Powerful Life

He has a passion for pottery

By day, Micah Vogel builds, installs and maintains the fancy equipment that protects OPPD’s substations and generation plants so customers can enjoy reliable power.

But at night, the 40-year-old senior relay technician settles into his basement in Council Bluffs and slaps a blob of clay onto a pottery wheel. An electric motor spins it into a blur.

Vogel dips his fingers into a bucket of muddy water, cups the clay in his hands, and squeezes. The clay transforms in his grip, swirling and yielding to the pressure until, seconds later, it becomes a bowl.

“It’s relaxing,” Vogel said. “I love taking something raw and seeing it turn into something different. You get these little lumps of mud, and you can turn them into art, you can turn them into functional ware. You can blur the line between art and function.”

The balance between art and function is important for Vogel, a 15-year OPPD veteran with both a technical and creative mind.

Vogel enjoys a lot of hobbies, from cooking to beer brewing to riding motorcycles. He plays the drums, and he and his wife, Gaby, love to travel. But pottery, in particular, has spoken to him in ways he never imagined – and he’s using those skills to help others.

Technical skills

Before he inspected and maintained relay switches for OPPD, Vogel was a college student from Orange City, Iowa, studying his way to a secondary education degree.

But his heart wasn’t in it. As a kid, he liked disassembling items to see how they worked. A technical field suited him better.

“I was one of those kids where nothing ever got thrown away in one piece,” he said. “Everything had to be taken apart.”

So, he decided to pursue an industrial instrumentation and control degree from Northwest Iowa Community College, the same degree his father had earned years earlier.

As a senior relay technician, Vogel helps build, install, program and maintain the relays that protect OPPD’s vital substation and power plant equipment.

In simple terms, he makes sure that relays are monitoring OPPD machinery as they should and stopping an electrical current when they detect a problem. A relay is a switch that automatically “trips” to isolate faults in an electrical system and prevent damage to other components. But just like an old television or laptop, relays don’t last forever, and relay technicians must repair or replace them.

“I really like being in the field,” Vogel said. “This job requires a nice mixture of technical skills and computer-related skills, and I get to put my hands on stuff.”

In the studio

Vogel sees some parallels between the technical work at OPPD and the art he produces on his own. If something goes wrong, on a pottery piece or in a substation, he’ll review his work, diagnose, then try another approach.

“There’s troubleshooting involved in both,” he said. “If something doesn’t quite work, you can do a postmortem and figure it out. I did this, and then this happened. There’s a logical sequence that applies to both.”

In his studio, Vogel surrounds himself with Star Wars memorabilia and small plants growing in some of his homemade pots. On a shelf next to him are clay-shaping tools. Two of his six dogs scamper around the room, tails wagging furiously. A gravelly Tom Waits song wails in the background.

Vogel tests the clay with his finger, making sure it won’t crack. Shaping the clay is only the beginning of a process that involves at least two trips to a kiln for proper hardening. A square board, called a bat, creates a solid surface where the clay can spin and then peel off easily for drying.

He squishes the clay in his fingers, then stamps it down onto the wheel. The clay makes a wet slurping sound as he molds it.

Once the clay is shaped, Vogel lets it sit until it’s “bone dry,” with almost all the moisture evaporated. Then he heats it once in a bisque fire to remove even more.

With nearly all the moisture gone, he applies a protective glaze – a mixture of water, glasses, chemicals and clays that form a smooth shell around the pottery. Then he puts the piece in a kiln again, firing it to even higher temperatures until it vitrifies, creating a glasslike surface.

Using his talents to help

A few months ago, Vogel and his coworkers watched a presentation about an OPPD program that helps struggling customers pay their electric bills. Andy Korytowski, a substation supervisor, suggested their department help raise money for the Energy Assistance Program.

Vogel jumped at the chance. He proposed a fundraiser that combined two of his passions: pottery and cooking.

With beef and beans donated from coworkers, he cooked three batches of chili – about nine gallons – over three evenings. He also made 40 ceramic bowls as giveaway prizes for participants. The event sold 30 tickets and raised more than $2,000.

“I just thought it would be a good way for us to do something as a department,” Vogel said. “That was super fun. It’s rewarding to get to help that part of the organization, and it’s a fun little celebration to have with coworkers.”

Learning the craft

Vogel’s early works were thick, wobbly-looking pieces, but with time, he refined his technique.

He signed up for a “wheel throwing” class, where students learn to mold clay into bowls, pots and other shapes. In a studio just north of downtown Omaha, he absorbed as much as he could. He watched YouTube tutorials. Attended conferences and workshops. And practiced.

“I thought it would be super cool,” he said. “I had wanted to do it forever, and then I finally got to do it, and I was hooked. You work on something from start to finish, and then you get to use it.”

Over time, he tried different styles. Some of his pieces have finger swirls, or drips down the rim, or funky little ceramic cups stuck to the sides. Some are only half-glazed, giving them different textures depending on where you touch.

‘Loves all things creative’

His work has impressed other artists. Mari Dailey, a pottery artist who also happens to be Vogel’s neighbor, saw some of his early work on Instagram, and the two eventually became friends.

“He was a novice at first, but in the short time I’ve observed his work, I realized he was learning really fast,” Dailey said. “He’s moving along faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

Dailey said Vogel “loves all things creative,” including poetry readings and music.

“He’s just a really generous and curious person,” Dailey said. “My favorite thing about Micah is that he can be in any crowd, with others talking, and he’ll play close attention. He stays interested in others and never get distracted. He’s always present.”

For Vogel, the hobby’s greatest blessing is all the new friends.

“I love the pottery community,” he said. “I have a couple of good friends that I’ve met through the community, and they’ve introduced me to others. It’s a warm, welcoming community, and it’s fun to hang out with creative types.”