Bursting before Chautauqua...

The garden that is...bursting.... just before I leave for NY and just as I have returned from Fla. on the worst plane ride of my life. A great vacation with the family in a beautiful location in the panhandle right smack on the beach. We ate good seafood and all browned our buns on the beach. But the ride home from the Pensacola Airport to Atlanta and supposedly to Pittsburgh...was a much different story. The AirTran flight was late...one hour from the jump at Pensacola. Then 25 minutes late in Atlanta and another 30-45 minutes because they could not get the door closed...it was jammed with the jet ramp that people use to de-plane. That alone should have been a warning to me...let somebody else have your seats. Finally after circling the Pittsburgh airport in a holding pattern due to the zero visibility caused by heavy fog, the captain says we are flying to the Akron/Canton airport in Ohio. After much deliberation from the captain and crew after landing at this tiny airport that was closed for the night...yes...CLOSED...nobody there until the morning, we all spent the wee hours in a very uncomfortable air terminal. There were not enough pillows or blankets...really nothing was provided to all of us. Finally at 9 am another crew came and we flew the brief 20 minutes to Pittsburgh...Kelli and I had been awake for more than 24 hours and stranded in Ohio since 3 Am. We finally made it home at 12:30 Sunday afternoon. YOW!

After all that I need something to meditate on, and my flower beds are really starting to rev up. So enjoy the slide show posted above and check out my new bird feeder from Nancy...you can find more stuff by her on her etsy shop, the link is on the side bar...also, does anybody know what type of allium I have in the images? I planted two types and cant remember either...I would like to get more bulbs...hmmmm. Well, anyways, breathe deep buckaroos and enjoy my flowers...next post from NY.

June...

Wow. It is the beginning of June already...wow again. Please pay no attention to my simple amazement of this change of months. June means a couple things for me...numero uno being I will be heading down to Fla. to visit my family and stay on the beach for a week. That means sunning my buns and eating a mess of good, fresh seafood. Numero dos is that I will be starting my summer job just as soon as I return. This means I will pack up my laptop, clay tools, and a bunch of studio clothes and head further up north to Chautauqua, NY.

I will be taking on the position of ...get this...KILNMASTER...honestly, that is what they are calling this job title. In reality I am more like the studio manager for the ceramic department...The place there is the Chautauqua Institute...it is a resort like arts community on Lake Chautauqua that has been there for like 120 years. They offer professional quality dance, theatre, music and visual arts classes, performances, and exhibitions for all who are lucky enough to be inside the gate. No cars anywhere on the premises...looking forward to it.

My gig there is setting up the studio for the new season and making sure all is going well, but most importantly, making sure everybody gets their work fired. I have 4 work study students and 1 full time assistant that will help me in maintaining the studio. I will be there until the third week in August...8 weeks of classes rolling through the studio. I hope to make a whole lotta new work while I am there...they are providing me with a semi-private studio space and I aim to make use of it.

This is the new wing to the visual arts building that was recently added and the fancy orange and brown building is the kiln palace.

The walls are all on overhead rollers and completely open up on all four sides...too cool.

They have this super special German or something kiln there. The Blaauw. It is a fully programmable digital gas kiln...super insulated...looks like it came from IKEA...That should be interesting...verrrry in-ter-est-ing

(Is that a Col. Klink or Shultz quote? How well do you know your Hogan's Heroes trivia). Anyways, I have allot of work ahead of me...there was construction during the off season and the studio looks like a bomb went off inside...

But, you know what? That is a couple weeks down the road yet and I still have Fla. in front of it. Sun on my buns first. And since I most likely will not post another for a couple weeks I am packing this one in...Here are a few new pictures from the on going kiln building that Nancy and I are doing ...its getting there!

Looks like we are not going to be finished before I leave but I will come back for the firing and have my pieces already glazed and ready to be loaded. I wish there was more time for me to stick around and finish the kiln off but alas, it is not to be...yes, "alas" I said!

While I am at this verbage filled frenzy let me send a big shout out to the hardest working man in the etsy clay business...thats right, the James Brown of the etsy mud team...Keith Phillips. He recently posted a long clay convo that we had about atmospheric firing...thanks for putting that out there, very cool. If you do not know his work, whats wrong with you? Mudstuffing, his shop on etsy is a very popular place and a good place to check for recent additions to the inventory...Keith's blog is on my side bar so you and I can visit frequently.

I will enjoy reading my emails and other blogs and posting new work and images of Chautauqua, NY this summer...new surroundings, new people, new climate (well sorta). Heres to the begining of a good summer gentle reader, heres to June.