And then there was Adam...

Here it is...yet another residual Chautauqua posting...OK, I'm a big fan of collaboration...and I was excited when Adam Paulek wanted to do a little 'thang'. I met Adam when he came to Chautauqua to teach for the last couple weeks. We sort of shared a studio space but we definitely shared the tunes. Adam comes from Tennessee and was actually the grad student of Frank Martin a number of years back. More recently he started a community based ceramic studio called Mighty Mud and now is solely into his own thing "Adam Paulek Pottery" While he was there he was into making all these bird houses that he wants to show all as one big thing...they all are a little wacky... so I guess I was a natural choice for him to give me one to finish off. Finish off I did, I tuned the surface of his slip dripped porcelain bird house into Mr. T's delft garden nightmare..."visions of sugarplums" click to enlarge...I will be sending this fella on back to Adam soon.

Adam and I had another cool collaboration...souvenir tumblers for the work study kids and others associated with the studio...he threw the forms and put his heavy slip on them and then gave them to me bisqued. I glazed them with a pale tangerine interior, clear exterior, and dipped the lips in my chisholm based chartreuse glaze. I made the decals from scanned images of 15th century wood cut prints of German family crests. I removed all the interior of the crests and replaced them with the text...and little images of Giant Chautauquan Lake Squid on the back.

Adam will be getting one of these babies in his care package from me and when the bird house arrives, little birdies will have visions of sugarplums dancing their little bird brains. I really want to see all those wild bird houses hanging in one space. It was great meeting Mr. Paulek and I hope to see him back maybe next year in the bubble if not before. Oh and you can check out his etsy store too...apaulek.etsy.com . Yeah go etsy! Go Adam! Go Giant Chautauquan Lake Squid! Go collaborations! Go green! Go crazy! Go away, but don't forget to c'mon back soon.