Best Intentions

I love January.
It is a time when I feel like I can re-group, take a breath and cook up projects for the coming year.

This year I vowed to clean out my studio space and make it so shiny that the reflection off my gleaming surfaces would make Christa (who's area at fourth & clay is directly across from mine) wear her sunglasses. Well...that was the plan. I got distracted and it doesn't look like it's going to happen this month...maybe February???

I am working on 5 little"chocolate bowls" for a show at TRAX which I feel very honored to be a participant in. I will post more about this event as the time grows near.

I am also working on Valentine's inspired work for my ETSY shop as I will be part of the Poppy Handmade Valentine/Wedding Market.

The year's off to a great start...now if only the elves would come at night, to do the cleaning job I had intended to do, I'd be a very happy camper.

pictures attached are work that was sold during the holidays.

Top Ten List -2011

I love reading top ten lists this time of year. I thought I would create my own of artist's work and show's I saw that have delighted and inspired me this past year...
I hope your Holidays were fun and that 2012 brings happiness, creative joy and peacefulness to you all.


Ruth Gurvich Her work amazes me, it is so beautiful it gives me goose bumps...is it paper or porcelain?


Betty Woodman Always at the top of my list.


Ann Van Hoey So thin and tranparent..these pieces make me hold my breath.


Yayoi Kusama It's hard to discribe how touching the exhibit we saw of her work was at the Centre Pompidou, Paris this fall. Orginally we had gone to see the much hyped Munch exhibit (didn't love) and wandered into a side gallery showing Yayoi Kusama's sensual polka dot filled environments and earlier work. I LOVED it.


Makoto Kagoshima Oh his drawings are so wonderful and I love all the little lines and scratches that are so fabric-like.


Isabelle de Borchgrave She had an amazing show at the SF Legion of Honor in Feb.. Her painted paper dresses were fabulous.


Elke Saba Love her use of colored slips especially on these less precise vases.



Derek Au (thanks to Melt My Heart)Love his pattern worked shapes.


The Museum of Hunting and Nature, Paris. This museum was right around the corner from the apartment we rented in Paris. We had visited it years ago and found it interesting but not spectacular. BUT it has been totally redone and is an amazing cabinet of curiosities, with videos, painting automated talking heads, ceramic bunny busts. If you have the chance to go see it...GO!


Craig Underhill Layering and scrathching on these large hand-built forms kept me staring at his web site for hours.

A Little Break

My table at fourth & clay is clean.
I will not touch clay for at least another week.
No more retail until the next open studio.
WHEW....it was fun but a little break is necessary.

Time now to cozy in with family and friends. Time to make cookies and snow globes with the grand-kidlets, go shopping with the daughters, celebrate my son's 40th birthday (yikees), have hot toddies with my husband and to share in the cooking of several feasts. Time to enjoy this beautiful Holiday Season.

I hope you all are able to take a little break too and that you have the happiest Holidays.

PARTY TIME

This week I have been preparing for the fourth & clay Holiday Show and PARTY.
This year's theme "DESSERT".... yum.
The party is always a blast, great art, funky music by our "house band" FRONTJUNK, cheap wine and good people. This year the artists are bringing a dessert to share so get ready for a sugar rush.
Please join me and 23 amazing clay artists:

Thanksgiving

As we prepare for this wonderful holiday,
I give thanks for my great family and friends.
We are getting ready to prepare a feast and I am remembering one I had in France...the
above is a picture of an amazing salad I had in a the little outdoor cafe, l'Estiminet Cantine in the Marche Enfant Rouge.
Happy Turkey Day Everybody....Let the Holidays begin!

Santa's Workshop

Dessert Plates for the fourth & clay Holiday Desert Show waiting to be glazed

I returned from France about 2 weeks ago. I had a wonderful adventure. So much fun that I didn't have time to blog about it!
Upon returning though I have been in a total daze getting ready for the HOLIDAZE. At first I was in denial ...Thanksgiving couldn't possibly be next week. Now I am in the weeds...glaze buckets slopping on the floor, wild kiln dances as I fill up Big Bertha and pray my hurriedly glazed, lovingly made (made before my travels) pots will be blessed with a good firing. This Holiday madness has it's upside. Our studio is humming with activity as Christa, rae and I are all in the same boat. The Christmas tunes started last week and the Happy Hour juices are flowing. Misery LOVES company but as things go this is definitely not so miserable.
It's good to be home.


Ornaments all ready on the clothesline.

Vallauris

Yesterday we took our trusty rental car and drove the 35 round-abouts, tiny, one way roads and super fast freeways (thank you GPS) from the Luberon to the Cote D'Azur to visit the amazing ceramic's city of Vallauris. My studio-mate, rae dunn, was a resident artist in the A.I.R. Vallauris residency program last June. You can see some of her work in the attached photo taken in their gallery. I was afraid she was never going to be happy once she returned to Berkeley as she fell so in love with her life in France and I can truly see why. The beautiful little town is filled with ateliers, museums and galleries all featuring ceramics. The gallery director, Dale, took us on a tour of the A.I.R. facilities. It looked pretty dreamy to me... A place where you could easily live your art without distraction but live it so well. The little Cafe du Coin right across the street from the gallery was a great place to start eating! We were served the yummiest seasonal eats by people who REALLY cared about what they were doing. The day was DEVINE. I can only imagine what a nice long residency would be like.