Three weeks until Showcase

large oval platter w/ wavy lip 

Production is going full tilt with only three weeks left until Ceramic Showcase. I'm switching things up in the studio, moving back into animal and plants in addition to dots and stripes, and adding color to the black & white.

tray with scalloped edge

Despite that Portlandia episode (you know the one), I persist in putting birds on everything. 

Platter with green fish

I'll have to stop making pots soon and get my booth figured out, there are so many details to track when getting prepared for a show. I feel like I am starting from zero, it has really been years and years since I've done this.

This video of pendulum waves is mesmerizing.

work in progress, greenware

oval boats and snack plates

dotty fruit cups

cup interiors

All these pieces have been bisqued, glazed, and are cooling in the kiln right now. It makes the studio so cozy!

Warm and snug is one thing, but I don't stay indoors all the time~

fall at the Japanese Garden

spectacular maples

a glimpse of red in the distance

I have been indulging in a mad addiction to Pinterest lately. Someone make me stop!

dinner plates and misty terrace

dinner plates, musical variations

misty day on the terrace

 drip, drip, drip...

foggy too

 view from the summer bed

not summer yet though

no morning coffee outside today

necklaces await cords

the best things about summer, part three

summer tables

We eat outside for all our meals during good weather. It's amazing how clean the house stays when all the food is consumed outdoors. The only downside is rushing to bring the chairs under cover in the middle of the night when it rains. Of course, the proximity of the summer bed is a plus when that happens.

mine is on the left, Mr. Cranky's is on the right, food goes on the extra one

The table tops are developing a nice patina through use. We are thinking of pouring hot wax on top and melting  it in with a heat gun to make the surface buttery-smooth. We have five or six of these tables, so we are set for guests as needed.

the best things about summer, part one

 Strawberries

Our neighbor showed us a wonderful place to pick strawberries, just down the road from us. They only charge $1 a pound, the fields are nice and clean with plenty of straw between the rows (comfy to sit on), of course there are beautiful views all around, and it has been a family farm for generations. 

Local berries are the finest

I think scones  make the best shortcake. We have been watching World Cup Soccer like mad fanatics (yes, even the 4 am games); eating our breakfast of scones with strawberries and whipped cream every day between games. Pure bliss.

Barley flour scones (shortcake)

I already told you about my newest favorite cookbook, Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce. I have been making scones for years and years and these are by far the new favorite. The barley flour adds a bit of texture, like cornmeal but much more recessive. It has a robust flavor, deep and rich. The author describes it thusly "barley flour has a distinctly sweet,creamy quality that tastes great with fruit". 

I don't think it is really fair to print her recipe here, but if you use my scone recipe and substitute barley flour for half of the all purpose and swap out the milk for buttermilk (& adjust leavening for the additional acid, right?), you will be really close to this. The cookbook is worth the price simply for the scones, as far as I'm concerned, but there are many more flours I have yet to explore in there.

John Cleese on soccer.

birds & leaves catalog

rufous-sided towhee

I finished my Birds &  Leaves catalog (view images here).

best display ever

 I pretty much had to get the catalog done for the Simon Toney store because they were kind enough to BUILD A HOUSE (!) in their wonderful showroom to display my little guys.

the owl is inside

Simon Toney showroom

The image above is just a small fraction of the showroom. They make custom furniture and cabinets and whatever else you might want that can be made from beautiful pieces of wood. Bill (Toney) is a genius with color and David (Simon) has an infallible sense of form. Seriously, go see what they can do, they are so creative and talented. I will try to do a decent photo shoot of the showroom one of these days when I can get my daughter with the fabulous camera to come with me. Or take a tour right here.

vines insinuate through cracks

The showroom is at 105 SE Taylor in a great huge building with high ceilings, lots of light, and filled with things you will covet.

Scotland looks so beautiful; should I make some sheep?

Tales, PDX Annual Naked Bike Ride

Little, Ranger, Bear, Woodrow, Ruby, and Jam naked

The Annual Portland Naked Bike Ride takes place every June. It is a worldwide event designed as a protest against oil dependency and to highlight the vulnerability of cyclists. Riding a bike nude in Portland is not illegal and the police helped the ride by controlling traffic in intersections where the cyclists passed through. Estimates of up to 5000 riders make Portland event the largest in the world. Beginning at 11:59 pm, it took an hour for the parade of riders to pass.
Little stopped at an intersection beside a van containing five Muslim women in full hijab who high-fived her and took her picture with their cell phones. Yay freedom!
More PDX bike fun here.

In the studio, Vista Ridge tiles

They came out great! Even the practice mountain that I did on a leftover piece of tile (smaller mountain in the center).

Artist, Apak

I am madly in love with everything these two do. They live in the sweet fantasy land pictured above, but you need special vision to see it this way in real life.

I mean, who else could make a sloth look cute?

Apak is the fantastical magical duo( as they put it) known as Aaron Piland and Ayumi Kajuikawa Piland. Visit their flickr page to see some tiny sculptures that look positively edible.

A pink tapir? Having tea? Brilliant.

Of course, they have an etsy store too.

Art Show

We are at the First Unitarian Church today and tomorrow for a fundraiser/art show.
Come visit if you are nearby. Our new jewelry is making its debut, I'm excited!

the art of going to an art museum

Beaded bag from the Columbia River Plateau

We finally discovered the best way to approach going to an art museum. Usually, we try to cover all the exhibits and spend way too much time all at once. We are just so greedy.

After years of post-museum burnout, our new modality is to choose one exhibit per visit and really allow ourselves to become immersed in it. Our very favorite exhibit at the Portland Art Museum is the Asian Art room,

but we forced ourselves to pass it by last time and focus on our second favorite, the Native American exhibit. We spent just over an hour there and left, sated but not exhausted. I suppose if you are traveling you can't afford yourself the luxury of such a slow method of perusal, but for your home museum I highly recommend trying it this way. We see new things in old pieces every time we look. When we are viewing work from the perspective of potters, I usually look at surface treatments and Mr. Cranky looks at form. first new necklace, stones, fir round, rufous-sided towhee feathers, elk hair

But now, because we are making jewelry, we have a whole new point of view. We see tiny details, methods of attaching things, ornaments, materials. Work in progress, shell, found wood (oak) piece, shell, mallard feather

Mr. Cranky is now obsessed with abalone shells and elk teeth and porcupine quills. He wants to use natural and found materials only and attach them in the most simple and direct way, so the Native American work is right up his alley. Work table for jewelry

We went to a bead store later that day and found abalone beads. We found an abalone shell too, but I can't remember where. And Mr. Cranky has a call in to a hunter friend for elk teeth. Now we regret not collecting the bear fur we found picking huckleberries last fall.

More paper art

Large Red Damask Letterpress Buckle with Ribbon by dsharp

Now it seems paper art is competing with the characters in Tales to take over my blog. I'm just gonna have to go with it.
I came across this video on fellow Portlander Denise Sharp's blog and promptly swiped it.

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

Denise is another paper artist that I had planned to tell you about, but now I've gone and jumped the gun. Loads of great things at her website. Like this:

Leaning Pisa Candy Container

Have a look at her etsy shop where you will find cool things like this letterpress buckle and ribbon:
I love her blog too. She found the video at The Rag and Bone blog, who got it from brainstorm (which seems to be written in Portuguese and since I have forgotten most of my Portuguese I can't tell you how they found it), and on it goes...

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart. ~Neruda

Well, not really on my heart, at least not this minute. But I have started a series of platters with phrases, poems, and snippets of evocative prose that I am pretty excited about.

The opposite of a profound truth is also a profound truth. ~Niels Bohr

Let the beauty you love be what you do. ~Rumi

My inital plan was that these plates would be chargers, looking very cool and interesting on the table before the dinner plates were set. I started out simply writing freehand, in the border, nice and loose. It doesn't always come out symmetrically balanced, so I ad-lib the rest with leaves or scrolls. I like the rustic vernaculalr feel of this.
But now I am thinking they might be used more often singly, as platters, that might hang on the wall when not in use. And that makes me think I should be more intentional with my lettering and spacing. So, stay tuned for the next interation.

Don't let your mind go outside your heart. ~Papaji

A life without passion is no life at all. ~Madgesdig

I keep a notebook going to record things I come across in my reading that might work on a platter. I also put single words that I like on the back of my dinner plates as a little gift to the dishwasher(that's the only person that would normally see them). But I think most people use a mechanical dishwasher. Which is fine, it does use less water than the way most people wash dishes by hand. But I think you lose part of the experience of having handmade pieces if you don't take every opportunity to actually handle them
Thich Nhat Hanh is eloquent in describing washing dishes:
"There are two ways to wash the dishes. One is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes and the second is to wash dishes in order to wash the dishes. If while washing the dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not 'washing the dishes to wash the dishes'. What's more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact, we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can't wash the dishes, the chances are we won't be able to drink our tea either...we are sucked away into the future and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life." ~The Miracle of Mindfulness

Blackberries

People from other areas of the world find it scandalous that Oregonians take blackberries so for granted. They are practically considered weeds here, what with their impenetrable spiky vines encroaching on roads and taking over any empty field. Very pricey in stores elsewhere, people have to treat them like precious gems. Around here, we are simply greedy blackberry gluttons.The logging road where we take our daily walk has a veritable wall of blackberries. The road is not used, so there are no impossibly dusty berries here. We picked about three gallons in a couple of hours. Yes, the dog got to come.We are not fond of the seeds so, once home, we put them through a sieve.Then, the remaining seedy pulp was put through the juicer to extract all the dark deliciousness.I add a bit (okay, a lot) of sugar and then freeze the blackberry syrup for use throughout the year.

I save the biggest, most perfect berries and freeze them on a cookie sheet. Later on, I bag them up to use in desserts along with the syrup.

I was debating whether to give you a recipe for Russian Cream (the premier use of blackberries, in my opinion) or showing you some cool blackberry art-for-daily-life. Maybe later on the dessert...
Irresistibly adorable baby slippers from Ailcia of Willo in the U.K. Awww...