Have Booth, Will Work For Beer

It hasn't been a week yet since the photo booth has been set-up and already it's getting busy around here.

Bruce Cadman has been busy getting new works ready for this years Ceramics Annual of America in San Fransisco.

Line em up and shoot!

Go team!

Strffigo

I have no idea what this is but I just had to post it...

Change of Seasons

A successful summer session wouldn't complete without someone heading off on some grand adventure and leaving the rest of us behind.

Heads-up!

All the projects and plans aren't going to simply be thrown up into the air only to be relabeled "daydreams". 

The game has just changed and become way more fun!

Hop hop BOOM! 
See ya real soon Jessica!

Collaboration

I was fortunate enough to spend a good chunk of my early adulthood as an technical artisan in art foundries down in the southwest. One of the big lessons pulled from those years was to value growth through collaboration.

Work can often take unexpected twists when you let it go and put your trust in another set of hands to leave their mark.

It becomes something greater, something unexpected... it becomes less about what I have made and more about what we have made.
It becomes "Our work".

Co-collaborator, Jessica Fong, has been literally leaving her mark in the studio lately. Her figurative line work has been finding it's way onto more and more of my works.
This is just the start...

Sprigg'n Stars

Need a few stars for a project...

A manhole has had my eye for a while... do I hear snickering?

A quick bisque and we're ready to go!

Dungon Photo Booth

Jessica Fong has been helping me set up the photo booth in the root cellar of the new home studio.

Fun!

AFT (about Fuc*'n Time), it's long overdue, but I really needed a break from the routine.

Still have to dial it in to work out the hot spots, but it works!

Knob'n

Trying something different...

We had a fantastic adjunct ceramics teacher in the UOP art department last fall.
Now everyone is familiar with her work after finding it on the cover of Ceramics Monthly.
Had to try Sunshine Cobb's spin on a knob for a lid.

A fob of clay that's scored on and wire cut in place while wet.

Looks great and even more importantly it works!

Ceramic Monthly Calls for Entry

Ceramics Monthly calls for entry.

Crocker

Went up to Sacramento to drop off work for this years KVIE art fundraiser and found myself standing in front of this amazing piece by Steven Kaltenbach at the Crocker Art Museum.
I visually fell into this work. It's beautiful from a distance, but mind numbing when you walk up closer and see that it's made of a complex repeating pattern that's used like pixels.
I would love a chance to just sit in front of it for a long spell!

Took the opportunity to hunt out Dan Finnegan's works that are in a special collection there too. He was set in a room along side the Hamadas, the Bernard Leechs and all the other greats... very cool Dan!

It was humbling to see so much great work.
I can't help but start using works like these as a ruler to measure what I make against.
Rulers of this type usually are masochistic exercises, it's all apples and oranges, but it was still fun to imagine what my work would look like sitting in a line up like that.

 

I'm happy realizing that I've become comfortable being who I am.

Comming Summer

Spring is almost over... Time for cutting summer bouquets and finally settling into the new studio.

Summer Studio MudHeads

What do you do with a spot of time on your hands while burning a kiln...

Play with the slip buckets!

StillLife With Vases

I've never took making vases to heart... I build gardens but I don't cut flowers, so the buggers didn't make much sense in my head.

But I've gotten lucky and have studio mates that have reintroduced me to bottles and vases, but more importantly to pleasure of putting together bouquets for friends and family.

 Sunday mornings have become ritualized cut and arrange mornings for us now.

 Jessica Fong has been kind, letting me use her work to explore the aspects of design that are needed for cut flowers. 

All the arrangements shown are using her pieces.

I feel like I'm starting to get it!

There's so much to explore and try, so much experience that needs doing.

It has been rewarding getting a chance to sit next to another craftsman in the studio again. Not only that, but being lucky enough to find studio partners that are more about playing and experimenting than producing a "product".

 Dynamic relationships lead us out of our own heads and off into unexpected directions. 

Thank you Jess!