adjusting to northern temperatures. and being a sort-of student.
got warmed up making some small wall pieces.
during our studio meeting g.m. decided it would be fun to cut them up and stick them together. it was kind of bizarre to see someone esle making stuff out of my work.
cell division.
northern studio, check out the boots on the bottom and the pile of winter clothes up top.
i may have a snuggee for a curtain at the moment but i’m pretty much totally unpacked and moved into my sweet west philly apartment. bg, my new roommate met me at the train station and we squeezed all of my possessions into her spacious hatchback.
this is what i was working with. sweet windows and nice floors.
everything is unpacked but some stuff still needs a place. and i definitely need some sweet curtains for these tall windows. in the meantime a few glimpses of my space…
shadow boxes with work and tchotchkes from all over.
bowl and saucer by sarah tancred, octopus rattle by kelly sullivan
mini wall piece by jamie bardsley
wall button by kelly sullivan
another wall button and one of my first art purchases, plate by lisa orr
when i move i purge. but it’s hard for me to let go of work sometimes, even if it’s suffered some damage and can’t be shown again or sold. sometimes pieces are transitional work which will lead to something else, and sometimes, it’s JUST too soon. these works go to the boneyard of art which is my parents beautiful overgrown gardens. they both love to garden and grow fruits and vegetables and succulents. here are some snaps of work i left behind before heading up here to PHILADELPHIA!
my last night at the clay company was spent doing the 8-midnight shift with j. at midnight matt said we might have as little as 45 minutes left so i decided to stay until the end. approximately 5 hours later we shut the anagama down. it made for a pretty delirious day at work, but it was worth it! here are a couple of pics i snapped between side stokes.
"i'm hot to burn this sonovabitch" (paulina, what up!)
rearranging.
super hot and bright.
basically freezing except when stoking.
i found it really amazing to watch matt and don work. they seemed to know what was happening inside the kiln at every moment. or they would open up a peep hole and glean a ton of information. when i fire the little soda, i’m never FULLY confident that i know what is happening. in the anagama with multiple stoke points and all kinds of dynamics going on inside i was totally blown away by their extreme knowledge, confidence and control. amazing!
the above picture is of some tiny sculptures i call the saskunei seeds. saskunei means “no worries” in the fukushima dialect of japanese. in late 2007 i attended a sweet kiln workshop in mashiko, japan. it was my first time to fire woodkilns and we fired 4 kilns in 4 days. one of those kilns was the saskunei smokeless kiln built by kusakabe masakazu. months later i would get to visit him at his studio in fukushima, two times and spend a couple of weeks there total. while i was visiting his studio, i made the sculptures above. pretty soon after that i returned to the united states for good. on the way back i had a layover in atlanta, which i extended so i could visit my good friend and potter kelly sullivan. she works over at an awesome studio/gallery mudfire and during the visit, i got to do some work there. i made some monster sculptures and more of these little seeds, which she fired and glazed after i headed back to florida. over one year later, on a trip up to bowling green, ohio, a friend and i stop in on her and after all this time i get to see the finished peices. when i returned to my studio in st. pete, i decided to make a some more of these little guys, as favors for the folks who purchased work from my exhibition. i’ve given a lot of them out as little gifts, but kept at least a few from each batch, and i’ll keep making them.
which brings me to the next stop on this train line, philadelphia, pa. i’ve “graduated” from my residency in st. pete and in january i’ll be moving up to philly. i started this blog to write about the good times, struggles and process of the clay life and hopefully the next year will bring more to write about.
ok, i literally took one picture the whole day. i snapped this quick pic with the intention of going back for more but you know how it goes sometimes.
oh, wait no, there were two, liz and sarah aka femme covert’s fabulous wares.
we were crammed together pretty tight between the tables. luckily robin from neckeds didn’t really mind when i touched her butt on accident. speaking of butts, i think the best story of the day was when robin’s friend pointed out the sign i’d put on the group of these little sculptures:
the sign said “butt” seeds 3 for $15. they were all like, “are those really for your butt?” which totally shocked me. because they are, you know, seeds WITH butts, not seeds FOR butts.
bottom line–aesthetically speaking i’m more about poop than sex so i changed the sign. haha.
last post before atomic. i’ll definitely post remotely from the bazaar with pics of everything going on. come on down and get a group of these little guys for your home. i’ll also have some of the large wall peices and an assortment of rattles and tiny sculptures.
small wall piece, wood/salt fired.
last year i wrote about shopping at the atomic holiday bazaar in sarasota, fl. this year i’ll be there selling my work. i was honored to be selected and even more honored to be rocking my space with team sarasota!
small wall piece, soda fired porcelain.
i know it’s going be a good time. last year i ran into an old friend who i hadn’t seen since before cell phones and internet! crazy.
get to the bazaar early for sweet swag bags including some tiny sculptures by me!
small wall piece, soda fired porcelain, lots of yummy carbon trapping...
i spent the holiday weekend at my parent’s house. in addition to delicious food i also got to make some work. on their lanai, after all this time, sits my first work bench. way back when i was 18 and moved out for the first time my place had a nice screened in porch, perfect to do art on. i mentioned needing a work bench and my roommate’s boyfriend (who was doing construction and had access to lots of scrap wood) built it right up.
my clay co shelf near entrance...
back shelf/tide pool.
today i unpacked the work i’d taken with me to “eclectic and then some”. since most of the smallies had just come out of the kiln they hadn’t made it to the shelf before heading over to gulfport. these are some quick snaps, but you get the idea of my shelf space at the clay co. i am really loving the pieces all together like this.
john cage says “Rule 8: Do not try to create and analyze at the same time. They are different
processes.” gettting a look at everything together, the low fire wall pieces i made about a year ago and the small ones which i made a couple of weeks ago really get’s my brain going. the collection in the second picture feels like a display case of a natural history museum. shells? fossils? an aquarium? this is the kind of situation i would like to put people in. and then they realize they can take a little piece of the display home with them.
welcome to my collection of specimens…