The Bird Has Landed!

Long time no bloggy!  Life has been crazy, as usual, for the last couple of weeks in preparation for my trip to Penland School of Crafts.  So much so that it seemed hard to bring my mental capacity around to blogging.  But now I am finally in Asheville, again at the lovely Sweet Peas Hostel.  But little did I know that it was spring break here!  There is lots of youthful energy around which I actually kind of like.  It keeps me young, ya know?  I did manage to forget the power cord to my laptop so my posts may be a bit sporadic until it gets mailed out.  For now here are a couple of images of the teapots that I was working on.  The came out of the kiln shortly before I left.

I'm off now to get some grub and start my adventuring around the city and surrounding communities to explore lots of great pottery and art.  Yippie!

Studio Cat's Twelve by Twelve

I've been following Michael Kline's twelve by twelve challenge over at Sawdust and Dirt so I finally decided I needed to jump on the band wagon.  This was a great idea and I made it!  I got six bowls and six mug bodies.  My problem has been that I keep thinking I need to get other stuff done so that I can focus on the work but I just came to the realization that this is completely backwards.  My work needs to be my priority and I'm sure I will still have plenty of time to get other stuff done.  Besides, now I am all fired up with creative ideas (pun intended.)

Another goody for my day is that my Kickstarter project was put into the Arts Devo column of our local independent newspaper, the Chico News and Review.  Goodie, goodie, gumdrops!  So now I am celebrating my early day achievements with a snippet of dark chocolate.  Yum.

Here are the teapots that I finally got the handles on.  I was initially going to try putting some little feet on the bottoms but by the time I remembered I wanted to do that they were already a bit too dry.  I'm not so sure that middle tall one is going to work out.  I love the way the handle looks but I don't think it is going to be balanced for the shape of the body.  I'm thinking it will be awkward to pour.  But I like how this prototyping is going and I am ready to try some more.  These will be decorated soon with paper resist, underglazes, and texturing.

Studio manager, Tiger, says she is the one responsible for making sure the twelve by twelve happened and that I really need to give credit where credit is due.  Ok, Tiger, you win.  "Thanks, now give me that tuna you forgot to give me this morning."