get yer etsy on...

Hello gentle reader,
I am squirting out yet another quick posting here...I honestly have a bunch of stuff to tap away on these keys about but I just do not have the time...soooooooooo, here are a couple of quick items. I opened a new etsy store and also helped my friend Nancy open her shop on etsy recently too. My shop is called Homeslice...the place for clay things. As I explained to a friend, it is my freak show tent in my own little carnival...ceramic oddities abound...check it out. Nancy's shop is called Little Mahoning Creek Pottery and it features her wood fired functional ware. I did a posting on Nancy a month or two back and it has images of her, the studio and her work...take a look at that then cybertruck it on over to her etsy shop to buy, buy, buy!

Also, Nancy and I are pouring the foundation for a new train style wood kiln on Thursday! Pics and posting to come on that undertaking.

I just got back from NY state...went up to get the skinny on my new summer job. I will be working at Chautauqua Institution in the ceramics studio. I will be managing the studio and work study students as well as firing all the work...I am KILNMASTER! I think the position should come with a viking helmet. Its a great gig and I am very pleased to be there for almost 10 weeks. Should be cool...and yes, there will be pics and a posting about this soon!

hope your gardens are blooming...

Opened...

Good morning...just a short note to thank all who came to the opening of my show, Greener Pastures and Fallen Heroes, with painter Shawn Watrous. It was a busy weekend in the burgh...the Carnegie International opened as well as the biennial at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. I can't wait to see the International...it is always an amazing show, if I am able, I will try to get some images and write a posting for my trip over there.
Please go to the boxheart link and click on the big painting in the middle that says Myth and Revelation to see pictures of the work and my opening...they have already posted a bunch of images.
I'm going back to finishing my coffee...have a great week.

First wood fire of the season...

Looking out from the pole barn area that covers the kilns and all the wood you would never have guessed that we started this day with snow. That's right gentle reader, SNOW. It came down in the morning for a couple hours...not just flurries but fat, fluffy, flakes. Thankfully, it did not last too long and by noon there was no trace of the strange weather from the morning....ahhhh, spring was back...sorta.
I made it up to the studio around 1:30 and by then it was shaping up to be a nice mild afternoon. Nancy started stoking the kiln slowly around 8 am. We brought up the temperature at a gradual pace due to the number of green pieces in the chamber. During my afternoon shift I kept the steady pace and slowly increased the stokes to begin a transition to higher temps.

Around 7 pm Nancy and friend Dan Boone took over and continued to crank her up...and by dusk we had heavy black smoke of reduction pouring out the chimney.




Cindy Rogers came for the night shift...She and Dan really got it rolling along.

We added the soda mix in between 2 and 3 am and by 4 am we had cone 11 bending...a little more work to even out the kiln and around 4:30 we were closing shop! Time for a shower and some sleep!
Nancy and I unbricked the door Friday night around 8pm. Things were looking good. We really made an effort to damper in more and create a heavier reduction atmosphere. I think it was successful because the clay bodies blushed more and our ash build up was considerably more than usual...in the fire box as well as through out the ware chamber.Nancy and I were both pleased with the results from the firing...here are a couple shots of a large group of Nancy's pieces and a set of dessert plates that I made...



















I also was so inspired by the Yunomi show that I looked at on the Akar website that I was compelled to make a bunch of cups myself!...I found out about this show by looking at Emily Murphy's potteryblog...which if you have not checked it out, you should...anyways, she was in the show along with so many very notable potters. So here are some of my cups, fresh from the fire and still a little sooty...a few will be getting decals. I recently shot a bunch of new images to make decals with...the plates will also be a recipient of the new images! Not bad for the first firing of Spring. This posting aslo served as a nice distraction from the impending opening of my show tonight...as much as a self promoting art whore as I am, I would rather the work be there without me!

Watch for some of these pieces to be for sale on my etsy shop site...homefry ceramics.

Showing soon...

Coming soon to the Boxheart Gallery in Pittsburgh, Pa. ...Greener Pastures and Fallen Heroes...That's the title for the group of new work that I will be showing beginning the 29th and running through May 24th...I am in a 2 person show with local Pittsburgh painter Shawn Watrous. His pieces in this show are mainly large abstracted animals...Dropping off the work today gave me a little preview on how our pieces will look together in one space...and I was pleasantly surprised on how well our pieces worked . It is a funky and colorful mix that feels lively and will keep your eyes busy.


These are three pieces that I call Liminal Objects. They are all three in the show. Each is made of white stoneware glazed with my re-worked marshmallow glaze. The cake plate/stands are topped with an indoor/outdoor turf. The other strange material here is a yellow tool-dip that I used to cover the tree like appendages...Oh yeah, the foot of each is also dipped in that lovely black tool-dip.

These two are part of a group of 5 small pieces I call Non-Monumentals...Here you see Andre the Giant and Mr.T. immortalized in a surreal landscape on closed organic forms. These guys are only about 6-7 inches high, but they are meant to mimic large-scale sculpture. They are small-scale-large-scale objects on rubber coated wood pedestals with fake turf tops...of course.

The Mobile Landscape Device #7 is another brand spankin; new piece....it really fits my idea for this group of work... a collision of information encompassing the natural and the faux...absurd machines...and nostalgic, kitsch objects. I am not showing all the work that is in the show simply because number one, I'm lazy, and number two I don't have images of them all...so, if you're in the area..you're just going to have to check it out live and in person. However, I thought I would include in this post a couple mugs that were not going to the show...whatta ya' think? Cool graphics, a lot of color and plenty of bling!

FRankenFlOwer MuG LIVES!

This other mug is a spin-off of the set of Landscape Sketchbook Tumblers that are in the show...So, If you are reading this and are in or around the Pittsburgh area, you are invited to attend the public reception on May 3rd...6-9 pm. Boxheart Gallery, 4523 Liberty Avenue, Bloomfield area.

Niagara, Eh?

As falls Niagara Falls, so falls a whole lot of chunks o' ice...

Niagara Falls blew my mind...the roaring power of the falls was truly awesome. The above video is from the Canadian side, where my wife and daughter and I stayed. The high season had not really geared up yet and there was plenty of ice flowing down the river. To a Florida boy like me, the upper river looked like Antarctica as it was still congested with ice. We stood at the precipice of Horseshoe Falls and watched the mini-icebergs go falling over.

This was my first visit to the natural wonder and I couldn't help shooting a whole bunch of pictures...thought I would share a few with you, gentle reader. The below video is of the aptly titled Rainbow Falls on the American side...soundtrack provided by my daughter...enjoy!

Cups, Basket, and Bowl...

As I get the last bits of my new pieces ready for my upcoming show at Boxheart Gallery, I thought why not start shooting images of them and examine them further. When my new stuff starts sitting around my house in sort of a limbo, it detracts from my process in creating the work. I want to see the new work in the context that I made it for ...first. Then, I can live with the work around the house, or better yet, somebody else can live with the work around their home.

This is a set of 10 tumblers... not just mere cups! ha!...I had to really control myself to only post these 4 images...these are a 10 part multiple variable image that you and 9 of your friends can drink from. I have often wondered if I really am a painter trapped in a ceramist's body. It is sometimes more important for me to create an image rather than a form...these are an example. I worked long and hard on each, firing them all 3 times plus the bisque to complete a layered composition that floats and squiggles around each cup. I am pleased with the outcome as each has the motion that I was after as well as a sketchbook like quality to the surfaces. You can set these up in umpteen different ways and they still work...one line hopping from one cup to the other just to finish in a tangle behind the large floral decals. Gold lustre popping here and there...oh yeah...click on these to see bigger!

This next piece I am calling 'Red Poppy Basket'. She is 9 inches tall and like the tumblers, has been fired multiple times. I sprayed a chartreuse glaze lightly over my re-worked marshmallow glaze and fired it to cone five then fired my new decal images of squiggly lines, coffee rings and fragmented patterns to 04. The last firing was the commercial decals with all their rich color and gold bling to cone 018. I really like the chartreuse in the background...adds a little more depth.

Here is the other side and a shot of the mouth and inside...the interior is a bright waxy orange. It is sort of as if Las Vegas exploded in the year 1972 and the residuals drifted all the way to Japan... and I captured it all on a velvet painting framed in barn board. OK, if that makes sense to you...please talk to me! But, anyways, I am very happy with this piece...the imagery and vibrant colors work for me.

The last one for this post is 'Into the Sun' a 12" wide, low bowl. Fired like the others with the exception of the gold lustre brush work in place of the commercial decals. This is another piece that is about the imagery and the composition that includes the glaze as a vital part.

The birdies seem to come from a great distance deep within the robins' egg blue glaze of the bowl's interior. They wrap over the opposite lip and down the other side...I really liked using the gold lustre, for a person who works mainly from collage methods when putting together something 2-d, it felt good to get back to brush work. Hope you like my new pieces...

I will post again soon ...busy times ahead...show opens April 29, firing the wood kiln on the 30th, and then teaching at Touchstone Center for Crafts May 2-4...Graphic Ceramic baby, come get your decal on!

Greener Pastures and Fallen Heroes...

I'm doing something that I have never done before. I mean never. I am posting images, albeit snippets and 'in progress' images, of the new work that I'm finishing for my upcoming two-person show at Boxheart Gallery. Its sort of a little preview...the trailer...I thought, what the heck, I love using my new light kit set up...it is so great to just shoot sweet images whenever you want with NO hassle. So here ya' go...visual blurbs of a few pieces...

I am into the new pieces...they are very different in many ways to my wood fired pieces but there are similarities connected to the finishing of the surfaces with multiple firings and imagery layered over and over. I will admit, the color took a bit of 'dealing with' on my part. I am very into color, but just not all the time. The pieces for this show however, tend to be on the brighter side. They are about cozied -up modernity. How human sentiment and nostalgia collide with clean, organic voluminous form. Emotion reflected in the objects around us.

The show is titled Greener Pastures and Fallen Heroes...Boxheart Gallery, Pittsburgh, Pa. It is a two-person show with painter Shawn Watrous... April 29th-May twenty something...Opening Reception is Saturday, May 3rd 6-9 pm...please come.