The story behind this vase is a long one but I’ll try to make it short. There’s this potter in Denmark who is a total rock star on social media and I have a love/hate relationship with his work. His business is called “Tortus Copenhagen Ceramics” and he’s amazingly talented at creating sexy pics and videos of himself making pots. I’m really impressed with his marketing skills, but his pots put me to sleep. Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s a very skilled potter. But the way he uses a black tank top and big muscles to sell his work is a total joke. So, I made a joke about it!
Why am I meditating inside my kiln? The Mountain Area Potters Gang is having a group show this month, and we were all required to do a “studio selfie” of ourselves at work. I put the task off until the day of the deadline and the job of cleaning my studio seemed really daunting. But then I realized that the one place in the studio that wasn’t all cluttered at the time was inside the shuttle kiln. A change of clothes and fifteen minutes later I had my shot. I had never sat inside my kiln before and it’s wonderfully quiet in there! Namaste.
This cookie jar is one of the pots that will be featured in the “Roots in Clay” show. It came together really quickly. It was the last day of decorating for the show and I knew that I wanted to do a collage of images dealing with how we get our ideas. That’s a muse on a pedestal and Lou Reed getting his songs from a “radio receiver” that he can turn on and come up with music like magic out of the ether. (I read a great interview about him one time and he claims to be able to tune into a magical dimension at any time and find songs there!) The jokes seemed to come out of nowhere as I was drawing this pot and I got small sense for what it must be to be Lou Reed. Creating this piece was a truly magical experience and I’m really proud to have it in the show!
For those of you who live in the Denver area, you are invited to come to the opening on Friday, May 6th from 4 – 7 p.m. at the Center for the Arts in Evergreen. And on Wednesday, May 11th at noon I’ll be giving a one hour talk about my work the next week. I’ll explain the process of how I make my pots and we’ll take a slide show trip down memory lane of my forty-five years of working in clay. There will even be door prizes! You can learn more about this interesting event at the Facebook event page.
And last but not least, here’s a cool art piece that’s for sale in the “one of a kind art pots” section of my online store. “Why does the pizza emoji have a shadow underneath it?” is an original thought I had one day and I hope that this image puts a seed in your brain about the mysterious pizza emoji. It can’t be balanced like that, so what’s going on? Is it falling from space and the image is the exact moment before it hits the ground?!!!
