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!

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.  

Photo Mania in Monterey

The last couple of days in Monterey, our class has had the opportunity to work with the wonderful photographer, Dan Burkholder.  He has been teaching us the ins and outs of iPhone photography using an amazing array of apps and techniques.  I don't have an iPhone yet but I have been lucky to have great classmates who allowed me to take some shots with their phones and run the apps.  I'm hooked and ready to get one!

Beach Bummin'

Carmel, CA

I have been so busy lately that it seems like yesterday that I last posted when in fact a whole month has slipped right on by.  Let's see if I can get y'all caught up.

Fort Ord Dunes State Park

Texture on the dunes

Sand City, CA

I am currently in Monterey at CSU Summer Arts taking a photography course called "Exploring Photography Through Three Centuries.  I've made it a point to get to the beach while I am here and have visited three so far.  I can't wait to go explore some more.

Taking a group photo.  Say Cheese!

The course is coordinated by Brian Taylor, professor and chair of the art department at CSU San Jose.

Professor Taylor has brought in three awesome guest artists for this two week class and we just finished up with artist, Dan Estabrook who is amazing!  He taught us salt, gelatin-salt, and gold toning, now considered an alternative process which was revolutionary in the 1880's when it was fist invented by William Henry Fox Talbot.  The three prints above are the ones I completed.  The first, on the left is from an image I shot (cough) about 18 years ago.  This one is a salt print.  The middle picture is the interior of the craft house from my recent trip to Penland and is a gold toned gelatin-salt print.  The last photo on the right is from a farmer's market picture of turnips and is a gelatin -salt print.  This process is quite user friendly I would like to explore it some more when the class is over.  

I am currently in the thick of mixed media with our second guest artist, Holly Roberts.  She is teaching the class mixed media techniques using photography, paint, and collage.

Susannah Israel

The weekend right before I left for Monterey I was able to attend a workshop with Susannah Israel who taught us coil building techniques for figurative sculpture.  I am so glad I was able to go to this as Susaanah is an absolute delight to work with and an incredible instructor!

My bunny sculpture from Susannah's workshop.

Soda kiln results

And then there was the soda firing.  It was a mere two weeks ago and already it seems like so long ago. 

I was able to participate in a couple of firings and I am truly addicted.  Phew, that's a lot of activity with more on the horizon.  I have another week in this class and then I will be starting the final two weeks with Clay as a Medium for Sculpture.  I'll try to keep you updated when I can find the time to breath!

Penland Day One

When I left home, spring was well underway.  It was in the low seventies and the daffodils were already starting to droop.  I got up to Penland today and was pleased to find that I get a spring do over.  The daffodils are still coming up and there are bulbs of various kinds sprouting through the soil everywhere.

I had to get down on my hands and knees to put my nose in this beauty and it smelled heavenly.

Here is the view from my bedroom window.  I was quite pleased that I was assigned a bedroom all to myself! This is an itty bitty room but has lots of storage.  Of course I plan to spend most of my time in the clay studio.  This room feels very homey.  It reminds me of my grandma's bedroom with rustic wood paneling.  Now I just have to resist jumping up and down on the bed like I did at Mimi's when no one was watching.  

A cozy corner in the Craft House by the pay phone.  I love how the late afternoon sun is streaming in!

The Penland campus is full of all kinds of artsy tidbits like this "Wishing Well" in an old tree stump.  Inspiration is everywhere!

Can you tell how I spent my afternoon?  Yes, one of my other passions it photography!  Tomorrow will be a full work day cleaning and prepping the studio.  I better turn in early tonight:)

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!

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?

Another fun polaroid.

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Vintage Photo Effects

This post is called "vintage photo effects" or "how I can take most of the day doing a photo shoot of my pots and then spend hours and hours tweaking them."  I'm kind of wondering what I like to do more, make pottery or take photos of my pottery?  Hmm.  I DID get other things done today, I think (scratches her head.)  I trimmed bowls and decorated mugs.  I went to the grocery store because we were all out of fruit and it was on sale. Especially the raspberries which is what got me into trouble when I realized what a great prop they would be.  Delicate little pieces of fruit.  They wont hold up long so I'll just have to eat them.  Huge sigh!

OH!  By the way.  This did have a purpose when I started.  These two porcelain and celadon pieces were from my Bachelor of Fine Arts Culminating Exhibition.  I just listed them in my Etsy shop to see how popular they might be.  Swing on over there and take a look.