Well, this is going to be a strange and unproductive day. Mom had to go into work today and the bug was supposed to go to school for the morning. My plan was to work til noon and then around 4 when Mom got back, get back at it. But I woke up to this…
That’s pretty significant snow for us down here and the schools are closed. My latest experiment with my feet demands that I wear my new shoes all the time and my only pair of boots lost their soul (not sure if they had much soul to begin with) last year and I didn’t get any new ones because we never really get any snow in Kentucky. So I can’t take the dog for a walk or go play in the snow because of footware issues. So here we are stuck in the house with no milk… oh my! Maybe I’ll make some barley bean soup… that would be somewhat productive. Here’s a bowl I finished up yesterday and put in the kiln…
Here’s another shot that I’m throwing in because it has the demon Dingus in the background. Notice the look on her face… like she’s planning something evil,
About a week ago I received an email from a potter named Connie Norman and I clicked over to her site and recognized this right away…
That cover was December 2004 and 2004 was the year I made the switch from my old job to doing ceramics. After my 3 week whirlwind summer trip with my nephew cross country, I started making pots and one of the first things I did was re-subscribe to Ceramics Monthly and this was one of the first few covers that I received. Connie has a blog and she does interviews with other potters and artists and she asked me if I’d like to do one and I said yes… the interview is here. Connie uses letters pressed into her pots as a decorative motif and the word couplings or phrases are repeated over open areas. She makes each impression by hand and I’m sure that we share similar spans of the meditative time working our ways through the tedium to achieve a certain result. If you get a hankerin’, head on over to Connie’s website, she has plenty of pictures of her work like this salt and pepper shaker set…
A bug day is the best day. Sugar and I spent the day together and will again today. I usually forego taking the camera on our walks because it’s cold and with the dog leash in my hands, I’m afraid she’s gonna yank my arm at the wrong moment and I’ll drop the camera… plus I don’t have my glasses with me so I can’t tell if I have the thing in focus very well. Anyway, it rained all day the day before and snowed during the night so the snow was wet and left good footprints. Here’s the bug running up the alley…
A little further along, by the mayor’s house, Sofia alerted me that she had discovered “witch” tracks coming out of their driveway. I asked how she could tell they were made by a witch and she looked at me like I wasn’t very observant and said “the shape”… I think whoever made them had high heels on. A ways down from there is a really nice old house that has a big stand of bamboo next to it and the snow was weighing them down and bending them toward the road. Here’s Sofia getting ready to shake the snow off to see if they would stand back up…
After this she wanted me to “ice skate” on a sewer drain and I said there’s no ice there so she said… well, we can “snow skate” then and proceeded to snow skate for most of the rest of the way home. The highlight of the day is that we decided to skip the Red Pooper. The reason is that the Chinese cook that works there loves Sofia, makes her extra things and comes out and tries to talk to her and Sofia doesn’t like him it seems. I used to think that eventually she would warm up to him but she doesn’t and she doesn’t do this with anyone else. I also used to think it’s because he cannot speak English hardly at all and she doesn’t know what to say. Anyway, on the one hand, it’s awkward that he keeps trying to connect with her and she won’t even look at him and on the other hand maybe her intuition is right… how would I know. So I decided maybe we should take a break and went to Caffe Classico which is my favorite coffee shop. They serve lunch and recently they expanded and have dinner too. Sofia loved this! We sat at a high round table in stools instead of chairs and she got a chamomile tea which they serve in a small porcelain cup and saucer and an accompanying porcelain teapot… with a little spoon no less. We ordered some pomme frittes (french fries) and coffee and she gawked at people. There was a bus stop out the window across the street and a young girl that was waiting had pink hair and she seemed mesmerized by her pink hair and eventually said that she wanted to color her hair pink. I said all the typical meaningless father things like, your hair is beautiful… way more than pink would be, but she wasn’t having any of it. The tragedy of gaining experience is that no one inexperienced is interested. So now she wants to go here every week and I wonder how long before she starts calling it Caffe Poopico. Here’s a couple shots of the bug having a real life tea party…
I have a good friend that has been reading up on the latest running crazes… primarily barefoot running and the corresponding logistics that include a footstrike that is not on one’s heel and smaller quicker steps. If not for my foot affliction, I would probably be trying the same. Anyway, along with a shorter stride comes more steps per minute or a quicker cadence. My friend runs with an iPod and was saying that at first one thing he noticed (an apparently this is not new to runners) is that his cadence didn’t match the music’s beat on his iPod. The surprise to me was that iTunes actually has a column attribute of “Beats Per Minute” that one can display right next to “Song”, “Artist”, “Album”, etc. and there are websites that will list songs that match one’s running cadence. My friend was excited about the prospect of running with music that matched the rate of his stride so he checked it out. Aside from how cool he thought the idea was, the down side became clear immediately when the first song listed for his cadence was Cher’s “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves”. So you can match your stride to the beat of the songs but you just have to listen to music you don’t particularly like… “But every night all the men would come around, and lay their money down”. So I got to thinking about unnecessary technological feats and figured maybe I could arrange my music to match the rate that I paint a wee dot on my pot. It turns out that the other day I sat there for hours doing just that and I listened to Ravel’s “Bolero” 5 times in a row… it’s only about 16 minutes and 17 seconds in length. Mom’s brother, when leaving a message on the answering machine, always says… “this is Mark, it’s about 7:13 on Thursday”. I guess he just doesn’t have the number of seconds handy. So I listened to “Bolero” 5 times and realized afterward that I never thought of Bo Derek once (older reference lost on younger viewers). I take this as a sign of aging. Here’s a few shots of the fishnet back breaker I was working on the other day, last shot has slip applied…
–|-.– .-|.-.|– ..|… …-|.|.-.|-.– -|..|.-.|.|-.. stop. Mr. Morse was the dots and dashes guy and I never would have thought, in this age of technology, to be reverting back to the old days but as that coded sentence says… my arm is very tired. Here’s my seemingly endless stream of dots and dashes…
Here’s a bowl interior where the dots turned into dashes along the way…
Mom, Sofia, me and my neighbor from across the street, Jamie (Sofia calls him Jamie Wamie), went out to toast a local event the other night. First, why Jamie Wamie? When Sofia was two or so she used to refer to everyone by their first name followed by that same name starting with a “W”. There was an old man that lived two houses down named Frank and she started calling him Frankie Wankie which soon was changed into Frankie Wanker and at the time I was teaching her to sing the chorus of “Davy Crockett” that Tennessee Ernie Ford made famous around when I was born. We would insert Frankie Wanker where Davy Crockett was so the chorus would go… “Frankie, Frankie Wanker… the man that don’t know fear.” Second, what are we toasting? My next door neighbors who have at any given time between 4 and 6 dogs have officially moved out. I know for certain there was a medium large shaggy dog and another big dog that are always outside and bark incessantly. Inside are two mini pins and a chihuahua. There were two others at times but I lost track and I think sometimes they left one or two of them somewhere else. In the dogs defense, they were left outside in some inclement conditions with no one home or someone home but sleeping and they would just stand and bark for what seemed like forever. Jamie Wamie lived directly across the street and the dogs’ barks would travel betwixt our two houses (only 10 feet apart) and shoot down and across the road so that he could hear them plain as day even when he was at the back of his house. Anyway, here’s Alicia and Jamie Wamie toasting their departure…
Hopefully load a bisque today if I have enough wares.
Thanks to everyone for their kind, encouraging and (p)retty (f)lattering anniversary wishes yesterday. There are several common glaze faults or glaze defects that (p)otters (f)orever seem to be dealing with. There are (p)inholing (f)aults and (p)itting (f)aults and crazy crazing and crawling. Early in my ceramics career (about 3 1/2 years ago), I was testing, testing, testing and had my first encounter with the dreaded (p)inholing (f)ault. This is where wee bubbles form in the glaze and either pop but don’t heal or almost (p)op (f)orth. Here’s the best picture I could find of the (p)inholing (f)ault and it’s in the bottom of the pot…
When I was an innocent, the (p)erfect (f)it for (p)each (f)uzzed boys with unformed (p)re(f)rontal lobes and not for le (p)etite jeune (f)ille was the (P)(F) Flyer sneaker. Basketball (p)layers (f)lew down the courts with these in the (p)ostwar (f)ifties and the (P)(F)’s were eventually replaced by Converse All-Stars (both are available today). I mention this so I can (p)re(f)ace my (p)lantar (f)asciitis discourse and (p)oint (f)irmly to this Harvard study which confirms that the post (P)re(f)ontaine era of (p)uffy (f)ootware that artificially “supports” our shared incorrect running style is most certainly the reason for the running injuries that are epidemic in the current era and that the pre (P)re(f)ontaine era was (p)ractically (f)ree from said injuries. Not (p)ig (f)eet nor (p)oetic (f)eet but (p)rimate (f)eet, my (p)rimate (f)eet came down with a severe case of (p)lantar (f)asciitis one year ago during a relatively (p)eaceful (F)ebruary. You may remember some of this (p)osting (f)un about my (p)odiatrist (f)arse of a visit with (p)ieces (f)rom the dog poop strewn yard on the soles of my shoes…
You may have seen this (p)ost (f)rom November…
Both attempts were (p)erfect (f)ailures along with (p)added (f)oot inserts, rolling my feet on (p)opbottles (f)ull of frozen water and assorted (p)odiatry (f)ootware. Yesterday, I went again to the (p)opular (f)ootware store that specializes in this type of thing only to hear another (p)erfectly (f)allacious conceptualization of what’s wrong and what to do about it. The (p)re-(f)ormed (p)imple-(f)aced boy who waited on me eventually sent me to a second (p)revailing (f)ootware specialist and I finally met someone who seemed to know what was going on. It may have been her 25 year history of dealing with (p)lantar (f)asciitis sufferers or, more likely, that she mentioned that she made all the copper sculptures on the walls or that she was (p)lain (f)un to talk to. So I got these…
Mom thought they were (p)retty (f)unny looking but she thinks that about any attire I might (p)urchase (f)or myself. I wanted to get the flesh colored ones, you know, the (p)ink (f)lesh colored shoes that old people wear… but Mom would be (p)ositively (f)reaked and wouldn’t leave the house with me. Of course the flesh colored shoes don’t really look like (p)eoples’ (f)lesh which is what makes them so (p)reposterously (f)lawed. Anyway I will have to hold off of any (p)rima (f)acie conclusions and wear this pair of puffy, (p)added (f)ootware and see what happens which leads me to the (p)aralell (f)indings of (p)inholing (f)aults and (p)lantar (f)asciitis… if you suffer from either of these (p)rofane, (f)alse conditions the diagnosis will be relatively easy. It’s (p)retty (f)air to say the cure or solution is quite another matter. Everything you read or everywhere you go you will hear (p)erfectly (f)air-minded and (p)lausibly (f)oolproof suggestions that run the gamut of what will get rid of the (p)roblem (f)oot or fault but every suggestion costs money and takes and inordinate amount of time to bear out. It could take (p)otentially (f)orever to change and fire every (p)otential (f)ix for the (p)inholing (f)ault and the same for any (p)ossible (f)ixes to (p)lantar (f)asciitis. Damn, not sure that was worth the it but if my (p)lantar (f)asciitis goes away I will take a (p)eti(f)ore to the (p)odiatric (f)ootware lady.
Well, today is February 2nd and that is one year to the day that I started this blog. To say that the blog experience is different than I thought it would be is a huge understatement. From a stats point of view, I have posted 275 times and collected 2150 comments. I’ve decided to use this anniversary to tackle the overdue explanation of the why behind blogging from my point of view to be in conjunction with the…
Clay and Blogs: Telling a Story
Opening reception will be held at the Campbell House in Moore county from 6-8 pm
October 1st, 2010
Before leaping into that just a visual to show what a difference a year makes with a child. It’s a cliche to say that kids grow up too fast but when it’s happening it’s difficult not to wish it would slow down a bit, if only because the huge differences in the child represent an ascent whereas the one year from 51 to 52 represents a reciprocal decline and I can say that the laundry list of infirmaries that I’ve kept mostly quiet about definitely make you wonder about how long one can maintain this lifestyle and career. But on to the proof on my third post ever I posted this picture of my raison d’etre with her first fired piece…
Here she is exactly one year later…
OK… so why blog? My previous job was a business that my best friend and I started and it was an internet development company replete with enough stories to write a book. The reason to mention this is only to say that after 3 1/2 years of being a potter, it was a bit embarrassing and quite a nagging problem that of all people I did not have a web presence. The prospect of directing my propensity for perfectionism toward designing and building a website for myself and taking into account that in the interim of 4 years since I worked at the company (the last 4 there not actually making websites myself), it only remained daunting to entertain how much time this was going to take away from actually making pots. Add to that the knowledge that things change in this arena extremely fast and that 8 years without actually building any sites would be almost like not ever having built any and that building a website is useless if you can’t direct traffic to it. So my computer died and I decided to get a mac and we splurged for dsl (my dial up connection had kept me from spending any considerable amount of time on the web because I could feel myself aging as I waited for a simple picture to download), then I set out to see about getting a website. I didn’t spend much time at all before I discovered what had happened in my 4 year hiatus from the internet world… blogs had matured. So all of a sudden there was a free, easy, connected way to get a presence on the web and at the very least I could point someone to the address and they could see pictures of my pots. At the time before I had met all the people that I’ve since met, I stumbled upon Kristen Kieffer’s blog and I liked that she could set up pages (like a website and which I still have at the top in the right column) to serve in the tradition role of a website and then update periodically in the main section. This is why I ended up choosing wordpress although I had already set up the beginnings of the same thing on blogspot. Then I discovered Etsy. So my reason for starting the blog was really just crass marketing. I wanted to sell online so as not to have to share such a large percentage with a gallery all the time and in my naivete I figured that the blog was the way to generate traffic to point to etsy. I was uncomfortable with the idea of a “public diary” and my plan was to do 1 post per week and I really had no idea what I would post about. I remember talking to a friend and saying… what the hell can I write about once a week? Then I met Gary. I have still never met a greater blog advocate than Gary Rith. I would visit his blog and was completely taken with the hi jinx, pictures of work, posting of his dreams and just general silliness. Gary was posting 2, sometimes 3 times a day and at the time he was on his second blog because he had filled the memory on his first (he’s on his third now) and he and I traded emails back and forth about blogging and selling through the blog and on Etsy. He was very instrumental in getting me to visualize a way forward to get it to work. By April I was posting virtually daily. The differences between my view of why I was going to blog and why I blog now are quite different in many ways. I still wish to sell work online and I have (xmas was gonna be my test and it wasn’t bad but not as good as I would have hoped) but the blog has somehow transformed itself into a way to connect with people. I know that this is a cliche and it’s basically the definition of social networking but there’s a difference between theoretical knowledge and doing it and having it work, no matter how great or small the expectations of how it might work were. I am in almost daily contact with people that I think would be more than mere acquaintances if we lived in proximity to one another. Kindred spirits, who have one solid base of commonality… we love clay. We love looking at it, talking about it, making things out of it, talking about it, watching others make stuff out of it, talking about it, seeing equipment and tools and studios and how it affects their families and because of the blogs we have a front row seat of the undeniable progress of all sorts of people pushing themselves forward in a variety of clay techniques at various stages of their lives. Along with all that you see kilns getting built, kilns getting fired, work being photographed, shows being set up, parties and music and food… almost everything. The price of admission is free to watch and an occasional post to participate. For me there’s also a tinge of pressure to keep up with all these people doing all these things. I’ve had several opportunities that are a direct result of people discovering or following the blog. I met Jeff Campana who lives in the same city as I do and I didn’t know it until we met online… now we meet for beers occasionally, share common viewpoints about all things clay and we will be in a show together in Chicago in couple months. I’m certain that if I didn’t have the blog this wouldn’t have happened. And then, as I mentioned above, there’s the “Clay and Blogs” Telling a Story show that Meredith at Whynot Pottery is putting together in the fall. I follow practically everyone in the show… there are people from England and Australia and even California. It should be a hoot to see how this whole thing comes together and I can’t wait. I managed to work in a trip and actually got meet Gary and his beautiful wife, Maude, when I went home to central NY for Thanksgiving. We had beers together and got to chat for quite some time with no great hurry and maybe if I get to go, I can attend the opening of the “Clay and Blogs” show and meet all these people too. I feel like I’m starting to ramble a bit so I’ll wrap it up by saying that blogging has made me feel connected and in a way supported by a community of people with the same interests and if nothing else it makes me feel that I am not alone pursuing a career that requires much sacrifice, many hours and the sometimes cruel and untimely setbacks that teach us what we need to know(but such is the nature of clay). I guess my favorite description so far is from Hollis Engley who said about daily checking in on his blogger friends… “This is the kind of thing we’d talk about at the bar or the pub or the coffee shop if we were a group of potters working in the same town. But we’re a group of potters working on the same planet, and we get to share these things through this marvelous blogosphere. A sort of virtual pub, actually, though we can’t buy each other a pint.”
I turned on the computer today to browser problems… it wouldn’t leave the page that it was currently on. Eventually, I opened a different browser and it did the same thing. I managed to get it to work but I’m not sure how, mostly just by fiddling with it or else whatever was wrong was temporary and now has been fixed but I don’t like computer problems because they can be very expensive. I keep thinking that I might have my first virus in 5 years. Sugar was feeling a bit better yesterday and when we were downstairs doing a puzzle on the kitchen table she started doing one of her favorite things… posing hypothetical questions. Yesterday it was, what are Mom and I gonna get you for your birthday? I said you can just give me a hug and she said, you’re gonna get that anyway… I mean what are we going to get you like we got something for Mom for xmas. I said whatever you like and she said, I think we should get you a boy doll. I said, you think I need a boy doll? She said, well it could play games with my dolls. I said, what if I get tired of the boy doll? She said, I could probably still play with it. Then she said, oh I know, we could get you a fluffy shirt. I said, do I need a fluffy shirt? She said, yes, you can turn it inside out and the fluff will be on the inside and keep you warm. I said, do you mean a furry shirt and she said yes. Then she said, I know what we can get you… potstickers! I said, potstickers?, the food? She said no!, pot… stickers and walked over to the cupboard where she had pasted a sticker from one of her coloring books and pointed to it and said, stickers like these with pots on them. I said, oh, where do you get pot stickers? She said, well we can just cut out pot shapes from a piece of paper and tape them to the walls in your studio. This is kinda what I did yesterday and will probably do more of today. It’s currently 10 degrees. While I was at the computer yesterday morning Sofia came to me growling with this lion mask on…
I took a picture and she came back still growling with a giraffe mask so apparently any mask calls for a menacing pose…
Then of course, dad had to put on the pig mask, I think the reading glasses combined with not showing my teeth keeps it from being so frightening like that terrible giraffe was…
I went into the studio yesterday to work on those vases and it was really cold again. After a couple hours, I couldn’t take it anymore so I dragged everything upstairs again to finish the rest of the day in relative warmth. Here’s the vases that I posted yesterday, I got a comment from my local potter friend, Maggie, saying to leave them the way they were but I had already done what I suggested…
I guess only time will tell. We woke this morning with a good 3-4 inches of snow and it’s still coming down like a fine dust. I think Sofia had the worst of it yesterday and she’s on the mend but probably won’t be herself until Monday. The coughing and sneezing… I thought it would never stop. I spent some hours putting little squares on some beer glasses and the bug sat next to me practicing her computer skills doing online jigsaw puzzles…
Well, up most of the night with the little bug… she’s a coughing, sneezing machine. I didn’t get much sleep so probably skip the computer shenanigans and head straight to the studio so I can get something done before the fatigue sets in. I don’t see how I’m gonna be able to dodge catching whatever this crud is that she’s gotten. It’s colder than a well digger’s ass again. I put together some funky vases yesterday again… maybe I will add some adornment today, not sure. Here’s a black and white shot…
Bug days tomorrow and Sunday and then it’s February… damn, that 1/12 of the year went fast! J.D. Salinger passed yesterday. My favorite short story was “For Esme – With Love and Squalor”. At one point I wanted to name Sofia Esme but I lost the battle when it became apparent that Esme was short for Esmeralda. Those names all cycle anyway, who knows, in 20 years Esmeralda, Bertha, and Dorothy will be the most popular names again.
I’ve been trying to get some throwing done this week and it’s cold in the morning but by afternoon it’s fine. The lure of the music, the clay and hanging out with her dad has made my studio companion spend a lot of time over the last couple days making her tiles and stuff. I get a big kick out of it because I really don’t monitor her activity except to keep her from getting into things she shouldn’t like black slip or whatever else… she just stands at the banding wheel cutting slices off of a block of clay and singing. She’s coming down with something (which I hate) and when I came up to go to bed last night, it sounded like Darth Vader was in her bunkbed… major congestion. I really really really don’t want to catch this but a part of me knows that I will. Anyway, here’s some of Sofia’s new tiles…
Before I got out the wet clay for her she piddled for quite some time and kept bringing me these little rubber banded collections of dry clay that was lying around. They all had writing and drawings on them with a regular pencil and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the rubber bands and the pencil work would not make it through the firing because she was having so much fun.
I managed to get a bunch of bowls made with the splishy splashy slip on them…
I was sitting there last week looking at this bowl and trying to decide whether this was gonna be one that was decorated on the inside or the outside. This is usually an easy decision but even though I feel pressed for time and have miles to go before I sleep I decided… to do both inside and out. Sometimes I feel like a sucker for punishment but in the end I think the bowl will come out more like what I want and I guess that’s the bottom line for now. So here’s the bowl in question, inside/outside/both…
After finishing that on Friday, I figured I’d had enough of the shellac for a while and got back on the wheel yesterday and man, is that thing ever quiet! Dreamy. I happened to see Sunglasses (Dingus) looking out the window like she was about to burst at the seams and there was a squirrel trying to get a partially full jar of peanut butter up the tree to its nest. That rodent was probably in hawg heaven… talk about hitting paydirt. I tried to get a pic of it with it on its head but he dropped it and ran. Damn city squirrels…
Oh and by the way, can you tell that I watched the game… my apologies to Minnesota.
I am not a sports fan anymore and never really was much of one… I usually watch the super bowl, world series, a bit of the NCAA basketball tournament and when Jordan was still playing some of those playoffs too. I am currently unable to work up any enthusiasm for much of any of it. All that aside, when I was 10 years old and I still hung out with my cousin Rand, who brews all the beer, a friend of his father went to see the Minnesota Vikings play in their first playoff game, I believe, and he brought back a souvenir football that was really signed by the whole team including the great Joe Kapp. This was all we needed for the Vikings to be the team we cheered for and I did cheer for them until well after my college years. If you are a Vikings fan, then you know that that is the equivalent of being a Boston Red Sox fan (at least until recently) because they have reached the playoffs 26 times and have yet to win a superbowl. For the last 15 or 20 years, I totally ignore the NFL season and late in the season if the Vikings have a good record, I might tune in. This has become a joke with a friend of mine that it is in fact my viewing over the years that has jinxed this team and if they’re doing well and they lose suddenly, the next time he sees me, he’ll say… you watched the game didn’t you? So inasmuch as I can cheer for anyone, I guess I’m for the Vikes today and maybe they’ll reach the superbowl again and of course, if they lose, I take full responsibility. Sofia has been “building” lately and “making towns” as she calls them, here’s a little tailgate party around a campfire just in time for the game…
The diversity around this campfire is indicative of the diversity of her entire towns… with Winnie, Tigger, Smurf, California Raisin, Homey, Mickey and a Turkey. Here’s her town…
Friday night was the second installment of Club 52 and we met at another pub for brews. Here’s the birthday boy, Jeff, in the first pic and then Al and Ray in the second picture…
Jeff grew up her in KY but only moved back a few years ago. He taught ceramics in Arizona in Tempe until he moved back. I wish I had some pictures of some of his pieces but I don’t… he did, however, give me this last year which instead of being about throwing off the hump, he called it “Ride the hump potter boy”…
Yesterday, Sofia wanted to “build” again, so we decided to build a little town in the bookcase, here’s that town…
My curiosity about musical taste is entering another generation. In the past few years as my friends’ kids get to be in their teen years, I’m always intrigued and sometimes surprised by what they’ve chosen when mining for gold in previous generations’ music. My fascination stems from the idea that’s firmly lodged in my head that my generation’s (I claim the 60’s but it was really the early 70’s) music was a sharp, distinct break from what came before and although there were nostalgic tv shows like “Happy Days”, we were not nostalgic for the music of the 50’s or earlier and it wasn’t until I was in college that I allowed myself to go back there. The irony is that there was outrageously great music in the 50’s and before and really at all times, it just wasn’t what was presented to us as youngsters. The great music of the 50’s wasn’t so much Bill Haley and the Comets and “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window” (although “The Ballad Of Davy Crockett” still appeals to me as kitsch and a reminder of the repression of the times), it was Miles, Coltrane and Brubeck. So now when nephews and friends’ kids decide they really like old Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Doors etc., I think to myself… well, of course they do, it holds up extremely well. I’ve given in to the nostalgia lately a bit by getting CD’s from the library of old rock and roll from my youth because I’m not willing to pay money for the 3rd format change of the same music (LP, cassette tape, and now CD… never owned an 8 track). Some of this holds up really well and some I just listen to once and think, what was I thinking? For example, love that old Stevie Wonder but Grand Funk Railroad just doesn’t do it for me anymore. So on to Sofia… when she was 3, when we were in the car, she had to listen to a particular song on a Counting Crows CD. Every time the part in the song “Goodnight Elizabeth” where Adam goes, “… set myself on fire and walk out on the wire once again”, she would turn and stare out the window and mouth the words. Of course, we were amused and after playing the song about 500 times, not so much… but the explanation of her affection for the song probably had more to do with our neighbor’s name being Elizabeth than anything else. When she was 4 and much to her grandmother’s dismay, it was Ani DiFranco in the car with the crazy guitar and the song “Gravel” where she says, “fight, fight, fight”. She’s 5 now and has been going through a Third Eye Blind phase and yesterday while accompanying me on my work couch, she came in with a CD and asked if I would play it… Lil’ Ed and the Blues Imperials. I said, “you really like this one?” and she said yeah. I said, “why’s that?” and she strummed her air guitar and said… “the guitar, the guitar” and started dancing around. She also wanted me to point out on the CD jacket which one was Lil’ Ed, here’s a pic of him with his trademark fez…
Now, Lil’ Ed is pure, hard-driving westside Chicago blues. His calling card is the beautiful, captivating and definitely low down greasy slide guitar. So I pop in the CD and Sofia comes in and dances like she’s on fire for a couple minutes and then sits down with me. She usually asks me about the lyrics which can be pretty entertaining discussions in themselves because she doesn’t quite get what a metaphor is yet. In the first song called “Hold That Train”, toward the end Lil’ Ed says… “next stop, Chicago” and Sofia says, why did he say Chicago? I say… I think he lives in Chicago. She says, maybe he will come to your show in Chicago. I say, well, I don’t know but maybe. She says, well, if you see him at your show, tell him your daughter really likes his music. I say, will do. See you there Lil’ Ed…
In a rare occurrence, Mom grabbed the camera and took a couple pictures. As it turns out the wee dog-ravaged love seat that I appropriated for the studio is the absolute most popular place in the whole house. I guess Mom thought it was cute or funny and went and got the camera. This is where I’ve been for days and usually as soon as I sit down the dog comes in and a bit later the bug comes in and they have a little tiff to jockey for position… and there they sit. It seems obvious to point out that as well as being tedious, my activity requires a somewhat steady hand and trying to maintain said hand with the bug squirming, jumping, getting a new magic marker, jostling the dog, craning to look out the window, etc. is akin to attempting to drink coffee on a trampoline. But I like the company so that’s what we do (notice that dad has 4 shirts and a neckwarmer on and the bug has one thin shirt and bare feet)…
After drawing for about an hour, Sofia was out of activities that could be done on the couch while trying to be still. I said, let’s have some tea. So I made some Earl Grey in my Joel cup and Sofia had already decided that Matt’s cup that I got Tuesday was hers (she decided this because she thinks that any mail that arrives in a box is for her) so I made her some chamomile tea in Matt’s cup. We sat on the love seat waiting for the tea to cool enough to drink and when she picked up Matt’s cup the first thing she said was… I like this handle, it has a little bump for your thumb. After that she kept holding it with her thumb against the bump and saying, I really like this cup. When she finished her tea, she asked if she could share my tea and I poured half of my Earl Grey in her mug. She liked the Earl Grey and for the next hour and a half periodically went to the kitchen to get Mom to brew her 4 more cups of tea which she drank while I worked (there were several pee breaks in there as you may well imagine). Her we are and this is her fake smile…
I was zoning out, doodling in my studio yesterday and jammin’ to “Giant Steps” (Coltrane) wondering when the mail was gonna get here. I took a break around two to stretch my cramped side and back… I looked out on the porch and there was this wee box sitting next to the mailbox. I brought the unassuming parcel in the studio and got really excited when I read that it contained Royal Mail as I’ve never received anything royal in my life (unless you count the royal pain in the ass dog we adopted) and am confident that royalty’s and my paths have ne’er crossed…
Oooh boy and it went through customs too (it’s from Grande-Bretagne!)…
Well, it was my secret santa from across the Atlantic… Matt Grimmitt!, and he sent me a beautiful slipware mug. Thank you very much Matt, this is my first international piece of clay. Check it out..
Matt Grimmitt is a wonderful slipware potter from England who literally has clay running in his blood as one of his ancestors a few generations back worked along side one of the biggies in the long English ceramics tradition. When I started my blog in February last year, Matt’s blog was one of the first that I followed and at the time had the catchy title of “Pots For the Kitchen From the Kitchen”… if you have a hankerin’ you can check out his work and other goings on at his new blog. Matt’s partner Antonia (Tiggy) also has a blog and she makes handmade soaps. So after a couple shots of my gift, I brewed up some Earl Grey and broke in my new mug and I must say that I really enjoyed the heft of it… it feels very good in my hand…
Thanks again Matt. In other affairs, I’m trying to make peace with the demon dog, Dingus. So I invited her in to lie next to me while I was painting on my greenware…
Aww, isn’t she precious? Actually, no, she isn’t… yet. Just when I thought we were making headway, she got up and instead of getting a drink from her dog bowl (which I checked and was full of water) she went in the bathroom and drank out of the commode (I guess she always checks there first). Then she came back in got up on the seat next to me and tried to lick my face. Aaaw, isn’t that cute?… trying to kiss dad with her fresh toilet mouth. We’re working on it.
Or in this case the greased wheel is kept from getting the squeak. I decided to move my resist stuff back down to the studio yesterday because it was gonna be sunny and 52 and the sun never peaked out and the temp never got past 40 or 41. No problem though, I was gonna skip the decorating and do some throwing on my recently refurbished and exceedingly quiet whisper wheel but changed horses in the middle of the stream. I did get that silicone grease applied around the axle…
I had a bit of touchup with shellac and once I started, I just kept going and never got back to the wheel. Got quite a bit of tedious work done though, here’s three views of the same bowl with 2 coats of resist but not etched the second time yet…
Here’s another beer glass sans the big handprint but ready to bisque…
Gonna try for another long full day today, which is shorthand for not spending too much time on the computer and not checking email every once in a while and not checking facebook every once in a while or tweets… never thought it would be that difficult.
Last summer, we had this great idea… let’s get Sofia’s sleeping bag, make a grocery bag full of popcorn, a gallon of refreshing libation and head to the drive-in. Mom said, where’s a drive-in anyway. I said I think there’s two, one in the south end and one over in southern Indiana. Up to google and within minutes it’s whittled down to one… it’s in southern Indiana but it’s about a 40 minute drive. I go to their website and click around and discover they went out of business 2 months earlier. My memories of the drive-in with our family and then later when we were all just trying not to get arrested are some of the best. I saw “Blazing Saddles” there and “Young Frankenstein” and “Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry” and when we went with my dad we saw “True Grit” and “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” and James Bond movies… this was before Roger Moore who was far from convincing even to a young’n and always reminded me of Buddy Ebsen in “Barnaby Jones” or Jimmy Carter in “The White House”, oh, right that wasn’t a tv show… but Buddy and Roger were codgers and they would run after 20 year old criminals and then kick their asses, please! I know, older reference lost on younger readers but remember that Cannon detective dude on “Cannon” (same era as “Barnaby Jones”)? That guy was pushing 300 lbs. but they would have him chase down a criminal in his 20’s and not even be breathing heavily. But I digress, I was busy at the computer the other day and the bug is behind me on the not-white-anymore carpet humming her little made up songs… she interrupts me and says, come look at the movies. So in the doorway on one side of the hall is this (the audience)…
In the doorway across the hall is this (the movie)…
I ask her a bunch of questions and go back to sit down and she says, wait you didn’t see the parking lot…
We had a great day yesterday. It was 55 and on the way to the Red Pooper, I started singing, I… can’t… drive… 55. Not sure why this stuck but Sofia sang it all through lunch and beyond. We had a long pleasant walk with the demon dog who I think is slowly being renamed Dingus. I’ve used so many epithets in frustration like dolt, doofus, dingleberry, satan, goofball, goofus, sunblaster, doltus, etc. and somehow have somewhat affectionately landed on Dingus. So when we’re playing with her, I throw the rubber chew toy and say Dingus Badingus, go get your thingus and this plays very well with a 5 year old… big yucks every time. Anyway, later we went for a longer walk with oranges in my pockets and had one at the softball field. Then on to the railroad tracks, the reservoir and the fountain at the natatorium and then all the way back home. Sofia stopped to pet this woman’s old dog and while she was playing with the dog and rolling down the hill getting muddy, this woman that I had never met before tried to convince me that I should send Sofia to a private catholic school. I kept trying to be diplomatic and say things like… well, Mom and I were both raised catholic but we aren’t catholic now. Unfortunately, this didn’t sink in and she kept up until she was convinced that Sofia wasn’t going to catholic school even though she just happened to be having dinner that evening with the kindergarten teacher at the catholic school she was recommending. Then she immediately switched to montessori schools… a disciplinarian no doubt. Anyway, home for dinner and it was a great day all round.
On Thursday, my friend here in town that keeps bees called me around dinner time and told me that because it was pretty warm out he looked in his hive and all his bees were dead. From what he described this is what had happened to me last year and when spring came I found the same apian remains in the bottom of my hive. So yesterday it was 55 here and I went out to see if I might spot some life. I gingerly stepped over the soggy, muddy minefield of dog poop and when I got to the hive… bees! They are alive, at least some of them and at least so far. There are a lot of dead ones by the portal and I’m not sure if they just died there of if there’s some house cleaning going on as the girls do bring out the dead…
Anyway, this news was as good as I could have hoped for relating to bees. I cleaned the dead out of the doorway and the bottom of the feeder, went and got some corn syrup, cleaned the feeder itself and gave them some syrup. In my mind I figured what’s more unhealthy than corn syrup… maybe high fructose corn syrup and what store popped into my head… Walmart. Ironically, I go to the corn syrup section and all they have is “Lite” corn syrup and I thought… what, Walmart’s gone healthy now? Not only was it “Lite” but it had vanilla flavoring… I’m not sure they realize that they are definitely going to lose their beekeeping customers. So the good news is the bees are alive! I got a solid 9 hours of work in yesterday and met up with Jeff Campana for beers and talked clay for some time. Today and tomorrow are dad and bug days and we’re off in about an hour.
Gonna be 45 degrees today. Once I started counted pieces and timing firings and trying to estimate how long it will take to decorate said pieces, a little panic set in. This is when working at home presents a challenge that working in a separate studio does not. I decided to skip the online thing yesterday and just get up and decorate. I was sitting here at this table painting resist before 8 with my Earl Grey and thinking how much I was gonna get done. I started to hear the shopvac at about 9 interrupting my serene Mozart wafting from the IMac. I thought, well Mom’s just vacuuming but then I heard another machine. I go downstairs and Mom is bringing in a rented rug cleaner and the only carpet in the house is the one under my feet. Mom has an ongoing war with the formerly white carpet that my ex-wife insisted on putting in almost 20 years ago (I lost that battle of common sense under the false premise that compromise would ensure a long and happy union… doh!). Sofia spilled something on it two years ago and it looks like someone spilled a large bucket of iron oxide stain on it. Mom thinks that bigger rug cleaners will work where smaller ones failed and I keep telling her that deciding it’s not a problem is a more effective route. Anyway, I have to vacate the upstairs because the rented cleaner is due back by 1:30… so I went to the bank and the hardware store for some silicone grease (thanks for the heads up Soubriquet) and that was the second place I went to. The first thing they ask is… what do you need it for? which translates to… I’ve never heard of that and I want to suggest using something else so that I can go back to daydreaming about quitting time. After lunch I set back at it with a damp but still wet carpet under my feet and a hour or so in, Sofia’s two cousins come in (Mom picks them up from school twice a week so I knew this was gonna happen). The three of them come upstairs and pandemonium ensues with little girl arguments and screaming and one of the cousins kept making this strange choking sound and even though I realized that she was entertaining the other two, every time I heard it, I felt like one might not be joking this time. They left around 5 and about 6 we ate dinner and I came back up around 7 to work and at 7:30 I had Sofia’s bedtime ritual which is me reading to her from 7:30 to 8-ish. Then downstairs to allow her to fall asleep… I never got back to it. Not complaining, merely trying to illustrate the difficulty of working in the house. Something happens like this everyday to a greater or lesser degree. Here’s some greenware I’ve been working on…
