Okay. I'm Daryl Frost, and I've got a studio on Harley Road, where I sell lots of other people's work, but I also have my own studio. It's just a small 360 square meter studio, so just a little one. Where I make a lot of sculpture, a lot of work out of clay recently, but I work in other mediums when I want to.
Yeah. I was in hospital when I was quite young and played with clay. And then when I was 14 I rode my motorbike from Lee, which is North Of Auckland, all the way down to Auckland with all my mates and we went to a potter's house for lunch and my mate's dad. I remember walking through his studio at that young age and just going, wow. This is somewhere where I could live and work. I did my building apprenticeship, and while I was doing that, I did night class pottery. I just wanted to see how the other half lived. So I gave up being a builder, built a house truck, ended up in Nelson a few years later, was supposed to be here for six weeks and never left.
Anagama. Yeah. Which is a tunnel kiln, giant tunnel kiln. It sort of looks like a cucumber going up a hill. There's no bag walls. There's nothing apart from the pots in there. It's one of the most scariest, riskiest, but most fascinating ways to fire pottery. You see flames coming up the top and out the sides – it's almost performance art at times. But mostly, it's sitting there, watching, listening to the kiln, looking at the pots, and working out what you need to do to control it.
When I was studying at Nelson Polytech, I worked with amazing potters like John Crawford, Christine Boswick, Ross Richards, Chester Neely, Richard Parker. Some were wood firers, some were domestic firers. My calling was the more looseness, the more intriguing, the more challenging sort of style.
I did my hundredth firing a couple years ago. I had to go back and figure out how many I'd done, only counting those I was majorly involved with. I've cracked over a hundred now. There was an exhibition at the Suter. That took about three years from concept to show, because I only fire my big kiln one, two times a year. It's just my life. It's how I live and make a living nowadays.
Probably 80% of a firing is the way you load it. You have to make the work with the right clays – I make all my own clays and slips. Then it's where and how you put them in the kiln, what angle, what clay goes where. You're trying to think like a river of water or flame flowing through the pots. You want some protected, some really abused, thicker ones for where you're going to side stoke. Then the firing, getting it hot enough, stirring it, getting the ashes, manipulating the flame, and finally deciding how to close it down and stop the fire. For a big anagama firing, it's five days, twenty-four hours a day, with someone always there feeding wood in every few minutes.
Exactly. I got shown that by Daryl Robinson, another wood firer. It's a tradition I've carried on. I'm too scared now to not do one without flowers. I pick flowers off my property, which sometimes is quite difficult to find, but it's part of the process. When I'm firing, that's my whole world for those days.
Post-firing depression is quite a hard thing to get over. When I'm making the work, I know where I want it to go in the kiln and how I expect it to look – and nine times out of ten it doesn't happen. When it does, it's like Christmas. Other times, you look at pieces that didn't work and either see the beauty or decide to refire them. I've fired some pots three, four, five times to get the effect I want. It's a very fluid way of thinking, but yes, post-firing depression is something you have to get used to.
When I was first introducing my work, someone I respected called it violent. That shocked me, but later I realized it was male – I'm a country boy, love trucks and sheds and chainsaws. With my dyslexia and ADHD, this is how I express myself. I take risks, go the extra mile, chase the craziness. I keep things raw and alive, always looking for a new way, a new slip, a new technique. That's why I've rebuilt my kiln again – for newer, fresher work.
The scallop shells keep work apart – they calcify to powder, leaving little fossils where salt reacts with the clay. My hip – after a hip operation, I asked for it back, roasted it, crushed it, and put it in a glaze. I put that glaze on a couple pieces of work that now my daughters have, so they'll always have a piece of me. I also do this for others, using a bit of someone's ashes in a glaze for sculptures, so instead of a box of ashes, you have a piece of artwork. Human ashes can go from bluey gray to red spots, and adding different glazes changes the color.
Yes. Nelson Airport used to have a lot of my work – fences, sculptures, barrier-breaking things. When they moved, the sculptures went to the councils. I made big stainless steel fences, some now at the port in Nelson. With non-ceramic commissions, you work with the client, which is tricky because they often pay years before seeing the work. But I've always delivered something they're happy with. I'm doing less of that now due to my body – it’s a physical job!
It comes down to being a one-off, an original. I can't even make two coffee cups look the same. My brain gets bored. I usually make ten of something, pick one, make ten more of that, and so on, but I rarely do that now. My work has evolved naturally – when I started, there were barely any documentaries or resources. Now you can Google anything. But there's nothing like learning from someone right beside you, watching their hands. Touch and feel are everything.
I wish I'd known more about marketing and computers. 80% of all artwork is selling your name, not what you make. Luckily, I've had people help me with that. I probably would have been richer if I'd made more domestic ware, but I chose a different path. My "sinkers" platters with crows have kept me going for the last twenty or thirty years – they're my domestic ware, all handmade and unique.
I think they forget that some of us are computer illiterate – I need help with applications for funding. Maybe they could run a workshop where you can come in, talk to someone, and get help applying. Getting funding, like for my hundredth show, was important as much for the recognition as the money.
I'm on Harley Road, in Tasman, just off the main road. My website will hopefully get better one day.
project, with funding from 
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