Grad School Adventures

Excuse the absence, I'm in grad school dontcha know? For the most part I have been posting updates to my Facebook page. I am not entirely certain why I haven't wanted to blog, except for the fact that I have been utterly and extremely busy.  The past four months have seen tons of changes, successes, failures, stress and excitement.  So, if you want to challenge yourself, move cross country and go to grad school!

College of Visual and Performing Arts, New Bedford Campus, Star Store. I'm up on the fourth floor in a huge studio space.

My space when I first moved into it in September.  I actually had a month in New Bedford without a car and no studio access.  I got a little depressed.  I rode the bus around, got a library pass, walked a lot and had a scare with bedbugs.  

The view out my studio window.

New Bedford is kind of an odd little town.  It's history is the fishing industry and mills and there tends to be a lot of poverty here.  There are pockets of wealth and pretty houses but to get to some really gorgeous scenery one needs to drive about five minutes out of town.  This is the harbor filled with fishing boats.  The area is known for it's historical ties to whaling and Herman Melville's Moby Dick.

Fall is truly setting in and one of my favorite places is this little park about fifteen minutes out of town on this little salt marsh pond.

One of the first things the grad students did after school started was take a trip to New York City to see some incredible exhibits at the museums.

So, I actually have been making work!  This is the result of my first soda firing and also what I set up for my first crits and reviews.  I was pretty pleased with how this came out in spite of the fact that I had a cold and was sick from an abscessed tooth.  I kept trying to figure out why I was so bleary eyed and delirious.  It was the hardest and felt like the longest firing I have every done!

Now I am busily trying to catch up and getting work made for finals.  Oh yeah, and there is that paper and presentation I have been seriously procrastinating.  See ya' later, I've got a kiln to check on!

New Adventures Await Part One

I am sitting in the Atlanta airport waiting for a connecting flight that is one leg of the journey that begins a new chapter in my life. To say that my emotions are a mix of excitement and trepidation is putting it mildly.  I have been quite busy since finishing out the semester back at the end of May. 

Two days after the semester ended i jetted out North Carolina to be a studio assistant in back to back workshops. This a pic of me stoking the new wood kiln at Penland School of Crafts. After five weeks at Penland I headed home to spend the next three weeks packing up and moving out of my apartment in preparation for a cross country move.

This was the last view of my little apartment as I mopped myself out the back door.

I spent most of that time trying to get rid of all my stuff when it finally sunk in to my head that none of the stuff I had was worth the cost of paying to move it. I sold, thrifted, gifted, and threw away stuff until I ran out of time. What was left got stuffed into my mother's house so that I would surely have something to do when I come back to visit.
To be continued...

 

 
 
 

 
 

Art Success!

Tonight finds me super, duper exhausted.  For the first time in many years I have taken my brand new soda fired pottery out to a small local art fair. By local, I mean four blocks away from my house which was great so could run home quickly for the things I forgot.  I think I went home three times.  The best part about today was seeing and hearing everyone's positive response to this new body of work.  I think that has been more valuable than the sales.  I was really crossing my fingers because I wasn't sure that very many people would be familiar with the look of soda fired pots or that they would appreciate the neutral, earthy peach and orange hues.  I think most people around here are more familiar with the cobalt blue and rutile combos.  Well, I was quite surprised at just how well received the work was.  Not a lot of sales yet but there are two more days to go.  Thanks everyone who came by the booth today!

So if you are near Chico, CA come on over and say hi and tell me what you think of my new work.

I'm going to go flop into bed now.  Have a wonderful weekend and stay cool and hydrated out there.

Gettin' it done.

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you have a deadline and a very specific to do list mapped out so there is no time for distraction.

I got tons of photos taken.  So many that I overheated my camera.

Many of these pieces will be in the show at the Matador this weekend.

I had a lot of fun making these little cups.

So much delicious contrast on these pitcher.  

We made it over hump day and were on the downward slide to the weekend.  Keep smiling.

Photos, Show, and Packing

Today I am trying to catch up on photographing all my pots from the last two soda firings.  I am feeling waaaay behind and just a wee little bit stressed.  I need to add these pics to my website, make a power point presentation for Penland

, where I am going in a little less than two weeks.  I need to pack for the trip.  I also need to start packing for my big cross country trek to grad school.  Plus, this weekend I will be showing and selling my work at ChiVAA's Art Fiesta.  Thank goodness I have friends and family to help me out with display equipment and set up!

I love the way the pots have turned out in the last couple of firings.  I have learned tons in the last year of my soda experimentations.  I finally reduced my soda amount by half and really pumped up the reduction and I think I am starting to get the feel of how this works.  I am loving the forms of these bottles and I think I will work on some more of them when I am in North Carolina. Bye for now. Gotta try to get on top of stuff.

Come on down and see me this weekend!

Clay Rocks!

So much clay, so little time to blog about it!  Here is a little recap of last weekend's Chico State exhibit at CCACA clay conference in Davis, CA.

Rick Barnett

Kara

Chaz Jay

Chaz Jay Detail

Toni

Amanda Swede Detail

Mallory Russell

I'll update with proper names and titles after I come back from the university tomorrow.

Big Update and Instagram Link

Hey Folks!  Life has been crazy or something like that.  I recently got an iPhone.  Yay me!  So now I am having fun taking quick pics and I am finding that I am sending updates frequently to facebook and forgetting all about my little 'ol blog.  Sorry about that.  At any rate, I have added an Instagram link to the right there at the top so that you can so what I am up to on a more regular basis. And with that, here are some photos of what I have been up to in the last month.

I went to NCECA in Houston Texas.  

At the La Mesa Exhibit

My toes in the Gulf of Mexico

Seashells from Galveston to be used in the wood fire at Penland

Galveston, TX

Firing the soda kiln

Unloading

Yee Haw!

So excited about this most recent firing.

Making pumpkin pancakes.

Now I am making more soda work.  I will probably only have time for one more soda firing before the semester is over.  Plus, I will be making work for the wood fire at Penland where I will be from the end of May until the end of June.  Besides all that, I will be packing for my cross country relocation for Grad school.  No rest in sight!

Soda Fired Pitchers and Mugs

Here are the results from my soda firing last week.  I've been having fun pairing them up and seeing how nice they look in good light and on the nice backdrop.  I think I am going to be ordering some business cards soon so these photos will be great for that. I love to order my business cards from Moo.  They are my favorite! I still have a lot more pictures to take before I'm done so that's what I will be doing this weekend when I am not lounging in the sun.  I am so excited for daylight savings.  Yippie!  Next week we should be putting in another soda firing.  Have a delightful weekend.

Comfort Food

So, I am feeling pretty bleh today.  We have had unseasonably gorgeous weather here in Northern Ca. Last week it got up to about 77 degrees F.  Phew, in February, no less.  It has been truly wonderful.  Now there is a storm blowing in and who knows?  Maybe it just has me in a mood.  On the up side.  A friend of mine has ducks that have been giving him more eggs than he knows what to do with.  Who knew ducks keep producing eggs durring the winter?  So, I cheerfully agreed to take some off his hands. Now, people who know me will have their eyebrows lifted in a question mark.  Because when I think of eggs, I usually think, EEEWWW YUK.  Yea, I am not a big fan of eggs.  Unless, that is if I am baking with them.  I will eat them, though for protein when I am tired of tofu.  But it has to be like, a little egg with those veggies, please.  Like that veggie scramble up there in my delightful little Erin Paradis bowl that I got at Crimson Laurel Gallery in Bakersville, NC last spring.  Can you see any egg in there.  I didn't think so.  One egg and a whole lot of veggies, spices, salsa, and olives just to make sure.

Now, eggs are eggs are eggs.  But try as I might tell myself that they were just bigger, fresher, better versions of chicken eggs I was a little squeamish about using them.  So I figured it would be best to try them out in brownies first.  Yup.  I killed two birds with one stone.  Comfort food and new territory, albeit, a teeny tiny challenge.  Now they were scrumptious, but I don't think nearly as beautiful as this Sharon Virtue tile I picked up last summer at the ACGA show in Palo Alto, CA.

And...don't you think these images are fun?   I got a hand me down iPhone 4 so I could finally play with iPhone photo artistry.  Alright then, I am going to pull up my big girl panties and get out of the house!

P is for pots and photos!

I've spent most of this past week shuttling pots back and forth between studios and prepping for a firing that I want to do next week, weather permitting.  I might get delayed a bit on that since a storm is rolling in Monday afternoon.  We might have to push the firing back a bit, oh well.  More time to catch up on my throwing.  

Last summer I took a photography class at CSU Summer Arts.  One component of the class was iPhone photography, taught by Dan Burkholder.  There was only one problem.  I don't own an iPhone.  That is until a few days ago.  Yay me!  Now it isn't a new phone, but thanks to a certain, special someone, I was gifted with an iPhone 4 which is just fine with me. So when I haven't been working on pottery, I have been trying to figure out how it works and pouring over my copious notes from Dan's lectures and demos.   And of course, downloading and trying out photo apps.

I have a thing for water towers and Chico has quite a few good ones to photograph.  I decided to spare my poor kitty and hit the streets around my neighborhood.  The weather has been incredibly warm and very much like spring is upon us.  Oh yeah, I had fun!  So if you don't see pottery here just know that I got deeply distracted and lost in photo land.  

A Speck of Sun

After yesterday's post I headed over to my friends studio to hang out with the Claymates and work on some of these fun mini vases.  It was mostly an ugly day yesterday but the sun came out just long enough for me to run these outside for a pic.  After I got home the deluge started up again.  I'm not sure why but the rain really bugged me yesterday.  It made me sort of anxious and then I realized the water was dripping loudly on a bucket outside so I moved that and it was a little better.  I also looked up the weather report for Massachusetts and Rhode Island where they are predicting a historical blizzard.  Suddenly, I didn't feel quite as bad.  I finished off the evening by cleaning up my studio so I can have a fresh start on some more work.  Now if I can just keep up the momentum I will have enough new work that I wont keep missing out on calls for artists.  Have a great weekend!