Sofia’s Dad’s Pots

Every now and then I find myself discovering ancient yoga poses that I guess have been discarded or simply forgotten over the ages. Since they are virtually unknown I feel they should be named so that they can easily be referred to by other yoga enthusiasts… like “downward facing dog” or “posture to the infinite”. I’ve settled on “upward mulberry” for this new one and since the ancient names all have a “sana” on the end, it may have been referred to in ancient times as “mulberrysana”. So yesterday, which thankfully was not a holiday, was a dad and bug day and like the day before that, which was also not a holiday, on our morning walk with the dog, we came upon a mulberry tree that was so jam-packed with berries it was really hard to believe. Well, Sofia being the fruit bat that she is saw nature’s bounty in the form of a large, wet, sticky, purple berry slick under a crazily loaded tree and she wanted some berries to eat. So here’s the pose… try it some time if you get a hankerin’. First you’ll need a severe case of plantar fasciitis, a 40 lb. dog that is 100% muscle and doesn’t behave well and a retractable leash… now before you can object, I realize that they didn’t have retractable leashes in ancient times (probably no PF either) but they also didn’t have space age styrofoam mats and “yoga blocks” either. So here goes… stand under a mulberry tree (preferably in about 1/4 inch of slippery rotten mulberries) and extend up on your tiptoes, with the leash in your left hand reach that left hand straight above your head and grasp a low hanging branch. The tricky part here is while you’re pulling down on the branch, the dog is pulling sideways with all her might which can knock you off balance if you’re new to the pose. Now with the right hand, extend it even higher than the left by pivoting your shoulders and gently harvest all the ripe mulberries on the branch… hold for 9 breaths. The difficulty lies in maintaining your balance (remember to breathe) and the beginner will inevitably be very close to a successful harvesting when a slight dog pull will shake the branch and very ripe mulberries will drop all at once bouncing off of your forehead and chest, leaving big purple blotches. Your reward might be something like this…

Here’s some holiday eye candy from my good friend Ig…

Well, they’re not free yet but we’re gonna let them go this afternoon after Sofia’s pre-school graduation. Sounds a bit ridiculous to me… I wonder who the valedictorian is and will the salutatorian feel slighted in any way. Will they move their tassels from side to side and toss them straight up in the air in unison? Anyway the metamorphosis of the callapidders is complete and as of this morning we have 4 brand spanking new “painted ladies”. They’re currently feasting on some carnations sprinkled with sugar water and in the afternoon we will release them from bondage to forage on the natural urban flora. Here’s the bug with her bugs…

Thanks aunt Cathy for the great gift. Speaking of urban flora, when we got back from Iowa, the hydrangea were in full bloom, the squash thrice their size and the astilbe was abloom also…

Here’s a strange flower that we got at the nursery when my sister was visiting, I have no idea what it is…

I still have ceramic pictures from Ig’s house and today it’s sculptures not pots (in this first grouping, the figures are a good 30″ tall)…

My good friend Vern and I hit the road yesterday for a wee road trip to Berea, Kentucky. The link on Vern’s name goes to posts that I’ve posted with his digital collages, here’s Vern driving…

Berea has a college and is know as kind of the craft center of Kentucky. Less than a decade ago, the Kentucky Artisan Center was built right off the interstate there. I’m sure that these exist in other states as well. Apparently the Artisan Center represents over 600 Kentucky craft people (or so I’ve been told). It sure looks like there’s that many people represented… there are items ranging the gamut of crafts on display in this relatively large building. Here’s a couple shots of the center…

One of the best things about being represented by the Artisan Center is that the work is not on consignment. They purchase the work outright based on their expertise about what they believe they can sell. Here’s a piece by Joe Molinaro, a well-known KY potter that teaches ceramics at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond and who just happens to have gone to SIU-Carbondale where I had also gone…

Here’s some pieces by Setian Leksirawat, a fellow Murray State University alumnus that I believe was in the program a year or so after I graduated…

In other news, the bug thought it would be funny to make signs and blockade the door to the bathroom. Joking about clogged plumbing isn’t exactly an area that I enjoy kidding about but she was very happy about her barricade…

My sister Cathy gave Sofia a “raise a butterfly” kit at xmas and what you do is send away in the mail and the company sends you a wee container of live callapidders. They spin themselves into cocoons and hopefully we all witness the metamorphosis into a butterfly. Sofia doesn’t transpose letters in words as much as she used to when she was younger and I thought the funny talk was all but over but callapidders it is and it cracks me up every time she says it. Here’s the bug with her callapidders…

At the opening in Chicago I neglected to take a camera to the opening but other people did. I met a very nice couple from Des Moines named Jennifer and Jeff. Jeff is a woodworker and Jennifer is a potter and she was attending Jeff’s workshop. We had a good time talking about power tool accidents amongst other things and Jennifer was gracious enough to take a couple shots of Jeff and me and then email them to me. Here’s one of the shots…

I get a bit antsy when people point cameras at me and I think I looked off right as Jennifer snapped this one. And as long as I’m posting pictures of myself, here’s one with the bug. When I was a kid no matter what the occasion whenever anyone took pictures of me, I would make a face. I was the one that ruined all the family photos. Well, apparently Sofia is a chip off the ol’ block in this regard as she started to make this face whenever I take her picture…

Of course the beauty of the whole thing when I was a kid was that nobody was certain that the photo was “ruined” until after it was developed days later but now you can just keep shooting until you get one. I tore down the photo setup yesterday, put all my glazing stuff away, started slaking reclaim, cleaned the floor and the wheel, taped the plastic that was over the bedroom window onto the floor so that more of the exposed wood is covered and wedged up some of Matt and Dave’s clay that’s been sitting there for months.

We’re back home. My good friend Jeff, who is a member of Club 52, and last year Club 51, and the year before Club 50, was nice enough to make the trip to Chicago with me and attend the closing. It was great to travel with him as there is never a lack of good conversation and because we don’t get together as frequently as we would like, we always have a lot to catch up on. We covered the gamut of topics on our 5 hour drive up and 5 hour drive back. Among those topics was this whole thing about what the lyrics of that song meant when it referred to Chicago as “that toddlin’ town”. Neither of us really knew and after a short online search, the only thing that seems to make any sense is that “toddlin'” was an allusion to teetotaling (meaning consuming non-alcoholic beverages), which would have been a purposely ironic phrase that was directed at the fact that Chicago was anything but teetotaling during prohibition because of the abundance of speakeasies there run by none other than Al Capone. Not sure if that’s correct but toddling is what toddlers do when they’re learning to walk and Chicago was definitely not learning to walk although toddle has a subordinate meaning that means walking unsteadily after drinking so maybe it’s similarly an allusion to the whole town consuming alcohol during prohibition. Anyway, here’s a pic of Jeff from a previous post to put a face with the name…

So I thought that if I could get the bug to the grandparents house by 8:30 that we could make the drive while stopping for a quick lunch and still get there in time to catch the end of Jeff’s workshop. We were making good time until we unwittingly stumbled onto I-290 in Chicago and sat in bumper to bumper for the next hour or so. Needless to say we arrived at the gallery only about 10 minutes before the closing was gonna start. We parked the car and as I was walking up to the gallery, I looked through the front windows and was shocked and elated to see my good friends Thad and Natasha from Southern Illinois who had driven up for a concert. Thad teaches sculpture at SIU-Edwardsville and we had gone to graduate school together back in the day. I hadn’t seen them in a couple years and wished we could’ve gotten there as soon as we intended because they didn’t get to stay long because they had a concert to get to that was downtown and the gallery was over in Oak Park which I guess was about a half hour away. Anyway, it was a great surprise and so good to see them. I also met David, the owner of Terra Incognito, and he was very nice and gracious. The closing was fine and although it was far from a sellout, there were some sales and I was pleased that it wasn’t a bust. I met a few very nice people from Jeff’s workshop and chatted away with them for quite some time. I was dreading the 3 hour affair from a plantar fasciitis point of view because I was not sure that standing for that long was gonna hurt so much that I would be too distracted to hang. After about 2 hours I was really needing to sit down because my feet hurt so much. Then after it was over me, Jeff, Jeff Campana and Jeff C.’s parents, Chuck and Barbara, went out to a nearby Thai restaurant and had dinner. Jeff’s dad reminded me of a movie star but I couldn’t place who it was. Afterward, the other Jeff and I went back to the hotel and tried to meet up with Natasha and Thad again but I guess the concert ran late and our phones weren’t working for some reasons. It was getting late so we made our way to a local pub/restaurant and had some good beer. I ended up getting a couple Lagunitas Hop Stoopid Ales and they were very good. The next morning we stopped by the gallery early to load up some pots and make our way out of town early but there was no one there. While we waited for a while, we wandered over to one of the tourist attractions in the neighborhood, the home of Frank Lloyd Wright. It was a beautiful house with a regal ginkgo biloba in the yard. Here’s a shot from the street…

I guess Wright’s Robie House is in Chicago also but in a different neighborhood. Anyway, we decided to drop in on Jeff’s cousin instead of waiting and drove out to Naperville and got lost. Her name was Lenore and she was very nice and prepared a big breakfast for us. We visited for an hour or so and made our way back to the gallery, packed up some pots and headed home. Here’s a shot of the gallery that afternoon, it’s a little picked over but you can kinda get a feel for the size and how Jeff and my pots were arranged…

Overall it was a great trip, I’m glad I went and I hope that both Jeffs had a good time. It was fun to meet the people I met and establish another gallery to sell my work through. Of course, I really missed the bug. After thinking about all the arrangements to make it so I could travel while Mom was working, I half decided that Sofia’s gotten old enough that maybe she should be my traveling companion on future trips. Aside from the 3 hour event at the gallery, I think she would’ve had a great time in that toddlin’ town.

Well, tomorrow is the closing in Chicago and aside from some last minute snafus, I guess I will be attending. So as a reminder to anyone that might actually be in the Chicago area tomorrow night, May 8th from 4PM – 7PM…

I’ve been struggling with photography again for the last day or so… I decided to get it all over with before I cleared out the setup so I could get started throwing. It looks like next week will have to be when I start the new cycle. Here’s some pictures of the a couple bigger bowls that I still have. Although I’m pleased with the color of the bowls, in order to get the background to be less blue on the golden yellow pieces, the color of the yellow is inaccurate. Maybe this doesn’t bother anyone besides me but I can’t figure out what adjustment I might make to have my cake and eat it to. Anyway here’s some pots and hopefully I can get some shots of the gallery this weekend…

(Numbers are an attempt at spamproofing.) Well, it’s May 4th and April’s come and gone in a blur of relatives with small gaps of illness and general non-productivity. It was great to see everyone that has visited (two different sisters and beaus at separate times and my Mom). My Mom arrived last wednesday and left this morning. She just happened to be here during the Kentucky Derby but we’ve all done the derby and are relatively uninterested. In fact, I have no idea who ran or who won and the only eventful “derby” thing that occurred was that Sofia’s preschool class made derby hats and here’s hers…

I’ve always thought it odd that schools take part in local events of this kind. Jefferson county (Louisville’s county) schools all have the day off on Oaks. For the uninitiated, Oaks is like a mini-derby that is held on the day before the KY derby and was originally intended as a kind of local’s derby (or so I’ve heard). And apparently now Oaks is a big draw so the locals have started going the day before Oaks although they have officially named it anything yet. I must be out of practice writing because I can’t seem to come up with a name off the top of my head… perhaps, Oats instead of Oaks but I can see the confusion already or maybe “Don’t You Wish The Weather on Derby Day Would Turn Out This Nice” Day, or how about Thirsty Thursday ’cause the locals are the only ones that like those mint juleps anyway. Anyway, my Mom’s a big fan of this blog because she gets to keep up with the growth of her granddaughter. So the gift for Sofia that she came with was a customized t-shirt. Here’s the bug posing front and back…

In the last post Sofia and I were coming to an end of our stomach virus (flu) and Mom was still not quite better. We’re all better now and my sister Sue, who was here when I got sick, fortunately didn’t catch it before she left and Mom didn’t catch it either so there’s two bullets dodged. My Mom’s foot hurt and my feet both hurt so we were very limited as far as what we could do during her visit and considering how little we did do, I’m at a loss as to why I’m so exhausted. Apparently, being a host for extended periods of time is not my forte. It turns out that my Mom is a gadget hound… who’d a’ thunk it? She didn’t pack any shorts in her suitcase (a carry-on) because all the recharging cords were taking up so much space. Really, she only brought her N1ntend0 (my Mom’s got a N1ntend0!) which I made the mistake of “checking out” for hours, her cel phone and her brand new N00k. In case you’re not up on it, as I wasn’t, a N00k is the Barne5 & Nobl3 version of Ama2on’s Kindl (for reading books electronically). It ended up being a great source of consternation to my Mom because it “locked up” for the second time while she was here and she is unable to read (electrically) on the plane to her next destination. In an effort to be supportive I said several times that “the book I’m reading is working just fine”… I know, what a luddite. That color TV thing is never going to catch on! Here’s a picture of my Mom at the Thai restaurant, sorry Mom but the rest of the family has to keep up with your growth too…

She was concerned that it wasn’t a good picture of her (although it is a fine picture of her). Of course her concern about the picture kinda made me a bit concerned because I thought that by time I got to my Mom’s age (29) or should I say, if I get to my Mom’s age that all vestiges of vanity about my appearance will have vanished and maybe that’s not true. I’m so looking forward to having those pants that come up to my armpits and are cinched tight with a white patent leather belt and complementary flesh colored sneakers… tres bien ensemble! People may snicker but I won’t care because I’m here to tell you that a belt under your armpits is infinitely more comfortable than trying to ride the razor’s edge (well, maybe not exactly a razor’s edge) of an ever expanding midsection… and they don’t make Spanx for men. Well, maybe they do but without my vanity, I wouldn’t even consider them. But I digress. So it’s back to work and I have to say that the clay has been calling my name for a couple weeks now and it’s a strange feeling not being able to get to it. In other news, I finally finally finally received my rejection letter from Lark Books “500 Vases”. It was so long ago when I sent in the pictures that I couldn’t remember what I entered and then I thought of how much has been made since then. Oh well, que sera, sera… I have heard, however, that if you don’t get rejected, they do send you a complimentary copy of the book unlike other ceramic books. So it’s Tuesday and the closing of the show in Chicago is on Saturday. A friend and I are driving up on Saturday morning and will attend the opening and hopefully we’ll get there in time to catch the end of Jeff Campana’s workshop (assuming there is no problem with us sticking our heads in). Here’s another piece that’s in the Chicago show…

I found out yesterday also that I was featured on Charan Sachar blog’s “Color Feature Of The Week” feature…

If you get a hankerin’, click on the pic and check out Charan’s blog… in addition to this weekly feature, Charan has plenty of beautiful work and recently has had posts about a recent trip to India. Last but not least, here’s another beer glass that I posted to Etsy the last week…