Land Kilns, 1979-1992, refractory cement, ceramic fiber blanket, clay, propane, mixed media, variable dimensions. 
Metabolism and Mortality/O2, 1992, industrial print, 40 in. x 48 in. 
Metabolism and Mortality/O2, post firing site view, 1992, steel, glass, refractory cement, branches, thermometers, beech tree, each element 6 ft. dia. 
Metabolism and Mortality/O2, night firing, 1992, steel, glass, refractory cement, branches, propane, beech tree, each element 6 ft. dia. 
Metabolism and Mortality/O2, Furnace, post-firing, 1992, steel, refractory cement, branches, 6 ft. dia. 
Metabolism and Mortality/O2, Greenhouse, post firing, 1992, steel, glass, thermometers, 6 ft. dia. 
Metabolism and Mortality/O2, video still, firing preparation, 1992, steel, refractory cement, branches, propane, 6 ft. dia. 
Metabolism and Mortality/O2, video still, firing, 1992, steel, refractory cement, branches, propane, 6 ft. dia.
John Roloff: Land Kilns, 1979-1992
The Land Kilns, 1979-1992, are environmentally sited ceramic kilns utilized as an alchemical instrument in and of the landscape. They are experimental site-works for exploring salient and poetic questions/themes related to ceramics, geology, global metabolism, systemic thought/material practice and environmental art.
The last realized Land Kiln, Metabolism and Mortality/O2, was created for the 1992 NCECA conference and sited at the Tyler School of Art, Elkins Park, PA, 1992. The project’s two principal elements: Furnace and Greenhouse are sited along the drip line of a large, now dead beech tree on the Tyler campus. These two instruments symbolically represent the beech tree’s life and death systems on a macro-molecular level and as an elemental protagonist. Furnace and Greenhouse were envisioned as ions of an oxygen molecule (O2) separated by the primal and arboreal forces of entropy and dissolution but are still united and activated by similar thermal processes: Furnace by ignition of fossil fuels developed by the photosynthesis of sunlight in ancient forests and their subsequent geologic distillation, and Greenhouse by the collection and entrainment of contemporary solar energy. The solar heat within the Greenhouse is measured differentially from the outside atmosphere by its internal thermometers (a span of as much as 30o F. between the inner and outer environments has been noted).
