chihuahua chat

Shippo here holding down the fort while mom, dad and "the other dog" play outside in the snow. Yuck! Mom claims she gonna do work when it snows but her frolicking shows other wise. This snow is my fault I fear. You see I am a dog of many things: professional eater, handsome, a ladies man some say, and a great dancer. So I did an anti snow dance on Monday and I fear I misstepped, and now 32 inches later I see my mistake! To illustrate my misery I will post a few pictures of my last horrible few hours, please notice the picture of my sister yelling at me, mom says she trying to get me to play in the snow. I know the truth so hopes to entomb me in the heinous white stuff and take my prized stripey bear for her own!

First Etsy order (YAY!)

This weekend I was contacted about doing some custom work on Etsy, of course I said yes because I love doing custom work. I love the idea that I am making exactly what someone wants and I know they will love it. I enjoyed doing sketches before hand for the customer to look at and enjoyed her feedback. Its just a simple tile with a cat that's "flying" she didn't want wings so I had to work hard to capture that freedom of motion but I think I got it. This order made my whole week as once its finished and shes paid I will have made back all the money I spent to list myself of Etsy, woot!

This weekend I spent some time on Etsy since I was snowed in and I did lots of browsing for myself and discovered the conversation mode on there. I started conversations with many talented artists to find out more about their process or just to tell them work is awesome. I am starting to really enjoy Etsy, its a really cool community of artists. Even if I never get another sale I happy that Vicki talked me into it and glad that I am finding the time to put my whole heart into it. Today I am also exploring joining some of the teams, has anyone done that, and how do they feel about it? One I looked at actually had dues but it seems that its a good group of people and it would help me market my stuff, has anyone had a good or bad experience with the teams on Etsy?

Snow Day

I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't blog about the snow since everybody else probably is, and instead would blog about the ceramics I would surely get done being that I cant even really open my front door there is so much snow.

However at our house with snow apparently also comes laziness, see exhibit A Sookie tucked in for a nap.

It is doubtful we could even get the dogs out for a walk, exhibit B was taken at about 7 am and what seems to be a foot of snow ago and you can see the snow is already twice as tall as Shippo. He standing on the path we shoveled him. And he is not happy about it.

Instead of getting lots of stuff done be it ceramics or much needed closet cleaning, I am curled up with my laptop and a book in front of a nice warm fire with a cup of tea by my side. And *blushes* joining the masses and blogging about the snow. However it is beautiful and relaxing and my inner Vermonter is pleased to blanketed in the white stuff. So cheers to everyone's inner yankee and to being a lazy bum. Have a nice cup of cocoa on me!


Oh and while your curled up in front of your own fire stop by Etsy my art is featured today under pottery and ceramics and there are some sales up this month, what better way to spend a snowy day than blog reading and online shopping!

Advice

Today I got my new Clay Times in the mail and I came across an interesting article about failure. It was little stories from several artists talking about how they learned not to write something off as a failure when it doesn't end up the way they thought it would. Several of the stories talked about taking things out of the kiln, labeling them a disaster and not seeing their beauty until someone else pointed it out. I thought it was a great article but didn't think it related much to my work as I normally use red iron oxide stain which always looks the same, so I tend to have very few surprises when unloading the glaze kiln.

Because of another snowy morning I ended up with the day off today and looked forward to starting some new pieces. I am eager to start the dogs playing poker piece but decided to first start with a piece that was commissioned a sculpture of a co-workers dog. Its a little terrier mix that was wiry hair and I thought making a specific breed would be good practice for the upcoming larger dog sculpture.


What I found today was what I thought to be failure. I didn't end up getting into the studio until 4 and probably should have just let myself rest. Instead I was chose to work and I was already tired and was easily frustrated trying to make things like dog hair. Nothing I did looked like his hair, I made three dog bodies and tried what felt like 1 million tools and nothing worked.(Anyone have any suggestions?!) Out of sheer frustration with the last body I rolled up the entire sculpture and started to pull on the clay. As I pulled on it I saw a different shape and let the clay go the way it wanted. What I ended up with is a cool miniature tree looking sculpture with gargoyle faces. Its not the best piece I ever made but it came from what I thought was a total failure. It will make an excellent tester for some upcoming surface finishes I want to try and a fun piece for me to keep. Next time I will come back to the dog sculpture with a better attitude and try to realize no matter what I make its art and even when I think its a horrible failure it may not be!

I also took my friend Vicki's advice (http://vmwstudios.blogspot.com/2010/02/feedback-and-motivation.html) and complimented someones work who I don't know but I admired. In this new Clay Times I also checked out the gallery section and found a piece called "Unfurled Twice" by Lenore Lampi, its a sculpture of two birch trees and its beautiful. I went to her website to look at more of her work and wasn't surprised to see shes a fairly accomplished artist. At first I thought not to email her as her accomplishments speak to her talent but I decided to anyways. Her work really moved me and it made my day to see it. I was happy to see she emailed me back today and laughed that she didnt even know her photo was in gallery section! I am not known for being one who likes to listen to much less take advice but I hope with age comes wisdom and I am hoping I am finally learning to listen to other people, be it someone I know like Vicki or strangers like those who contribute to Clay Times.

Unexpected Relaxation

Today my hubby and I had plans for a wine night with 4 of our favorite people, but Mother Nature had other plans. We only ended up with about 4ish inches of snow but we feared that the pet sitter wouldn’t be able to make it to our house so we opted out. Initially we were both disappointed as we had been looking forward to a night of fun, friends and not having to take the dogs out ourselves.

I have found unexpected happiness in this lazy day. I think perhaps it is partly because yesterday I did this:
That’s right I made a gargoyle! Ironically it was a chess piece, a replacement bishop the buyer of the chess set requested because the first one had a small crack. But it felt so good to get my hands in clay and make something, and I am hoping my apathy towards clay is lifted and this week I can begin anew.

This snowy day has also provided me with quiet and peace of mind. Down here in the south when it snows no one expects anything of you, it isn’t expected you will go out anyways, you are expected to curl up with a book in front of a fire even if there is only an inch on the ground. So that’s what we did and it’s been wonderful, to make my evening a little better I am going to bake some cookies to add calories to my wonderful day! I will leave this post with a picture of Sookie during our snowy walk, as always Sookie loves the snow, Shippo thinks it is little tiny flakes of torture sent down to make his life somehow even worse and would not hold still for his glamour shots!

Oh when is he gonna call!?

In July Beth Cavener Stichter is giving a workshop at Baltimore Clayworks and ohhh I wanna go. I really wanna go! Beth Cavener Stichter is well known among the ceramics community and is one of my favorite ceramic artists. I love the idea of being able to learn from her, improve my work, and just pick her brain on her artistic process shes amazing. Unfortunately the workshop is not cheap (and why should it be shes great!) So I am putting some faith in my etsy shop that perhaps I will sell enough to pay for half.

So now I feel like I am back in high school waiting on a boy to call only its etsy not a boy and its not a phone call I am waiting for its person buying my stuff. The waiting for my first sale is killing me! I realize I have already said I need to learn patience and I know I do, but its so hard. I look at the shop and see over 30 people have viewed something and I wonder, why didn't they buy it? I cant help but wait in quiet anticipation checking my esty stats everyday, like I would the answering machine waiting for a boy to call. (OK that's a lie we lived in the dark ages and didn't have an answering machine or cable tv for that matter).

I did learn last year, the hard way, to never count on money from art sales, so even though I want the esty shop to suceed, I am also saving my pennies from work, denying myself sock monkey mittens and yesterday while I was walking Sookie she found 10 dollars! If she keeps finding dead presidents instead of dead birds I will be on a roll!

For anyone interested here is the workshop info, its going to be an awesome one:
http://www.baltimoreclayworks.org/class/mtclasses/spring10/workshops/Ws4_Stitchner.html

The Greatest Sculpture Ever

Procrastination we all do it, me better than most and I love to not admit to procrastination by justifying that I am putting off the important task by doing other minor but still important tasks. Cleaning is my favorite way to procrastinate which is good as we have 8 fur babies running around here and they love to shed and spit hairballs on things I love.

Lately though I find myself procrastinating on making new work, which is something I almost never do, it’s more likely I do ceramics to get out of something like say mowing the lawn. But I think I know why, for my recent show in December I was able to unveil what I consider to be my Greatest Sculpture Ever. Not the Greatest Sculpture To Date but the Greatest Ever. I made a chess set but it was so much more than a chess set. Really it was 32 sculptures that came together to make one large statement. Each piece, even the pawns, was different. It was an enormous amount of work and one of the only things I have ever made that makes me sit back and say, yeah I'm damn good. But now I feel it’s my opus, my swan song and I can’t get around it. I wanted so badly to start my dogs playing poker piece last week but instead messed around with my etsy page. The Greatest Sculpture Ever now looms over me, what can stand up to it? Should I start an “I have made my Greatest Sculpture Ever” support group?

I realize I am young and have many sculptures yet to come and hopefully someday the Greatest Sculpture Ever will be dethroned by the Even Better Greatest Sculpture Ever. In the meantime I will take this mental block for what it is and not force myself around it. Perhaps it’s my brain telling me I need a break and time to recuperate after a busy year and completion of the G.S.E. I am hoping to use this time to become more introspective in my work so everything I make can become my G.S.E. Its times like these that I also take time to make little things like ornaments and magnets to keep those art muscles sharp, so when it comes time to get back to work (soon I hope) I can flex my art guns, knock the G.S.E. off its throne and start the E.B.G.S.E! Until then support group meets Thursday I’ll bring the doughnuts!