That’s really the only thing of value I’ve got to say today. Although, for those curious about the photograph: Yes, that difficult to read facial expression is a well blended mixture of exhaustion, relief, and too much candy, and Yes, that is my fantasy personal assistant giving me a back rub.
stitch, hammer, paint, saw
I feel like a haggard santa (no red suit unfortunately) finishing, pricing, packing up the work I’ve created for this weekend’s sale. Come check it out (I will make an effort to wear something red) Friday night from 4-9 and Saturday 11-6 at 790 Willamette St.
that glazed look
Yesterday I spent most of the day standing on my rubber mat glazing, glazing, glazing pottery. I listened to War of the Worlds (the 1938 Orson Wells radio drama that caused mass hysteria). Did you know that a decade after the first mishap an Ecuadorian radio announcer reworked the story and aired it in Quito Ecuador, where it again incited a public panic. The militia was called out to defend against the supposed aliens, six citizens were killed, and the radio station responsible for the broadcast was burned to the ground.
HHHHHot!
My kiln is firing today, (no, that’s not a photo of the process, it’s a campfire) turning all those little fragile clay bowls into something akin to stone. There is a strange weight of responsibility resting on the shoulders of potters. The intense heat of the kiln (2,000+ degrees fahrenheit) liquifies and bonds the silica in clay, creating an incredibly hard material. Potentially the pots I fire today could be intact a thousand years from now.
framework
My eldest daughter turned eleven today, marking not only the first decade of her life, but a full decade of me as a parent. As I assembled these small frames today it prompted me to think about the framework of my life, like a series of self portraits spanning back to my own beginning. Me as a daughter, a student, a sister, an artist, a wife, a mother... The frames overlap, often contain one another, and even sometimes conflict with each other. My daughter is just beginning to determine and diversify her identity, her own framework.
sleep
Sleep is the eager cloth onto which I stitch unformed, unrealized ideas. Sleep is the cool lump of clay that forms and reforms in the hands of my mind, until I wake into a new day with bright fresh notions (some admittedly better than others) of what I plan to tackle. Without sleep I am all disconnected stitches and hardened bits of mud. Last night I didn’t sleep.
Fantasy B
In my massive and well lit studio I have an area completely dedicated to costuming. Aside from using the space to construct a series of elaborate and bizarre costumes meant for a show of some sort, I love having people swing in with their various costuming ideas and challenges. For a reasonable fee, I manifest their wildest costume fantasies.
In the real world, halloween always brings a few friends knocking at my door in search of minor costume augmentation. I love doing it, and I often daydream about taking it more seriously.