Slow Fire and the Kind of Making That Slows You Down
What surprised me most was that the piece itself taught me this. I didn’t sit down intending to create something “mindful.” In fact, I first imagined teaching it in a fairly structured way, almost like a mapped project. But as I burned, I kept responding rather than following. I changed things. Added depth. Let the spirals develop later than planned. Listened to the piece instead of controlling it.
That’s when I realized I didn’t want to teach this as a pattern to copy. I wanted to offer it as a practice.
Because there is a difference between following a design and entering a rhythm.
And I think many of us, especially creatives, know what it feels like when making shifts into that quieter place. Time changes. Pressure loosens. Something opens.
I’ve been thinking lately about how much of my work, whether in pyrography or surface design through Wild Ridge Studio, keeps circling back to this idea of attentive slowness. Repetition. Symbol. Pattern. Natural forms. The kinds of things that ask you to look longer.
Maybe Slow Fire was always hiding inside that.
I just hadn’t named it yet.
For me, Slow Fire has become a way of describing a kind of creative practice I want more of. Less output-driven. Less performative. More spacious. More intuitive. A way of making that leaves room for listening.
Which may be why it feels so aligned with this season of my work.
I’m increasingly interested in art not only as something beautiful or skillful, but as something inhabitable. Something you can enter. Something that changes how you feel while you’re making it.
That may be a lofty ambition for a wood burner and a piece of basswood.
I think craft has always carried more than people give it credit for.
The first piece in this new Slow Fire direction is called Burn to Breathe, and it centers around a mandala-inspired burn that acts more as an invitation than an instruction. A starting point, not a destination.
I don’t want people recreating my piece. I want them to discover theirs.
That feels like teaching in a truer sense.
And maybe that is what excites me most about this new body of work. It doesn’t feel like stepping away from pyrography. It feels like stepping deeper into one of its quieter possibilities.
I have a feeling Slow Fire is only beginning to show me what it wants to become. A workshop series, yes. Perhaps more than that. A body of work. A philosophy. Possibly even a book someday, which feels wild to write but also… maybe not impossible.
If this kind of making speaks to you, I’d love to invite you to the first Slow Fire workshop inside Pyrography Academy. And if nothing else, I hope it nudges you to consider that your creative practice can hold more than productivity.
Sometimes it can hold peace too.
