sick ugh

Not the flu, at least.  Just can't go doing.  Staying around the bed.  Keeping warm.

first figure sculpture...2010-2011

This has now been bisqued, and is waiting for me to glaze it at Odyssey.
I've got a few bowls that I've thrown at BMCA clay studio waiting to glaze too.

Guess it's time to get the glazing gloves on.  I don't usually wear them, but I think I will next time, just to keep the fingers out of chemicals.  My fingers have been suffering from clay absorbing all the moisture from my skin.  I POUR on lotion for hours after I work, either throwing or sculpting.  I've seen some really expensive salves at Highwater which I might just have to invest in soon.

I've also started a new Excel spread sheet to track my maternal geneologies...looking for whatever I can find about the women in my parenting.  So far, nothing has googled.  But that's just using their names, and they still have parents, spouses and places for checking...hope to find some geneological sites.

Texas women, Tennessee women, South Carolina women, Virginia women, maybe even North Carolina women...as well as Georgia, Missouri, and a few other places too.  I haven't tried to find my great grandfather's family in Germany yet, but I bet my neice did who lived there for a while and now lives in Italy.  Unfortunately she thinks I'm medussa or something.  Thanks to my sister, who is medussa or something.  Ah families are so much more maneagable when you don't have to relate to them directly!

Back in Black Mountain

OK, for me, working close to home in a community studio is good.  I went in the BMCA studio yesterday, and wanted to make a fruit bowl.  I did it.

For the past 2 weeks I've had small sculptures on the table in my work area (living room cause my studio space is too cold) but have not finished anything I've started.

I wake up in the middle of the night, and think how I want to finish something.  Then when I get up in the morning, there's no incentive to actually sit down at the table and do it.

Throw a fruit bowl?  Easy breezy.

So I've found that a community is important for me.  Isolation is more of a place to rest.  I don't work easily and creatively here.  Work is better when I have the time limit, by knowing the studio is only available during these hours.  Isn't that weird?  I have a residue of the lifetime of punching in and out at work, where the rest of the day was mine to do the necessary life support activities and have fun.  At least that's how I find myself today.

But the table is still here in the living room, and there are no studio hours today.  So perhaps...I'll let you know when I do.

Clay Club is an interesting mix.  I may go to their meeting up in Burnsville next Wed...if there's not bad weather.  I'm interested, because it's made of "professionals and serious potters".  But I'm also skeptical that all these serious potters will not think of me as one...after all, I don't have the self-discipline to work daily in my own living room, nor do I do production work like most of them do.

My life as a ceramic artist is to create sculptures and functional wares that speak to the heart of another being.  Between the experiencing of shape, color, pattern, texture and tactile feeling there is perhaps a smile of recognition.  When a piece is functional, it should take the smile a step further, to satisfaction that the purpose for which it was intended is well fullfilled.  Clay is my chosen medium because it has that alchemy, the almost miraculous shifting from mud to rock and glass.  Ceramics offer three dimensions that meet us in the fourth dimension, the time we spend with them.  I most enjoy seeing people picking up my wares to have a deeper knowledge of what is actually there, what I am saying to them.

Whow, I just wrote an artist statement.  Funny how it came out when I wasn't thinking about it!