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Gleanings From My Tribe: Six Mugs, A Tumbler, Two Vases, One Bowl and A Grenade

 

Today I spent visiting a few other local ceramic artists in their cleaned up, Ready for Prime Time 2012 Santa Cruz County Open Studios Art Tour habitats,  gleaning the fruits of the passion we hold in common. Since I hardly get out of my paddock, it was a deliciously freeing promenade and I came home with treasures and photos from most of my stops. Up top you see my new wardrobe of mugs, my personal theme this year. At the end of this post you’ll see the tumbler, bowl, vases and grenade.

What follows are short illustrated vignettes about each these folks…three of whom were participating in Open Studios for the very first time and ALL of whom are open Encore Weekend and of course would be willing to share their work by appointment all year long. (I didn’t ask them, I just know this.)

I had only this one day to get out there, since I participate in this 3-weekend Tour myself  and this wasn’t my weekend to be on. I mapped out a strategic travel itinerary like a seasoned Road Warrior for Art. I also announced to associated family and friends I was going it alone. May I recommend that? It makes for agile quality: timing, conversations and all the other decisions: Eat? Pee? See Everything on Every Shelf or Just Enjoy the Overview? It’s my own personal Artist Date, and dang if I ain’t good company to me!!!

The real trick is getting out there as early as possible. Studios are open 11-5; be at the first one as soon after 11 as you can! (But,  too early can be awkward.) Happy Hour everywhere is 1-3, so see if you can get to most places before then, or be prepared to swim upstream through the crowds and maybe not have that intimate artist chat. I did the best I could with the timing because I had a 50 mile loop to execute. I only got mildly lost twice, no, three times, the downside of no-one riding Navigator/Shotgun, I guess.

 

 

 

First stop: Andrea Dana-McCullough, Artist # 265 ( she’s on the left in the photo.) Her love of carving through colored layers onto her pieces (sgraffito) is augmented nicely by her love of insects. I was on a personal quest for a Bug/Beetle Mug, which I found in snappy blue on white. It’s the upper right mug in my lead-off photo. When I got home I washed and began drinking from each vessel in the order I’d acquired it today. Andrea’s was first and I was sorely tempted to just stay put. I have one other piece of hers, a small tray, and these won’t be the last!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the farthest reaches of my loop was Travis Adams, Artist # 279. He has the entire back work area and yard of the fabulous Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center STUFFED with his amazing range of work. It was a massive effort and looked wonderful. I had to have one of his grenades – see last photo – and then a dangerously drooly crawl-glazed bowl (also below) caught my eye and a sweet little teadust mug – middle left up top. Travis has also SO generously displayed not only my own OS postcard, but the conetop Travis Beer can I traded him for one of his rat sculptures earlier this year. That’s what he’s holding in the photo. My Tribe…I think I’ll keep them!

 

 

 

Looking happily occupied with visitors (back to the camera) is Mattie Leeds, who along with wife Melissa, are Artist Studio #289. There is no shortage of things to see here on this Bonny Doon land, the penultimate  lifelong ceramic artist habitat. From slightly unbelievable shard-pile mosaic installations, to a formal display room, to the working rooms and kilns, it’s huge and worth the trip. It’s lovely that you can wander the cavernous multi-level inside and outside as long as you like. I didn’t buy a Mattie Mug…I have in the past. Instead we spoke of his recently child-proofed studio (!) and of the piece I REALLY want….

 

 

 

 

 

 

My heart has an all-or-nothing thing for this big – as in five feet tall – lidded vase which Mattie created as a demo at Cabrillo College. The size and form are phenomenal, but the Asian bird and bamboo painting is even better. Such intimacy and skill on such a huge work! Yep, it’s all I wanted to take home. How?  Where? *SIGH*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another lovely artist habitat up by the wilds of UCSC and Pogonip is that of Jeannine Niehaus,  Artist #240. The yard, the teahouse and her sure-handed thrown and slip-decorated pieces all play well together. Since I have a fall birthday, I was thinking of her bright maple leaf decorations on a little sumpin’ sumpin’….I know….a mug!!!! How about TWO? (Middle right and back in the top photo.) Jeannine never stopped long enough to pose; her yard was full of aficionados. (I waited until they briefly cleared from her teahouse deck to take this shot.) She was cheerfully watering her bedding plants and chatting the while and setting a fine example of how to genuinely represent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just look at the smiling Hank Scott, Artist #235 at Saltwater Pottery! He’s a first-timer to Open Studios, but obviously NOT to pottery and decorating. With a clear palette and style, I think he’s found a lively following. I bought one vase for me (short with red dots) and one for my mom (creamy with bamboo), both seen below. His late 1800s home is a well-restored Santa Cruz original and  it was SRO by the time I was there. I think he might feel encouraged!

 

 

 

 

 

 

So….the one photo op I did not get to take was with Geof Nicastro, Artist #163 and Rocky Lewycky, Artist #162. They both are showing in the expansive space behind Clay Creation on Soquel Avenue and have a wide and sympatico offering. I was just settling in for a spell and selecting a blue impressed cylinder mug of Geof’s (seen at the top left) when a huge crowd descended upon the two – I’m talking a couple dozen folks on a bus tour! Lucky Geof and Rocky! –  I held my mug close, pressed money into Geof’s hands and left through the back path in the hedge. Sometimes it’s like that! Love you two, and here’s to a fruitful Encore Weekend! I toast your creativity. SO wanted a panoramic shot….take one and send it to me….I’ll include it here.

 

 

Last stop:  the engaging Jasper Marino, Artist #149, holding the two pieces I bought from him, both variants of his dense, graffiti-influenced  calligraphy. The mug is up front in the top shot and the tumbler on the left rear down below. (Oh, and time to switch to drinking out of my  Jasper mug.) We had a few moments in his very personal space to talk about self-perceptions and what next-level functioning might entail. “Thoughts become things, baby!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, that’s a full day touring the environs of eight ceramic artists in my tribe on the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County’s annual Open Studios Art Tour. We are rich beyond belief here in the Fifth Most Artistic Locale in the US.

 

 

 

~Liz Crain, who is proud to be associated with these fellow ceramic artists and the many more she couldn’t get to either because there is still only one of her (dang it!) or because they are holding Open Studios at the same time she is. Tribe, just the same! Oh, and notice everything hunted and gathered today – even the grenade –  was thrown on a potter’s wheel, which Liz does not do herself, but profoundly appreciates.

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Merely Clever

 

“Cleverness is not wisdom” ~Euripides

 

Beware the Pleasure Island of artistic cleverness! It will make donkeys of us all.

I admit, I’m no different. I’ve boogied around that isle, delighted with my parlor tricks and sight gags, elbow-jabbing viewers into acknowledgment of my conceits. “Get it!?” – which surely obliterated any tender scions of artful charm.

And I’m not the only ass here: I watched my artwork rapidly grow its own ears and tail and morph into a One Trick Donkey. Well, then!

As much as I suffered, I lacked enough understanding to dodge this pitfall. Was my work Un-skillful? Under-realized? Tentative? Brash? Or, horrors, Sophomoric? Yet, those descriptors felt tangential. I needed to grasp the heart of the cleverness mechanism so it could become my creative tool to wield with dexterity and intention.

The epiphany came from two related concepts learned at the side of my longtime mentor, Kathryn McBride:

Avoid the Merely Clever and its corollary, Apply Irony.

 

Avoiding the Merely Clever

A few years back, as Kathryn and I were walking among student displays at the annual California Conference for the Advancement of Ceramic Art in Davis, I heard her snort in amusement, and then wonder out loud if the humorous piece in front of her was “merely clever,” meaning it fell short in certain ways.

She explained that her own MFA work in Ceramics at San Francisco State had received this truthful critique and she’d became a more conscious and confident artist because of it. Decades later, she still found it useful in assessing her own ideas. And by being able to recognize mere cleverness in the work of others, she could guide students beyond the first layer of their creative impulses to a truer meaning.

From that time on, we would smile and rather conspiratorially use “merely clever” as a gentle codename for any work which took the expected and easier road home, even if exquisitely executed.

And at long last, I had the conceptual tool I needed to identify and go beyond visual one-liners myself.

 

Applying Irony

Yet, there remained works and artists who seemed to dance tauntingly close to the “merely clever” trap, yet not fall in. How? Why?

And why did one of Kathryn’s most successful perennial assignments ask her students to make a work illustrating a Tired Old Cliché? She even provided a list of 80 kickstarter sayings and phrases. Wasn’t this a recipe for a snooze-fest of obviousness? Yet hackneyed chestnuts such as “Let the cat out of the bag” and “Butterflies in the stomach” provided the springboard for some literal yet profound interpretations from students at all levels of artistry. Why?

Only in recent months have I realized the answer. It has come from a sagacious little book titled 101 Things to Learn in Art School by Kit White. Item 94 on the list is “Irony has controlled the stage in contemporary art since the end of Modernism.”

Let me quote the discussion of this a bit more:

To avoid the twin whirlpools of the easy send-up on one side and the sentimental on the other, come to a clear and meaningful understanding of how irony works as a serious factor in the world. As Richard Rorty once wrote, it is the recognition of “the contingency of all things.”

So, there you have it. We can still visit Pleasure Island, just bring along some 21st century conceptual donkey-embracing armor. Irony brings complexity, depth and wisdom to the simple shallows of mere cleverness. A meta-conscious dose of the ironic in our artwork turns the piece, tragic or comic, real or abstract, into a consideration of what it also is not and of what else it could be, evolving the work out of our clever heads into our all-contingent hearts

~Ironically, Liz Crain is a sometimes-narrative ceramic artist who completely agrees with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s admonition to “Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness,” – which Kathryn also knew well, especially when over-tired.

 

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Versatility Plus Meaning: Fifteen Blogs

Sometimes I think that blogging is over-rated, or even should be dead. It’s had its Fifteen Minutes of Fame and should know when to leave the stage to allow us to enjoy some fresher and more engaging interchange. I feel this about writing mine because at times I just don’t want to talk and I especially don’t want to write about what I don’t want to talk about, so I don’t.  What is all this thrashing around with words? What did I enjoy before blog-keeping?

I often strongly feel this ache for the metamorphosis of bloggery  when skimming the relentless bleats of others out there yammering into the blogosphere. They drown each other out with thin opinions, baldfaced marketing (OK, SELLING IT) and yawnable or precious writing. They don’t need to exit the stage, they need to take a flying leap into the mosh pit.

Pretty jaded of me, right? And yes, I know to click away and mostly do. Except…..Except……

Except, there are naturellement blogs I find enthralling, unreal, hilarious, titillating, challenging, informative, irresistible. And, regardless of topic and writing style,  it’s always because it’s the person coming through the screen to evoke my response and connection.

So when one of the first bloggers that I felt that idiosyncratic electricity of recognition with, Quinn McDonald of Quinn Creative, nominated me recently for The Versatile Blogger Award, all blog-related misgivings were washed away. This bloody bloggy biz is bigger in better ways than I thought because Quinn just whisked off my blindfold. (She’s a versatile and skilled blindfold-remover, so I feel safe.)

Here’s how The Versatile Blogger Award works: If you’re nominated, you’ve been awarded the Versatile Blogger Award. (My first blogging nod and thanks, Quinn!)

  • Thank the person who gave you this award. That’s common courtesy.
  • Include a link to their blog. That’s also common courtesy.
  • Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly
  • Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award
  • Finally, list  7 things about yourself.

Here’s my list of 15 nominees/winners. Go visit each one and see if the writer/person comes through to your heart too. Some of them I know personally, most I don’t and they generally don’t know I follow them. Some post quite often (even daily)  and others leave me aching for another entry for months and months. They range from fellow ceramic artists, to experts/coaches,  to food and lifestyle advocates. I appreciate their being here, just for me.

  1. Archevore by Kurt Harris MD. I’ve just found this one and I’m magnetized by the thoughtful articulate intelligence.
  2. Cleavage: sex, money and meaning by Kelly Diels. Dark humor and dangerously sharp wisdom. Yow.
  3. Discardia: Make Room for Awesomeness by Dinah Sanders. Creator of a new holiday of awesomeness connecting up several of my favorite life arenas.
  4. Gringado by Susan Dorf and Mark Taylor. Two friends who travel to Mexico for months every winter. They are keen observers of lush and not-so life.
  5. Kelly Thiel Studio by Kelly Thiel. Deepest respect for this woman’s artwork and life balancing. She’s charming, too.
  6. Nom Nom Paleo by Big O’s and Little O’s Mom. One b-u-s-y person with time to tell us what she cooks and eats.
  7. Patricia Scarborough Art by Patricia Scarborough. This is full of wry light and air along with gorgeous painting.
  8. Penelope Trunk by Penelope Trunk. Oh, Penelope… I can’t NOT watch you live your life and tell us about it.
  9. Polka Dot Clay Studio by Karen Hansen. So here’s the newer voice of a clay friend and I’ll never be able to guess what she’ll say next. Never. And I love that.
  10. Sequoia Miller’s Blog: ever wonder ’bout pottery? by Sequoia Miller.  I could use more of his quiet deep discussions. Love his pottery
  11. A Spinner Weaver by Annie MacHale.  Here’s an unusual kind of weaving with a prolific,  passionate advocate.
  12. Terry Parker: Pottery Shards by Terry Parker. Another potter friend who’s been busy in her new studio.
  13. This Artist’s Life: Day to Day in the Clay Studio by Whitney Smith. She’s boldly honest with her successes, challenges and musings. And she can write strongly enough to bring us all along.
  14. The Work of Art: Musings on What it Takes to Make Art Happen by Michelle Williams. A new one by the Executive Director of the local Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County. Big ideas.
  15. The Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson. A blog which challenges me to re-think everything I touch and make.

 

Seven Things About Me…and I’ll stick to the art.

  1. I remember the Class Artist in 2nd grade showing me how to draw a finger and its nail from a side view. Mind blowing stuff.
  2. Almost took Art in high school, but the Speech and Debate coach persuaded me to drop it and take his class, for all four years. (Detour #1)
  3. My first drawing class was Spring Quarter of my Sophomore year in college. I took every Art elective I could after that, but was too scared to change my major. (Detour #2)
  4. I was an artist’s model for about four years right after college (one way to get free instruction, really.)
  5. Had emergency appendectomy. Got corporate job. Years passed. (Detour #3)  Then: Broke my back. Quit corporate job. Began art-making fulltime. Got into first gallery.  All within the same six months.
  6. Moved to the Sierra Foothills for a decade. Explored poetry and community theatre. Oh, and had my sweet babies. (Detour #4)
  7. Rounded up 30 years of art classes into an AA, finding clay along the way. Ah.

 

~Liz Crain is totally copying her creativity buddy, Quinn, by finding something personal to say at the end of her posts that she intends to be an insightful, touching and witty coda. Love you, Quinn!

 

 

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It’s Complicated: Distilling 30,000 Years of Ceramic Art into a Six-Week Beginning Handbuilding Workshop

OK yes, that title is a tad dramatic. But it’s not a needy and exaggerated untruth: I’m actively sorting and defining what I know and enjoy about the entirety of ceramic arts in order to hone in on the heart and soul of this Beginning Handbuilding class, taught by me,  starting at the end of this month.

And this week that honing process hit critical mass. It felt a little like peeking into a ramping raku kiln and watching for the powdery glaze on the pieces to liquify, come to a bubbling boil and then to smooth out again as both it and the ware it is coating becomes blastingly red-hot. And THEN comes the moment to shut off the gas and pull the pieces with tongs into their garbage can reduction chambers. Most of you ceramicists out there will understand this reference, but if you need a visual, here’s a good one.

All this week I gathered and listed and piled and flagged.  I re-piled and sorted and started a board of sticky notes detailing each project’s intended trajectory through the weeks. I assembled the needed demos, quotes, glossary, Important Things to Know and on and on. I culled (which was clearer and easier now) and kept the best.  A Beautiful Mind got nuthin’ on me!

Last post I talked about how this class-formulating process amasses information. I think I mentioned something about comparing the ceramic teaching process  to cooking show demos, but I’m reporting in tonight that I’m not quite ready for that one. Maybe next week. I HAVE made one sample of a Press Mold Wad Pot, which you can see below,  but now I realize it’s the first of several needed to provide tangible illustrations of the important stages of just one of three comprehensive methods and techniques I will be teaching.

Press Molded Wad Pot at leatherhard

And that serves my personal understanding of Full-Service Ceramics. Sometimes students can connect the dots, but I find in ceramics it’s not all that easy. The whole process is un-obvious, far-ranging,  deceptively sidetracking and negotiable.

But that’s also the most important clue for me as as Interpreter and Guide: first and foremost, I need to have a profound and undistracted personal sense whereof I speak. If I gloss over, give the short shrift, make assumptions, it does not do the job in that satisfying way. I think I am connecting my own dots, retrospectively. As a matter of fact, I could re-title this post Things I Wish Someone Told Me Right Away.

And even then, the only way out is by doing it. So while I prepare and attempt to perfect my offerings for my new class and students, ceramics has also taught me to be more comfortable with imperfect and unexpected outcomes. With learners of all ages, that’s nearly a given. Years of helping clay handbuilding students has told me this amount of preparation is no less than the right amount, as cloggy and complicated as it can be. I’m glad it’s ONLY 30,000 years I need to review and condense and, like I said, I’m enriched and privileged to do it.

Class Nuts and Bolts: 6 Thursdays, 2-5pm, Session I: Feb 23 to March 29, Session II(with different techniques, projects and subject matter I still have to formulate): April 12 – May 17 held at the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center, 9341 Mill Street, Ben Lomond, CA,  831-3364ART.

If you’re so inclined, you can call or register online at www.MountainArtCenter.org. Class is $180 for Members/$200 Non-Members.

Next time: Those visual aids!

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Crouching Teacher, Hidden Student: Crafting an Excellent Clay Handbuilding Class

Step right up and lookee here: I said YES when the enthusiastic folks at the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center asked me if I would  be so kind –  and organized! –  as to offer a structured series of Beginning Handbuilding classes. That was a few months ago and now, here they come in just a few weeks. I better get this figured out.

I got thrown into the briarpatch at the outset, because in order to write not one course description but three of them  – Short, Long and For the Press – I needed to have my raw concepts of what these classes would be about aligned with my personal take on the ginormous field of ceramics. Nothing like starting right in.

Just what do Adult Beginners or Re-Newers want? Or need? What do I have to offer them? Could I parse this out and still keep it meaningful, soulful and artistic, for us both?

How much does my editing, formatting and delivery of this wide-ranging subject affect outcomes? I concluded it was puh-lenty and I would do well to start back at my own beginning, boil it down to the bare-boned basics and embellish prettily from there.

So what you see to the left is my long-time method of distilling knowledge: get a side table, dedicate it to the topic at hand, and proceed over the ensuing unfocused weeks to pile it high with everything which might be valuable to that cause. (It’s also how I wrote my college term papers, so I guess there’s a workable precedent in force.)

Supposedly Right-Brained Creatives respond better to horizontal, visual, tactile piled-up available information – as opposed to vertical files behind cabinet drawer-fronts –  and I agree: when I have a thought, a pertinent quote, a book, an article, a snippet of anything I suspect might be useful, I just throw it here, feeling rich and capable.

In good time, I will comb through the cornucopia and discover the inherent order there. Yes, I have a goal in mind, but the only way I realize it is to plow through and let it grab me. Inevitably the outcome is so much richer and denser than what I thought I was creating.

These stacks are certain to contain my decade-plus collection of notes and handouts from my stable of teachers too. Some of them have had genius ways of simplifying and Explaining It All….or genius techniques, genius timetables, and genius projects which I can freely channel, if not outright copy. I bow to those who gave this kind of effort before me, and I reap the harvest of their cultivation. Nobody comes out of nowhere.

And that’s really all there is to it. I’m no expert. I’m just someone who’s studied how to share and how to be a guide and to deliver substance. I’ve got some ideas on what sorts of things are good to know in the beginning and what sorts of things might logically follow.  I have theories on how to engage learners and how to aid them in discovering their own realizations and about how to foster the creative process as it relates to clay. Beyond that, what happens is what happens and I mean to stay awake to it. I’m a Hidden Student inside a Crouching Teacher.

Class Nuts and Bolts: It meets 6 Thursdays, 2-5pm, Session I: Feb 23 to March 29, Session II: April 12 – May 17 held at the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center, 9341 Mill Street, Ben Lomond, CA,  831-3364ART.

If you’re so inclined, you can call or register online at www.MountainArtCenter.org. Class is $180 for Members/$200 Non-Members.

Next Time: A discussion of the super slo mo similarities between an illustrated ceramic process and cooking shows.

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To All the Blog Titles I’ve Loved Before

Is there a name for the Muse of Blogging?

 

At a workshop early last fall, I asked the presenter, ceramic artist Wesley Anderegg, how his ideas for new work came to him. Did he have a backlog waiting to draw from? Was it a sudden inspiration? A visual image? A concept? After all, his work uses Concept as a long suit, often leaning on a quirky visual pun in support of it. To my surprise, he laconically replied that in truth the title of the piece came to him first, and the rest of the work followed along in embodiment of it.

Now that’s an odd bit of insight, which I recognized instantly as a ratification of own my creative Step One,  not so much of my visual art process – that’s as visual as visual can be – but rather, that’s exactly my blog writing process.

The Title presents itself as a fulmination of Something I Have to Say.  Those slippery snippets of insight, the wry and dulcet posits and synchronous happenstances that make up my world?  They unite,  distill themselves and wander into my frontal lobe in the form of words.

The Title must also be delicious and tantalizing enough to impel me away from whatever else I am taken up with. Ideally, it should plant me at the keyboard and keep me there to slog through the typing, the inserting, the looking up,  the linking, the editing, the tagging, and the publishing. And the re-editing and re-publishing. Folks, it just doesn’t write itself.

If I miss getting to the writing apace, I capture the Title Headline Idea and the motley insights for it on whatever writable surface I’m near. For months now, that’s been the case, as I was way too busy cranking in the studio. The result of which – besides a ton of new work –  is I have a sizable clutch of suggestive blog titles I know I’m not likely to turn into full blown posts. They were written on the ice and the ice melted.

You know where I’m headed with this, right?  In order to release their energy and un-snag mine so as to be able to write afresh, I want to share them here.  This amounts to a cyber-version of  letting go of clutter, a la my new found holiday, Discardia. (Which you, too, should seriously go investigate and celebrate.)

So, let’s pull them out one by one and see what might have been some incalculably awesome reading. Yes, yes,  I could have just recycled it all, but this will be more fun.

1. Under the Hood with String Theory and The Swerve;  This comes from the book I was reading (The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt) and an email conversation with a friend. My cryptic subnotation reads, “proposing unifications and reasons, strings swerve.” On the same note: “Tuvan Throat Singing.” “Feynman.” Click on the links for a glimmer, cuz that’s all I have now.

2. The Mess-up; “1.One supervised experience with a hot stove. 2. How it goes terribly wrong. 3. The itch you can’t scratch. 4. What happens when it goes wrong and our reaction to what happens. What happens after that.” OK, I know this had to do with making mistakes as a learner and, as an instructor, guiding students through mistakes, or even letting them happen. And I recall I wanted to talk about expectations and perfectionism.

3. In Which I Attempt to Explain Myself; No further explanations available.

4. Flaccid Visors, Dead Elements and Other Tolerations; Meant to be a discussion of the needless annoyances we put up with, even adapt around, but how they still negatively invade our psyches. Yet, just like the Circus Trees, it can also become its own artform.

5. Singing Wrong Right; My notes say: “Brush abuser” (clearly a self-reference) “Skate Stupid” and “practice, practice, practice.” Not sure how all that quite fit together, but I think it was about bending the rules with confidence.

So, that’s five Phantom Blog Titles with Notes, gone, but now never to be forgotten. I kiss them fondly and wish them well,  like old boyfriends, knowing they gave as good as they could at the time, and so did I. Yet, it’s now Now and new titles keep arriving in my mind. Think I will grab one of those and sit down at the keyboard soon.

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My Art Buddy Karen: An Illustrated Panegyric

Love Karen Hansen's playful WallHeart

I could have said paean or laudation or even, dare I, encomium, but panegyric was the big ass word I needed for this public praise piece about my Art Buddy Karen Hansen.

So, without tons of backstory, and letting the photos describe her ceramic art, what’s good about Karen as an Art Buddy?

What's she DOING in there? (Karen Hansen, greenware)

She’s Magnetic. It’s got to be about Frequency (or is it pheromones? I forget.) No matter, when I’m in classes with her, I want to know what she’s doing, thinking, making. It matters to me a whole bunch. Even though our styles are divergent, they’re sourced from similar resonances and I simply need to be around that to channel the muse and protect me from the detrimental energies in the room.

You know, deep down inside, TV is good for you! (TV Wall Plaque - Karen Hansen)

She’s Associative. That means that she collects her fascinations from nearly any quadrant and synthesizes them into enjoyable quirky meanings. A quick study of human foibles, she makes good fun of nearly every thing and every body. She’s facile with words and slippery thoughts. As a matter of fact, that might be her true medium. But it comes out in the clay too.

Half Empty? Half Full? Nope, just 1/2. Deal. (1/2 Lidded Jar - Karen Hansen)

She’s Versatile and Steady. Adaptive and Constant. Ever-changing and Predictable. Do I speak in parables and opposites? Yes. Because it’s true. I’ve probably quoted it before, but it was Steve Allen (or maybe Marshall McLuhan) who said, “The funny man (sic) is a man (sic) with a grievance.” If we go beyond the oppositions, we find the unifying core of humanity in both tragedy and comedy and I enjoy that skill in Karen.

Karen's Playland (or one of them...) Hey, I see that oil can back there!

She Brings It Basically it’s a Full Catastrophe Package with Karen. Equally capable of shop talk, philosophy, baudiness, pop culture or fine art references, and animal humor, she most humbly reveals her passions. She can simultaneously complain and assess, with chuckles. She buys my art, too, astounding me.

Skullheart, Pitfired babydoll head, Pillsbury Doughboy, Candies and dial tile...the beginning of my Karen Hansen art collection

Well, I mean to say I’m pretty fond of her. Art Buddies cannot be conjured. They ARE. I have a modest shelf of Karen’s treasures, pictured above. Some I traded with her, some I just purloined from her “extras.” Karen would modestly say these pieces reflect more about the eye of the beholder (me) than the maker (her), but I like them because they hold her special juju. Back to that vibe thing. And I want MORE stuff in this collection, especially of her newer work.

Polka Dots and Spirals for Everybody (Lidded Jar - Karen Hansen)

Fortunately for all of us, she recently entered the art market, a move I applaud. There’s her Etsy Shop, Polka Dot Clay Studio where you can see and buy lots more of her fun style for yourself. And there’s the Santa Cruz Open Studios Art Tour 2011, which we’re both still waiting to hear about our acceptance.

One Word: Birds (Lidded Jar - Karen Hansen)

Conspirators. Birds of a feather. Com-madres. That’s how I feel about knowing Karen and her art. Did I heap enough public praise? Did I use enough illustrations? I hope so.

Corazon Espinado in the most exquisite way. (Wallheart - Karen Hansen)

Thanks, Karen!

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