I have been working with clay for many years now and the most satisfying part is to develop new expressions with all the new materials coming in. Have you heard about paper clay? Take a look at the big letters in the sculpture link.
Raku is a spontaneous and popular technique. It’s not so hard to build your own kiln; I learnt the technique in the early 90’s and have built many kilns since then. My Raku kiln is a wood fired kiln which you can get a description for by clicking the link