Category Archives: problems

new year, new life.

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today is 2009.  it’s been a long year.  i started the year in tokyo, with a long term romantic partner and a job at rbr art center and even though things seemed to be in place i wasn’t happy, one year later, here i am, working at a great job and creative clay, partnerless, in residence at st. pete clay and feeling pretty good.  (i don’t miss tokyo or rbr, but i certainly miss my former partner masa, who is the best person you could ever meet.  geography is a harsh factor sometimes)  but it just goes to show you that life isn’t perfect and pretty all the time, sometimes you have to give up something you like the best for things to move forward. 

finally, after of a week of turtle life i moved my stuff into the new place with the help of my brother.  i’ll be living with on of the girls from the studio in a big place (a couple of blocks away from the old).  we’ll each be on a different side of the house with the kitchen and living room in between and we even have our own bathrooms.  A LOT more space then my little garage apartment! 

speaking of turtles, this month i’ve been working at a turtle’s pace in the studio.  i’ve completed another set of wall hangings, but that’s about it.

so new year, new life and more time in the studio starting now with the help of my favorite christmas gift, the hand built sculpture stands from my brother.  he built three, sized so that they nest together when not in use.  (pictures coming soon).

and of course some obligatory new year’s resolutions:

1.  get my etsy shop up.

2.  start taking some yoga classes or JAZZERCISE!

3.  if it’s in st. pete, bike there ALWAYS and bike the pinellas trail.

happy new year and akemashite omedetou!

turtle life

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on christmas eve i moved everything out of my place.  i started the night before, packing up all my books, journals, sketch books, etc and wednesday morning i took them to the clay co to drop off (temporarily).  i could barely lift the big boxes since so much heavy stuff was packed in so i had to invent special methods to lift things into my car.   i was like a racoon with an oyster. 

yeah, i like a simile.

my awesome sister came and helped me pack up all the breakable stuff and load everything that was left into my van.  anyway, i’m moving to my new place tomorrow but the person taking over my old place needed to move in early.  so i’ve been a turtle all week.  good times!

after the longest week ever.

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seriously, last week was long.  i was bummed out to miss art basel in miami but life on the west coast of florida was busy enough.  at work we were being observed, at the studio we were preparing for the sale and i was preparing my own art work for the sale.  whoo, i was really running on low!

finally yesterday i had a bit of a break.  well, recently a half day is as close to a day off as i get but i’ll take what i can get.  i worked in the morning at creative clay.  we are still book making.  i know we will have to move onto something different but i’ve so enjoyed seeing m improve her skills.

afterwards i went to mazzaro’s italian deli to get something for lunch.  i’ve been hearing about this place since i moved here, but hadn’t yet been.  it was like walking into italy.  i was able to find my favorite cheese from when i was traveling in italy (romano fresca with pepper corns) not to mention arancini (sicilian rice balls) and italian tuna.  these were the things i would buy (with a roll or loaf of bread) and carry around in my bag to eat for lunch in some scenic spot.  you know how it is.  the only thing i didn’t find, but i’ll have to look next time, is white anchovies.  the arancini were very similiar to my family’s except that they had way too much cheese in them!

i relaxed the rest of the day, stepping out for an errand or two, and this morning, finally i was back to 100%.

holiday sale.

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today and yesterday were super busy. st. pete clay held their annual holiday sale and i got a great suprise.

i pulled my wall hangings out of the kiln at 7:30 saturday morning, put wires on the back and hung them in the reitz room, where a display of work had been set up. among everyone else’s stuff, j had set up some of my bushes in a little patch of “snow”. i hung the wall pieces across from them and then headed to work. a  couple of hours later j sent me a text saying that someone had purchased all 5. when i finally got back to the studio, i cruised past my shelf to see if anything else had sold and to my surprise an older sculpture of mine had also gone. the “nose warmers” is the white sculpture with red knitted tubes.

this whole holiday sale thing was fun. i’ve never really made work with the sole intention of selling it before, but i got into the spirit this year.  i put my work into a format that i thought would fit into people’s lives well and it was successful.

i had one bummer of the weekend though.  the white platter with glaze cells (bottom photo), took a dive off the shelf last night.  yikes.

wall peices installed in the reitz room

wall peices installed in the reitz room

my shelves

my shelves

second-top-shelf

second-bottom-shelf

bottom-shelf

the inevitable crash

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wow, what do i do with all this free time?  i guess that having  a deadline really amped me up to work.  i have been assessing everyday, figuring out what hours could be spent in the studio coiling, and now (post deadline) i’m experiencing the inevitable let down.  i spent some time with my sketch (list) book yesterday working on what i’d like to do next.  gotta get back to work.

yesterday i worked my a.i.r. day.  j and i did a lot of hard, glamourous work, like cleaning some funky ass bathrooms (a weekend of 24/7 use, yeah!), loading up 3 bisque kilns and 1 glaze kiln and cleaning up the kiln pad for the unloading next week.  the dumpster was full, so we couldn’t even do the trash until the garbage truck came, and then whooo the large amounts of trash we had.  but to be honest that is why i like working tuesdays, there’s always a lot to do.  it’s satisfying to make a dent in the work load and i’ve learned a lot from j.

sayaku. the complete and total worst.

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one of the bushes burst.  yup that’s right.  the 3 bushes are not out of the kilns yet but i peeked in on the medium bush (which had become one of my favorites) and the top had fallen in.  i was soaking it for a long time so that the water wouldn’t make it explode, but at the end of the day it was stupid short cut taken in construction that caused the damage.  i’m not sure if it will be repairable, but i went ahead and fired it hoping it will be.  given the time crunch, i ended up with two parts of the bush with very different amounts of dryness.  the bush was a sweet leather hard, and if there had been more time for it to dry with support it might have been ok, but popping that leather hard bush into the kiln with a heavy, built up area that was still a lot softer and speed drying it just didn’t work.  it collapsed.

rough, but that’s the way it goes.  the kilns fired off, and tomorrow they will be cool enough to unload.  tuesday morning in nice light i will spray them with glaze and fire them one last time. other than that i am in full mixed media mode, trying to prepare for installation friday.

hmmm…

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confusing moment today and a minor set back.

first of all, i loaded the tall bush today.  this time i loaded into one of the kilns which i tend to like less.  it has a different computer than i am used to, an orton autofire, and i understood that it needed lengths of time input in minutes.  j was standing by, lending me moral and technical support.  when i went to enter in the 24 hours soaks, there wasn’t enough space on the screen.  it was set up like this h.mmm.  h is hours, m is minutes.  finally j pointed out that a 3 digit soak in minutes could still be long enough so i programmed in a 999 minute soak.  this was after putting in a call to the kiln service and getting no answer.  i also sent off an email to orton, since i didn’t have much luck finding a users manual in the studio or online.  i talked with jamie a bit about what kind of schedules she uses.  at this point i’m still a little unclear, like, why hold at 90 degrees, or 140, instead of 100 or 150, when your going up in incriments of 25?  and why stop and do a major hold at 180 vs. 200 when the boiling point is 212 degrees.  ???  i’m trying to take r’s advice and just talk to everybody, see what they do and then work out my own preferences.

so tall bush is officially firing.  i am working on one more major bush and then i was going to use a big round mold to pop out a few more bases, when, after rolling out the slab for one,  i realized that highwater clay had closed for the weekend and i was out of clay.  totally out.  well, save about 8 pounds which will maybe be enough to finish one of the in progress peices i have going on.  maybe enough.

yikes.  i was planning to work a lot this weekend, and then focus on firing and glazing, but that’s going to have to change since i can’t get more clay until tuesday.  yikes.

i guess this will give me a chance do so some research, and work on the non clay aspects of this installation.

also, i borrowed some plaster slabs from j and starting playing with some slip i had laying around, trailing on the plaster with a 60 cc syringe in octopus like shapes.  ceiling hangy things?  christmas ornaments? we’ll see.