Good Times

Still Seeking, Not So Desperately

LocalTalkersGoingHome

I’ve had a fine old time connecting with 19 out of 53 (36% so far!) folks from the “Local Talkers 2009” series of mini face jugs that I made back then and am now giving away to the folks who unwittingly posed for them. IF I can find them!

The whole idea is described in my last post, if you’d like to delve further. That post also contains the list of all 53 names AND who’s been located so far. I keep updating it and I will also include the shortened list at the end of this entry as well.Read More >

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2009 Local Talkers Fourth Quarter Group!

Oh my, the final fourteen weeks of the 2009 Local Talkers project were wild! There was the woman half hiding behind a wall and the guy with the sunglasses and face mask. Unbelievable!!! If I were making up a face a week, I would never have gotten as out there as these real life respondents to the Good Times Local Talk column did.

And that is the nutshell reason I even attempted this: Truth adds more unanticipated detail and surprise augmentation than Fiction. One almost just needs to provide a well-orchestrated capturing mechanism, whether it is the photograph, videocamera, written word, painted impression, or in my case, the small handformed face jug.

Almost. I know my Genius walks the streets, though.

This was the last sub-group to be formed and successfully bisque-fired. It is delicious to have gotten to this point, so let’s take a moment to gaze at the first collective shot of them all.

I am wincingly aware that I am nowhere near being done. The real problem-solving starts with beginning to think of all 53 individuals as a unified group and of how to go about finishing them and displaying them to emphasize that. (And I am definitely NOT displaying them like these casual shots!)

I have taken a few stabs at this unifying need over the past year, but now I am calling in some experts. I have a set of fellow ceramic artists whose aesthetic senses I revere who I will consult. I will do a lot of testing. I will take it slow.

Maybe I first need to be clear on how I will display them before I know how to unify the decorating. One long shelf? Four shelves? Individual shadowbox cubbies? Risers? Wall? Table/pedestal? Frontal? 3D? Pyramid? Wood? Black velvet? Bamboo?

I am in another Gathering Phase of the Creative Process. I did not work this hard for more than a year to rush through, either. I am savoring this part: letting the right surface treatment present itself as I run my options. I know I will feel its goodness when it arrives, just like I let the right face come to me each week and I let my formal response to it come around as I worked the clay.

It’s that well-orchestrated capturing mechanism being developed, spliced, edited, restated and glazed in order to turn it into art and I am good for the breadth and the distance.

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Catching Up with the Local Talkers of 2009

This time last year I embarked on a project I knew for certain would take a minimum of a year to complete, which was part of its appeal: to make one small jug a week inspired by the expressions of the respondents to the Local Talk column in the weekly entertainment tabloid called the Good Times.

I shared my quarterly progress with you and last wrote in October, noting the fact that, while I had faithfully gathered the weekly columns and made lots of other ceramic art, I was OK with the fact that I had finished only one of the 13 jugs in the Third Quarter…and the hands-on studio time for the project in the Fourth Quarter was not looking promising.

You can find the other posts in order here, here, here, here, here and here. I truly recommend reading the first and the last ones, for the original set up and the “we left off here” aspects.

But up top and just below are photos of the still-green evidence of my earnest studio time in the past week, when I returned at long last to Weeks 28-39!

I was concerned that after such a long time away from these faces, my “hand” would be different and it would reflect in an observable and unwanted difference from July to January’s product. Not so! While I felt differently inside and held some completely different mental conversations — many of which were based on the powerful learning I did last summer at Skyline College with Tiffany Schmierer and last fall with Cynthia Siegel — what came out was pretty seamless. Whew!

I have an opportunity to work in my studio at least this much in the coming weeks and would love to get all these lovelies, current and future (Weeks 40-52), into the bisque kiln by month’s end. I am rarin’ to solve the puzzle of how to decorate this body of work and also how to display it to best effect. I have some tantalizing ideas on both fronts.

After a year’s practice, it has been odd to not set out each Thursday morning in search of the current week’s copy of the Good Times, but it has taken one tiny bit of pressure off my days, allowing me to absorb the fact that I really did collect the whole year and now just can enjoy the heck out of making good on my promise to myself.

More on this real soon!

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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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Keep on Talkin’

When you sign on for a year-long project lots of things happen you did not expect. Last post I spoke of being happily surprised that folks who appear in the weekly Santa Cruz Good Times Local Talk column are so pleasantly countenanced. (I am basing my 2009 one-a-week small face jug project on these faces; first 13 weeks crammed into the shot above.) I guess anyone who agrees to answer the question man is, well…agreeable!

Some things I have never seen in the column: an answer without a photo…..a dog or thing instead of a human in the picture, someone really mugging, or with their hands in front of their face, turned sideways or backwards…or even looking miserable like in a booking mugshot. Does that mean my facial sampling is skewed a bit towards the thoughtful, articulate, courageous and well-socialized among us? Sure! And, I am fairly sure that sometime in the past, one or all those things I don’t recall seeing have actually been there. This year, however, I live in a bit of dread about them. What, artistically, will be my response if it happens? Maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe I will pick that shot and really get stoked on the relief of seeing something new. Maybe I will play it safe.

Oh, yeah, and please, Good Times, don’t cut the budget for this column this year! I have thought of alerting the publication to my efforts, but it feels both wrong and premature. I need to let it all unfold as it will, being a patient B.S.-in-Sociology participant-observer! It’s heady enough (pun intended) sharing it with my family, friends, Art Salon and you out there in the cyber ethers. Let’s keep it our little secret and surprise the Good Times later, OK? And let’s hope they don’t surprise me too badly first.

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Work in Progress: Local Talkers

Now for some dramatic new art! Here is a stage-y shot of most of the First Quarter of 2009’s year-long small face jug project which I have set for myself.

Some of the backstory about this project: Our local entertainment weekly rag, the Good Times has run a column for all the 20 years I have read it called Local Talk. It’s a Question Man-type column, the kind where the reporter hangs out somewhere like in front of the bookstore, stopping random folks and asking them the burning topical question of the week, or even some general-interest question like, “What did you eat for breakfast?” The peeps who are amenable get their picture taken and their answer published in the column. I have even appeared in it! (And, interesting side-note, after I answered the question on the spot, I changed my mind and wound up calling the reporter later that afternoon to tell him my new opinion! That’s a Libra for you.)

Anyhow, years ago, when I was new to ceramic work, the Local Talk column asked, “If you were a vessel, what would your purpose be?” The range of and reasons for those answers still astound me. Those five people said they would be containers like ships, sustenance holders, and blood vessels! They would carry truth, food and oxygen in the interests of peace, cultural sharing and fun. I just never thought outside the utilitarian ceramic “vessel” until I read that column.

Somewhere soon after that column came into my life, I got the idea to make a piece of art each week based on one of the faces from it. Well, it took nine years, but this is the year I am doing just that. Each Thursday morning I go out early and grab a Good Times, bring it home and gently tear out the column and date and number it with the week. I pin each one to the wall in my studio until I can make two or three weeks’ worth of face jugs at a time.

I never know which of the three or four faces I will pick. Some weeks the faces are just so tantalizing and choosing is difficult. Some weeks, everyone just looks the same. Fortunately I have never sought to make portraits, but rather to use facial features, expressions, accessories and hair/hats as springboards for a fun little jug. Sometimes I am so lost in the faces I never even read the question or the answers!

I sign and date the bottoms and stamp the week’s number into the leatherhard clay when I am done. They are bisque-fired, but I am waiting to have the entire year done before I color and/or glaze them.

A side benefit to this project which I did not foresee: almost everyone is smiling or at least has a pleasant expression. They are a gentle, amicable bunch, this First Quarter grouping. I have a bit more to say about actually making them, so will write about them again soon.

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