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Grand Champion ribbons for our Junior Girl Scout Troop 407 project (front and center)

This is the cigar box Molly decorated for her part of the Troop 407 Ohio State Fair project.

I haven’t posted in a long time. I’m going over to my webpage http://www.primalpotter.com to post our family vacation photos in the photo album, but I thought I would put a few here as well. This year, like most, we stayed closer to home: Hocking Hills, in Southern Ohio. A trail ride at a horse…

My girl is ten…

Molly at horse camp…

Friday night, we went to the Center for Visual Arts gallery at the Toledo Museum of Art for Edith Franklin’s retrospective show. The place was mobbed with people, and Edith gave one of her marvelous, signature “speeches”, telling the story of where she started and the life she has built around clay. You go, girl

Sky Cheif is the black and white one… Captain is the big red one with the white forehead… others are Whirlwind, Espresso and Charcoal. We are halfway finished building the big octagonal dovecote for them. It will sit on the platform next to the swingset, where the little playhouse used to be.

The carrot-and-stick, measure-and-grade, results-oriented way we teachchildren in all other subjects doesn’t mesh well with the teaching ofart. If anything like a creative voice can survive and be nurtured in atraditional school environment, that’s a testimony to the hard work andinnovation of a good art teacher. Art instruction often amounts to“deprogramming”, and it’s a tall…

The ten homeschool moms on my deck had all claimed a pizza crust and topped it with pesto and goat cheese, or olives and veggies, or tomato sauce and motz… I was scooping ember sout of the oven to get ready to bake. I had asked them earlier to keep an eye out for a…

OK, so… Last weekend on an impulse (ok, and impulse inspired by being unable to zip my last-resort shorts) I attended my first ever weight watchers meeting. I took Jeff with me, and we joined. Since then I have been getting some kind of weird enjoyment out of using the etools to coordinate my lunch…

So we went to the lake with my folks for the weekend, and I talked my dad, Jeff, and son Connor into going to the Hillsdale farmer’s market on Saturday morning. I was just going to get beets to pickle, but we ended up in this barn we like because one end is full of…

What a good day. I got rolling this morning and worked on bread. I made a nice loaf of multi-grain, but I also ground a gallon jar full of whole wheat flour. I used mason jars to pre-measure the dry ingredients for a dozen future pizza crusts, not lined up under the bread machine awaiting…

This year’s Crosby Festival has its usual array of artists from around the country, in Ceramics, Fiber, Glass, Graphics, Jewelry, Mixed Media, Painting, Photography, Sculpture and Wood. The festival is a nice one, held every year at the Toledo Botanical Garden. It’s a lovely place with little houses (formerly part of the neighborhood) now housing…

I meant to keep a daily journal of the stuff I got done in June, but it got away from me. And I would have been embarrassed to admit how much had gone UNdone when I was trying to get myself graduated! (Winter clothes to the attic, finish my taxes, etc… ) After a good…

Happy birthday to meeee I’m a hundred and three I’m off to my hammock in the shade of a tree

I don’t want to go to the studio. It’s not just “meh, don’t feel like it” — it’s more a sense of dread at the thought of unpacking my EMU studio stuff, reorganizing, starting fresh, sitting down at the wheel. I was so immersed for so long — day and night, toward the end —…

My kitchen window, over the sink.

When we added on the master bedroom, I lost my kitchen window. I put a mirror up instead, with a little window box for herbs, and a fake picket fence like the ones in the back alleys of Petersbug, Michigan. I cut whatever I could find growing in my back yard and put it in…

Temmoku chick waterer based on an old crockery one I found in an antiques catalog.

Chick waterer with dorky half grown teen chick. I shoul dhave taken this when they were little anc cute.

I should explain that a conversation on the clayart list about studio space inspired me to photograph mine.. especially since I just cleaned it. I finally brought my hanging plant home from the windowless EMU studio and hung it here. It seems happy. These tall shelves are more like a rack, with boards that can…

The shelves on the left are covered with thick plastic on the back and have plastic that can be pulled over the front, to make an impromptu drying cuboard (for things with handles or things that need to dry slowly.) Those big boxes up on top are the pots, pots and pots from school that…

The lady next door has an in home day care, so I get to spend warm weather days listening to one of my favorite sounds: children’s voices. Their sandbox is right next to my studio deck, but hidden by a trellis and grapevines, so I get to hear all the in-depth issues discussed by 3,…

More tall shelves, these were trash picked — and a short shelf unit that has a plaster wedging board for emergencies. (My good one is under the window but sometimes you need a spare.) My valentine from my kids is on the door, with pots drawn on it..

This big table used to be in a conference room. It’s heavy and white and easy to wipe down, and it hides all kinds of stuff underneath. The wheel under the right end is plugged in and ready to go, all I have to do is pull it out and then “park” it again when…

One way to make the most of studio space is to stack and stash. Tall shelves are full of glaze chemicals (the small amounts.. big bins are in the garage under the slab roller.) 5 gallon buckets of glaze are under the table (along with a big rubbermaid of clay and a creative industries wheel.)…

Here’s Molly doing her homeschool homework in my newly cleaned studio…

And the peeper frogs are talking, tonight. Now if my darn hens would start laying, it would truly be the season of promise. I am thinking about taking my crock pot ou tthere tomorrow and showing it to them, and having a serious talk about productivity.

So I got a call early this morning from my local post office, asking me to plase come and pick up my bees. What a lovely thing! I spent a warm spring morning on the deck putting new pale beeswax foundation into my wooden frames, while Connor and I worked on his essay, and the…

This was on a poster from some student show that I brought home from NCECA, but no artist was named. It’s horrible and oddly fascinating. I can only imagine that some prof challenged the class to make the ugliest thing possible. I don’t think I could do as well as this thing. Wish I knew…

And today… the poison ivy.

I had kind of a meltdown in the van last night, coming home late. I thought I was handling this all pretty well, finals week, teaching, schedule craziness, and oh yeah — the pressure to come up with a stellar show in the next month that will justify to family, friends and profs the madness…

Four inches of snow the week after Easter… can we be done with this, please?

My kids and I made Patrick his own little Easter basket… lol

I have to agree with Vince that Pittsburgh is a visually arresting city.I didn’t expect the color, the variety of old brick and new glass, cleanstreets, striking architecture and surprising public art, wide rivers,dramatic bridges, and neighborhoods on every horizon that climb ahillside. I drove my van to NCECA Wednesday afternoon, just a 4 hour…

I woke up in Pittsburgh, PA (What a great town!)  and now I am home, tired enough to feel like I half dreamed the entire NCECA conference. More on that tomorrow, after I sleep, unpack and process a bit. Tonight we colored eggs, as is our usual custom.  As I dipped and smudged, waxed and…

This was the day Molly and I fired the salt kiln. It was the best firing I’ve had so far. We spent the day, cleaned up the kiln yard, finished up before 9pm, got to ^7 with the tip of ^8 just bending.  Molly befriended Casey the sculpture student and got to see how soem…

In the background is one of the lovely grey glaciers of slush native to my area. These can be found well into the spring thaws, on the edges of parking lots and in roadside front yards.

Shino and wood ash soy bottle.

Stoneware, iron-impregnated porcelain slip and wood ash.

I melted some bits of broken blue glass bottle on this one.

Tripods are hard to photograph.

Flashing slip and ash drips.

Light shino and wood ash.

Crunchy little guy.

This was my most ash-blasted pot, right from the firemouth.

I laid the biggest amphora on its side, right inside the firebox. I put it on seashells I picked up in Florida (which instantly froze to the wadding… ironic) and though they left a signature, it’s nowhere near the ash blasted anagama pots I am used to seeing shell marks on. Interesting, anyway. I am…

After my last post, Iput away the laptop. It was dark, and cold, and I had short of spent myself on blather for the evening. Reading over what I wrote, a lot of it sounds crabby… I also realized , when I was looking over how I dole out my time, that I spent SIX…

No, you don’t need to adjust the brightness of your monitor. It doesn’t get any lighter grey in Northwest Ohio/Southeast Michigan in March.

Bunji cords and plastic tarps to keep off the snow and keep out the wind…

Patrick’s a happy man. Tarp roof, frozen firing couch… it’s amazing what feels like comfort, when you’re “out in it”.

Firing log After heavy snow on Monday, when I got off the plane from Florida, and and ice storm on Tuesday, and Patrick’s schedule conflict on Wednesday, I had to abandon plans to fire the salt kiln alone before the wood firing with Patrick — and even had to postpone the wood firing. We settled…

This is a shot of my gallery model.. some of the pots are bigger than they should be (the ones on the wall) and the woman is a little overdressed… but it was fun.

Yesterday morning I woke up in the land of bougainvillea and grapefruit blossoms, buzzing bees and glorious sunlight… got on a plane (leaving Jeff and the kids behind) and flew home. The view from above showed dirty snow and standing puddles, grey flat grids of farmland and suburb. Grey sky, grey landscape. It was raining…

Tomorrow’s my last day in the sun, and I head back to snow country on Monday, all by myself. Much as Dannon and others predicted, I’m finding that a few days far from home/studio/school/winter has given me some clarity. I suspect I will land with a clear resolve and a plan of action focused by…

Here’s the lobby… two six foot tables.

Yesterday morning we got up early, packed up the kids and headed for Eastern Michigan University.  I went to class and gave my midterm, then met Jeff and the kids at the clay studio to load some pots in the bisque. We went out to breakfast at “The Bomber” with Patrick, then got on a…

I just drove to EMU on my “night off” for a meeting in the gallery. The gallery director gave us a packet of forms and information — wall dimensions, checklists, available displays and pedestals, lighting info, everything we’ll need to set up our MFA shows. Yikes. I’m kind of excited, now. It was bewildering to…

The kids — along with raffled pots — made $1200 for the Northwest Ohio Food Bank at the First Unitarian Church soup fundraiser. It was awesome. Toledo Potters Guild members, local majolica artist Ann Tubbs, and my bud Patrick Green from EMU donated bowls for the raffle. The kids made enough bowls that parents could…

I love how kids’ minds work. I brought a bowl of dry alphabet noodles so the kids (all ages) could sign their bowls by pressing noodles into the clay. (They burn out in the firing.) When I saw little Veronica planning to put her name inside of the small foot ring she made for her bowl,…

This is the etching I did in printmaking last semester. I’m having a blast scanning stuff. I’ve never had one of these before!

This is a picture of a picture of our family, at Mom and Dad’s place in Florida last year. Connor on the left.. Kelly, Jeff, Tyler, and Molly on the fence.

Last summer, in a moment of temporary insanity, I agreed to volunteer my Sundays in January to make bowls with 25 or so K-9th graders at the Unitarian Universalist church. There will be a soup-supper in February where the bowls will be sold (full of soup) and the profits will go to local food banks…

Some of the kids’ bowls from this project have great looking feet…

Reflections on a pug mill at winter solstice Not dust, precisely, to dust; We riseFrom stickier stuff. Not parched desert sandBut damp crease of Nile, richflood-given mud, the living fertile dirt. Darwin sings us up from primordial ooze.Genesis forms us, clay of a potter God. From a spark, we come to bein a uterine sea,…

I am very excited about a pickle jar full of suspicious looking scum that a friend sent home from gym class with my son. It sat on the counter,  since I was away at school,  until Jeff (understandably) threw it in the trash, but Connor dug it out for me last night when I learned of…

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me Twelve crocks of sauerkraut Eleven sourdough starters Ten jars of kim chee Nine tubs of yogurt Eight jugs of raw milk Seven blocks of tempeh Six drops of soy sauce FIVE… KE-Fir GRAINS! Four sprouted loaves Three cheeses Two miso soups And a…

I drove up to school Thursday evening before it got dark, and since Jeff got out of work early, he and the kids came along.  Ty and Connor stacked bricks, and Molly gathered wadding balls and threw them in a bucket. Nancy arrived in time to unload her sculpture. The first thing we discovered when…

About half of my pots are going to get refired.  A few look OK the way they are.  The temmoku came out pretty nice.

This was an experiment with my pugmill-mix clay body from home, Vince’s all temperature slip in black, and a ^6 reduction temmoku glaze.