This Blog Has MOVED!

Hello, all!

Thanks to my handsome and talented husband, my blog has been integrated into my newly remodeled website.

You can find my blog by going to my website, http://www.vmwstudios.com and clicking "Blog", or go there directly: http://www.vmwstudios.com/blog

Go on, head on over now!

Gotta do it

I hate casting plaster molds.  It is tedious, and working with plaster is totally different than working with clay.  But I love being able to cast my work multiple times!  There's no way around it.

So today I tackled the plaster again, with decent results, a two-part mold and two one-part molds.  I'm exhausted, though-- some people make plaster look easy, but it's not for me!

Time for a walk with the dogs, who have been looking mournfully at me every time I walk by.

One Year Ago

Progress seems to happen soooo slowly, and I often feel like I haven't improved much at all.  However, I started thinking about where I was last year, and actually a LOT has happened.

Exactly one year ago, I was days away from getting married!  I hadn't touched clay in months, due to other jobs and the whole wedding planning thing.  I wouldn't do any serious clay work for another couple of months after.

In the last year (after the wedding), I did the following:

-Traveled to Japan and Taiwan for the first time 

-Developed and created over a dozen one and two-part plaster molds for my slipcast designs 

-Experimented with and figured out glazes for the designs 

-Had a sculpture juried into a show for the first time! 

-Got juried into and participated in my first art fair, Artsfest 

-Experimented with pit firing 

-Organized and held a two-week gallery show with Callie, our first since graduating from the Hood Ceramics Graduate Certificate program.  We plan to make this an annual show. 

-Set up my Etsy shop 

-Oh yeah--started this blog!

Wow. The amount of work that went into each one of those things... I guess I'm so impatient to improve that I forget how much I'm learning.  Where will I be in another year?

Right now I am on my way to a cabin in the Shenandoah for an anniversary weekend getaway with Ray :]  He's the one who inspired me to pursue my dreams, and who still inspires me every day.  So I guess a better question is "Where will we be in a year?"  I can't wait to find out!

Lots of Love on Valentine's Day

What can be better on Valentine's Day than cozying up with a bottle of wine, heart mini-pies, and a special someone?

Not much, unless it's a kilnload of perfectly glazed artwork....

The Problem With Working At Home

The recent snow days have caused a lot of folks in the DC area to get off work.  Teachers, government workers and more have been happy to get a few snow days, even if they are sick of the snow.  You would think, since I live in the same house as my studio, that this would not affect me and that I would have gotten a lot of work done.

Nope!

If I had been snowed in all by my lonesome, I would have gotten plenty of work done.  However, I was snowed in with my husband and my mother, and while it was nice to spend time with them, the house was never quiet.  My studio has no doors to close, and the laundry room and back entrance are off of it.  I felt like my "space" was invaded, my mental peace constantly buffeted.  I can't get really into something unless I know that I will not be interrupted, and during the snowstorms there were always requests and conversations and minor emergencies to contend with.  When I had time, I retreated into a book or tv show or blog reading.

Finally, today, the snow has been somewhat cleared off the roads and my loved ones are back at their place of employment.  It is peaceful, and I am back to work!

Musings and other results of a snowpocalypse

Whitney Smith's post about making ceramics your job offered some good advice for beginning artists like me.  I am struggling with the decision of whether to make ceramics my job or keep it as my art (art that substantially helps out with the bills but does not make a decent living).  Much as I would love to be able to say I support myself solely on my art, I feel like the more I support myself on it, the less it will be my art and the more it will be my job.  The moment I begin analyzing how salable a piece is, all the joy is sucked out of it.

Her advice to make time for other hobbies and pursuits is easily taken (and to an extreme!)-- I have several other loves besides ceramics, including mosaics, graphic design, cooking, and writing.  Also, a couple part-time contracting jobs unrelated to art.  It's finding the discipline to commit the hours to ceramics that I have trouble with, especially when I view it as a business rather than art.  A part-time business, I'm okay with.  The question is, which part-time job should I focus on in order to make a living?

In other news, here is the aforementioned snow dog.  I told you it wasn't great, but we love looking out our bedroom window and seeing it looking loyally up at us.

And here is the heart pie I made from the recipe I found in the Martha Stewart Living February 2010 issue.  The recipe made 10 of them, and it took me a mere 2.5 hours.  It was just what I was in the mood for: a long evening of cooking, accompanied by a glass of wine, with a delicious reward. My mom and Ray were glad I was snowed in with them!

Snow Dogs

I had no illusions that I would get tons of ceramic work done this weekend as the blizzard hit.  I know myself far too well for that!  Ray is snowed in here and his presence always signals "vacation time!" to me.  My work was limited to reading blogs and shoveling our long driveway.  We found a great site to watch tv shows online (free and awesome! http://tvgorge.com ... I hope they keep it up but have no idea how they make money as there are no ads...UPDATE: they are making "improvements" and currently have no videos to get me through the snowpocalypse!) and have marathoned the last season of Dexter as well as caught up on other favorite shows.

The snow is so deep that it's actually easier to crawl across the top of the snow on hands and knees than it is to try to walk.  If you do walk, the snow swallows you up to your knees every time you take a step.  Ray and I tried both ways today when we decided to make a snow dog, and Bandit helped by modeling for us.

Freckles, who has shorter fur and thus is too cold to lay down in the snow, got in the way as much as possible, climbing into my lap or onto the sculpture.  She was too cute not to cuddle with.  The dogs will only walk where we have broken a path--unless they see something to bark at, in which case they will go wherever they want.

Now I'm bored and rested enough to head into the kitchen for a couple hours of testing a recipe I found in Martha Stewart Living: Pear-raspberry heart mini-pies!

A Snowy Day = Me reaching for a mug

Well the snow canceled my plans for the weekend, but on the plus side it gave me an excuse to keep my favorite mug out all day.  I have a couple favorite mugs, for different purposes and reasons.  It's like shoes: each one has a different purpose and goes with a different mood or outfit, so you can never have too many.

This mug is my favorite mini-mug, as I think of it.  It holds a small cup of liquid and I always refill it a couple times.  But I like refilling beverage containers.  I would rather have three small glasses of wine than a ginormous one.  Thus, today I filled my mini-mug with pure coffee, coffee plus hot chocolate, and finally coffee, hot chocolate, and marshmallows. Mmm!

I got this mug in Kanazawa, Japan last summer.  We found a shop with a ton of mugs, hundreds of them, all different.  Some were cast, some were thrown, some were slab... I went through them all and this little gem caught my eye.  It doesn't look at all "Japanese" to me but it's one of my favorite souvenirs of the trip.

I had some Photoshop fun with it because pseudo-snow is a better background than my messy kitchen counter top.

Death of a Computer

Last week my computer caught a nasty virus and we decided to wipe it and reinstall it.  I got all my files off before wiping it... or so I thought.

I hadn't backed up some of my pictures, in fact all of the portfolio ones of work from December.  This affected my dragon wreaths, my 2 new sharks (the lovely crackle pitfire ones...), one of my favorite struggling birds sculptures... most of those are sold, so the pictures are irreplaceable.

Since the only way we have to remember our work is photos, I felt like I'd lost my friends.  I nursed my grief with my comfort food of choice (spaghetti with lots of cheese) and dove into a book for a few hours.  I finally told myself that I will be making a lot more great work this year, and next year, and the next, etc, so while I may not ever get those photos back, I will have plenty of others coming soon.  Hopefully before I apply to shows.

The biggest annoyance is that I lost photos of work I was planning on posting to Etsy, so I had to go retake those before I could list the items.  And let's not even talk about how I forgot all my music files...

Feedback and Motivation

I had been dragging my feet about an Etsy shop for months.  Even watching my friend Callie start her Etsy shop wasn't enough to spur me to action. I felt that I wasn't ready yet, that my work wasn't good enough, and that I just needed to get a few (dozen) more things in order first.

What finally prompted me to dig in and go for it was Julianna's comment from this post. Knowing I "ought to" do something and having someone (who doesn't know me other than through my art) demand it caused a totally different reaction.  Friends and family can be supportive, but when someone else values my work on its own it means quite a lot, especially to an artist just starting out.  Thanks Julianna!

So if there's someone out there whose work (be it sculpture, writing, or anything!) you admire but you haven't told them (I do it all the time, just looking and watching without making my presence known), drop them a note!  You have no idea how much it means to them.

You can find my brand new Etsy shop at http://www.vmwstudios.etsy.com.   I will be slowly adding to the work there, since I don't have good pictures for everything yet (that's one of the reasons I was procrastinating!), so check back often.

It's Always The Little Things

It seems like I am always being delayed by things I don't expect.  I should just expect something to go wrong at this point and assume every task will take double the time I think it will!

I ordered a bunch of mosaic tiles recently, and am in the process of detaching them from their paper backing.  This is done by soaking them in water until the glue holding them onto the paper dissolves, which takes only about 5 minutes.

One of the tile colors, however, absolutely refuses to detach from the paper.  I don't know what happened to this batch, and it has never happened to me before, but even after soaking them for two days, they are still stuck.  I eventually gave up my hopes for an easy solution and set to work.

A five minute job is now taking hours. I had to tear each tile off of the soaked paper, and now I am working my way through the 225 tiles, scraping the glue and paper remains off of the tile.  The paper remains are stuck fast to the side of the tile that will show in a finished mosaic, so I have to get it off.  Scrubbers don't get it well enough and besides, the tiny tiles are too small to hold with one hand and scrub with the other, so I scrape and scrape with the only tool that does the job adequately--my fingernails.

One step at a time!

Studio Reorganization

When I first started my studio in the room where it is now, I put up a few sets of shelves and a table and kindof spread out from there.  Nothing was organized in a way that made sense for work flow-- the wet slip was across the room from my molds, the glazes were far away from my tables and the sink, etc.

Since I got to reorganize my studio from scratch, I put a lot of thought into where things go.  Hopefully the work flow will be better and I won't be going back and forth across the room all the time anymore.

One of the most important considerations, however, walks around on four legs and drives me nutso by laying behind my chair or right where I'm trying to walk, or wagging his big tail near my works in progress.  So I made sure to arrange the shelving units in a way that left a few easily-barred openings to the serious workspace in my studio.

And it works!  Today I took advantage of that feature and blocked Bandit out while I was working on things on the floor.  A cocked chair lets me step over it easily when I need to get out or in, but my puppy dog can only stick his head in between the shelves.

Needless to say, Bandit does not approve.

Mosaics: My Other Love

Ceramics and mosaics are like two different parts of the brain to me.  In clay I tend to think in 3-D, with curves and textures and details.  In glass tile mosaics, I stretch to think in 2-D, which comes less naturally for me.  I have to restrain and often tone down my designs, because the grout lines and varieties in glass color create enough visual complexity without me adding a complicated design.

This was my first mosaic table, a Christmas gift for my now-husband, who loves tea.  We had this coffee table, but the glass in the middle broke and so I cut a board to size and created this design.

This was my second table, a year later.  I snagged a perfectly good free table from somebody's curbside, and it was our dinner table for about six months before I gave its white vinyl surface a makeover.

Both tables are currently gracing the living rooms of my closest friends, since we have no room for them where we are living now.  Plus, after I live with my art for a while, I like to see it out enriching other people's lives.  I can't keep every artwork I make!

Large mosaic projects like this drain me of a substantial amount of energy.  It takes over a month for me to go through this process:

• develop the design
• choose the colors (a "blue" area will have at least 3 shades)
  
• order and prep the materials
• refine the design after I get the uncut tiles on the surface--often I find I need to tweak lines
  
• cutting and gluing the tiles
  
• grouting
• cleaning and sealing

When I finish, I am totally uninterested in ever doing it again.  But after a few months or a year, I get that itch again and find myself on a mosaic tile website.  My current favorite to order from is Mosaic Art Supply. I am ready to start a new project soon.

Studio Overhaul Update

The studio owner (yes, it's my mom) has decided not to rip up all the floors after all.  The reason: concrete is COLD (I know, news flash). What's down there now is Pergo wood laminate flooring, and we were removing it because one corner is prone to water seepage from outside when it is rainy.  The water gets into the floor insulation, and the soggy conditions were making the floor warp.  And, as we found out when we ripped up the rotten boards, it encouraged lots of mold.  We decided to rip up the rotten/wet/moldy area as well as a foot or so around it.

Removing the wood laminate was not as easy as I'd hoped when we got to the non-rotten sections.  This meant I got to break out the circular saw and impress my mom.  I must have gotten my love of power tools from my dad.  I cut the wood evenly and we took out the rest of the boards, the insulation layer, and the plastic covering the concrete.

My mom wants the concrete painted eventually after we let it dry and see if it stays that way.  I have realized that I have a blind spot when it comes to the aesthetics of either a work in progress (be it ceramics or a vegetarian stew) or functional things, like the floor.  I see either the finished product in my head, or the function, and that makes it beautiful to me.  Give me a concrete floor over a white carpet any day.

After some finishing touches, I will be moving my shelving and studio equipment back, but in a better configuration than before.  I am committed to making the workflow better, and keeping the studio clean and neat--which means arranging the storage/shelving in ways that make it easy for me to do so.  My mom has given the flooring up as lost and will refinish the room when my studio eventually moves, so I can stop worrying about messing it up and treat it like the clay studio flooring it is!

Progression of an Idea

One of the wonderful things about making art is the process of developing an idea.  You learn and imagine things you never expected.  Sometimes what you end up with is a complete surprise, but when you look back you can see the progression as your mind leapfrogged around and refined its imagery.  Here I've documented a progression that has taken place over several years.

This was Stage 1: a sculptural spiny eel curving its way up a handbuilt pot.  There is an opening at the top with a boring rim, as if it is meant to be a vase.  It was never finished because although I loved the form (more specifically the eel), I could never decide what color/texture combination to use in glazing it.

Stage II: Eel vs. Creature.  I went to rebuild the original piece to basically test glazes on, but ended up continuing the wall up and around and finishing it with teeth.  The concept was a spiny eel, probably hunting, encountering a hunter of its own as it wound its way along coral and rocks.  However, the boring satin grey I finished the creature in basically ruined the piece for me.  It never quite came together.

Stage III found another eel hunting, this time encountering a shark.  I felt the shape of the shark's nose balanced the form nicely, though I do wish I'd curved it the other way.  I love the contrast of the metal and the clear crackle glaze on white clay.  However, the piece still felt like it was a step in the road.

Stage IV: Abandoning the eel!  I often find that my original ideas are too cluttered, and simplifying them usually results in a more powerful piece.  That is what happened here.  I took just the shark shape, cut the mouth into it, and pit fired the resulting sculptures.  The simplicity of the form allows the markings of the pit fire to shine, and to me this type of finish creates a mysterious, primeval feeling.  Smoke and fire, water and shadow.  The pieces have openings for a tea light candle to be inserted so that the light can flicker along the inside of the mouth.

Smashy Smashy

Yesterday I did something I've been wanting to do for months, if not years: collected all my old work, finished or "in progress" (some have been "in progress" for ages), and smashed it to bits!

Old, bad, or unfinished work hanging around felt like a weight around my neck, keeping me from new projects and new ideas.  This year, when I finish overhauling my studio, I will have a nice clean slate to work with.

I didn't throw out everything; here were my questions that helped me sort:

• Was it well made?
• Did it still inspire me in some way?
• Will I want it one day to look back on my beginner years?
  

If the answer was "No" to all, I tossed it.  I felt no pangs of sorrow as we smashed--so I'm pretty sure I made good decisions. I think my sister had more trouble throwing things out than I did!  She helped me (thanks sis!), and it was funny to see her reactions to demolishing certain pieces.  Some she was thrilled to smash, some she was very sad about.

Major Overhauls

Due to a minor but unfortunate flooding situation in my studio (also known as the former rec room in my mother's house), we have decided to take up the now-warping wood paneling and insulation on the floor, leaving bare concrete that we will paint with a concrete sealer. 

To be honest, this suits my needs fine because I won't have to worry that I am damaging the floors with a plaster/clay/glaze spill or by dragging heavy equipment.  Luckily this decision came at a time when I am taking a break from clay and cleaning up my studio and throwing out unhelpful clutter.

When I walked down there to begin the cleaning/moving process (I will put all things on one half of the room, deal with the other half's floors, and then switch), I almost walked out in despair.  Who knew I had all that stuff!  And in such a mess!  Then I reminded myself of my "One Step At A Time" resolution, identified my very first step (get a trash bag), and jumped in.  I refused to let myself think farther ahead than the next 2 minutes.

By the end of the day, I had made some serious progress!

Walking Like Freckles

Feet barely skimming the ground, Freckles is a study in enthusiasm as she explores the forest trail anew each day.  It is still hunting season, so I call her back when she roams too far away, and she gleefully stretches her legs to race towards me.  She even skips.  I saw her.

She reminds me of what we all need more of in our lives: sheer childlike enthusiasm.  Full steam ahead, doing our absolute best at whatever we chose to do, simply because it makes us happy.

Resolutions for 2010

I have two resolutions this year.

#1) Believe in myself. 
Putting myself into my work, into my words, and into my relationships is so hard for me because I try to please everyone.  I assume that they won't like what I have to offer, and I fear their disapproval or disgust.  This resolution is a wide-reaching one, requiring that I

• stop looking for outside approval
  
• start saying/making/doing what is in my heart
  
• value my own thoughts and efforts.

Simply making this resolution has caused a change in me.  Whenever I catch myself feeling negatively about myself, I reaffirm this resolution.  Each morning Ray has me saying a statement that fulfills this resolution.  And whenever I am wavering, about to lose my courage and wimp out, this credo will be my guiding star.


#2) Take things one step at a time.
Right now it's taxes.  And getting my ridiculously awful business records in shape.  And cleaning/rehauling my studio.  And figuring out an Etsy shop.  And designing new pieces.  And casting new molds, making new pieces, testing new glazes, applying for new shows---

You get the idea.

Every time I start hyperventilating, I stop and identify what the next step is for what I'm doing today.  I have the rest of my life to become a super-awesome expert; it doesn't all have to happen this month or even this year.  Yes, it's a complicated lifestyle full of challenging tangles to unravel and huge tasks to complete.  But like Jordin Sparks warbles, the only way we get there is one step at a time.

It helps that I LOVE that song!

If you have a resolution attached to your artistry this year, let me know in the comments!