I have a fabulous Artist’s Talk and Demo at Cabrillo College Ceramics planned. Got my talking points, props and handouts in line. Have some great Segment Titles, such as “Failures of Concept and Skill,” a couple of which are shown in the photo.
Even so, I expect my earnestly laid plans to veer off-road – and I truly hope they do!Read More >
One of the topics the Cabrillo Mud Heads Ceramics Club members requested I talk about this coming Friday was my experience transitioning from a ceramic student to a career ceramic artist. I have plenty to say on that subject, especially as it pertains to the general arc of Mistakes and Making Them Right.
Case in point: ordering too many thousands of postcards for Open Studios in 2013.Read More >
I was invited to give a three-hour Artist’s Talk/Demo at Cabrillo College Ceramics and it’s coming up this Friday.
While I gladly said yes about a month ago, I am now wondering just who volunteered me behind my back, because the scaredy-catted introverted hide-in-her-studio artist has got the dithers. My Inner Critic, Scylla, is quite sure I will suck in the most boringly didactic way possible. That the crowd will politely suffer my foolishness and drift off at the first break and it will be The Worst Talk Ever.Read More >
Since July 18, 2009 I have offered a wide array of my ceramic work for sale through the online handcrafter’s marketplace known as Etsy.
But, now it’s kaput, done-ski, o.v.e.r. My Shop is still there, with a few remnant listings, but no need to check it out – it’s on Vacation – indefinitely – until I can take a stick and kill it.
It’s been a pretty fair run: 89 sales to some nice people, 99% of them living east of the Mississippi River, where I hardly ever go. (About one sale a month.) A nice fat PayPal account, for a time. 370 Shop Admirers.
Once I made a cup set in response to a Beginning Hand-building class assignment. The cups were rudimentary root vegetable shapes with wings for handles and I was inordinately proud of my conceit and execution of it. None of them stood up, having those pointy little root ends and all, and – being a clay newbie – when they were bone dry, I bobbled the long skinny carrot cup and broke off a wing. The kiln tech at that time was a most helpful resource for me who has since gone on to be a teacher himself and I naturally went to him to get ideas about re-attaching the wing.Read More >
A few years ago, my friend and clay buddy John Albrecht sat me down and described his passionate idea for a new clay place. What he outlined back then was not just ambitious, it was a little outrageous. It would be a place, he said, that reached out to both clay diehards AND clay newbies. It sounded like my kind of theme park: excellent facilities, enticing projects for spontaneous drop-ins, members’ studio space and privileges, local clay artists available for consultations, date nights, movies, interesting flex hours. Oh, and a gallery with exhibits and work for sale.Read More >
Although I’ve done so a few times, I find it confounding to write about my longtime ceramics mentor, Kathryn McBride, who died in February, 2012. Later that year I wrote “What Dreams May Come” about receiving a heartwarming bit of understanding and resolution. Last year I wrote “The Apron” about taking on one of her physical mantles. Regardless of my meager written output, she daily abides in me physically, mentally and spiritually.
Physically: I have many of her tools and materials. And I use them!
Mentally: I call a woven basket she gave me her “In Basket.” It contains small trinkets of hers and when I really need to tell her something, I write it down and put it there, smiling to myself.
Spiritually: Her Christmas Card from December 2011 reappeared a few weeks ago, full of loveliness and hope, speaking about the coming spring she did not yet know she would never see.Read More >