Here we go into the last round from NC Potter's Conf. and the influence that I brought home. Sunshine Cobb works in a very meticulous manner. She does some thrown work with really nice textures rouletted onto them but mainly, she makes coiled pots. The coiling and pinching gives her work an exquisite sensual surface which she then pierces and cuts pieces out of. It is delicate work but she just keeps at it in a very straightforward workwoman like manner. After firing with commercial glazes, she even goes so far as to sandblast them to soften the surface.
I love Paintings on the sides of buildings, especially if they have a working headlight !
Saturday night, we went to visit the home of a local collector. who has literally thousands of pots in his house. I'm not going to give out his name but he is elderly and has been collecting for decades. EVERY nook and Cranny in his rambling home is crammed full of pots to die for and he has already give 1000 to a university collection. Let the pictures speak.
Finally, I have been working on a pot that incorporates some influences from Tony Clennell. It has a 9# bowl, 6# cap, and a 4# base all attached to each other. Add a lid and some wheel thrown handles and this is what you get. Currently 16" tall and 14" wide. It is not really my style but it was good practice and a lot of fun to do. Now to dry it for a couple of months and see what happens in the firing. Thanks for stopping.
I need to be making mugs. I need to be making cereal bowls. Going to a conference, you see people making stuff like this.
So you come home and start making parts for pots you don't need. Here is the bottom
Here is the top.
Tomorrow, we'll see if they fit together and if the forms hold up when they are attached to each other. PS, I blame Tony Clennell for this. That guy is a hazard sneaking across the border just to mess with my complacency !
I want to show a piece of Steven Godfrey's work today also. I really wasn't familiar with him but he does some incredible work with porcelain and he came all the way from Anchorage Alaska to see us.
He does lovely work and seems like a nice guy too. He was a good presenter and held up his share of the stage. Not an easy task when the stage is shared with two other people.
I still need to review Sunshine Cobb and a visit to what is probably one of the best collections of contemporary pottery in the country. Thanks for stopping by and come back soon.
That's right. It's been so long since I posted that I think people quit looking for updates. I'm gonna fix that right now. It was a long January and February. The ankle still hurt some and I had to be careful not to get out on the ice and slip etc but it has settled to the point that If I overuse it, it hurts. If I take care of it, it feels like it did a couple of years ago. The limping seemed to screw with my back so there went another two weeks. Finally a couple of weeks ago I went for a routine check up and my doctor didn't like the way my face looked. Specifically a spot on my face that turned out to be a minor skin cancer that comes off in a couple of weeks. They say it is nothing to worry about but then again it is not their face. All of this stuff has slowed down the pottery making this winter. I need to make Lasagna dishes, I need more mugs, I need more big bowls. It will get done, I'll just be busy. I'll keep you posted, Honest. On the fun side of the ledger, I attended the North Carolina Potter's Conference last weekend. I have 92 pictures so I will need to space things out over a couple of weeks to go through it all.
Tony Clennell and I have been online friends for several years and this was a chance to meet up in person. I know it's not really that far to South Ontario but there are only a couple of days each year between skeeter season, blackfly season, and ice over so it has been hard to schedule a visit. Tony demonstrated his strong sense of style and distinctive line of multihandled shino glazed pots He also brought a nice selection of pots for sale and sold them all in short order. It was great to finally meet him and hang out for a while.With so many pictures, I didn't even process them so they are still raw but you can see what was going on.
In my quest to offend a wider array of people, I have still been singing a couple of times a week. Here is the latest. I'll post more from the conference in a couple of days. We're just getting started.
