Holiday Colors

Christmas colors, a few days late I know! Happy holidays and Happy New Year to you all! Thank you all for making Dirt Girl Pottery very successful this year. Here's to a great new year!

Studio Sale

I had my 2nd annual Studio Sale today. Well, it wasn't exactly a studio sale, more like a "move all the furniture out the living room and put my show set-up sale." But, you get the point. I almost did have a sale this year because I've been so swamped with craft shows and gallery stuff, but I really wanted to do it. It's great for me to connect with friends and neighboors.

Now my living room is back to normal and my pottery is back in the basement until next week! I'll be showing at the Old Crow Gallery for their holiday show.

Holiday Art Show
Opening Reception
Saturday December 13th 2008
5:30 pm - 9:00 pm

331 Cottage Road South Portland
Show runs Dec.13th thru Dec. 24th

Paintings Photography Glass Textiles Jewelry Pottery Sculpture
HolidaySale hosting over twenty local Maine artisans
207.347.8181 http://www.oldcrowgallery.com/

The Dreaded Mug

I was talking to one of my dearest friends Shanna about throwing mugs last week. I love mugs. I love drinking out of them, love heating them up in the microwave and sipping my favorite beverage. But making them....hmmmm. Let's just say that the mug is not my most enjoyable form to throw. It's the handle. Let's face it, when I make bowls and tumblers, it's the few steps of weighing the clay, throwing the form and then trimming. With mugs you have to add the extra steps....

of pulling the handle, and then.....

drying them ever so slowly upside down for days and days so that the handle dries and the same speed as the rest of the mug.

Don't get me wrong, I love mugs, but this time of year, I'm mugged out! What about a nice tumbler or tea bowl???? Yeah, I know, you all want mugs. grumble grumble

Just kidding really! Okay, off to heat up my coffee in my favorite....mug!:)

New Encaustic Work

Here are some new encaustic pieces that I've finished in the last month. Above is titled "Orange Leaf". A few of these will be in River Roads Gallery, a wonderful little space in Skowhegan, Maine that has been showing my pottery and small clay sculptures since February.



Showing paintings is something very new for me. In the past, my paintings have been created just for me or given as gifts.

"Tree Sky"

"Green Leaf"

"Green Ovals"

I will be in the Holiday Show at the Old Crow Gallery in South Portland, Maine, from December 13-24 next month. If you're in the area, stop in and check out all the local artists. I'm the only potter so I'm really looking forward to some good sales.

Cool Uses For My Buttons!

I've been making ceramic buttons since last winter and love them. They are really enjoyable for me to make since they are whimsical and just plain fun. They are awesome "kiln stuffers" which fill all the empty spaces in a firing so a potter saves money because there is no dead space. Carol Dean from SandFibers makes the most beautiful woven bead creations. She bought a few of my large buttons several months ago and listed one of them in a felted wrist cuff.

And.....she sold it!

Picnic Portland!

I had an awesome time showing at Picnic Portland in Lincoln Park this past Saturday. I shared my tent with my long time artist friend Allison Villani, who makes recycled paper jewelry. The weather forcast was pretty sketchy, but then it cleared up and became beautiful. My 6 year old daughter was dropped off an hour into the show and stayed for 6 hours. I was completely floored that she was able to handle it that long, but she made a bunch of new friends and ran around the whole time throwing stuffed animals into air.

Here's our shared space in my tent. We had so much fun hanging out. I remembered that Allison and I had met in this park 13 years ago while walking our dogs. We both lived in the Old Port at the time.

This was the booth next to us. The guy who makes these large fabulous birdhouses actually made this set-up out of recycled cardboard tubes that had rolls of fabric on them. It took him and a few friends close to 2 hours to rig this up, all the while we were biting our nails watching. It took them 5 minutes to take down. I was happy for him because the birdhouses were priced at about $150, and he sold two. Phew!

Check out Wordy Smith!

MaryAnn from Backwoods Creations, a fellow Etsy Maine Team member, came up with a great cross promotional idea a few weeks ago and I am just now trying it. She has encouraged all team members to blog about each other. I love this idea! I have chosen by good buddy Kellie, from Wordy Smith!

Kellie has so much fun making her amazing decoupage work. I have some of her bamboo tiles that she thoughtfully crafted just for me. She found many vintage pictures of potters and clay pots and decoupaged them onto the tiles. I later glued magnets on the back and get to see them everyday on my fridge!

I been to a few etsy Maine Team meetings with Kellie and I love hearing her talk about her process. She enjoys finding the right phrases and passages and words in her vintage finds to create her pieces. I know that anyone who purchases one of her goods, will have something very special, not to mention funny as well! Kellie is a hoot, a great team member, and an awesome friend! Check out her shop!

Making Encaustic Medium

Well, I FINALLY took the time a few weeks ago to make my very first batch of encaustic medium. This is the method I learned from Kim Bernard, my encaustic guru. What is encaustic medium you ask? Well, it's kind of like what gesso is to oil painters, encaustic medium is to encaustic artists. The medium acts as a base for the paint, among many other purposes. Since I intent to do a lot of scraping in the wax, I need a thick surface on which to work on.

I felt like I couldn't really start anything in my studio until I had accomplished this task. It was a very impulsive evening in August. The weather was nice and the kids were happy playing outside and I thought, "now is the perfect time!" It was 4:45 and by 5:00 I had the hot plate plugged in and everything set to go.

Here's all the equiptment: hot plate, stainless steel pot, stainless steel bowl, colander and ladle, silk screen, clothes pins and stirfry spoon.

To make encaustic medium you need 5 parts beeswax to one part damar resin, which comes from a certain family of deciduous tree that grows in the East Indies. They have to be melted together slowly over low heat. The white stuff is the refined beeswax and the golden chunks are the damar resin.

Okay now the damar is really melting now. Here is a gooey chunck stuck to the stirfry spoon.

All done! Now it's time to pour it through the filter.

Ooooh nasty! That junk was all in the damar crystals. It's bark and maybe some elephant hair.

The wax is now poured into silicone muffin tins and tuna fish cans. I ordered the wrong size muffin tins. They said on-line that they were the standard size. Maybe for kids cupcakes....they were a lot smaller than I expected so I have to scrounge and find every tuna can laying around. Thank goodnes my daughter loves tuna sandwiches!

Aren't they purdy? Aren't they just lovely? I'm so proud of myself. I gave myself soooo many hours to do this, thinking that I'd begin at 5:00 and slowly start the melting process. By the time 6:00 came I was already filtering 1/2 the batch and pouring the rest of the beeswax in. By the time 7:15 came, I was pouring the wax into the tins! I thought it would take much longer. Well, I must have done it right because nothing got set on fire in the process.

Surviving Craft Show Season

My booth at the UMC show.

I spend August 7,8,9 and 10th (four days!) at the UMC Cumberland Craft Show. It was looooong, but I felt I made a lot of great sales. As usual, my ringholders, spoon rests, and mini pots were my best sellers, but I also sold quite a lot of mugs and cereal bowls. And 12 pendants, which is very exciting since they are just simply fun for me to make and are a total bonus when they sell. I'll definately do this show again next year, but maybe do it outside in one of the animal stalls. I know that sounds gross, but the spaces are huge and cost a lot less than what I paid.

Rob made these shelves for me. They where so easy to set up and display.

Close-up of my jewelry and button display.

Some Encaustic Work

Here is one of the encaustic pieces I made at Kim Bernard's workshop during July 4th weekend. We made our own supports which are basically shallow boxes turned over. The sides of this piece are about 1 and 1/2" thick. The supports keep the piece from warping. If it warps the wax could crack...very bad. This piece has another mini box inset near the top where I poured wax into the cavity and stuck one of my mini vases in before the wax cooled. Underneath are a row of periwinkle shells. I'm having so much fun playing with the wax and trying some cool things out.



Here's a close-up:



I think I can put dried flowers in the vase and they won't fall out. My daughter said this is ocean art because she says the blue part at the bottom looks like waves, plus the shells. Maybe instead of flowers, we'll collect some feathers we find at the beach and put those in the vase.

Buttons and Boxes!

These are my new buttons that I'm having fun with. I myself don't enjoy sewing but used to enjoy running my fingers through my mother's button box when I was little. I loved the feeling of the smooth buttons on my fingertips. These buttons and nice and large measuring anbout 1 and 1/2" wide. I've sold some in my Etsy shop and at craft shows. People seem to really like them. I had some shoppers ask if I could make them smaller, so I'm working on that now.

I'm also working on some sculptures for my fellowship work. I'm taking a weekend long workshop with Kim Bernard on the 5th and 6th at her studio in North Berwick, Maine. I needed to make some supports for the encaustic to adhere to. Anything pourous will work. I am so excited to try this on clay. I've been making these clay wall boxes for years and can't wait to see what I'll come up with. Here are two different sizes in the green stage. The "green" stage means that they are still wet and not leather hard yet. My basement is nice and cool right now with the humidity (as long as I keep the dehumidifier on all the time), so everything is drying nice and slow, perfect for slab work.

New glazes!

Okay, it's been waaaay too long since I've blogged. So this will just be a quick update blog post of my newest glazes until I get back into the swing of things. I've been very busy doing some craft shows and fellowship stuff. Here are my new cone 6 glazes. I'm so happy so far with them.

From the top left to right: semi-matte cream (in some parts of the glaze it comes out a beautiful blush color), raspberry (kind of touchy, need to work more with this one), semi-matte light green. On the bottom left: greenish-blue, then royal blue.

This is the raspberry glaze on a bud vase.

Here is the cream glaze on a bud vase. I love the speckled coming through on this glaze. There are dark and light speckles that occur.

Encaustics!!!!

Well I started my fellowship over Mother's Day weekend by taking the encaustics workshop with Kim Bernard. It was so inspiring! It felt like being back in college taking art classes again. I haven't taken many workshops or classes at all since I graduated with my B.F.A. from USM in 1995. I'm so used to being the one leading or teaching, that it was so nice to be able to listen, think and reflect for once. Kim's one big rule was we were not allowed to create works of art. We were supposed to just play and experiment. 16 hours of playing and experimenting! I never do this. I always work for a finished product. It was hard at the beginning to let go and just try something new without worrying and fretting over it. Here are some pictures from my weekend:

This was my work space. A griddle to heat up the wax, heat gun to melt the wax, vent to suck out harmful fumes.

My tools: various clay tools for scraping and incising in the wax, natural hair bristle brushes to paint the wax with, and vegetable oil to spread the oil pigment sticks around the wax.

My painting station with the encaustic sticks. I melted them straight onto the hot surface of the griddle, set at 200 degrees. The clam can is holding melted medium, which is a combination of beeswax and damar resin. Smells so good! It's hard to believe that this wonderful smell (it's fabulous too) is harmful if inhaled too much.

Preparing a wood panel. I'm painting this with melted medium in one direction, then apply heat with the heat gun, then let cool, then paint another coat in opposite directions, apply heat, and so on for a total of three times. Then the panel is ready for encaustic paint.

This panel is cooling, you can see how the bottom right hand side is still warm and not cooled. It's almost ready!

This is my first experiment, well actually my second. My first one was so bad, I heated it up and scraped the entire piece off with a razor blade. You can see here that I tried incising and inlaid approaches. I also used pigment sticks for the little scratched green lines and the black lines. I'm totally addicted to those pigment sticks.

Here are four experimental panels. The gray one is a transfer from some cool medical drawings I photocopied of the spinal cord and skull. The upper right shows incising and pigment sticks to bring out textures. The lower left has collaged pieces of wood and a ceramic textured tile. It's blah, but good practice for when I try this on more clay work in the future.
Here is a close-up of the transfer I did. I gave it to Rob, sort of as a joke about his back issues.

Prepping Studio Walls

Well, it's time. It's time to paint the studio walls. And when I say "studio", I mean "basement", and when I say "basement", what I really mean to say is "crap crap crap!" In January I wrote about my studio and how terrible it looks. I want to feel inspired when I work down there. Yes, it is a basement, but I need to keep my costs down. I can't rent a studio space, especially with a spouse that works nights and two small children at home. So, I need to spice things up. I finally bought a new heat gun today. I needed one anyways for my fellowship to work with encaustics.

Here are my new fab tools! A heat gun and razor blade.

This is a before shot of some ugly adhesive on the concrete wall. Before heat gun:

After heat gun: You can see that I tackled the spots at the top and haven't done the bottom ones yet.
Now my arms ache!