Pottery books for Christmas

Ive been enjoying reading one of my excellent Christmas presents:

Functional Pottery: Form and Aesthetic in Pots of Purpose

I've checked out Robin Hopper's videos on form and proportion from the library before, and was happy to see much of the same material expanded upon in this book.

This book covers all kinds of kitchenware, plates, mugs, bowls, goblets, butter dishes, pitchers, teapots. He also covers proportions and esthetics of form, along with praticalities like center of gravity, weight, and making things 'fit' the human body for use.

He also has a broad definition of 'funtional' pottery that isn't just dinner service, but includes decorative ware that serves as objects of beauty and contemplation. 

New blogs and old friends

Google Reader had a suggestion of a blog I might be interested in

http://claycraft.blogspot.com

So I was browsing through and found this post about my long-lost first pottery instructor who moved to the other side of the country:

http://claycraft.blogspot.com/2008/11/jamie-kirkpatrick-display.html

You never really know what or who is going to pop up out of the past on the internet these days. And if you haven't given Google Reader a try yet, check it out. I really don't know how I'd keep all the blogs I follow manageable without it.

Pottery section now on Alltop

For those of you that don't know about it, Alltop.com is a nifty blog aggregator that groups blogs by topic or area of interest. They generally strive to have the most popular blogs as determined by their own ranking criteria.

Within each topic, they list their top blogs, along with the last five post titles in an easy to scan 'magazine' format.  Very easy to lose several hours exploring....

The Great news is  -- They now have a Pottery Topic.

Congrats to Jen Mecca, Emily Murphy, and Bulldog Pottery for making the first cut! You need to go and get yourselves a badge for your blogs here: http://badges.alltop.com/

Go check them out...  the more traffic they get from all us potters the better. It might get them to expand the number of pottery feeds in our section!

What color green are you?

All of this glaze testing going on out in the pottery blogosphere got me thinking about color --

You Are Teal Green

You are a one of a kind, original person. There's no one even close to being like you. Expressive and creative, you have a knack for making the impossible possible. While you are a bit offbeat, you don't scare people away with your quirks. Your warm personality nicely counteracts and strange habits you may have.

What Color Green Are You?

Words of wisdom for artists and other creatives

Here's a little gem I found going through the old posts from the Red Deer College'sArt Blog

The Incomplete Manifesto for Growth:

http://www.brucemaudesign.com/incomplete_manifesto.html

Some of my favorites include 

4) Love your experiments.

6) Capture accidents.

34) Make mistakes faster

 and 

26) Don't enter awards competitions - 'Just dont. It's not good for you'

Check it out for a goldmine of wisdom and sanity.

Red Deer College

I had a pleasant surprize this evening. While doing a semi-regular check on my blog stats, I discovered some traffic coming from a blog I was previously unaware of. 

http://robinlambert.wordpress.com/

Turns out it was from a ceramics blog at Red Deer College in Albert Canada.

I've just started exploring but it's chock full of interesting assignments and projects, as well as links to other online resources for ceramists and artists.

Even though I've been an IT guy for almost 20 years, sometimes this whole internet thing just amazes me.

Dorodango!

I'd come across this a couple years ago and it just resurfaced again last week on one of my favorite shows, MythBusters.

A common childhood pastime in Japan is making hikaru dorodango, or 'shiny mud balls' by taking a ball of mud and squeezing, packing and smoothing it, gradually drying it out, and slowly adding dry dirt to it, and finally rubbing it to a glossy shine.

The results are nothing short of amazing.

Looking at the process, it seems like what they're ending up with is a packed, smooth ball finished with an outer layer of finely burnished clay particles, probably not far from terra sig.

Image from: http://www.kyokyo-u.ac.jp/youkyou/4/english4.htm , which also has instructions for making one of these little gems.

There is additional information and instructions here:

http://www.dorodango.com/about.html

and at Wikipedia here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorodango

Thinking Creatively

Yesterday I read an interesting article on how to think like Leonardo da Vinci. It really resonated with me and got me thinking about how I could apply it to my pottery.

(I wonder if da Vinci was a potter.... he certainly tried about everything else..... )

I especially liked the points about choosing a theme and observing things in terms of that theme for a day. Also examining your beliefs, seeing if there are any that you haven't actually verified through experience. Then looking for two or three other possible points of view. 

I've found in pottery that what works for one person often doesn't for another, so taking someone's word for it on what is possible or not isn't always accurate. I know a lot of people who throw without a sponge. This just doesn't work for me for whatever reason. Some people throw wet, some throw dry, I kinda fall in between, tending toward dry.

So just don't forget to keep experimenting!  That's what makes it fun anyways, and that's why we do this, right?

The full article is here:

http://www.wikihow.com/Think-Like-Leonardo-Da-Vinci

Seasons and Cycles

I just read a fantastic piece about business cycles and how to look at slowdowns over at Molly Gordon's blog here:  Seasons of Success

I lke her point about if you spend your energy resisting the slow times in 'autumn' you'll be too spent to enjoy the 'spring' when it returns.

Back to work!

It's been a while.

It was 7 weeks last Friday since the accident put me out of the studio. Countless doctor visits, pills, hot soaks, and ice packs later I'm slowly approaching functional.

I finally made it back to the studio yesterday to see what I could do. I'd signed up for a class that starts this week, and wanted to find out if I could do it, or have to cancel. I'm happy to report that I was able to handle the 25# block of clay, wedge, center and throw a couple 2# 'test pots', a bottle and a vase form. Today I'm a bit sore, but no worse than general pottery soreness from not throwing for two months on top of the lingering soreness, if that makes any sense.  I'm hoping the extra activity at this point helps work the knots and cramps out.

It's also been 3 months for the Brian Fields Pottery blog.

I've had nearly 400 unique visitors from 20 countries and 42 states. I have to say, I'm happliy surprized. 

Arts in Education

As a followup to my post a while back 'But what's it good for?' the Colorado Council on the Arts has recently put out a study on the importance of the arts in education. The arts being under attack in public schools is hardly a new thing, but I had no idea it was so bad in Colorado, having been cut from $1.2 million in 2002 to $200,000 in 2004.

And ironically, at the same time this is going on, employers are asking for more creative, innovative workers...
http://www.coloarts.org/programs/education/study/index.htm

There's also a great resource at Keep Arts in Schools.
http://www.keepartsinschools.org/

As we go through these tough economic times, we need to remember the importance of the arts to our children who will take us into the future.

Great resource for artists

I discovered this site today during an aimless surfing session. It's for an organization called Self Employment in the Arts

Lots of good info and resources for artists trying to make their way in the business world. They also have conferences several times a year around the country.

Cold weather potters

I read a post over on Deborah Woods' blog about throwing in cold weather and it got me wondering....

She said she uses a crock pot in cold weather to keep her throwing water warm so her hands don't freeze, which I actually think is kinda brilliant.

Are there any others out there that use warm/hot water in cold weather? I guess whats bothering me is that I've actually tried it a few times, sometimes by accident, pushing the lever more toward warm, sometimes on purpose when it was cold. It took me a while to put it together, but I seemed to have a lot of trouble throwing with warm water. When I mentioned it to a more experienced potter, they said 'Oh, yeah, you don't want to throw with warm water, always use cold.'

For you warm water throwers, do you have challenges? Or is it something I'd eventually adjust to? I'd also imagine it's probably dependent on the clay body.

I've got to get back into the studio soon.... WAY too much time to think lately.....

Annual Pullen Art Center Fair

Although I was unable to participate, I was able to get out and see the annual Art and Craft fair at Pullen Art Center on Saturday. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and warm with a nice breeze.
There was jewelry, fabric, paintings, prints, beads, paper arts, and of course pottery.

It was good to see everyone from the center, and all their creations. I find it's always a bit disappointing sometimes to see everyone's work in progress and then miss out seeing the finished work when they pick it up and take it home.

I did go inside to rest at one point and overheard many nice comments about the current Circle of Eight exhibit in the lobby gallery. Beautiful work there. I tried to take some pictures before the accident, but the glass fronted cases made it difficult to get decent images. If you're in the Raleigh area, definitely go check it out.

There's a 'participant's work' show in November, so I hope to get a piece or two of my saggar work into that.