Awesome Santa Cruz gets some press!

Awesome Foundation June Winner | the dirt | Jenni Ward ceramic sculpture

Thank you to KION News 46 for including the Santa Cruz Awesome Foundation Chapter in their top news stories!

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, Calif. (KION_TV)- A group of 13 Santa Cruz County residents launched the first Central Coast chapter for the Awesome Foundation.

‘Awesome Santa Cruz’ is offering no-strings-attached $1000 micro-grants to fund a creative, community-minded project within the Santa Cruz County area. The group focuses on projects that bring people together, promoting compassion and opportunities for community-building that might not other wise exits.

Read more here…

another umbel update!

Freedom Forge is going full steam ahead with umbel production! All of the flowerhead parts have been fabricated and now we’re tweaking the angles to adjust for just the right amount of organic movement in each flower, allowing them to be uniform and unique all at the same time. The big stems are coming up next and then there will be an adventure to the galvanizer in the very near future!

This project is sponsored by:

A Feast of Flowers | Jenni Ward ceramic sculpture

metal fabrication is in full swing

I’m loving seeing the process of making the metal parts for A Feast of Flowers and luckily Kirk McNeill’s studio is right around the corner from mine, so I can pop over to see what Kirk and his team are up to.

In my last post, the flower head ‘arms’ were bent for the outer ring of flowers and now those arms are being riveted and welded to the base plate. Eventually the inner layers of flowers will be made the same way and stacked on top of this larger base plate. This is only one layer and they’re already looking so cool! More to come, stay tuned!

This project is sponsored by:

A Feast of Flowers | Jenni Ward ceramic sculpture

mark your calendars!

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY OPEN STUDIOS 2023

OCTOBER 14, 15, 21 & 22 | 10am – 5pm

ARTIST #297

EARTH ART STUDIO

2523 C MISSION ST | SANTA CRUZ

Please join me for my 18th and LAST year of participating in the Santa Cruz Open Studios Art Tour! The studio is going to be packed with art; new and old, big and small, so come find a treasure for your home or garden. Looking forward to seeing y’all in a few months!

photo: Crystal Birns

umbel update

I’m excited to announce I’ve finally finished fabrication of all of the ceramic elements for A Feast of Fennels and every surface of the studio is covered in parts. Scroll down to see the progress on the metal fabrication happening!

Kirk McNeil and Franco Di Majo working on bending the rods that will create the flowerhead structures. Love the custom jig they made to get each curve just right. Can’t wait to see all these parts start to come together!

This project is sponsored by:

A Feast of Flowers | Jenni Ward ceramic sculpture

Outside Scoop: 24

This week, outside the studio…


The Outside Scoop is a weekly blog series that shares a little bit of what’s going on in my life outside of the studio. Please feel free to leave comments, I look forward to chatting with you here!

hello? can you hear me?

Apparently my blog feed has gotten stuck here on my website for the past month for unknown reasons and you have not been receiving your weekly The Dirt emails from me. Grrr…

I ~think~ I’ve fixed the issue and if the stars align, you should receive your regularly scheduled email on Friday morning. It should give you links to all the posts that got stuck or you might just get this post or possibly once again nothing at all will hit your inbox. sigh…

Thanks for your patience and fingers crossed we’ll be up and running again soon. You can always check out what I’m up to by navigating to The Dirt here. Including a scene from the studio here so you get a preview of what’s been going on!