Last Weekend of Art Trail

Today marks the beginning of the last weekend of Art Trail.

I love Art Trail. We meet the most amazing folks during these two weekends. Oftentimes these chance encounters become long term friendships. Last weekend was just fantastic. There really is nothing quite like having folks excited about being in your studio, seeing how pots come into being. It really changes how they view pots and the making process.

Here's a great Art Trail this weekend!

lolchicken

Politics and bedfellows and chocolate torte

I dont think anyone wants to read about my political views. Others have said much of what I would say, albeit usually with greater eloquence. So I will be brief. Today I came across a fantastic letter to the next president of the United States.

About food.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/102678/dear_mr._next_president_--_food%2C_food%2C_food/?page=entire

If you read nothing else of a political/social bent before the election, please read this.
Rather than all the depressing deplorable and reprehensible campaign posturing, this letter really tries to look at what our future holds. It is filled with optimism and collaboration. I am sure someone will say it is overly simplistic, and as one person replied on the comment section, they are just happy to have cheaper gas. As a nation, we seem to consistently miss out on seeing the greater picture.

Next topic of contention: Facebook.

A week ago a friend invited me to check out facebook.com. Having heard about the social network for a number of years, I figured, sure, why not? At first I think some part of me enjoyed the pseudo-nostalgic aspects of it. The quasi-voyeuristic nature lends itself to the isolation of the computer user. For folks too lazy to pick up a pen or even a telephone, this is the perfect way to stay in touch with friends. When someone suggested that Twitter is the new insta-blog; a more immediate way to connect with friends and family... all I could think was: oh god. we have been reduced to a culture that wants a sound bite for everything including our drab, boring-as-shit lives. Talk about depressing.

So what did I find after a week on Facebook? I found my past. I found lots of folks who I went to school with and I found/remembered the reasons I didnt stay in touch with many of them. Somewhere between humiliation, embarrassment, and frustration there was a sliver of hope that things improve with time. For now, I will call this the mythology of self: that we imagine ourselves to grow better with time. We dont.

From this mythology of my past came the demons, demi-gods and heros. All come to raise their heads from the shadows and beg the question of where I fit, where I belong. After a fair time to think on how that period in my life played out, I can safely say that my past is where it belongs; behind me. My future lays before me, with maps spread out, plans laid, and choices abound.

I guess this is where clay came into my life. Clay pushes me hard. It is never the same day to day. There is always something new to be learned, to be tried, to learn from, to fail. In my talks with my daughter I try hard to remind her that failure is the better part of learning. Trying and succeeding all the time has serious limits. Failure is a good thing and can be tons of fun too! Just ask anyone who ate the failed versions of my flourless chocolate torte.

I think I will end this entry here and hope you read the letter to the prez that I posted above. It definitely is food for thought. I am off to mix up concrete to patch the mighty big holes in my basement where we pulled water and gas pipes through the wall. Something satisfying about fixing holes in the foundation of your home. That idea seems fraught with analogy and I've had enough of that for the day.

Workin' on the Trench

I think this image says it all: Art Trail, gallery open, and backhoe waiting to fill the trench back in.

Today marks day seven of the BIG DIG. It started out as a simple goal to bring water and natural gas to the studio. I never thought I would be the one laying the pipe. Turns out, my labor is a whole lot cheaper than my plumber. So for the past four days I have been fitting the pvc pipe together, then gluing it all up today, and finally fishing the stainless steel gas line through the pvc conduit. Fun fun fun.

So here is what our driveway and yard look like right now. Of course, this is right in the middle of Art Trail! Figures.

The good news is that if all goes well tomorrow, I should begin backfilling the trench tomorrow, with the gas being hooked up probably before the week's end. Then it's back to making ice cream bowls for all those folks waiting for them!

Interesting Animari - the Kinetic Moving Sculptures of Theo Jensen

I am speechless. You simply have to see these to believe them. Watch the video.





Theo's website: http://www.strandbeest.com/

Art Trail Weekend is off to a great start

This Art Trail weekend is off to a wonderful start. The weather is fantastic, sunny and clear, not a cloud in the sky. We had a really nice crowd most of the afternoon. Lots of fun conversations. I love meeting folks who have seen our sign (sometimes for years) and finally decide this is the time to stop in. Everything changes. Once they see the inside of the studio, the gallery, our workspace... it makes everything more intimate, more social, familiar. All good.

Folks think it's very funny when they come through the door and I look just like the guy on the postcard. Yeah. That'd be me three years ago, more hair....
http://www.arttrail.com/artists/SOLLA.html

What made the day truly unique and meaningful... had not nearly as much to do with Art Trail or our studio. I FINALLY managed to punch a BIG hole into our stone foundation of our house so I can run a gas line to our studio. Made the hole for the waterline earlier in the week with our friend Jeb. He made it look easy, so I figured I would tackle the gas line on my own. Took most of the day, all of my energy, and ALL of the profanities I could muster. But the rocks parted, the sky smiled on me, and in the end, we have a PIPE sticking out of our basement. The mice think this is cool. Tomorrow, pictures of the holes in the wall and the trench in our driveway.

New Images

one of Evangeline and Paul's beautiful greenhouses in the setting sun

the same greenhouse but about 5 minutes later

We belong to a local CSA (community supported agriculture)...so every Tuesday night we are off to the farm to pick up the week's produce. Last week the sunset was so incredible, the lighting was awesome.... so Nancy and I decided to stick around a bit and shoot for a while. I LOVE their chickens!

Watch out for the fall

It sure rained a lot last week

Luna Chicken-head

Ferro Pumpkin-head

It has been a pretty colorful Fall so far this year. After spending last weekend in the Adirondacks, where the color was peaking, I wasn't anticipating much in the way of color on our trees yet. As luck would have it, it rained most of the week and the leaves are just saturated with colors. I am hoping they linger for a few more weeks so that folks out on the Art Trail get a lovely drive out in the country.

Our cats are thrilled about the onset of cooler weather. Both have taken to finding the warmest body in the house, usually me, and trying to get up on a lap anytime ANY of us sits down. That'll change once the heat really kicks on. Then they'll be happy to curl up next to the baseboard heat.

Gone to the woods

This blue floatplane took off and landed every half hour, ALL day Saturday. Talk about LOUD. Our motel was right in the flightpath/waterpath.

Motel Long Lake, in the early morning pre-dawn light

The motel's beachfront at 6am in the fog, with the glow from the neon sign

We spent last weekend in the Adirondacks. Having spent precious little time in the Great North Woods, I figured it was closed enough to get-away to, but far enough away to constitute a vacation. Here are a few pictures from the trip.

Frank Ozereko

Face Bowls, Frank Ozereko, 2008

Face Bowl detail, Frank Ozereko, 2008

Last Spring, Nancy and I were preparing for the Craft Boston show. Rather than show up and feel our way around blind, we figured we could call a few of the potters who regularly do the show. First on our list was Francine Ozereko. Mind you, I hadn't talked to Francine in well over 10 years. It was as though it were yesterday. We talked for nearly an hour. When I finally hung up, I felt like the show would be cake, everything would work out just fine.

On the final day of Craft Boston we had a visit from Frank who was there to help Fran tear down her booth. In our all too brief chat, the subject of teaching was brought up again. It was like being back in the studio with him for Independent Study again. His tone changed. He started thinking about how to toss that bone out there so I would look at all the different paths before me. Nancy calls this flexible intelligence. Thinking around anything. I pride myself on being a flexible thinker... Frank is outta this world.

Trying to talk about Frank Ozereko has always been somewhat difficult for me.

He isn't a flash-in-the-pan, potter-of-the-month coverboy, nor is his work dull or obscure. He actively shows his work and consistently makes interesting clay work.

So why is it difficult for me to discuss Frank's impact?

Probably because of Frank's raw intelligence. That would be my first guess. He has a phenominal scope of interest and the depth of his reading, research and study is just amazing. Having Frank as my undergrad prof in clay really changed how I looked at the field of art.

Everytime we would meet for our Independent Study class at UMASS, I would have some pot I would want to show off or some new glaze. He would say just the right thing to let me know I was on the right track, then he would toss a bone my way... something to lead me down a slightly different path. Always opening up my options. I dont think I realized until probably 15 years after leaving UMASS how instrumental this time was for me. I am STILL going back and revisiting some of those crits.

When he asked if we could trade pots I was more than surprised. Honored, but something more. He chose a beautiful oval vase. One of these forms that I love making. I would like to think it shows. About a week later, these two awesome face bowls showed up in the afternoon mail delivery. They spoke volumes. In someways they embody everything I love about clay and yet never make in my own work. They have gesture, humor, seriousness, color, texture. Everyone I know who has seen these in our collection, IMMEDIATELY wants to hold them and turn them around. Potters and non-potters alike are curious about who made them, what other work do they make...

I guess the best thing I can say is Thank You Frank. You're awesome. These bowls are the coolest ! Congrats on getting into Akar Gallery!! Now if only we could get a website together for a nice retrospective. That would be fun.

Feet

Teabowl by Tom White, ca 1993, Northfield, MA

When I met Tom White, I was finishing up my last year at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. I had been apprenticing to Michael Cohen, when it was suggested that I spend some time with Tom as his production work at that time revolved around copper reds. My undergraduate thesis was on the chemistry and physics behind copper reds.

About two weeks before Tom's big holiday sale he fell out of a deer stand and suffered some pretty major shoulder and rib injuries. As compensation for me lending a hand getting the studio cleaned up and prepared for the sale, he sent me home with two of the nicest teabowls I have ever held!

Every potter seems to have some "side" life and Tom's is hunting. Some folks have freezers full of Hungry Man Dinners, others have ice cream. Tom's freezer was FILLED with deer, elk, moose and all sorts of other wild game. My holiday bonus was a bag full of venison that made my last Christmas in Amherst a very merry one indeed. To this day I have yet to have a better venison steak!

This post was really supposed to be about feet. I hate getting side tracked but I think it is nigh on impossible to talk about a pot without gleaning something about the potter... so this preface is really more about the insight into the pot... not the potter. Really. Just wait.

Feet. Pots without feet look awkward. Not necessarily wrong, but it's noticeable. Tom's teabowls had the tallest feet I had ever seen at the time. I love how these feet feel in the hand. They BEG to be held. Tom's ongoing study of Asian pottery has informed his style, rather than overwhelming it. I don't think anyone would mistake his teabowl for one from Mashiko, and yet the considerations are similar, albeit different due to distinctions in different cultures. By and large, most Americans wont be whisking green tea in one of Tom White's teabowls. Whiskey, coffee, herbal tea, chai and god knows what else is fair game!

Looking at this teabowl after having used it for the past decade and a half (which admittedly saw this beautiful teabowl boxed up for the past 6 years), I am still taken in by many of the same things that first grabbed me. I love the swirling of the clay. I enjoy the splashing of the multiple glazes Tom used to use. Seeing the small stamping of his chop and other stamps really speaks volumes of how I came to begin my decorating on our current body of work. It all comes 'round I guess.

Details: When I first looked at this teabowl critically (during grad school in Utah) I couldn't believe that someone with Tom's experience would still be dealing with "plucking" on the footring. Plucking is where chunks of your foot bond with the kiln shelf. Kiln wash helps, when the wash is still fresh, but after 10-15 firings, with volatiles like gerstley borate and wood ash, that refractory kiln wash becomes more like a glaze. Then porcelain feet tend to fuse to it. Little did I know then that eventually we ALL deal with plucking and it is a bugger! Fast forward 15 years and we went through a spate of plucking that nearly drove Nancy and I to insanity. Now we add powdered alumina hydrate to our wax. So far, this has solved the problem.

I'd like to address other "foot" issues, but I'll save it for another post. I would love to hear from other potters about their inspirations and how they've lived with those pots, and how they've influenced their work.

Pitchers

Oval Pitcher in Forest Green, made September 2008

I love pitchers.

Not just making them.

But pitchers. I LOVE everything about them.

Some potters go nutty over teapots, teabowls or whatever.

I love pitchers.

I love the way handles are so crucial to the balance of the form as well as its function.

I adore seeing spouts offering up the contents of the interior.

Pitchers can be so many things, but I think most (if not all) articulate in some manner,
the human-ness of pottery. The lips of the spout, the belly of the jug, the foot, the broad shoulders supporting the sprouting handle. It's all there!

Firings

We are firing almost non-stop this week. I spent the weekend glazing. I would guess that there are probably still 2 more kiln loads to fire, and that is having fired off 2 this week already. LOTS of pots. I am hoping to get together with Mary Ellen Salmon to take pictures of pots sometime next week. My greatest frustration yesterday, while unloading an awesome kiln, was that most of the pots weren't for us. They were orders from galleries, from patrons, and orders from our website.
Tomorrow I will be unloading a blue and tangerine firing.... LOTS of footed mugs and most of them spoken for! Wow!

More pics from last week

Aurora got hurt pretty bad last week. Took a spill on the playground and left a chunk of her shin behind. 14 stitches later she's feeling a little better. She's still recovering and has a few more days of being on crutches. As a result, we spent Thur and Fri home recuperating, and watching way too many movies! Not nearly enough studio time for sure.

Caturday

Ferro panting from the heat

Ferro sleeping in the heat

Saturday and Sunday were too hot. We have had such a nice early fall that when the humidity started ramping up again on Friday, none of us thought it would be nasty through the weekend. It was yucky. The cats spent the day looking for places where they could get a breeze on their bellies.

Inspiration.... where does it come from and where does it go?

When I first started grad school at Utah State back in 1995, I was trying to learn how to throw more loosely. After the first semester it was suggested that simply throwing faster would loosen up my style. So the challenge was to make 1 minute mugs. We're talking centering, pulling, throwing, and cutting the mug off and tossing it onto a board in a minute. Well... after an hour I had about 50. Another hour I maxed out at just over 100 total. Here's an example of one.

The thing I liked about these mugs is how wonky they are. I made NONE of my usual efforts to make a nice clean lip, or to smooth out the foot. Just throw it, toss it aside and go back 3 hours later and jam a handle on it. This is NOT the way I was taught to make pots. But it freed up my eye to be able to see more of the wonkiness in all of my pots. Nancy and Aurora call it woobie (wooby?) Sort of a bastardized version of wabi-sabi. Try explaining wabi-sabi to a classroom full of first graders. Say woobie instead and they all get it. Somedays that makes more sense to me too!

So, looking back more than a decade, this mug was sort of the forerunner of our current line of mugs. It has the loseness, the flowing lines, the casualness... but it also is more raw than most of what we make now. Sure is fun going back and seeing how that circle of making just keeps on coming back around!

Gun for Hire

Marc Freedman 2008©

Marc Freedman 2008©

Marc Freedman 2008©

Yep. I shoot stuff for other folks.

Sort of makes me a mercenary. A gun for hire.

(no more watching westerns late at night!)

The beautiful work above is from Marc Freedman. Watch for Marc at some of the BIG shows coming in the years to come.

Pictures from the weekend

Made a LOT of pots this weekend. Everything from ice cream bowls to soup mugs to plates and oval trays. Nancy and I just cranked out as much clay as we could. I spent most of today playing catchup. Trying to get everything trimmed, finished and cleaned up. Here are a few of the pics from our Sunday afternoon photo excursion. We have had virtually no customers here since Labor Day. Everyone around (who lives off tourism) says that this is just the way things go. No one buys anything except school related stuff at the outset of Sept, then things get rolling by the end of the month as the leaf-peepers start to emerge. We shall see!

Tag - I'm it

It would seem that my blog has been "tagged". Joy Tanner has a very cool blog which I poke my head in on a few times a week. Last week she tagged our blog and gave a list of the various things one has to do now that one is "it". So here goes:

Here are the rules of the dreaded "tagging" thing:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog. (this is what you're now reading.)
3. Write 6 random things about yourself (see below).
4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them. (This is only a game.)
5. Let each person know they have been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Six random things about me:

1. I never intended to be a potter. I originally went to college to study film and photography. Ended up in chemistry and physics. Go figure. Found out that understanding WHY things melt and change color was probably one of the coolest things in the world!

2. As much as I love music, I can't play one lick of anything on any instrument. Hell, I cant even play spoons.

3. I have an enormous music collection. Mostly obscure singer-songwriter, rock-n-roll, blue, folk and tons of celtic stuff. Lately most of our collecting has been punk and celtic punk.

4. I have two cats. You'll hardly ever see more than one on our blog though. The orange-ish tiger shows up in our photographs now and then, but our black cat is a bugger to shoot. I havent had one good photograph of her turn out well from over 100 that I have taken. Black cats are one of the toughest things in the world to photograph.

5. I miss teaching. A lot. For some potters, making pots satisfies the reason d'etre of pottery. I need the students. More than just an audience, I need the collective mind of a focused class to help wind me up and get my motor going. Extroverts need to be around people to recharge their batteries (or so I have been told).... and teaching was the best way I have ever found to do this for me.

6. I would give just about anything to be living out in the pacific northwest again. I miss the weather, the light, the crops (especially the cherries!), and the people. I spent summers in Port Townsend during college. After a hiatus of about 5 years I went back and it was even better than when I had left. Unfortunately, the value of our house in upstate NY wouldn't buy us a rundown singlewide trailer in the Olympic Peninsula. Depressing really.


______________________________
Tagged bloggers:

Matt Grimmett in the UK
Dan Finnegan in VA
Hollis Engley at Hatchville Pottery in Cape Cod MA
Ron Philbeck in Shelby NC
Alan Argyll from the UK
Hannah McAndrew from Scotland
Paul Jessop from Barrington

Open all night ?

No, we're not open all night, nor have we added neon to our sign. Just playing around with light painting. I Set the Nikon to BULB and left the lens open via the shutter release cable, then I drew on the sign with an LED flashlight. Exposure was about 1-2min. Not terribly long.

I had a photographer come up to us during our last show... we've met at many of the various Rochester shows over the past 5 or 6 years. We got to talking about the frustration of doing product photography. Everything being shot for shows, galleries, etc, all looks the same. Same backdrop, same shadow, same old.... his suggestion was to consider light painting as a way of getting a seamless backdrop with the additional opportunity to put light EXACTLY where you want it. Seems like a pretty wild idea. I would never have considered shooting pottery in the dead of night, outside,...with a flashlight. But it is certainly worth playing with. Who knows what will come of this? Anyone out there played with this idea already? Your results?

Labor-ing away on Labor Day Weekend

The studio and gallery were noticeably barren this weekend, so we took full advantage of this and spent quite a bit of time out of doors, playing with our cameras in the bright sunshine. Ironically, some of our best photos happened as that gorgeous sun was almost gone.

Issac Button - WOW

If you haven't seen this footage of Issac Button, all I can say is get a rag ready to wipe away the drool. This man was wicked fast, wicked good and moved more mud in a day than most potters move in months! It actually begs the question: Is there anyone out there NOW, who can throw like this? Who can take 40 or 50# of mud and turn it into jugs, one right after the other, all day long? Do you know of anyone consuming a TON of clay a day???

Such a treat to have this video available on YouTube. I wish we had access to the entire video.
I have to thank Michael Kline and his blog for sending me over to Matt Grimmitt (from the UK) and his blog. From there I found Douglas Fitch's blog and there.... THIS video. I know, that was kind of a round'about way to get there... but Thank you!!!

Taking Pics Wherever I Can

Today was one of those days where the light was great, weather was perfect, everyone was healthy and we had virtually no customers. Makes it wicked hard to stay in the studio. So we took the evening off and went out and played a little. Aurora has been working on her skating form via her rollerblades. Making great strides !! We also played around a little with some ND filters on the new lens this weekend. Fun stuff.

More pics of pots coming this week (*I hope*)