Empty,but not for long...

I just picked up my bowls from the big group firing that Dan Kuhn did for everyone down at IUP. I am very pleased with how they came out and I think these will make real nice soup bowls for the folks to pick up at our upcoming Empty Bowls Fund Raiser. The event will take place this coming Tuesday, March 2 from 11-2:00pm and all the money will go to the Indiana County Food Bank. I am volunteering to ladle up the soup on one of the soup stations that day. Nancy has organized 4 or 5 different soups that are available to choose from...several individuals are making home made soups and a couple local businesses are also donating. Josh Floyd and Harmony Ritchie have also been key in getting this event off the ground. Another great stroke of generosity came in the form of a painting donated by Kamal Youssef who lives in the local Smicksburg area. Here's a little about Mr Youssef,"Among the first Muslim artists to exhibit in the West, Kamal represented Egypt in International Biennials in Venice, Italy (1950); Sao Paulo, Brazil (1952); and then exhibited in the Biennial in Alexandra, Egypt (1955). The Museum of Modern Art in Cairo mounted his one-man show in 1952."

Its a great piece that I would love to have hanging in my house...this painting will be raffled off for 20.00 a ticket during this soup(er) event.

Here are a couple details of some of my bowls from the group firing. The shinos are looking nice and warm and the tenmoku glazes are working overtime. Come on out if you are around town and grab a bowl and fill'er up...ten bucks...you eat yummy soup...you keep the bowl...you help fight hunger. See you there.

Who's got big bowls...

...I got big bowls...and 20 of them ready for the bisque almost. That will be my small contribution to this year's Empty Bowls Fundraiser event that will take place here in the greater metropolitan area of Indiana, PA. on March 2 right outside the Commonplace Coffeehouse. Nancy Smeltzer, Josh Floyd and Harmony Ritchie are organizing this year's event and potters from all around the area are donating their bowls and time. It also serves as a nice kick in the ass for me to get back into the studio...brave the snowy roads and just get back to doing what makes me feel good. I spent a couple days in the studio throwing and trimming 20 or so bowls that I will be firing with a group of others down at IUP. My friend, Dan Kuhn, who was recently the grad assistant there, will be firing all our work in the big Baily gas kiln. Other local potters will be stopping by the ceramic department there for a bit of a "throw down" in the next couple days. IUP is supplying the clay and the firing...awfully nice of them...all you have to do is show up and crank out some bowls. Above are bowls by Nancy that she threw for her friend and neighbor Marilyn to carve and decorate and below are some of mine from the other day. More to come about this event!

Speaking of snowy roads, the winter is dragging on here and the snow seems never ending..."relentless" as a friend put it to me today. The studio up at Nancy's is half buried in snow and the kilns, like us, just seem to be waiting for some better weather. In the meantime, I am getting back in the swing of things and plan to be making a good bit of work including a bunch of teapots for a show I will be in this summer in Chautauqua.

Whenever it decides to stop snowing and our weather changes a little for the better, I will be ready to load a kiln and chuck in some wood. Until next time...think warm thoughts.

Let it snow...

..and snow it did...and it is doing it again!

I just thought I would post about the weather...well mainly our big snow storm that just whipped through here. The best part about it was that I was at Peak'n Peek in New York snow-tubing and sitting in a hot tub. The bad part was that I came back to my driveway totally plowed under in about three feet of the fluffy white stuff. It took me about an hour to dig out the driveway so I could pull in past the sidewalk. Thank goodness I was keeping my back good and limber sitting in a hot tub.

We also went over to the Chautauqua Institution to see it in the dead of winter. The lake was completely frozen into a gigantic chunk of snow topped ice. The Art School was up to its steps in snow and the studio looked so different than the way I usually see it during the summer season. I must admit that having lived in Florida for 36 years of my life, where the temperature rarely got around 40, I am endlessly fascinated with the winter and especially the snow.

Another thing that I am endlessly fascinated with is, how well chicken wings and beer go with winter weather. Here I am with my daughter sampling a veritable cornucopia of the local buffalo wing fare. Our timing was perfect this weekend, not only did we miss the big ass snow storm but I was here for the big wing festival too! ...and by the way, French Creek Tavern won.

So, here we are "bracing" for another 10-14 inches on the ground by this evening...SNOWMEGEDDON as CNN puts it...I love the non-stop coverage of the weather... I say...whatever...bring it on.... get it over with already because I am ready to go back in the studio and make some bowls for the upcoming "Empty Bowls" event in March. Heck, I am just ready to get back in the studio. In the meantime, check out my etsy shop...I just posted a bunch of new stuff. Did you know...online shopping is a great way to pass the time during a snow storm!

Cluster F....

Here it is, the end of the first month in the new year and I feel like I have already lived the remaining 11 months. That's right kids, its been a whirlwind from the get go and I am gearing up for a couple of the big events that have been kicking my butt. The one really major event is the exhibition I am opening in Kipp Gallery at IUP. Just to remind you, I spend a lot of my time as the Director for the art department's gallery here at IUP. I will be opening "The Far Side of Function: Contemporary Works in Wood" on this coming Tuesday 2/2. This is a really great exhibition but also a really large exhibition. I had a local gallery in town involved from the beginning but they had to pull out due to the fact that they are still under construction and also out of funding ...hmmmm...can you say, "cart before the horse"... anyways, being a little creative with this show I was able to spread it out into our Performing Art Center and all is well. This show has such wood luminaries as Jack Larimore, Craig Nutt, and Tom Loesser and includes furniture based works and large scale sculpture that will be placed outdoors. I am almost ready...just a couple more tweaks.

A bit of personal good news... I have been curated into a very interesting exhibition at the Pittsburgh Center for Art. I will be dropping off/installing my piece this weekend. The show entitled "Cluster" will sprawl throughout their entire space as the building is broken up into separate galleries. I know a couple people that are also in the exhibition and I am very pleased to be included along with them. That show opens 2/5 and runs through March 28. Here is part of the statement from the curator...Cluster takes over all PCA's gallery spaces at the Shadyside campus and features invited artists who've investigated the spatial device of connections. These connections might be obvious, esoteric, direct, or juxtaposed, and elicit a fundamental element of artistic discourse. Welch says these artists are, "working within their interests to profess what they know or do not know, for a purpose that is both self and collectively informing."...

...sounds cool. Here is the piece that is going..."Poppy Field".

And finally, I wanted to share another bit of my recent trip to Athens, Ohio. Actually, this part is from a short side trip to the little speck of a town called Nelsonville. After we loaded up on fresh baked cheese and sausage bread and Turkish coffee at the local farmer's market we took off to visit this hipster mecca. It was no more than 15 minutes outside Athens and was refreshingly free of University propaganda and large groups of drunk frat boys. Nelsonville was an old coal mining town that bit the dust years and years ago but has since been revived by local art loving folks. There are 7 or 8 galleries around the main downtown couple blocks along with good eats, coffee, and a very cool old opera house turned hip music venue. One of my favorite things about this little area was the sidewalks...all made from these super cool salt glazed star bricks. The link built in here is a thorough and folksy account of that areas past and the production of these bricks.

So there you have it...a little crazy blog

meandering on a bitter cold winter day...hope you are staying warm. Until next time...cheers.

Art goes moo...

I returned yesterday from a very eventful and relaxing weekend in Athens, Ohio. I left early Friday morning and hightailed it with my wife and daughter to the Dairy Barn Arts Center, where I spent a couple hours installing my wall piece, Tubors and Corms: Landscape #1. I also dropped off another small scale sculpture and a few pieces for the gallery shop too. The opening was jam packed with people and I was told that this venue will attract a big crowd the whole time there is a good show on exhibit. The work for the "OH+5'10" was all solid and from many different mediums...everything from installation pieces, photography, painting, small sculpture, and of course...ceramics. This exhibition is the Dairy Barn's 7th regional biennial and I was very happy to be a part of it. I met and talked with a couple big name clay dudes while shmoozing at the opening too...Tom Bartel and Brad Schwieger who both teach at OU. Tom has curated the next exhibition coming in to the Dairy Barn... figurative ceramics. I have always liked both guys' work and enjoyed chatting for a while with the both of them. Here are some images of the space and my work on the far wall and on the perimeter, also a couple nice ceramic works that I liked...Tina Gebhart's salt fired vessels and these wild ones by somebody whose name I have forgotten...sorry...cool pieces though.

First I must remark on the size of the space...its HUGE! It was an actual dairy barn with a long history as a property owned and operated by the local lunatic asylum. That's right sister, in case you did not know, Ohio University bought up the very large asylum properties and surrounding land where the dairy barn is today. The Dairy Barn is not associated with OU, but instead inhabits the very fringe at the bottom of what is today called "The Ridges". The barn was part of a much bigger complex that was originally built to help the"hospital" be self sufficient and also for the patients or residents to come over and help work the farm. Now, the "Ridges" complex houses several different departments for OU including the University's Museum.

The girls and I enjoyed tooling around town and exploring the nature trails that were dotted with several cemeteries. The oldest dated back to the late 1800's. That cemetery along with the second one we found only marked their dead with very modest headstones with only their patient number carved in to the stone. The third grave site however, had actual names and dates carved into low set stones. From the literature, it wasn't until the late 40's or early 50's that this practice became common for the institution. In the 60's and 70's, the asylum was falling into great disrepair and due to the size, it was difficult to continue the upkeep and was later shut down in the 1980's. There are still many unused and unusable buildings in this creepy collection. My wife and daughter wondered the whole time why they had not seen this place on one of their favorite ghost hunter shows.

Like I said, this was a fun weekend and it will be fodder for a few posts...Nelsonville and star bricks...The Kennedy Museum and the OU faculty show...so stay tuned gentle reader...more to come.

Wild cucumbers...

Wild I tell ya!...I just wanted to show off some newly decal fired pieces...most of the forms themselves are from the last wood firing me and Nancy fired off right before Christmas. The images are new... 99% new images that I have been working on. They all started as my digital photographs and I manipulate them pretty heavily in Photoshop before printing them from my laser printer. Two of the large wood fired platters are sporting my images of the Wild Cucumbers or Balsam Apples, that Nancy has growing all over and around the studio and kiln area. They are strange, short, spiny cucumber like pods that grow on thick and vigorous vines. In the late fall when it starts getting really cold they dry out like gourds on a vine and their ends pop open. The interiors are complex structures that resemble a loofah gourd. I have been checking out these crazy little boogers for a while now and I am pleased to recreate them as decal images for these new forms. The first one is 11 inches across and lovingly warped and draped in ash from the firing and the second is 12 inches across. Its surface is stamped and marked and full of chicken grit breaking through its sheen. Both rough and tumble forms really show off my images of those oh so wild cucumbers...click to enlarge.

Another new image I recently made was of the Hops that are teamed up with the Wild

Cucumbers in a plot to cover the studio. The Hops too started as a digital photograph...below is a nice low, shallow but wide bowl that has the new Hops images. 10 inches across.

I will be posting a bunch of new work on my Etsy site soon. Hopefully just in time for some Valentine love...you know, all anybody really wants from his or her significant other is a nice piece of pottery...ahhh, if that were only true. Anyways, check out my cool new fav-o-rite little design..."Dodo farting flowers mug"...now really, what a sexy and romantic gift that could be...nothing says I love you like flowers from an extinct bird's sphincter.

In the next day or two, I will be off to Ohio to install my wall piece at the Dairy Barn Arts Center in Athens. I have that piece and another in their exhibition OH + 5'10, its their 7th annual regional biennial. I am going to install, drop the rest off and then stick around for the opening on Friday the 15th. I will be sure to post images from the show next week...same bat channel.

Down under...

Hello and HAppY New YeAr!!...just a quick post to start the year off right. Yesterday I got an email from a person in Australia that bought a couple pieces from me and he sent me the link to his own blog, where he wrote a really cool post. If you click the link to his blog, you can see some of his favorite new wood fired pieces...and awww shucks, my bottle is one of them.

The funny thing is, he also has work on this same post by two of my friends. Josh Floyd lives nearby and is a regular fixture in our little pottery community here in the middle of nowhere just north of Pittsburgh,PA. If you have a second check out Josh's blog and see some of his good looking pots. The other guy is Justin Lambert...I met Justin this past summer at Chautauqua. He came to teach for a couple weeks and we had a whole lotta fun drinking beer and cooking Italian sausages and corn on the cob in between firing kilns and making stuff. I have been following Justin on his facebook page as he recently tore down his modified bourry box kiln and built and fired his new Anagama kiln. I really like Justin's work too and you should see the new pieces coming from that kiln! Like me, both these guys have Etsy sites and if you are in the market for a nice wood fired mug(and maybe you already own your very own Kyle Houser mug)you should check out their shops!

Here's to a productive 2010 for all!