Sivertson Gallery

Do you raku? We do!

Save the date! Join us on Saturday, October 1, from 10am-3pm in the Sivertson Gallery parking lot

It’s back again this year! Join us for our annual fan favorite with artists Richard Gruchalla and Carrin Rosetti. Buy a bowl to glaze yourself, then watch the dramatic raku firing process right here in the Sivertson Gallery parking lot. All pieces will be fired by 5:30pm, and you’ll go home with your own work of art.

Dress for the outdoors, as we’ll hold this event rain or shine, warm or cold weather. No registration necessary — just come! Snapshots from recent years give you a flavor of this fun, casual gathering:

Meet raku artists Richard Gruchalla and Carrin Rosetti

“There is something so rewarding about creating a beautiful object out of mud. It is elemental—of earth, air, fire, and water. The combining of these things with your own hands, skills, and imagination—and turning nothing into something—is alchemy.”

For more than three decades, Richard Gruchalla has made his living as a potter. For many of those years, he has worked in collaboration with his wife, Carrin Rosetti.

Richard and Carrin work in the vessel form with a firing process known as raku. Raku is a thrilling process of firing clay: the piece is put through rapid extremes of temperature and has a distinctive look when done. The clay is blackened, the glazes are crackled, and the atmosphere affects the colorants in the glazes; it emerges from fire into a piece of beauty.

Both Richard and Carrin are past recipients of McKnight Fellowship Awards given through the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council of Minnesota.

Artist statement

We make objects that sometimes spark a sense of remembrance. This is often subtle. There are things hidden in the memory and not easily brought into focus. Where do ideas come from?…We look. We enjoy the world we see. We gather things around ourselves that bring us pleasure — maybe they remind us of a shared event, or of a person we have gotten to know. Perhaps somewhere we overheard someone say, “I really like that color!” and now we see that color everywhere.

Objects. Events. People. The visual lift of a graceful curve. The repetitive texture of beaten copper. The cloudy translucence of polished jade. Ancient Chinese cast bronze? Mideastern alabaster? American Arts and Crafts?

We make objects that sometimes come from a spark of remembrance.

We work in clay. We call the process “American Raku.” Sometimes we add other materials to the finished pieces — wire, wooden pegs, metallic leaf, stone, string, etc.

— Richard Gruchalla and Carrin Rosetti

You can view the gorgeous vessels made by Richard Gruchalla and Carrin Rosetti at our gallery in Grand Marais.