Boo Boo Kitty and other fun things.

My Little Leopard Dipping bowl up there to the left made it into this super fun treasury this morning on Etsy so I'm happy about that.  It is a gorgeous sunny day here in Northern California.  No fog which is awsome.  The wind is blowing and all of the fall leaves are racing through the air and getting kicked up by the car tires.  It is really beautiful.  However, I did have to chuckle a bit as the leaf blowers were trying to work around in the wind.  Seemed a bit counter productive.

I still haven't set up my little kiln yet but I did get a small slab roller.   Woo hoo, thanks, Kathleen.  It should be perfect and is just the right size for my little basement.  It is almost set up and soon I can get to experimenting.  I bought a couple of hand carved wood Indian block stamps from Amanda James on Etsy and as soon as they get here I am going to try them out on some slabs.  I can't wait, they are transit right now. One more thing, I'm also part of the Etsy Mud Team so I'm excited about that also.

I have quite a few new pieces out of the kiln and will get to posting some images after I get some of my grad school applications sent out.  Priorities, you know?  Have a delightful fall day wherever you are, or spring if you are on the other side of the world.

My Vegetarian Thanksgiving

Yesterday we cooked the traditional turkey and all the trimmings for the meat eaters.  However, I have recently decided to go vegetarian so I had to come up with something else for myself.  Who knew that tofu and brussel sprouts could be so delicious?  I got the inspiration for this dish from the blog 101 Cookbooks.  The recipe is called Carmelized Tofu.  I adjusted it to use sliced, roatsed almonds because I had no pecans and I also tossed in some dried cranberries and sesame seeds. Then I substituted maple syrup instead of brown suger.  I made the sauteed brussel sprouts and put it all on top of some nice, fluffy quinoa with a splash of Bragg's Liquid Aminos and a little sesame oil.  Oh my gosh, I was in heaven, and no turkey, mashed potato food coma!  Now if I could have stayed away from the pumpkin pie and vanilla ice cream that would have been another story altogether.

Other fun stuff going on includes my new (ahem, used) little kiln baby.  I drove out of town on Wednesday to snatch her up.  I can't wait to try her out.  We have the 220 outlet in the laundry room but the room is so tiny only the washer and dryer fit in there.  So, alas, I will have to get a small shed or run the proper electric out to the garage.  But, oh I am itching to try her out!

Last, but not least, my Black Friday/Cyber Monday Etsy sale is in full swing and is proving to be pretty successful so far.  Most of the work in the shop are one of a kind items, so if there is anything you would like to purchase you might want to head on over there and get it before it gets snapped up.

20% Off Sale in My Etsy Shop!

Shop homemade for the holidays on my fabulous handmade pottery Etsy store!  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Winter Wonderland

My reindeer tea bowl made it into this lovely Etsy Treasury today! This treasury was curated by Kristin Gabriel of Trunk Couture.  Have a great Saturday everyone!

Constructing Elements

Lately I have been thinking about how to make some mixed media work so while I was working on photos for my website I decided to start playing around with compositions of different ceramic elements. 

For now I am just using the ceramic elements but I felt like a kid again playing with my building blocks.  It is rather freeing to allow oneself to play like a child.  Now my mind is thinking of what different kind of elements I can add or structures I can build to put these in or hang them on or any number of crazy and fun things.

I am suddenly feeling a trip to the scrap yard coming on and my hands are itching to get a saw into some wood and metal and start creating!

Maybe some yard sales if it doesn't rain tomorrow.  Hmmm...mind is racing.

Magic in the Park

I've been pretty busy lately.  I would like to say that I have been super, crazy busy but I don't think that I am being that efficient with my time.  Either that or I have unrealistic notions of just how much I can fit into each day.  Or it might be that I spend too much time surfing the internet.  Hmmm...   Anyway my grad school applications are coming along nicely and I have gotten the worst part of it out of the way.  I have been making work to add to my portfolio and I have been editing images so that I can update my website. Since I have been spending a lot of time in either a dark room in front of the computer or in my basement studio I decided that I absolutely HAD TO get out of the house and out from under the trees and get into some the wide open space with sunlight.  Of course I had to grab my camera just in case.

I headed up to Upper Bidwell Park which is one of my most favorite places to go.  It always holds some kind of magic for me no matter when I go.  But this time was a special treat.  I'm not sure that I have been there before when the leaves are changing.  It was absolutely gorgeous there this afternoon.  Everything had that special glow about it.  I really felt like I had entered into some kind of fantasy realm.  Everything was entrancing. I was only going for a short drive through the park but it ended being a three hour walking photo shoot.  It was very relaxing and inspiring and now I feel like I need to go back everyday, all day.  Sigh, too bad other things have to get done.  Maybe I'll bring some of these colors into my work?  I have to justify more research, you see.

Oh the enchantment of it all.  I'm kind of lazy when it comes to writing creatively although I do have my aspirations.  This makes me want to sit down and write poetry.  I love the images but they don't recreate the smells and sounds like the hawk talking or the owl hooting or the silent, delicate flight of the bats skimming over the lake.  I didn't want to leave but the sun was going down and it was getting dark and colder by the creek so I decided I would end my adventure and try to get back home and back to work.  But this is what I found when I got back to my car...  And that meant I had to stay for another hour.  Smile.

 

 Yes, a truly delightful day!

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!

Fall Pottery Mugs

Fall is finally in the air here in Northern California.  We went from 98 degrees on Saturday to 78 degrees on Sunday.  My hands, nose and toes are cold as I sit here typing.  I could put on a sweater but I am kind of reveling in the new sensation.  It is supposed to go back up to 90 today so we are still in the fluctuating stage.  Leaves are falling from the trees and things are just beginning the change from green to oranges, reds and rust colors.  To celebrate the season I am listing new mugs to my Etsy shop.  Enjoy!

Another fun polaroid.

Find me on Etsy
http://www.etsy.com/shop/dancingclay?ref=si_shop

Polaroid SX-70

My latest distraction, among a long list of other things, has been playing with my vintage cameras.  Here is a photo of my late 1930's Kodak Six 20 Duo.  I shot this image with my 1970's Polaroid SX-70 using PX-70 Color Shade Film from The Impossible Project.  Today I made the two hour drive to Sacramento and back and then decided to do a photo shoot of some more pottery for Etsy and for show entries.  Keep an eye out for those images.  Way too tired now to do much else but crawl into bed.

New Terracotta Work

New work going on in the "studio," aka basement right now.  I had been without a place to fire any of my work since finishing up over at the university and I was starting to go a bit insane.  I even let my fingernails grow and was starting to polish them!  First time I've had long fingernails in the past twelve years.  I hadn't been sure how to solve my lack of kiln dillema until a little over a week ago.  While I was having a garage sale with some of my older work, a potter/student came up and we got to talkin'.  He told me of a studio he new of where I could work and get some stuff fired.  The only problem is it is really far away from me.  I mean REALLY far!  As in four whole blocks away!  I couldn't believe it.  I went and visited the studio with a bowl of fruit in hand for a potluck lunch they have every Friday.  It was awesome and I have been jumping for joy for the last three days.  Has it only been three days? Only?  I came right home and went to work.  Strange thing though, even though I consider myself more of a potter I really didn't feel like making pottery.  I've had these sculptural ideas that have been taking up my thoughts for the past month or so.  So this is what I have been up to.  I'm pretty happy with this first piece so far and I have another one started. Not sure if this is complete or if I might combine it with some other "part" or perhaps some mixed media.  Ah, excitement!  Now if I can keep on track and get my grad school applications in I will be doing great.

Bedroom Floor Art Studio

This is what happens when you plan to do a little sketching while leisurely listening to Pandora.   I have started pasting images into my sketchbook from other artists to use as jumping off points for exploration of new ideas.  I have been quite interested lately in architectural structures and conglomerates.  The image from the bottom right of my sketchbook is the artist, Julia Haft-Candell. It is a detail of her piece titled, The Bike. This spring she was a project space artist at NCECA, national ceramics conference.

 The Bike by Julia Haft-Candell

Lauren Gallaspy

Lauren Gallaspy is another artist whose work I have been enjoying immensely.  I love her uninhibited use of porcelain with the drips and bridges and juxtaposition of solid and delicate elements.  On top of her forms she delicately draws figures and abstract elements in pastel hues which embody the struggle between opposites, love and hate, attraction and repulsion. 

Lauren Gallaspy