Hey Guess What?!?
It’s FREE SHIPPING FEBRUARY!!!
Use offer code lovefreeshipping at check out all month long for free shipping on all artwork in the online shop. This only happens once a year, so pick out something for your sweetie or yourself and the shipping’s on me!
Offer is only good online, US only from Feb 1 – 28th 2018
If you missed the opening of Take Aways, here’s a teaser walk through of the exhibit. You’ll feel like your almost really there! Lots of artwork in this video has already been sold, so get down to the gallery and pick out some for yourself before their all gone!
I’ve been working on an installation of my Rock Candy Series for my upcoming solo show at the Grants Pass Museum of Art and thought I’d share a little video of the process. I made 100+ of these rocks, glazed them in a variety of bright colors and they will be installed in a ribbon of them wrapping around a wall in a section of the gallery interspersed with photos of them as they were installed ‘in the field’ at Joshua Tree National Park. I love how they start out as these lumpy potato shapes and end up angular and sharp – they’re just begging to be touched!
I wanted to share with you an article by Casey Lesser of Artsy called ‘Why Ceramic Artists Are So Good at Dealing with Failure’, this article rang so true with me and I’m sure with so many other clay artists.
A long time ago, I wrote a blog post about a studio shelf filled with finished work falling down spontaneously and taking out all the work I’d placed on it along with everything on the table below that it fell on- that happened about 2 weeks before an Open Studio event. I’ve also had instances where I pulled a beautiful piece out of the kiln, placed it carefully on the table and then promptly caught my jacket on the edge of the table, making the piece wobble and fall right off onto the floor. Not to mention all the explosions, cracks, glaze failures and everything else that can go wrong with ceramics.
I think it’s important to share the failures as well as the successes in the process of making art. And the potential for everything to go wrong in the process of working with clay makes for a love/hate relationship for sure but I think that’s exactly what keeps me coming back to it.
This series is so new, it still doesn’t have a name yet but I’m pretty excited to share the process of what’s been happening with these pieces. It all started with this video of stretching out the clay pieces and forming the rings. Once they were bisque fired, I started playing with them all on my studio floor to create intriguing compositions. I finally decided that these guys are going to have to go up on the wall so I busted out the diamond bits for my dremel tool and started drilling. I burned through quite a few bits in the process and pretty much immediately regretted not planning ahead and putting the holes in while they were leather hard but now the holes are in and I’m going to glaze these up and get them in the kiln.
More to come…
For the third year in a row, ‘the dirt’ has been honored with the honorable mention award from potterymakinginfo.com! Which is pretty amazing since we’ve only had ‘the dirt’ up and running for three years! Thanks so much for recognizing all the work that goes into making and sharing these posts. And so much thanks to all of you who take the time to read my posts, I’m so happy to have you along on this art making journey!
For those of you that want to read the best of the best in ceramic blog posts for inspiration and education, it’s already all organized for you right here…
Pajaro Valley Arts Council’s annual fundraiser exhibit, Take Aways: Art to Go opens January 17 with a reception on January 21st from 2-4pm. The exhibit runs until March 4th and showcases local artists work all priced under $250. When you buy a piece from this show, you take it with you and the artist replaces it with a new work. I’ll be participating with work from Nest and Bone Series, so if you’ve wanted to add one of these pieces to your collection, now is the time!
Take Aways: Art to Go
Pajaro Valley Arts Council Gallery
37 Sudden St Watsonville CA
January 17th – March 4th
Opening Reception January 21st 2 – 4pm
With an upcoming solo show at the Grants Pass Museum of Art in April, I’ve been bouncing between a lot of projects in the studio these days. I plan to create 6 large installations for the exhibit and I’m making some new work as well as showcasing some older work. So I’m bouncing between making lots more Rock Candy pieces, more Lichen pieces, new Bone pieces and one more really new series that has yet to even be named. The Lichen and Rock Candy pieces all 500 of them total are now drying and awaiting their bisque firing. And I’m still working on the Bone Series pieces.
I am excited to share that I think I’ve solved some structural issues I’d been having with the Bone Series. I’ve been making these pieces for awhile but I’d get some stress cracks happening during the firing process at the joint of the flanges and I think I’ve solved that problem by using cardboard templates to help me keep the flanges together as 3 solid piece of clay rather than having 6 individual flanges connecting together. I haven’t fired them yet, but already they are stronger when assembling them and so far they show no signs of cracking. Fingers crossed…
Will let you know how things develop and if my template system was a success!
Here’s the monthly wrap up of everything going on at the studio…
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