Almost ready for Craft Boston

Here we are, not quite two days away from hitting the road on our way to Boston. Everything is packed up into boxes and ready to load into the van. We've never had this many pots on hand EVER. Probably 2x more pots than we have ever had... even for our holiday sales. Just TONS of pots.

Tonight we spent the bulk of the evening playing around with the layout of the new booth display. Trying all sorts of angles, rearranging this and that over and over... always in search of the perfect layout. The best part was laying the new Wondermat flooring. Foam squares that interlink. Very comfortable. I dont think I could ever do a show on carpet again! Best part: they are grey, so even dirty, they look just fine. Talk about low-maintenance.

Here are a few of the pots we're taking with us this coming week. I decided that from now on, we need to pull a few pots from each firing to save for exhibitions. From this last firing, I am pulling aside the sunset teabowl in the image from the last blog entry.

New pots pre-Craft Boston

Tangerine carved vase $100

Sunset facetted teabowl $Not For Sale

Blue carved vase $120

Here we are, a week before heading to Boston. The studio is a disaster zone and should qualify for federal relief. The booth has been completely repainted. Parts to everything are EVERYWHERE.

The good news is that we have TONS of pots ready for the show. Finally. The last two firings produced some absolutely stunning pots.

I spent the better part of last night and so far, much of today, taking new pictures of these pots. As always, comments are welcome.

More playing

The original image

Yep, when I should have been dealing with taxes today, I was instead up to my _________ in fun, playing with some new photo software. Oh what FUN!

What I am finding is that while composition, good glass, excellent lighting, etc are all crucial to getting amazing photos, the thing that has been missing from my work has been the "post-processing".... meaning the Photoshop time or any one of a hundred programs out there. The ability to adjust contrast, saturation, color correction, focus, etc....is so important to the final image.

Excursion Around the Bay

Or what do you do when the lights go out? Today was one of those days, where the ice storm that should have been keeping us home and safe and dry... instead had us out on the road, looking for someplace warm and lit. We lost power for the better part of six hours. To top it off, we lost MORE branches on our white pines due to ice build up. The yard is covered with enough branches to make 2-3 full sized trees!

For most of the evening Nancy made new earrings and I goofed around the the camera. Once the power came back on I planned on getting back to work on taxes and data-input... but I REALLY wanted to play some more with the images we shot last weekend at the Junkyard. So, here they are!! Comments encouraged.

Junkyard Excursion

We finally had some snow this year. Everyone else in the Northeast has been complaining of too much snow, but here in our little corner, we've had precious little. With the nice white stuff all around, the family was compelled yesterday to head out on a photo excursion. Everyone had their camera in tow. The first pictures I am posting today are from my camera. Hopefully tomorrow I will have some images from Aurora's camera. Nancy will probably post her images on HER blog.

The Everglades

Of all the things we did on our trip, this was the most WILD! Alligators, anhingas, herons and all sorts of other amazing things!!!


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Seaworld

While Aurora and I sat in Orlando with a 5 hour layover, we decided to DO SOMETHING with our time. So we hopped into a cab and went to Seaworld. Here's some of what we did.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

New slideshow from our trip to Florida

After trying to sort through the hundreds of pictures that Aurora and I took on our trip, we have whittled it down to these. Enjoy.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Gone to Florida

Took a break from the studio this week to come down to Florida with my daughter to visit my family. Once we made it to Miami we headed down to Key Largo with my brother Martin and my mom in tow. We had the most amazing time snorkeling off the reef. Saw fish of every size and shape imagineable!! On the way back up the keys we stopped in at Dolphin Cove and SWAM with dolphins! Originally the plan was that only A would be going in the water to swim with the dolphins... then my mom sprung the surprise... I GOT TO GO TOO!!! Talk about amazing. Nothing in the world really prepares you for such a stunning experience. Rather than write more, here are some pics.

Ready, Sets, Go

Another week passes and we are up to our eyeballs in pots. This week was spent making oval forms. We had an order for some casseroles (which I no longer keep in stock as part of our line..)
which needed to be much larger than our normal old-style baking dishes... think 14"x10" ... which means throwing the form at 16'x12". That's a mighty BIG casserole. Looks more like a battleship compared to our little pots.

One of the things Nancy and I have been playing with is the idea of sets. In the past, everything we made was sold piecemeal. Now we're hoping that by combining pots into sets of forms, they'll sell as a unit. We shall see. I think the tumblers on the tray above is a good place to start. More to come.

I also had a chance this week to make oval vases again. My hope was to have a few days in a row to really make an extensive series, but our cat Ferro has been in and out of the hospital with urinary tract issues. No fun! With only a few more days to be in the studio before a week's hiatus (kid and I are heading to FL for some snorkeling and some exploring in the Everglades) there isnt much time to get hip deep in more work.

We are definitely getting closer to that end of March deadline as we get ready for Craft Boston.

Getting Caught Up

This weekend was incredibly productive in the studio. Nancy went to town making plates. Board after board of oval platters, dinner plates, salad plates and dessert plates... they just kept coming all weekend. She took Friday off work for a snowday. Ended up spending most of the morning trying to get our cat Ferro to the hospital. Add a wicked ice storm to the mix, and it made for a very exciting and tense morning.

We unloaded another kiln this weekend. Some pretty amazing pots came out. More oval pitchers and oval platters. The gallery is started to look fully stocked again. It's ABOUT TIME!!!
Our goal at this point is to be really overstocked by the time we leave for Boston at the end of next month. We're getting there.

Nancy spent a huge chunk of time over the past week stripping, sanding and priming the new booth parts. Still a lot more to go. After trying out some chemical stripper on some of the big hollow doors we use for shelves, we decided that strippers just arent meant for us. Talk about GOOEY! What a mess!! To save time and frustration we went to Home Depot and bought NEW hollow core doors. Done. Tonight they'll be primed and tomorrow they can be painted. Easy.

Sometimes the hassle just isnt worth it. We try very hard to be as eco-conscious as possible in this family.... but there's definitely a point of diminishing returns!

Pitchers and more

After a long wait, we finally have some new images of the pitchers we've been playing with. I wont say much tonight... since I really should be outside loading the next glaze kiln! But, tomorrow while this kiln cools, I will post an update about some of the things Nancy and I have been working on in the shop.

For now, enjoy the new pics of the pitchers.

Sign of the times

A couple of weeks back, we were out on a drive, just cruising around the top of Cayuga Lake. Figured we would head over to Auburn for a photo-jaunt. The sky was grey, no snow... not the best light for winter photography. At the end of the day, Nancy took my favorite picture of the day.

Makes me wish we had some sign in Trumansburg that was as iconic and ironic and just plain funny as this one. Talk about a landmark!

Let them eat cake!

The old Dessert plates are DEAD. Long live the dessert plate!
Today we sold the last of the old style dessert plates.

Now we can put our focus on the NEW dessert plates which are so much nicer.
Deeper sides, more easily stacked and most importantly; less likely to warp!

Revisions

Here we are, dead of winter, and there's no sign of snow. Grass is green(ish)...and the ground seems frozen. Makes taking winter photographs really tough! I had hoped to have new pictures of finished oval platters, dinner plates and dessert plates sometime this week. Still not there yet.

I spent today washing and waxing pots. I think, at the end of the day, there were enough pots waxed to fill at least two kiln loads. Having those new pots in the gallery will be really sweet.

We've spent this month really looking at what aspects of our pottery needs some updating or revising. If you have something you really want to see, now is a good time to speak up so we are able to at least add your ideas to the discussions.

Here's to ongoing revisions!!

Working with images

I have put off installing the latest version of Photoshop... mostly because I am still trying to learn all that Photoshop 7 had to offer. The new Nikon D80 came with some trial software called Nikon Capture NX. Specifically designed to work with RAW NEF images from Nikon cameras, it is the most amazing software I have every worked with. It makes changes MUCH faster than Photoshop. It has more commonsense pre-programmed settings... it just WORKS better.

So, here's what I was playing with tonight. A photo of Ferro and part of the mozaic of images from yesterday. I can't get over how rich and saturated the colors can be!

Very Un-January like weather

Not really sure I have the words to describe how bizzare it is to see grass growing in the middle of January. It would be one thing if this were a visit to Miami. Nope. This is the field across the road from our house and studio.

Just wait till summer 08 at the Johnson Museum at Cornell University

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platters coming to Cornell in 2008

Created with dumpr.net - fun with your photos

dumpr.net

Created with dumpr.net - fun with your photos