Woodfire Wednesdays and Greece

Community: I have really been enjoying Laurie Erdman's blog - The Spirit of Clay. We met at the NCECA pre-Conference: Making Through Living - Living Through Making". I love her format of "Wood-Fire Wednesdays" (great work there today - John Butler). The format reminds me of radio formats when I was growing up - Double-Shot Thursdays or Two-For-Tuesdays on WBCN or WAAF or whatever rock and roll station I happened to be listening to - usually hoping for some Doors or Creedence or Dire Straits. Some other ceramic possibilities? Free-Form Fridays? Slip-Cast Sundays?

Studio: My aunt Connie is coming over today. She is the Teacher Specialist with The Examined Life: Greek Studies in the Schools. She and her crew will be filming me at the wheel in order to get some visuals for their website. While my own influences aren't specifically Greek, I am a strong believer in travel as a means of learning and growing and understanding. We travelled as a family to Greece a couple of years ago and loved it - wonderful food, spectacular scenery, plakas, islands, history...and we happened to be there for Euro '08 - a great place to take in a soccer tournament. Afterwards, we determined every town in America should have an outdoor movie theater on a rooftop...the best place to watch a James Bond film!

Community and Studio

Trying a new format for this blog: Community and Studio. I always seem to do better when I have a structure for my writing. I think this blog has been a little too freeform so I'll see how this framework works. The goal will be to write about work/artists/happenings in this part of the world and also give some updates of what I am working on in the studio.

Community: went to Warren Mather's talk at Lacoste Gallery yesterday. Warren's work speaks to the beauty of the ephemeral. He shoots images of water (lakes, streams, ocean) and presents them in ways that speak to the personal. Moonlight on river becomes a gorgeous calligraphic line. Raindrops on snow becomes a broadside of bulletholes. Seagrass in front of the sea becomes abstracted into a hairy hole. Snowman in a field becomes a brainscan searching for tumors. Warren uses fisheye lenses, symmetrical printing, and a glazed ceramic surface to create objects that entice the eye and invite deep observation. In addition, Warren is such a kind and nice man - it is such a pleasure to talk to him about his work.

Studio: I've continued working on gridding my pieces. I like that it allows me to explore pattern, symmetry, historic fabric like the harlequin, architecture like IM Pei, mathematical graphs, weather maps, etc. The work has progressed in a way that recalls what I wrote about Spanish architecture. I like trying to fit the contemporary with the classical, like an old city. Here's a couple images of some greenware: