In honor of St. Patrick's Day...

I thought I might share some pictures of a trip 5 friends and I took to Ireland this time in 2004 to visit a friend there who was a missionary. It just happened that the time we were able to go was over St. Patty's Day, so we got an extra little treat to be there for the celebration. I apologize that some of these images transferred funny, but you can get the point...

A couple of boys at one of the parades we saw while in Galway: Here's the whole gang at a random road sign. One of our friends that was with us has "ford" in his last name. So, of course, we made him get out of the car and take a picture at every appropriate sign. Needless to say, there were a lot- we all joined in the fun on this one (we're easily amused):
Our friend Ellen had distant relatives in Ireland that we sought out at the beginning of the trip. Here's their farm:
One of the days we took a small boat out to Innish Boffin- a small island off the western coast of Ireland. It was a great day of hiking (in bogs!) and hanging out. The waters were really really choppy on the way out there. We all were hanging onto anything we could to stay on our feet. We caught our friend Dave unknowingly hanging on to the ladies room door. Classy!

Different cups for different needs

I made this great smoothie today and realized after I had poured it into one of my favorite cups that it looked pretty amazing in there. This is one by Ronan Peterson (the cup, not the beverage) who works up in the Chapel Hill area. It's got a great crackley surface and is perfect to hold.



This is my new Kari Radasch mug that I just bought in Atlanta last weekend. Why am I smiling? Well, the top opening is nice and wide and perfect for maximizing the amount of marshmallows floating on top of hot chocolate. And, although you can't see it in the picture, the bottom's nice and wide too, which allows it to sit easily on my quickly enlarging belly shelf.

Past weekend's workshop

As posted earlier, I spent last weekend at a Kari Radasch workshop at Mudfire Studio in Atlanta. It was a great one- nice people (all women!) in the class and Kari was extremely generous with her clay knowledge and techniques. Much of the time was spent watching demos, with a little bit of time to work to get the techniques down. We made lots of molds from items that we had brought along, and a couple of somewhat finished pieces. I dried some of my molds too quickly and may have to remake, but the concepts learned are still there. Here's Kari on the first day showing us how to treat the rim of a shallow bowl once it's taken off the hump mold..
Kari had an interesting way of coil-building her mugs and other pieces. She would layer a couple of coils, stretch them upward and then "throw" them on the banding wheel using her serrated rib to shape and distribute the clay evenly. It left a nice subtle texture on the surface, and had the dual quality of the looseness of a handbuilt piece and the evenness of a thrown piece. These pieces were so sweet that I had to buy one (picture to come....).
Even with all the great techniques learned that will get good use in my studio as well as for my students in upcoming classes, I learned most from Kari's slide lecture. Warning! I may have a hard time articulating exactly was learned: Kari has simple, concrete ideas that she aims to express in her work, and she does so extremely effectively. I tend to overthink or underthink concepts and she does it just right. As a person, she seems very familiar even before you meet her because she expresses herself so well in her work. Does that make sense? I think I need to take some time to intentionally determine what I would like to convey in my work without it being shallow or contrived.

Workshop

Yesterday was a fun day- it started with heading up to Concord, NC to deliver work to the Cabarrus Arts Council. I'll be the featured artist in their gift shop for the months of March/April. In May I'll give a demonstration/lecture to the council members.

After that, I headed to Davidson to have lunch with my good friend Alyssa and her sweet daughter Earle (who's probably the cleverist almost 4 year old I've ever met). It was fun to catch up and see what she's been up to in her studio. Alyssa's been focusing on some really cool collages/drawings at the time and in the fall she'll be heading up to Minnesota for the McKnight Fellowship at the Northern Clay Center. She's a rock star, basically.

This afternoon I'm excited to head down to Atlanta for a workshop with Kari Radasch. It's a short one, but I suspect I'll learn a lot. I've admired Kari's work for some time and have many questions for her. She recently had a major change in her body of work and I'm curious to see what kind of reactions she had during that process. I enjoy taking workshops for mainly 2 reasons: they inform my work and enhance my teaching.

As part of the workshop, Kari asked us students to look for things around the house that would be good to use to make molds. I don't really have many serving pieces that aren't handmade, so I headed to one of my favorite thrift stores- the Habitat Restore to look for some goodies. Here's what I came up with:
Aside from the little brass owls, I got all that great stuff for $8. What a deal.

These little guys actually came off my mantle. I've been wanting to make a mold or something out of these for some time because they have great sentimental value. My grandmother used to have a very large collection of brass critters that my sister and I would always rearrange whenever we went over to her house, just to tease her. These guys had their own shelf and we would turn them around to face the wall and she would act "mad" at us, and we thought it was so funny.

I'm a big dork and I don't care...

A couple years ago, I remember having a conversation with Brian's cousin about how he will sometimes exercise while on the job. Steve's a construction worker, so he said that sometimes he would run to his truck from inside when he needed a tool or run to the woodpile, etc. Well, on Tuesday I missed my morning workout and it was too rainy to take a walk outside, so I figured, "why can't I do a workplace workout?" Obviously I wasn't going to run laps around my slabroller, and I was glazing. One of the first steps for me while glazing is to brush on black glaze in the textured areas of my pots (which is pretty much everywhere). Since it doesn't require a lot of precise marking, I felt like maybe I could fit in a little movement. So my brilliant solution was to march in place while brushing.

Needless to say, about 1 canister set and 8 mugs into it I looked down and happened to notice how ridiculous I must have looked. There I was, latex-gloved, belly sticking out of a too small shirt, marching and glazing in my studio. I started laughing so hard that I had to sit down- thank goodness no one was there to witness this in person, but I am considering making a video: "Low-impact studio aerobics." Look for it soon in a video store near you!

Here's what the pots look like once I wipe them down- the black glaze ends up really highlighting those textures. I then brush and pour more oxides and glazes on top.

Empty Bowls Event

This past Friday was the Second Harvest Food Bank's empty bowls event. People can purchase a ticket in advance that gets them a yummy lunch, free bowl and afternoon entertainment. This event has been so successful over the past couple of years that it sells out long before the event is held, which is so exciting for the mission of Second Harvest!

This year Clayworks, the studio where I teach, provided 280 bowls! Students, studio artists and instructors pitched in. Julie, Adrienne and I were there for the event to promote Clayworks and do a little bit of demonstrating. Well, I did the demo, Julie was my posse (as she said). Adrienne took the pictures, that's why she's not in any of them. It was fun to be there and see the different bowls that people picked.

Current projects and a little bit of drama

In conjuction with working on regular inventory and gallery orders in the studio, I've recently had some great special commissions. I'm just wrapping up one for the Arts and Science Council here in Charlotte. They're currenly in the throws of their fund drive, and commissioned me to make the gifts for the chairpeople of the drive. The first picture is the poster created specifically for this year's drive, and I was to design the gifts based on it. So, here are a few getting glazed, 2 finished pieces and small stacks of the finished product.

For me, no commission would be complete without a little bit of drama. While these are technically due next Wednesday, I gave myself a due date of this Friday, to make sure everything got done in time. I always make extra, just in case something happens that's out of my control (or I just plain mess up!). Well, they ended up ordering extra at the last minute which ate up my "just in case" pieces. Of course, as I opened the kiln yesterday, this was the face I made when I discovered that 3 pieces had major glaze snafoos:

Then I realized that I had enough time to remake the extras I needed...Here I am making more trays. Watch out for that belly! Yikes.

Yummy site....

I was rummaging around on the internet this evening, waiting for dinner to finish cooking, and I came upon this great site that I know is going to be completely distracting to me: http://www.reprodepot.com/

It's a website that features all sorts of goodies, but my favorites were the selections of fabrics of all sorts. I'm kinda a fabric freak and use a lot of different designs as inspiration for much of my work.

This swatch especially caught my eye. I swear I had a jumper or something in this pattern when I was 3! Oh, the memories.

Oh, things kids say

Wednesdays are usually a bit exhausting for me these days. I start off by meeting my friend Julie in the morning at the gym, doing the eliptical machine while reading smut magazines and chatting. Then off to teach class at Clayworks, tutoring at an afterschool program, back for a few hours of work in the studio and then back to Clayworks to teach an evening class.

I got a great little post-tutoring boost of energy today because one of my little students said something really funny. We haven't discussed the fact that I'm pregnant, so, I guess she was just trying to have my back on this one. As I got up to leave today, Tori gave me a hug from the side, looked up at me and said, "Miss Amy, I'm sorry. But your belly is gettin' kinda big." In other words, start focusing a little more during those workouts! Oh, the humility kids can create!

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood....

....would you be mine, could you be mine? Won't you be my neighbor? Oh yes, today marks the 40th anniversary of the first national broadcast of Mr. Rogers on PBS. I don't know about you, but in a family that didn't grow up on tv, this was one of the few shows we were allowed to enjoy. There was a great clip on NPR this morning, featuring good old Fred speaking to us adults, saying that he likes us "just the way we are." I think that's a sentiment that's easy to forget. Here's a link to a tribute to Mr. Rogers, recorded a couple of years ago on NPR.

Another reason it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood is that I've begun to notice a lot of plants have started to bloom. It doesn't quite feel like time for spring yet, but the dogwood trees and daffodils around here don't seem to care. We have some beautiful winter rose bushes right outside our front door that are in full bloom:

In the studio, I've been working on a couple of specific commissions, which are just about finished. While I enjoy creating something a bit different, I'm anxious to get back to making some of my "regular" work for some upcoming shows. In March and April, I'll be the featured artist in the Cabarrus County Arts Council gift shop, so that'll be the next project I'm working towards finishing.