Copyright and other blogs currently being worked

Happy Year of the Dragon. Here is my Dragon Girl Bird sculpture from 2018.

My info

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Happy Halloween to all!

Here's hoping your season of spooky fun is enjoyable,  and that those who take it seriously also have satisfaction in honoring their ancestors, communing with the dead, and gathering for community.

There's a pottery show I'm getting ready for.  I have to limit my participation to indoor shows...just the limitations of this old body these days.

Here are the two photos I sent to Marion Arts Council for their brochure which is printed for the benefit of the customers.



This is for the Appalachian Pottery Show in McDowel High School the first Saturday of December.  Which happens to be Dec. 1.

Hope you can come if you're in the area.  There's a fee of $5 to browse some of the best pottery around...in the comfort of being indoors!

In the meantime, I'm preparing for a show in Owen Middle School right here in Black Mountain the following Saturday, Dec. 8.



Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Tuesday Featured Artist - Throwing on the Hump -by Euan Craig

Euan The Potter, Euan Craig
A blog post is rare from this potter in Japan, at least that have been sent to my blog list.

This one is great.  Not only a nice lesson in tools, but a bonus of a YouTube showing how to throw rice bowls on the hump, using the "tombo" tool which he describes, and tells you how to make it.
Thanks Euan!

The Video HERE.

The entire interesting BLOG POST HERE

The last sentence of his long and wonderful blog is:
"What makes a great pot is a potter working in collaboration with the forces of nature, sloughing off the detritus of convention and addressing the issue of what it is to be human, a part of nature, expressing ones self through clay. "      

I may be a "hobby potter" in that I don't make production pots, nor do I make my living as a potter.  My health precludes such, as well as my age.  I asked Euan for permission to post his very informative blog...and am still waiting.  I guess he's busy making pots.

Monday, October 29, 2018

More angels of different kinds

I've enjoyed painting faces on some angels which are sort of caricatures.  They aren't supposed to be any specific people.






Sunday, October 28, 2018

Put a dragon on it...

 OK, I lied...I just got some new fish...no dragons.  Just Neon Tetras, Wag Tail Mollies, and a new male guppy to keep my female company.  I'm not putting gravel on the bottom of the tank yet...it holds too much gunk I think.  I've been fighting algae for months, so have completely cleaned everything. (I had an algae eater, who died, must have been too much for him.)

 So here's a tower, with a dragon on the top.  This was greenware stage, just completed.

Now at bisque-ware stage, to be glazed this week.  I'll show you when competed, of course.

Thursday, October 25, 2018

Native America new series - art and artifacts on PBS

I hope the link works...the show I watched last Tues. night on PBS had some new artifacts from South America, paintings along a cliff.  And a lot about Chaco Canyon, and a new way of making a map of the world.


It was worth watching again today using this link, which will be up until Nov 20 it says.
Native America, From Caves to Cosmos

I particularly liked that the spirit world was part of the foundation of the show, stories from the tribes, and their own way of looking at the world.  The interviews with Native Americans were interspersed with some archeologists...I was particularly glad to see a woman and a black man from the U of Illinois describing the cliff paintings in South America, which I'd never heard of before!



I just feel I was in the right zone last Tues. Oct 23 at 8 pm to find it at the minute it started...extraordinary coincidence since I just did a bit of browsing, and there it was!
Pueblo elders performing a ceremony at Chaco Canyon

This is the press release about the 4 part series...

Pasadena, CA, January 16, 2018 – Today at the Television Critics Association Press Tour, PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger announced NATIVE AMERICA (watch trailer here), a new four-part series from Providence Pictures that will premiere Fall 2018 on PBS stations nationwide. Weaving history and science with living indigenous traditions, the series brings to life a land of massive cities connected by social networks spanning two continents, with unique and sophisticated systems of science, art and writing. Made with the active participation of Native- American communities and filmed in some of the most spectacular locations in the hemisphere, NATIVE AMERICA reveals an ancient and still thriving culture whose splendor and ingenuity is only now beginning to be fully understood and appreciated.
Recent discoveries informed by Native-American oral histories have led to a bold new perspective on North and South America – that ancient people across these two continents may have been part of a single interconnected world. This and other research is leading to revelations that will forever change how we understand Native America. The series highlights intimate Native-American traditions and follows field archaeologists using 21st-century tools such as multispectral imaging and DNA analysis to uncover incredible narratives of America’s past, venturing into Amazonian caves containing the Americas’ earliest art and interactive solar calendar, exploring a massive tunnel beneath a pyramid at the center of one of ancient America’s largest cities and mapping the heavens in celestially aligned cities.
NATIVE AMERICA is an extraordinary portal to the past and window to the present,” said Beth Hoppe, PBS Chief Programming Executive and General Manager, General Audience Programming. “The latest scholarship and research have shattered earlier conceptions of indigenous culture and civilization, revealing vast social networks and shared beliefs that have bridged the generations and that continue to flourish in Native-American communities today.”
Narrated by Robbie Robertson (Mohawk and member of the famed rock group The Band), each hour of NATIVE AMERICA explores Great Nations and reveals cities, sacred stories and history long hidden in plain sight. In what is now America’s Southwest, indigenous people built stone skyscrapers with untold spiritual power and transformed deserts into fertile fields. In upstate New York, warriors renounced war and formed America’s first democracy 500 years before the Declaration of Independence, later inspiring Benjamin Franklin. On the banks of the Mississippi, rulers raised a metropolis of pyramids from swampland and drew thousands to their new city to worship the sky. And in the American West, nomadic tribes transformed a weapon of conquest — the horse — into a new way of life, turning the tables on European invaders and building a mobile empire. 
The producers of NATIVE AMERICA were given remarkable access to Native-American communities, going behind the scenes at special events, including a pilgrimage to ancestral ruins at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, a trek across lost territories in the American West, and an investiture ceremony for a chief in the Pacific Northwest, surrounded by cedar totem poles and centuries of tradition. Tribal members and descendant communities, whose ancestors built this world, share their stories, revealing long-held oral traditions as the thread that runs through the past to these living cultures today.
“I can no longer look at this land without thinking of the millions of Native Americans who created a world in which people lived as family with all living things and that their way of life still has the power to make a more just and sustainable future,” said producer Gary Glassman.
Inventive animations by Academy Award-nominated artists and 3D computer modelling bring ancient ruins to life, enabling viewers to experience the pre-Columbian world in an immersive way.  The result is a new window into a 15,000-year-old story that unifies North and South America and resonates to this day.
In addition to the series, an expansive companion website on pbs.org and a robust community outreach and education campaign will accompany the series. Classroom resources thematically relevant to the series will be available on PBS LearningMedia (pbslearningmedia.org). Teachers can use these free resources and support materials to jump start classroom conversations and help students delve more deeply into the history of Native-American culture and innovation.
NATIVE AMERICA will be available on DVD at ShopPBS.org. The series will also be available on Digital HD.
Funding for NATIVE AMERICA is provided by The Anne Ray Foundation and PBS.
NATIVE AMERICA is executive produced and directed by Gary Glassman for Providence Pictures. Julianna Brannum (Comanche) is series producer and talent liaison. Producers/directors: Joseph C. Sousa and Scott Tiffany. Producer/editor: Rob Tinworth. Edited by Sean Sandefur, with music by Ed Tomney. Coordinating producers: Maureen Barden Lynch and Ben Sweeney. Animation by Handcranked Productions. Sacred Story animations by Daniel Sousa, with 3D animation by Mitch Butler.

About Providence Pictures 
Providence Pictures believes television has the power to change the world. For twenty years, Providence Pictures has produced programs for the most prestigious international broadcasters — PBS, Discovery, History, National Geographic, BBC, and Arte. Through stunning photography, dramatic narrative, meticulous research, innovative animation, and elegant cinematic re-enactments, Providence Pictures crafts complex ideas into compelling, intelligent stories. Their films have won and been honored with nominations for television’s most prestigious awards — six Emmys, two Writers Guild Awards, the AAA Science Journalism Prize, International Archaeological Film Festival, the CINE Golden Eagle Special Jury Award, and many more.

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Angel bird ornament

 I've moved into caricatures on my little angel ornaments...started with cats, of course.  Here's my first bird.

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Tuesday Featured Artist - Terry Gess


From his own web site: (Link here)
Terry Gess is a studio potter in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina.

His formal education includes study at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and Penland School of Crafts.

Upon completion of his Masters degree, Terry Gess received the prestigious three-year Artist Residency at Penland School of Crafts. He was also invited to live and work in a Yixing teapot factory in the People's Republic of China, collaborating with a master Chinese potter in the development of new teapots forms. In addition, Terry Gess was selected to participate in an international ceramic exhibition and symposium held in the craft village of Fiskars, Finland, as well as studio lecture at the Estonian Academy of Art in Tallin, Estonia.

The North Carolina Arts Council awarded Terry Gess a ten-week residency at Chateau de La Napoule, an international artists residency program housed in a magnificent castle on the Mediterranean shore of the French Riviera.

In recent years, Terry Gess has expanded his creative activity to encompass creative writing in addition to pottery.

He and his wife Carmen Grier were awarded a joint studio residency at Cil Rialig International Artist Residency on County Kerry, Ireland.

Most recently, Terry Gess was selected as the first international participant in the “Bridge - Narrows Creative Residency” on the shore of Lake of the Woods in remote Ontario, Canada.

After eight years of teaching Craft Design and Pottery in the Professional Crafts Program at Haywood Community College, Terry Gess continues to augment his studio work by offering a limited number of instructional workshops and lectures to schools and pottery groups.

Terry Gess exhibits his work in exhibitions and craft shows across the United States – his work is regularly featured in select craft shops and galleries.
Terry Gess taught at Penland and my son was his studio assistant many years ago.  He still recognized me (though I did remind him how he knew me,)  That way he didn't have to guess too long.  I am thrilled to see his new work.


One of my friends, Cathy, was a student of Terry's at Haywood College.


Terry's new work is so beautiful.  He told me he will be teaching a course at Penland in 2019. 


Monday, October 22, 2018

Raku figure







One of my best friends bought this figure several years ago, and I neglected to make any photos.  She was obliging enough to bring it over so I could snap a few.  I asked her if she had a name, and she didn't.  That's ok. It belongs to her now.

Sunday, October 21, 2018

Saturday, October 20, 2018

Cat Angels

Cat Angel A - view above

Cat Angel A- view of side
Cat Angel A - view from front

Cat Angel A - back and side view
Cat Angel B - view front
Cat Angel B- view back
Cat Angel B - view side back
Cat Angel B- view side
Cat Angel B - view front & side
Cat Angel C - view side & front

There are 3 more cat angels...but I've not taken their photos yet.  It's been fun making them and having their very different personalities around my house.


Thursday, October 18, 2018

A last look at Spruce Pine Potters Market





Will Baker's gorgeous salt fired pieces.  I wouldn't mind his shelving either!






I have never left a market more pleased at having experienced the height of the genre.  What beautiful work! And if you notice a lot of bare spots, remember that there would be another day of sales tomorrow...I doubt that many things went home with the potters.