today i spent the day helping install a show at a gallery in old city. it was great to spend the day with 3 such well established, interesting and very amicable artists. i find it very important and inspiring to be around people you respect, especially really amazing women. i wish i would have thought to take a picture or two of installation but anyway, if you’re in the area, definitely check out the show at the rosenfeld gallery.
it’s always such a struggle, but it feels so good when, for a little while anyway, you can feel confident in your artist’s statement. g.m. told me the other day, “no one writes there artist’s statement alone.” what a relief! he helped me out fundamentally, providing primary guidance, as well as other friends and artists, all of whom i respect a great deal. getting feedback from a variety of people really helped A LOT. when i saw people’s responses i really got an idea of what was actually coming across in my words.
thanks SO MUCH to everyone who provided me with their feedback.
and if you haven’t read it yet, check it out here and let me know what you think.
sorry for the rough pics. they are from my phone. anyway, i’m still plugging away in the studio. the trip to florida, and working quite a bit has been keeping me away more than i would like, but that’s the way it goes. in addition to my regular job i’ve been doing something really fun and educational assisting a local artist. so far we’ve installed a piece at the nceca invitiational and pulled some stuff out of storage, organized and packed up work. it’s a really wonderful experience. i’m learning a lot just seeing how she does things.
i’ve got some aps in the works, and a few deadlines coming up. like every other ceramic artist at the moment, i’m scurrying to finish up aps and wondering what i’ll be doing next fall.
in the studio i’ve been amassing some work, but i’m still really struggling with how to finish it. i haven’t even bisqued any large sculptures yet. i’m waiting for them to get super bone dry, but i’ve been keeping plastic on them for weeks. i’m afraid to keep them uncovered and risk cracking. and since i don’t know exactly how i’ll finish them i need them to be perfectly smooth. ehhhhh, finished work…..sometime….eventually…….:-)
new sculpture in progress….
studio mate e. with her giant math mold……
some pics of the previously mentioned work. new sculpture, and new blue wall peices.
the idea with these new pieces is for them to go on the walls. i’m embarking on a kind of challenge, figuring out how i would like to finish these. so i’m looking at everything as a test right now, not knowing if anything will come out well. i did some tests with raw materials, trying to keep the surface and the substance closer to each other, and playing with the color clay is the same idea. trying to avoid putting a layer of surface over the whole thing. i GUESS that soda firing amounts to the same thing, a layer of surface treatment on top of raw clay, but i feel that the interaction of the soda, fire, clay and carbon means it’s more of an extenstion of the clay surface vs. a covering of the clay.
with awesome guidence from g.m. i’m looking at artists and doing some reading in a more studious way then the last few years and right now, form wise, i’m really interested in ron nagle, ken price and especially kathy butterly. of course their surfaces are amazing as well, but i love the forms. BUT they all treat the form so intensely with surface, and there is this idea that they are 3d paintings.
i’m really intrigued by the work i’m seeing both in person in philly (super great art town and gearing up for nceca with a plethora of clay exhibitions) and in research, and trying to figure out what kind of inspiration i can take from all this to push my own work forward. definitely moving along at turle pace right now, but i’m not worried.
ok, so no more snow days. actually the weird thing is that there has been a lot more snowing at times when i’m out and about but it’s not sticking so not causing such a problem with the transit. there were a couple of days where i was getting poked in the eyes with snowflakes as i walked around. so odd for a floridian like me.
i was in tokyo for almost a year before the first snow and i don’t remember it ever really snowing like this. there were FOR SURE never piles of snow on the ground for weeks on end. i feel like a little kid, scraping snow off cars to make snowballs and pulling out my camera at all kinds of banal sights.
the snow on the trees reminds me of the cherry blossoms in tokyo, sometimes they were white instead of pink and the light color of the blossom made the tree bark look like charcoal, which was especially beautiful. i have only been here in winter so maybe these trees will end up being cherry blossom trees in the spring? that would be sweet.
and up close the black and white of the bark and ice make a nice pattern:
i’m also really interested in the icicles. i don’t always remember to look up and see them but the other day on the way out see an exhibition at the crane arts building i spotted these bumpy, melty looking icicles.
what do i love more than project runway? project runway canada.
i would love to have iman come into my studio and give me a critique. she doesn’t care if you’ve never sewn a suit before, she doesn’t care what your client wanted. you’ve got to step up and deliver or get going.
here’s what i learned from project runway canada:
1. you succeed or don’t. don’t be a baby.
2. be a gracious winner. be a gracious loser.
3. stay focused.
4. be flexible, but don’t lose your aesthetic voice.
5. manage your time well.
it’s really weird not living 8 blocks from the studio. i start my job (reproductive health clinic) tomorrow and my schedule is going to be something like thurs-sat. so once i finished up some wall pieces and the sculpture i posted a pic of yesterday, i realized there wasn’t much point in starting anything else. once i get accustomed to these train schedules (and it’s not so death-by-hypothermia cold) i might be able to swing nightly visits to the studio but for the time being i think my best bet might be to work on pieces start-to-finish sunday through wednesday.
today i went with new friend m.d. to visit a very well known local sculptor. i’ll be working with her a few days in the next months prepping/installing work before and after NCECA. her studio was beautiful. seeing her work in person (in the gallery) and in different stages of completion (in the studio) was breathtaking. her husband is also a well established sculptor and it was really inspiring to meet them both. they were super friendly and chatty and asked lots of questions, which of course i kind of geeked out while answering. (i.e. way too long description of the japanese alphabets…….) when i really would have like to hear more about them and their journey to where they are now. hmmmm, well moving forward, i hope to get a little more insight.
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
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!
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…
