Happy Birthday, Mom!

I am lucky to have talented moms.

My mom has been doing French embroidery for almost 50years. It is a part of her life now and helps her to keep busy at quiet night, especially after my father passed away three years ago. It is fun for me to check out what she makes every time I visit her. And always some of them go home with me.

And my mother-in-law has done stained glass for 10years. Lamp shades, Japanese lanterns, small to large...

And now she started learning a Japanese flower arrangement. Last Xmas season, she requested me to make a flower vase. Since she made many pieces of staind glass for me, I was happy that she wanted my pottery.

Today is her birthday and I am in Japan! My husband And I are very happy to be here to celebrate her 78th birthday.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Dirty Little Secret

I have a dirty little secret - I choose to work in total chaos. I don't mean disorder, I mean upheaval.


I have a fairly small studio--compact, I like to think. I also think that I am damn lucky to have my own studio at all, considering that I am not really a team player. Occasionally I have someone working down there (in the basement, behind the furnace) with me...my lovely niece Caitlin comes once a week, as she has for a few years, and she produces some beautiful work.


But in general I work alone, listening to the radio or podcasts. I try to stay a bit organized, and I do keep things clean enough for Caitlin to be able to produce her work.


I noticed, especially today, that when I am working alone, and getting very involved in a specific project, the tools go flying, the clay is all over, and the only thing in sharp focus is the piece I am working on.

I finshed the series of pots I had been working on, and I was just about to turn out the lights. I was going over in my head the plans for tomorrow, which meant changing my clay body back to porcelain. 

Oh no, time to clean up...forget the Oscar red carpet! Porcelain is a little princess, and just a touch of contamination is no good, no good at all! Every tool, sponge, bat, all the tables had to be scrubbed clean, for a new kind of chaos, tomorrow!

Dining in Denver

delecTABLE: The Fine Art of Dining    

Presented by The Art Students League of Denver

April 6 – 27, 2012

Online April 1^st at www.ASLD.org

Bamboo Plate

It’s official; I must now squeeze another file into my already overflowing drawer of show rejection letters.  This time I get to add a letter into my “Acceptances” file!

I am quite honored to have my work please the discerning eye of the esteemed juror, Nick Joerling.  I share that honor with 22 other potters, including a potter whose work I have long admired, Monica Ripley. 

Berry Bowl

So my Berry Bowl and Bamboo Plate are off to find a new home in Colorado. Hmmm, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea…

                                                                                                    

Happy New Year!

This is the final post for 2011. This last week of the year, after the crazy, hectic holidays, and before the start of the new year I like to update all my new calendars, pay my bills, balance my checkbook, and find all my scattered ‘to do’ lists, to see if I can finish things up.

This year I had a ‘to do’ dating from 2003, that needed a bit more time to complete. That year I had attended the NY Ceramics Fair, where contemporary artists and antique dealers display their wares for collectors and designers. I somehow got some free tickets, and attended the show across the street from the Metropolitan Museum on 5^th Avenue. That first year I went they had a display of antique ceramics from the Deerfield Museum, and I fell in love with a delftware punch bowl. So I did some research on punch bowls, and sketched out my version of a bowl with a fish, with the words ‘Keep Me Swimming', traditionally used inside a punch bowl to encourage replenishment. It was time to make it my own, for this year’s holiday.

Sorry, I forgot to photograph the making of the bowl, but it was 14 pounds of porcelain clay, with a thrown foot, to give it height. I planned on making 24 cups, with handles, with each having a number.

I mixed up some clay slip, using cobalt and a little red iron oxide to tone down the blue. So I threw 27 cups, with the same shape, sort of, but the sizes definitely vary. The cups were trimmed with a rounded bottom, and I added a thrown foot from a coil.

I had a limited amount of the chosen porcelain clay, so I ditched the idea of a handle on the cup, and I’m glad I did because they stack nicely!

So, I made it just in time, and I tried an eggnog recipe from Alton Brown. We had a bottle of Maker's Mark on the side, and voila! a new tradition.

Another new tradition this year was my decoration of a little sculpture that was a joint effort between my daughter, Cathy (a VERY talented painter) and myself...she did a small sculpture and I added some dark slip to bring out the 'lines' and put it into a dark clay shadow box. It is very much at home on my mantle, and a little  Grinch-Santa hat dressed it up for Christmas.

I want to wish everyone a very Happy New Year, and all the best for 2012.

This year's tree, the loveliest of all

Malcolm and blackberries

When I got the job firing the kiln for the Malcolm Davis workshop in 2002 at the Art School at Old Church, I was very excited but at the same time, I was very nervous firing the kiln, which was filled with Shino freaks’ artworks. After Malcolm’s instruction of how to fire a shino kiln was finished, everyone left the art center but me. The kiln was still around cone9 just after the glaze reduction. Malcolm had plans to have dinner with Mikhail Zakin but he kindly stayed with me for a while. I had a very good time chatting with him but I knew he needed to leave. I remember
that I tried not to give him a chance to say, “it’s time to leave”, by talking and asking questions non-stop. My last question to him was…’How high can the pieces as well as the kiln go up?’
He told me the story of blackberry picking during his Shino firing….. His firing was almost finished, he totally forgot that he was firing the kiln. He was having fun picking blackberries. Suddenly he remembered that he was firing the kiln! Ran back to the kiln and the cone11 was down completely. He left me with this answer to my question “So, cone 12 is still ok.” Always when I fire the kiln, I remember this story and imagine how happy he was picking blackberries.
I hope he is at peace with no pain and meets his dear friend, Pam Proctor up there.

Tribute to Malcolm Davis

The Pottery Show at the Art School at Old Church in Demarest, NJ during the first weekend in December was not the same this year.  At first I thought it had something to do with the economy and people’s depression about the “It’s only a Recession” Depression.  But it was something else; the zeitgeist was not there. It felt intangible at first, but by Sunday I realized what was missing: Malcolm Davis. I remember thinking that next year when Malcolm comes back the energy will flow again.

For the past 10 years I have looked forward to Malcolm’s effusive, long lost friend greeting when he arrived at the school on the Friday of the show weekend for the inventory process. Even during transitional periods and stressful times in my life, he always made me smile. But what I loved most about Malcolm was the seriousness of his convictions underneath his Suessical antics.

Maybe I have a soft spot in my heart for him because Malcolm was my first. Yes, I know many people have said that about him and I do realize that someone like Malcolm must be shared with the world.  For those of you who don’t understand what I’m referring to; Malcolm and I (and about 20 other people) spent 5 days together on Long Beach Island, NJ back in 2002. No, it wasn’t a “Jersey Shore” kind of thing – in fact we never even saw the beach! 

Malcolm was the instructor of the first pottery workshop I ever took. By listening, watching and learning from him I realized that I could take myself seriously as a potter (and as a person) without being too serious.  It was possible to change your life’s direction mid-stream and live to tell about it! I have often said that Malcolm taught me about the importance of Qi in an otherwise lifeless piece of clay.  In Chinese religions, Qi is the life force and energy that flows through everything.  Well if anyone knew about Qi, it was Malcolm.

Malcolm Davis, 1937-2011

Well, there are tributes to Malcolm Davis all over the internet, and since we all have our memories, we wanted to share. So here I go…

I attended classes at the Art School at Old Church, in Demarest, NJ for 7 years, and during that time was privileged to be able to volunteer at their annual pottery show, curated by Karen Karnes. Those shows, the outstanding work I saw every year, and the wonderful, generous potters I met every year changed my life.

Malcolm Davis was always approachable, easy to talk to, and even a friend, to a star-struck pottery student. I took a few workshops, and then joined him at his first workshop at La Meridiana, in Tuscany. It was a wonderful experience. I had never been to Italy before, and who better to share the food, the wine, the beauty of the scenery, and pottery making, than Malcolm Davis! It was a magical experience. I know everyone who was in that workshop has some great memories. It was a little rough around the edges, but truly exhilarating.

Malcolm petting the beef before dinner - Poggio Allora

Malcolm was describing to me the strange reaction he got when he sent them his material list, including a few toilet brushes for the glaze mixing. I think his explanation strained everyone’s translation abilities. So he asked me to take a photo with them…voila!

I later sent the photo to Malcolm, and a few months’ later it appeared in my new deck of Studio Potter Collector Cards! I was so proud.

Malcolm was a great friend. I still feel overwhelmed that he would take time to gossip with me, exchange recipes, make plans. He really was a Dr. Seuss-like character (not my original observation, but totally true). Malcolm Davis was a great man, and I consider myself really lucky to have known him.

Malcolm and Ellen, Itsuko behind camera!