earthenware

Yay Monday!

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I sort of mean that.  I'm having a hard time getting going today but maybe after another cup of tea I'll get rolling.

It's good to be home and settled.  I think it took me two good days to recover from NYC.  I do love living out here in the country.


Today will be a big making day.  I have less than 2 weeks until my Holiday Studio sale and I need certain pots to finish filling the shelves.  I've made a list and hopefully I can knock a chuck of it out today.

I've been posting new pots in my Online Shop.  There will be 4-5 more going in today.


I feel really good right now and excited about the last few shows I participated in.  It was great to see folks and to get my newest pots in their hands.  I'm going to do a little post on that later probably.  For now, I'm off to get my hands in the clay.  Have a good week everyone!

 

The Desire to Disconnect

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I've been working yesterday and today to try and get some of my 'junk' organized.  'Junk' being all the stuff on my desk, the kitchen table, the table by the window, and on top of the bookshelf by the door.  Piles. Stacks.  Stuff of varying importance. Or no importance.

As it is now I've moved most of it to my upstairs desk, which is to become my Control Center, the place from which I am going to build my Empire, or at least where I'm going to spend the next hour working to clean out my Inbox.


In the last month or longer I have seriously noticed my addiction to being 'Connected'.  I check my email several times a day, and my blog comments, and my facebook, and my Etsy, and I also have the weakness of getting sucked into surfing for god knows what on the internet.  It's not good.  It's eating away my time, my creative time, my time for tea and drawing and reading and napping.  I need to Disconnect.  I need some structure to my time on the internet.



I have a plan. I'll share more about that later.  For now lets just say that I'm happy that I've decided to work on this.  I'm not saying I'm going to do less work or use the internet less to market my art or to communicate with others.  I'm just going to do it in a healthy way, that doesn't eat so much of my time up, and make me crazy.


I'm getting some help from some of the materials and posts on this site.


The Gallery Crawl uptown went well last night.  I was in charge of the food at the Arts Council and with the help of my fellow board members Fredia and Donna we put out quite a spread.


My work at Two Doors Down looked fab and I sold a couple pieces from there.



Thanks for checking in everyone.  Have a good Friday!!







Very Happy Thursday

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Piglet thought that they ought to have a Reason for going to see everybody, like Looking for Small or Organizing an Expotition, if Pooh could think of something.
Pooh could. "We'll go because it's Thursday," he said, "and we'll go to wish everybody a Very Happy Thursday.
Come on, Piglet." 
I love Winnie the Pooh.  I think he could teach us all something.  That part above is from The House at Pooh Corner. Chapter 8.  In which Piglet does a very grand thing.

Well, I'm having a cup of tea in my new Rat cup as I wait for my oatmeal to cook.  I think it's my new favorite cup!  I was very happy with that last kiln load and look forward to some of those pots going off to new homes.

That book there by Gregg Levoy is very good.  The title is Callings.  I'm only 50 pages in but I'm really enjoying it.  It's about learning to hear/recognize and follow (or not) callings in our lives.  With the hope that this will lead up to living a more authentic life.


I worked on a few rectangular boxes yesterday.  They are fairly time consuming pots, each made up of 8 parts total.  Then the deco is pretty intensive too.

This first shot shows the three bodies, thrown without bottoms and then gently shaped.


And here they are now after I've shaped them a bit more and attached the tops and bottoms.

They are currently under plastic to allow everything to even out before I cut the lids and attach the feet.  That's probably not going to happen until tomorrow as I have a full day of getting ready for the gallery crawl in town tonight.  I'm in charge of the reception at the Arts Council and I have pots on display at a local shop.  Looks like I'll be in the kitchen most of the after noon.


Here's a paper cut sign that I made for my display at 2 Doors Down.

  One thing I learned while making this, be careful when working on paper cuts because if you poke your finger with the scalpel and then bleed all over your paper it pretty much ruins it and you have to start again!


This next part is for Anna but may be helpful to others too.

This is a close up of the tools I use for sgraffito and carving away excess clay.

 I want to mention that the working ends of the tools on the right should be filed with a flat edge as shown below. (As opposed to a knife shaped edge).


I keep a small file on hand when decorating and give them a sharpen when needed.


Okay that's quite a lot of info for today.  Breakfast is ready so I'll sign out, have a great Thursday!!

Just out of the kiln

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Some of the pots from yesterdays unloading.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGAp61klMKg

Tomorrow, September 1, is the Gallery Crawl in uptown Shelby.  My work is featured at Two Doors Down, 12 Warren Street.  I also have work at ETC Gift shop in the Arts Council and at Buffalo Creek Gallery, also on Warren St.  I hope the locals will come out and support the arts and our local businesses.

Deco. Videos

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I shot these two clips showing pots getting drawn on, layout and working towards some finished etched pieces.  I'll try and write a bit more about this and what I'm thinking as I do this soon.  For now here are the videos.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X9p3SpJapk

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZbiF6wnrDs

Stanley Mace Anderson

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Ronan took his class out to visit several potter's studios in the Penland area while I was there.  I was excited to hear that they were going out to Stanley Mace Anderson's pottery, so I decided to go along too.


Stan is an icon in the majolica world.  He's been producing his unique style of majolica pottery since the late 70's. (See article HERE).

Stan was very generous and talked to us all about his pots and process.  I love Stan's brushwork and the expressive quality of his forms and decoration.  He had shelves of work waiting to be decorated.


He had been working here at his wheel on some trays when we arrived.

This next image is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in a workshop. Stan's pots of colored stains.  I imagine these have been 'growing' here as they have been used over the past 2+ decades.



There were also shelves full of finished works.  Cups, yunomi, bowls of various sizes, many, many plates, platters, and other tableware.  All useful, all beautiful and rich in color.  I had to have a yunomi.


Stan shared that he has been brushing some white slip onto the work at the leather hard stage. This is not normally done in majolica.  The slip is loosely brushed over certain areas and sometimes he will scratch through it.  The slip gives some sense of movement under the majolica glaze and the marks give some texture.  I thought this was really brilliant.

I totally fell in love with the separately thrown and added foot on the yunomi.


I'll be trying this soon.  Stan also does this on some tall footed bowls and tureens, as well as ewers and tall teapot forms.


This is the first majolica pot I have ever bought!!  I am happy that it's one of Stan's and I'm pretty sure next time I go back I'll be getting a plate.

 

Pulling a Fitch

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After watching Doug make several jugs while he was here it's only fitting that I felt the need to have a go at a few.  Doug makes it all look easy and it's really fun to watch him make a big jug all in one go by using the weedburner to speed things along.

I made these two today and they seem okay for the most part.  They are about 11" tall and rounder than most pitchers I usually make.  I used the burner and got them this far.


I'm going to let them rest over night before coating them in slip.

I haven't really felt like blogging too much to tell you the truth.  After having Doug and Hannah here for so long it's not very fulfilling to be here in the virtual world. " There's nothing like the real thing baby."

I'm sure I'll get back in the swing of it as time goes on.  I'm struggling with being a bit down and I feel like one of the best things I can do is practice being in the present moment.  Maybe I can blog about that.  Well, we'll see.  For now it's back outside for some time w. Karma and then off to the Gallery Crawl in town.

Cheers everyone!

Working on the Jar Ideas

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Below are a couple of videos of me showing some work in progress and talking about moving these pots forward.

It's good to be in this place of not knowing exactly what to do, or setting up some problems to be solved.  I feel like most of this sort of thing gets worked out in the 'doing' as opposed to the 'thinking about it'.  Both ways are valuable, but for me I have to see it in clay to really know what works best.  You'll see I did some sketching in the first video.  That's an okay jumping off point, but honestly I don't sketch pots too much.  If I do it's just to remind me of some idea that I had so that I remember to make it later.  This leads me to more thoughts but I'm saving that for the next blog post.  It will be about risk and ruining pots and so on.

For now here are the videos.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qALJRfdNwLs

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pdlnAXNVqE

Monday

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The porch should be finished by the end of the week if not sooner.  I had a pretty productive weekend, mainly making bowls and mugs and such.   A few pots came out of the kiln.  Most of them had clothes line deco but I did have a few experiments like the bowl above.  I'm working out glazing ideas as I go.  This isn't my ideal solution, nor even my ideal palette.  I'm not quite sure how I'm going to approach this new imagery as far as glazing goes.

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IMG_0083Hopefully I'll finish up two gallery orders this week and fire again over the weekend.