A Minor Fall From Grace

That's not good...


I'm not sure of the title that the Bruce originally gave this teapot, but "A Minor Fall From Grace" is the title that I surreptitiously handed this work this week. Local artist Bruce Cadman had brought in a few works for photographing. Usually this is a painless exercise...but this time I broke his newest work as I was taking it off the light table. Doh!

The "up-side" is that Bruce is a really nice guy, (a little strange, yes, but hey who am I to point?) and we had just gotten the piece fully photographed. His only request was to have a picture of it while it was still in one piece.

No problem...

Sorry Bruce...

P.S. Your wife paid me $5 to smash the peice, but now she won't pay... so I'm making this into postcards to hand-out at this weekends event...

Just kidding.

Stroll & Jazz on Miracle Mile

Avenue Autumn Showcase
Stroll & Jazz Concert Friday, November 13th
The night starts with a stroll on Miracle Mile at 6:00PM with gourmet hors d’oevres and fine wines.

This is going to be tons of fun!This is our first outing as PortCity Mud and we’re excited! We got brought in on this project at the last minute, but we have been looking for just this sort of event to goof around at so we were prepared… well kinda.
We had the pedestals on hand already. (We enthusiastically made them a few months back in prep for a storefront gallery project.) We had artists lined up. (That’d be us. Our ugly mugs are posted on the side here.)

This is an evening event, so with that in mind we decided to make use of the impressive amount of glass in the storefront with a projected video shown directly onto a sheet in the window to go along with the exhibition. We sat down with a few beers and tested it out last night with lots of success. It really got people’s attention.

So we’ll be at the old Wells Fargo Bank Building at 1906 Pacific Ave with an exhibit of ceramic arts, video demonstrations shown in the store front glass, along with live demos and wine inside. The event starts at 6:00PM.

One of June's PostCard Splits

I've been promoting to my local markets with postcard splits. These are full sized post cards that I have shrunk down to half size and doubled up on a single printed postcard. I cut these cards in half to create minis that I can liberally hand out at farmers markets and drop off at any coffee and tea shops that I visit.
For the price, I'm starting to create and hand-out moo-card sized minis for several of our local artists that are partisipating in the PortCity Mud Project as well.

Prospective designs are tested at my neighborhood coffee shop by dropping a card design on the floor and noting what happens. If someone picks up a card and drops it in the bin... it's literally garbage. If they pocket it after picking it up... it's a decent design.

PortCity Mud Project

Time to start another large community project...

Everyone around here has been garumping about how the art community in Stockton is non-existent. Maybe I'm not looking at the same city, but there's a lot of arts happening here! It is a stratified community of young to old, with a unhealthy dose of pessimism and apathy spread through much of the older crowd, but there is an amazing amount of unshown talent just walking around.

The PortCity Mud Project is a grass roots project aimed at reengaging our local ceramic artists with their community using guerrilla gallery exhibitions, plain air demonstrations, and online media.

Hey, when you have nothing to lose... it's time to play!

A Handful of Racers

Well... for all my whining this morning about everything in yesterdays kiln load of work conspiring to challenge my preconceived expectations, there were a good number of pieces I did really did enjoy pulling out of the kiln.

These works still play the edge of what I need to come out of the kiln verses what I personally think is fun to hold and explore. Unfortunately, these are more often than not, 2 totally differing ideals. This point is actually becoming a point of personal internal philosophical contention, (but that is definately another post).

Creating a Paper Stencil Part 2

Here is the second part of this weeks demo...

The first part is in the previous post. It shows the technique I use for cutting out 30 to 40 stencils at a time. I do this by cutting my design out of a billet of newsprint sandwiched between sheet plastic using a jewelers saw and bench pin. I can actually get 60 to 80 stencils out a a single billet if I plan my design around the cut, using both the positives and negitves in a design.

This clip shows how I apply the stencils to create a composition. It goes on to show the slip being applied and the paper being peeled away revealing the surface design.

Enjoy!

Creating a Paper Stencil Part 1

Alright... I know I've shown the process before, but shooting the pictures for these stop motion "how to" videos are how my kids are earning their allowance at the moment and I'm still learning how to put it all together.

This demo is divided into 2 parts. I know I have a hard time sitting still longer than 4 minutes, so I've tried to keep each clip relatively short.

I've got lots of question marks with these videos, but my big question right now is... Does it need sound? I have my stereo blasting Miles Davis and Trombone Shorty while I'm sitting around slapping these videos together, so I assume that everyone else sitting at their computer has their own trax playing in the background.

Self doubt and second guessing always seems to lurk in the shadows, luckily it rarely keeps me from having fun!