Into the Unknown

Tomorrow I leave for Arkansas for the day. I will awake early, get into my truck and drive. In this photo I was coming home from a long trip, the unknown, what was new, was at home. I was driving East into a Kansas rising sun. We cannot know how our lives will unfold, we drive into what we have dreamed for ourselves.....the mystery of it is delicious.

New Tea Pots (:

This one has a flaw so I didn't put it into a gallery but I liked the shape. Fun to make.

This weeks kiln was a treasure chest and totally unexpected because most of it was refire pots. I am finding that this is one of the perks of cone 6 electric firing, if you don't like the pot, reglaze it and throw it back in. I had mixed up a 'red' recipe I had gotten from the ceramics magazine and glazed the inside of one of my 11" bowls with it. It came out a slightly darker version of pepto bismol, so I sprayed it with my cobalt black glaze and put it back in.

Another gem was this 14" platter, the celadon glaze crazed like old Japanese and Chinese pottery made centuries ago, making the piece look old and new at the same time.

Its deep into the night...I just finished firing my kiln. The only sounds are a soft October rain and a train whistle in the distance.....

This is an image I took in historic downtown Santa Fe of some street musicians sitting outside the Starbucks playing impromtu jazz. This image is in an online exhibit, 'Your Best shot' at www.rohophoto.com. and also in 'Snap to Grid' at www.lacda.com.

Some pots I've made.......

mugs.....................

A large pot in progress, unfired. 30" in diameter and 32" height in its raw state.

New porceline mugs before they've been fired.

Digital Compositions

' Mountain Drive' 31"x31" I took these images on a rainy night in the St Louis city streets. My heart was on a night drive through the Sangre de Cristo mountains of New Mexico.

'Blu' 27x32 When I told someone I was talking to about this image they suggested that maybe they didn't really need to know how it came about... but I like to talk about it anyway, so here it is. One evening I made myself a juice..and those of you with juicers know that if you don't put that annoying little part in the pitcher you get a nice thick foam on your juice. I had my juice in a cobalt blue glass with a german beer name written on it and when I was done with it I set it on the table next to my chair. The lamplight shone through the foamy glass and what I saw in it made me grab the camera.My whole point to making these digital compositions is this.......the beauty in our lives exists in the mundane, everyday things, things we may pass by all the time and don't see, things we may even think are ugly, so we don't really see them. Beauty is everywhere, all we have to do is see it, to awaken to it and we can be transported by it.

This one is made from macro images of a rusty dumpster. A friend and I were drinking martinis and trying to name it. Unfortunately, 'On Pinken Pond' is what stuck. That's only funny when you have had too many martinis. digital image 27"x32"

'opening the third eye' 26" x 57" I was out on a sunny day walking in 'the hill' neighborhood, I came across a fire hydrant painted silver. These are macro images of the hydrant reflecting the blue sky. I knew the title of this one when I was making it........theres some more ideas stirring about the frame, revisions to come......

roadrunner

The economic recession going on in the world right now brings change for people, and for me personally, this is a welcome change. My usual work is renovating peoples properties and with that at a slow crawl I have the opportunity to work in my studio nearly full time. For the time being I have very little income and truthfully that frightens me. But, with that comes the time I have needed to set up my studio and work in it. I have longed for uninterupted chunks of time to work to ride the wave of an idea out, pots in fugue. I want to explore the subleties in a particular pot shape by making that shape again and again. One would think that I would jump at this delicious opportunity to make art, to make pots, but I have spent time running scared. I went to my land in Taos New Mexico and that was a tough journey, I drove 35 all the way through Oklahoma in an ice storm, but it needed to be tough because the trip was about running until I'm through running. I looked out my truck window at a rest stop after I had made it through the ice storm and there was a road runner just standing there staring at me. I came back to my studio and started to work, to just make something, anything. Julia Cameron, that wrote 'The artists way' and 'the sound of paper' says we have to be willing to work badly. We have to be in our studios working when inspiration shows up. Talking about this stuff with friends helps and especially if the friends are creators. I wrote this to a friend the other day. 'For me having the courage to set foot in my studio every day and get my hands on some clay or on some digital composition opens the door for the passion to flow. And it doesn't always, but thank God I am not walking dead, that I get to live art. One would think that just showing up willing would be easy but it is not. I comes with a lot of fears around survival, fears around the validity of what I create. Sometimes I look out at a world who is saying 'How come you get to do your hobby while us responsible people go to work every day?' But this is not a hobby, this is who I am, this is the journey that my soul has chosen, and to live in harmony with my hearts agenda I make art..... or maybe its making me. If I am doing something else my heart will beat just enough to keep me alive and that is it. 80 percent of what an artist does is all this mundane, routine stuff that has to be done so the art can be made or so it can leave the studio, and that stuff is not much different than anyone elses jobs. Then there is 10 to 20 percent that gives life meaning for me the artist and shares that with the world through the work.That part I have no control over, the work creates itself. Ideas flow from someplace not limited by thought, I hope my skills are honed enough to recieve the inspiration, that I have nurtured and put in the work so I can make what comes.' I know that having a bunch of time to create is luxurious that most of us artists are squeezing our art making in between making money, taking care of kids or pets or our houses or our health or whatever. I am grateful for this time.