Long Walk

I took a long walk today trying to burn off some frustration.  I walked through the cemetery and when I saw this I realized it pretty much described just how I feel today.  Some days are great, some not so great.  But seeing this kind of helped.

I made the Front Page of Etsy Today!

My little ceramic dipping bowl made it to the front page of Etsy today in this wonderful treasury!  And to top it off,  the bowl sold.  Woo hoo!  I'm so excited because this was a bowl I made when I was at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina in June. 

Heart Tile Wall Hangings

When I first started back to college in the fall of 2007, my first ceramics class was intermediate mold making.  One of the projects was a multiples assignment involving tiles that needed to be 2" high.  I started by making a clay positive and then cast it in plaster and used it as a press mold.  Being fall, I wanted to use plant materials before everything fell off the trees.  I used maple seed pods in this one and rubber stamps for the lettering.

Returning to school was a stressful change and I found myself doing whatever I could to remind myself of peaceful, happy things.  These tiles were direct reminders to me of what was important and what I needed to do for myself.  I created about 30 tiles, all with different impressions and wording.  I was told that the hearts brought to mind the work of Jim Dine and the many heart paintings and sculptures he created.

Most of the tiles were finished in 2007 but I recently unearthed a bunch that I was still doing some tests on and had not finished.  The completed tiles had been fired at cone 04.  The above tile had a wash of purple mason stain and I glazed it up with a satin clear and fired up to cone 5.  I am quite happy with how it came out.

 

This last one also had purple stain and I applied a combination of commercial red glaze and a crackle glaze that fluxed into the red and added some color variation.  This one is also fired to cone 5.

I have had so much that I have needed to catch up on since graduating and then I am really trying to keep myself focused on making sculpture for my portfolio and grad school applications.  However, these tiles keep sneaking into my mind and I feel like making a few more. I better use them as a reward for when I get the sculptures finished.  They are a nice relief project. Pun intended.

In the meantime I have listed these in my Etsy store.  I can't keep everything I make no matter how much I love them or there wont be room to make more.  Sigh...

Have a delightful weekend full of peace, stillness and love!

Playing with Polaroids

I finished off the last of the film I purchased from The Impossible Project to test out my SX-70 cameras.  This is the PX 600 Silver Shade UV+.  I think I'm finally getting the hang of it after botching quite a few of the images.  Of course, now I am out of film and need to order some more.  The above picture shows a problem I was having with the cameras or film, I'm not sure which.  I wanted to figure out if I had a defective film pack or if the camera roller was maybe giving more pressure on one side of the film.  So I hopped into my dark closet to transfer the film to the other camera hoping this might go away. 

Instead of going away, I got the same problem but on the other side.  Huh?  I hadn't had this problem at all with the color film so I don't know if maybe my finger was in the way of the door and putting pressure on it.  I will have to play around more with this.

I went up to the park tonight to watch the sunset but there were almost too many clouds.  The weather was absolutely perfect and I wish I had been out there for hours.  I thought I had three shots for the polaroid but alas, this was the only one.  My scanner doesn't do the best job with scanning these in.  The top photo has this kind of moire pattern when you look at the original size.  This one here had some strange color artifacts so I turned it black and white (which it already was but it took out the strange pink circles from the scanner) and then I gave it a slight sepia tone.  Fun, no?

Tomorrow, back to sculpture and applications.  Then when I've gotten some of that done I will reward myself with some more photography.  Hmm, I wonder if it should be the other way around?

New work in progress.

This past week I have been distracted or rather my brain has been all over the place and I was busy. I'm just not really sure what I got accomplished.  

The week before that, however, I spent quite a bit of time making some new work.  I am interested in the process of opening up on a personal level and also I am interested in architectural structures and how those relate to my inner thoughts.

I am still fleshing out ideas and working to figure out where this is headed.  Am I leading this new work or is it leading me?  Perhaps we are working together.

Next week I plan on refocusing my efforts and making three or four new pieces that will be larger.

I learned an exciting thing yesterday when the mail came.  Some of my work has been accepted to "It's Only Clay" at Bemidji Community Art Center.  I am very happy. Actually, I started jumping up and down when I read the letter.  Yay!