Studio Journal

Channeling Willem and Karen


So The Plan was this: trade a piece of my art for one of Karen Koch’s and alter it mightily as in Erased DeKooning by Robert Rauschenberg. (You who need the thrilling and informative backstory are encouraged to see Karen’s blog and my previous post, the one just before this one, which will connect you to the other two previous posts…so just scroll down…as always, I’ll be right here when you get back!)

I have concocted this lidded ceramic container recalling some of the shapes and textures of both my work (the Soap Bubble bottle) and Karen’s. It has been bisque-fired and is ready for more decoration. My plan was to add colors and patterns not to exactly replicate Karen’s lovely little piece, but to riff off of it in 3D. Could I do that with the decidedly less-wieldy underglazes?

Apparently not. My first brushings were tentative AND pretty ham-handed, if that is possible! I hated them. But the hate was well-utilized because, all of a sudden, I remembered that DeKooning spent eons scraping his paint off of his surfaces, painting more and applying absorbent newspapers, and scraping and applying, scraping and applying. Thank You, Willem! I just got creative permission to do less than rinsing it all off and starting over, but to do more than piling on more colors in hopes it would get better.

Enter the sanding screen as seen in the first photo up top. I LOVE this thing! It makes Instant Old surfaces. Off I went outside with a mask (because you don’t want to breathe ceramic-anything dust) and ever so lightly and randomly scraped and altered the surface I had thickly painted.

It got better! I started to feel the rhythms of Karen’s piece, titled Purple Music. I thought about music. I wondered what Karen was listening to when she made it. (Karen?) I put the Real Jazz station on the satellite radio, literally caught the vibes, and painted and scraped and scraped and painted.

Eventually I broke out the underglaze chalks and pencils. Betchadidntknow they had those, right? For we who love that dry, calligraphic surface, they are heaven. AND they smudge good, too! The bottom photo shows the piece nearly done. It is altogether more playful and rhythmic and totally has the effect I was wanting. Whew!

So, I leave us right here with just a few more steps to go: clear glaze wash and the final firing, with an important twist in the works. Stay tuned, kids!

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Shhhhh! Creative Radio Silence



It is pretty much true for all of us with Right and Left Brains: I find I can’t talk and create at the same time. I can talk before (What’s the Plan?), on breaks (How’s it Goin’?), and afterwards (Here’s the Deal), just not during. As a matter of fact, I enjoy watching the demos of creative instructors because there is often a point where I can almost see them switch brain hemispheres and pause their verbal instructing in order to get the demo piece to the right artistic place. Makes me glow inside with recognition.

For the past week I have been in the silent During phase with the DeKooning/Rauschenberg-inspired art exchange which I am involved in with Karen Koch. (I have described the swap’s progress and premise in my previous posts of 8-17-09 , “Creative Timing” and 8-12-09 “Art Swap, What If?”) I have been quietly and happily deploying my Big Idea, step-by-achin’-step, and have been unable to make words about it. Yet, I also know I need to come up for air in order to document this fantastic experiment for me, for Karen, and for every other interested soul out there. I’m currently on a creative break, so I will recount the tale as it has unfolded so far.

As of today: the first bisque-firing is cooling down! I lifted the kiln lid and peeked and the piece made it through without self-destruction, always a positive sign. Now it can never revert to earth again, having passed the point of no return in order to become a delicious, absorbent ceramic canvas for the rest of the decorations I have planned for it. I am relieved and blessed to create another day.

So let’s take those photos up top, have ourselves a pictorial, and see what silent changes happened last week.

Top: The wet signature on the bottom of the work, a ceramic tradition. The idea is that if the piece is inscribed while it is still unfired, the artist was actually present. While there is no problem with other types of signatures being authentic, this wet signing is just one kind and I happen to prefer it. Sometimes you will see an artist’s chop/stamp pressed in the wet clay, sometimes a painted underglaze signing, all perfectly wonderful. This one includes a date and an inscription which might be the first in the world to include a Twitter hashmark address!

Middle: One thing I love to do is give a piece some color before that first bisque firing. It helps ease the stultifying transition from forming to decorating. There is so much waiting around in ceramics, it is a common problem to lose one’s stoke between the making, drying and bisque-firing steps and consequently to be neither in one’s right OR left brain when re-encountering it. I painted some amethyst and white underglazes, only partially mixed, on the whole piece. This serves as an underpainting and helps me regain my place quickly after that first firing. I chose those colors because they are common to both the pieces Karen and I traded, as she so skillfully observed.

Bottom: Off to the kiln! This morning’s photo shows the piece loaded in the kiln. And, surprise!!! It has a lid, formed from memory to recall the top of the piece I sent Karen! It has been painted with chartreuse underglaze as well as the amethyst/white mix, neither of which look at all like they will when fully fired, part of the flying-blind fun of ceramic decorating. (Oh, and don’t worry, all you energy efficiency sensates, I did not run the whole kiln with just this one piece….about 20 other works were loaded in after this shot, and they survived just fine.)

So, after today’s firing success, I am charged up and ready to do the decorating work in the coming days. Until then, I will maintain creative radio silence on this project. Over and out.

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The Focus Pull

In the world of filmmaking, when the camera changes focus during a single shot, (say from Mrs. Robinson’s half-stockinged leg to Benjamin in the background, conflicted and staring) it directs the viewer’s attention in a powerful narrative manner. I want to borrow this focus pull concept and play with it a little in the realm of this blog. Let me steer our collective attention beyond the deliciousness of thinking, making, showing and blathering about ceramics and creative process for just a bit.

You see, I went and signed up for another of Alyson Stanfield’s oh-so-valuable online classes: Blog Triage, and it started today. This class is different for at least two reasons right from the start: One is Cynthia Morris, the co-instructor, who adds another mindful mother lode of experience to the work at hand, and Two is the fact that the class assignments will, like as not, play out here with all of you, dear readers, and not just in my private office or studio.

Case in point: the first assignment asks for me to essentially pull focus and blog about what I expect to get from blogging and just who I would like to be reading my posts. This request creates a heady funhouse mirror effect on me, but I know the point of looking at things from other perspectives is to be more than self-referencing, that the meta-awareness generated is gold for the narrative comprehension.

I have read and followed some blogs for years…I just did not know they were blogs! I guess I thought they were highly entertaining, active and personal websites, which, after a fashion, they were. As a blog consumer, I enjoy warmth, humor, community and an artful turn of phrase, even profundity, in the writing. I usually want to think or learn something too. I want to connect and feel moved, to sense the passion and pulse of that living human on the other end. Even if I never comment! Please don’t ask me to separate the trivia from the minutiae: if I read about your capricious kid, your trip Down Mexico Way or your braided body hair, I want to be invited along with you and not merely asked to stand and admire! P.S. You are allowed, nay, encouraged in, your detailed techie-nerdy passions, though. Su embebecimiento es mi embebecimiento.

Now that I have a blog of my own, I’m expecting myself to generate at least the level of excellence I find engaging as a blog-sumer. I need to keep me entertained! It is harder than I thought, too, but not because I bore easily. I figured my understanding and meaning-making would come in the doing, and it has.

Here’s what I like so far about SoulCeramics:
~I am gaining a much clearer and confident artistic voice! I prefer to play with words and ideas, layering many concepts and kinda quirky references into my writing, and, funny thing, I like doing that with my art too. Neat!
~Love, LOVE, LOVE being able to make hyperlinks to some of my obscure observations…..it fosters greater understanding all round. (Thanks to my phenom-son Roger!)
~I am forging a powerful community of readers and commenters who tell me in many specific ways how they enjoy and benefit from my musings. I am meeting like-minded folks, not all artists, a lot of them bloggers about hiking or beer brewing or Silicon Valley in the Early Days.
~I am proud to invite others to my blog…and I had not thought that was the case until today.

But, who do I want to attract here? Can I even describe this micro-demographic? Starters are starters, so here is a first, impromptu attempt:
~Family, friends, colleagues….everyone I already know.
~Ceramic artists, heck, all artists, really. I love cross-pollination.
~Thinkers and readers.
~Lurkers and Laughers (having been one at times.)
~Pranksters and Cosmic Thieves (put these in to wake you up….if you’re still reading… I know this is a long post….)
~Folks who can give me good support and professional connections, whoever and wherever they are now.

So, some things once seen cannot be unseen, and pulling focus has revealed a plot twist. Blogging about blogging has changed my blogging. Good for us!

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Creative Timing


One of the absolutely, positively, hyperbole-intensified, hardest things for me to learn and retain in ceramics is to wait for the right time to do the right thing to the right amount of clay at the right moisture content. There are delicious names that potters give to describe the stages of clay wetness, and here are some common “cheese names”: brie, mozzarella, cheddar, and parmesan. (Hungry?) If you just think of how relatively wet these cheeses are and how they might behave when modeled a la ceramique, you get the idea a teensy bit. For years now, I have come up crying when I tried to get clay to stand and behave when it is brie or even fresh mozz consistency OR when I try too zealously to shape or bend it when it is cheddar or, heavens, parmesan hard. You see those cracks?

So Creative Timing in ceramics not only includes when the Muse/Genius arrives and tells you NOW!!!! but also includes where your clay piece is at when that alpenhorn sounds. Riding this magic carpet of Creative Timing is part of avoiding the ultimate frustration and embarassment of know-better failure as well as grabbing the soaring, roaring upwelling of spirit and plain ol’ fun that nailing it gives. And I suspect that speaks true in any sport or creative endeavor. Probably even poker.

That said, I am full of ceramic pertinacity, so slowly, slowly, slowly I have gotten better at the Waiting Game. Yes, it is possible to rewet dry clay and to dry out wetter stuff, but it is totally sweet to have the rhythm in place, because then it matches the creative surges that might be accompanying the reason I am in the studio in the first place!

So, this directly applies to what I am doing in my Art Swap with Karen Koch. There is that Big Idea: take the art she has sent me and rework it in some way so that it becomes new art in the loosely interpreted spirit of “Erased DeKooning” by Robert Rauschenberg. (And see my last post for the most interesting particulars and links.)

Yet, as I have heard someone who eschews vacations say, it’s because, “Wherever I travel, I take me along,” the bald fact is I am just me, livin’ my day-to-day. Some days I have good ideas and energy, some days I am dull, distracted and dissident. But I really have not survived this long as an artist to mind any of it. I just know to go in the studio regardless of what the finger-to-the-winds of my creative mood reads… and it generally is the right thing to do.

I stalled in addressing this project today, for familiar, but ultimately dismissible, reasons. Karen and I have agreed to a deadline and deadlines are conducive to showing up, at least to me. Also, the clay was ready for my next impulse. Deadline + clay readiness = dismissible reasons for creative avoidance.

I wanted to apply a subtle nubbly texture to the bottle form I am working on because Karen, in her note to me, mentioned that she made her art with “colored pencil, paint, and Sharpie marker on patterned paper.” I can’t replicate the pencil, paint or marker, directly, because they would burn out in the kiln, but, hey, I can do texture! So the first shot above is of the homespun fabric that I applied to the perfectly-ready (mozzarella-hard) clay and then rubbed a bit with a nice rounded wooden tool. Second shot is what that left the clay bottle looking like: happily it is reminiscent of patterned paper!

So it was a few hours well-spent. All in good time, especially in clay.

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Art Swap! What If?



Oh, what have I done? It all started innocently with a “What if?” And that one “WI?” led to another and another, so that I presently find myself in this fun little puzzlement: How to alter the art sent to me by Karen Koch in the spirit of Robert Rauschenberg’s “Erased DeKooning?” (And I take great satisfaction knowing she has the same conundrum over the work I sent her.)

See, first it was what if I joined a book club organized by artbiz maven Alyson Stanfield on Twitter (yes, Twitter: #dekooning.) We read, more or less together, DeKooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan. And what if one of the other readers pondered if any one of us could let our work be destroyed as in “Erased DeKooning.” And what if I tweeted that I thought I could and what if I and that other reader actually did this?

Fast forward to today: Karen and I have sent each other a piece of our work and are independently gathering our ideas about just what to do. She has blogged several times about it and you can see both works there. What I hope to record here is how I develop my response. So up top you see a photo in my studio with a bunch of slabs of a nice white porcelain-type clay called Geostone, and behind it the work (on the right) and card and envelope that Karen sent to me.

Below that photo you see what I did with those slabs today, a beginning container of some sort. I DO have a Big Idea, which I got in the shower, but I won’t spill it all out right now. Let’s just see what happens and I will make posts as I go.

What I think makes this a bit more difficult than just making OR destroying one’s own work, or even trading privately with another artist:

Goes against the creative grain a smidge. Need to stretch, though, and that is good.

Feels wrong to wreck someone else’s work, even with permission. Again, more stretching. Still feel a strong urge to honor this destruction. Make it holy, even.

This particular experiment is being done in front of an audience of sorts, as both Karen and I are posting and blogging and tweeting and emailing and showing and telling and talking to many other people about it. Although it was born in a public forum, it did not occur to me that this would be the case when we traded and created, so the watching eyes and ears add another factor. Fine, so the performance ham in me can come out and play too! It’s been awhile.

This is definitely NOT like the “Erased DeKooning” because of the two-way exchange and the fact that we were not intending to replicate that. We are more interested in seeing how it feels to let go of an end product, something we both cared enough about to not erase/edit ourselves. “What if….” is a pretty endless proposition.

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Local Talkers Close Up


Taking a closer look at two of the small face jugs I am making all this year, as described in my previous post. On top is Week #16 and below Week #20. I affectionately call them Bland Man and The Dude. They both were unusual experiences in the making, and that is is why I am featuring them. (You are able to see front views of them in the group shot from my last post.)

There are typically four faces to choose from each week in the Local Talk column. I am often magnetically drawn to just one and, while I don’t decide for sure until I am actually sitting down with the wet clay to make that week’s jug, it doesn’t change all that often.

Bland Man was my response to NOT getting any buzz going that week. (No offense to any of those folks featured in that column!) This project has always been more about responding to what I see rather than creating a portrait, but even creative responses benefit from close observation of the details. No matter what I did, nothing niggled or intrigued. What else to do but to go with that then? I am happy I did. There is something timeless in this simple little jug. It has whimsy and wisdom and a calm abiding sense that recalls more ancient art. Bland Man, then, is a tiny little joke, really. Beneath that calm exterior lies….

Now The Dude I talked of last May in the Mother-Daughter Double Jug post. If you recall, I was tempted to make another two-person jug, but the angles were wrong, so I went with this covered-up but still full of personality (or attitude?) young guy. And, usually I put the week’s number on the neck or hair in back, but the big ole “20” got pressed into the front of the cap. There is swagger and self-satisfaction in this one for both him and me.

Of the six weeks I let this project ride while I studied ceramics at Skyline College in San Bruno with Tiffany Schmierer, the Thursday columns lined up on my studio wall like fence posts. I spent time studying them yesterday. I mentioned before that I had never seen anyone mugging in a Local Talk column…well, dear readers, I have a Mugger for you. I also have the lovely face of a local classical sculptor who teaches European methods (gee, am I intimidated? Nah.) And there are LOTS of people in sunglasses because it is summer in Santa Cruz! Not quite sure what will develop because of that. We’ll all know in October’s post.

Like I also have said, nearly all are smiling or doing something to make ME smile. Such a gift. At mid-year I am very pleased with this project and looking forward to bringing it into its fullness. I consulted with Tiffany about applying colors and glazes, so I even have some insight into where I will go with that when they and I are ready. It all feels just right.

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Local Talkers Class Picture Day

It’s been fun thinking up how to show you all thirteen weekly small face jugs from the second quarter of my 2009 year-long series based on the Local Talk column in the Local Rag Called The Good Times. It’s basically a face-a-week proposition I have been working, working, working.

But ever since hitting the half a year mark in June, at 26 weeks, I have been letting the columns pile up and taking some time away while I did a six-week summer intensive at Skyline College in San Bruno, CA with Tiffany Schmierer. (Much more wonderfulness on that later.)

This group shot is reminiscent of an elementary school shoot: line ’em up on some risers and try to capture everyone looking their best. Obviously, some have misbehaved! Love that.

I also have stylist tendencies, because I put them all on a 2×4 on the laundry room water heater. Let’s go urban funk. It excites me in some great way to do anything BUT the perfect gallery shot. I’m saving that for when the whole series is decorated, glaze-fired and complete. Which is, gee, a whole six months or more away. I’ll wait. In the meantime, I will photograph whatever and wherever I like.

So here are their sweet and lively bisque-fired faces. What I have learned in the Second Quarter is that the smiles really speak to me, even if they are “window smiles.” I know I talked about smiles in a previous post, but responding to them goes deep and satisfies.

I also have to admit to understanding my work better when viewed through a lens, blogged about and published. It’s a bit like putting a frame on a painting because it sets it apart and allows another understanding of it to come forth. So does good lighting. So do 2×4 water heater risers in the laundry room.

I also have learned to stay loose and interpretive this quarter. Hence the Bland Man: I’m sure you can pick him out. But there is also the Temptress and the Dude. (No, not that The Dude, who abides, but a relative.) Such fun.

I have a few close-ups to post soon. But I wanted to share this Class Photo from today to get things started. It was a great July away..and you will hear me talking about that soon enough…but for now, just enjoy another small body of work that leads to a huge one.

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