babe, bunny, and beer

The studio tour weekend is over and it's time for a beer! Stacey claimed this "eine Kline bier stein" and we're so grateful to all of our fierce pottery fans who support us year after year, come snow or come shine. Thank you also to all of our new customers! We hope to see everyone again next year!

As for what's left, we'll be announcing the time and date of our Etsy sale tomorrow. So if you weren't able to make it this weekend you'll get a chance to shop for some of our pottery and jewelry next week! We'll let you know!

Check here at ye olde blogge or text "pottery" to 70259 to sign up for our mailing list.

Thanks again folks!

Get'em While They're HOT!

No wonder Simon hasn't been saying much around ye olde blogge for quite some time. He's been busy building kilns and making pots!! This card may very well be the best announcement of a pottery sale that's come through my inbox in a long time!

Check out the online store at Mill Creek Pottery for:

New pots!
New kiln!
On Sale!
On Line!

Saturday at 9 a.m. CST

Unloading the CMP

Courtney and I unloaded the kiln and we were both very happy to see the multitudes of pots! We weren't very happy to see the pool of glaze around pots glazed with my alkaline ash glaze, though. I think the shelves will be OK after some grinding, otherwise I'll be shopping for some new shelves!

courtney and her multitudes

Courtney was busy getting her pots set up in the showroom of her husband John's glass shop, when I was there grinding the glaze off the bottoms of the runny pots. John has refinished the walls in the showroom with beautiful walnut and cherry boards that he got from Milan Street up in Buladean. Milan runs the small lumber mill and brings us the bundles of wood Courtney and I burn in our kilns. The walls and shelves look super beautiful! The pots and the glass looks so good against the walnut and cherry! (sorry I didn't have my camera to get some pix.) Maybe I can visit over the weekend during the sale and get some pictures.

The Toe River Arts Council December Studio Tour begins tomorrow at noon, and John and Courtney have lots of beautiful work. They are hosting Penland resident metalsmith extraordinaire, Amy Tavern.

We were busy getting the pottery shop set up to host our friend Wendi Gratz who will be joining Stacey and myself for the tour. You can see Wendi's work here! In addition to all of the new work we've been making for the tour, we have lots of goodies for our customers . We've also "spruced" up the shop with a Christmas tree and lots of boughs of balsam fir grown just up the hill from our house.

If you haven't been to a TRAC studio tour before you really should treat yourself to a trip to the mountains to ramble and visit the over 100 studio artists and 9 galleries in Mitchell and Yancey counties!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(exclamations by evelyn!)

I'll take more pictures of the fresh pots and try to post them tomorrow. Maybe I will shoot a video.

Painting/Glazing Highlights

As usual, I'm completely (well, almost) tapped from getting the pots painted, glazed, and ready to fire. Lucky for me, Courtney loaded the entire kiln! I don't have a lot to say. I just wanted to post a few pictures of the painting session (in no particular order) and make some ever so brief comments and then it's off to dreamland so I can be an effective stoker in the a.m.!

Thoughts?

horse-rabbit?

couldn't go wrong with the brush marks in this one.
flowin'!

trying to incorporate my style of leaves.
combing included free of charge.

we'll see if these wiped highlights show up
in the fired article.

a visitor to my studio recently asked if I took notes.
If you are trying something new, take a picture!

big pitcher with random leaf and
dots deco

lillian and her ballerina cup

iron, copper, cobalt

the stack

A Chosen Path

Mark Shapiro is a potter, workshop leader, occasional curator, and now editor! from Worthington, MA. Mark Shapiro has made wood fired functional pots in Western Massachusetts for the past twenty years. Mark's pots can be seen in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the Racine Art Museum, the Mint Museum (NC), the International Museum of Ceramics at Alfred,NY, and the Currier Museum (NH). Mark can also be reached at mark@sawdustanddirt.com


I have recently edited the book A Chosen Path: the Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes published by University of North Carolina Press. Over her long career, Karen Karnes has created some of the most iconic pottery of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The body of work she has produced in her more than sixty years in the studio is remarkable for its depth, personal voice, and consistent innovation. Many of her pieces defy category, invoking body and landscape, pottery and sculpture, male and female, hand and eye.

Equally compelling are Karnes’s experiences in some of the most significant cultural settings of her generation: from the worker-owned cooperative housing of her childhood, to Brooklyn College under modernist Serge Chermayeff, to North Carolina’s avant-garde Black Mountain College, to the Gate Hill Cooperative in Stony Point, New York, which Karnes helped establish as an experiment in integrating art, life, family, and community. After twenty-five years of communal living, Karnes moved to rural Vermont with partner Ann Stannard and began making some of the most complex work of her career.

Karen’s life and work illuminate both the golden age of the American craft movement and the ethical, aesthetic, and living choices that all craftspeople face today.

Editor's note: Here are some reviews so far,

Reviews

"Filled with high-quality images spanning 60 years of [Karnes's] work. After reading the book, you will understand why she is commonly referred to as the 'grandmother of American ceramics.'"
--AmericanStyle

"There are too few books that treat pottery as seriously as other art forms; too few that pay sufficient tribute to the achievements of women artists; and too few that situate great art within a rich biographical context. This finely textured book does all three, providing in-depth analysis not only of Karnes's pots and sculpture, but also of the life of the fascinating person who made them."
--Glenn Adamson, Deputy Head of Research and Head of Graduate Studies, Victoria and Albert Museum

"Mark Shapiro has assembled a stellar cast of essayists to explore the intriguing life and work of potter Karen Karnes. They write with a grace, clarity, and reverence befitting this maker of sublime yet curiously humble clay masterpieces."
--Mark Hewitt, potter and co-author of The Potters Eye: Art and Tradition in North Carolina Pottery

"A great book about one of the important potters of our time. Seven artists, critics, historians, and friends, followed by Karen's own observations, document her life and work. Central, analytical, and factual, it is a fascinating story of creativity and dedication. Inspiring and long overdue, it is important reading for all artists."
--Warren MacKenzie, potter

From Where I Sit

Here's a quick view of some of the pots I've painted for the upcoming firing. I will try to keep you informed of the other pots I've painted as well as some source images from one of my favorite pottery books before the holiday break!

But for now it's lunchtime and then more brush play!

Questions? Leave a comment! Thanks.

Full Moon Rising

Pots & Chores

I finally finished my pots yesterday after slacking with other things and I needed a little warm up to my brushwork ahead and
painted a bunch of invitations to the studio tour coming up on December 3, 4, 5! Are you on my mailing list? [sign up here]

I also cut some wood that is too big/wide to stoke in the wood kiln, but makes nice heat for the house and studio. Nothing is wasted here! Unfortunately this makes for a lot of various pile of wood around the kiln yard. But I developed a pretty quick way of cutting and stacking.


I'll be deco-rotating the pots for the next few day until I haul them over the hill to load with Courtney next week. I will send images of some of the motifs that emerge from the session.


Have a great weekend.

Yunomi

for the 2011 Akar Yunomi Invitational

The upcoming firing is probably the last wood firing I'll do before the deadline for the spring show in Iowa City, so here are a few hopefuls.

This is from the AKAR web site:

3/25/2011 - 4/4/2011
2011 Yunomi Invitational
(ONLINE ONLY)
~200 potters,
5 Yunomis each

- Posted using BlogPress from my uNomi

Coffee Break vol. #30

Bailey's Peak, aka the Peak, is always the focal point when I go in my walks around the field with Jack. Today I took this beautiful Courtney mug with me! It came from the firing last month that Courtney and I shared and has become a regular in my coffee break rotation. The handle fits my hand very well and the size is just right for an afternoon jolt-o-joe. Although you can't see it from this picture it has a nice liner glaze. I think it might be called salt white or white salt. The white glaze is a good way to tell whether the coffee is brewed strong enough. If I can see through the coffee to the glaze I might as well toss it out 'cause if I wanted tea I'd brew a pot of Earl Grey!

By this time next week Courtney and I will have loaded the kiln at her place and we'll be taking the holiday with family and friends. We'll return to fire the kiln on cyber Monday!

Back to work...



[ post posting note: here's another shot of CM's mug showing more detail in the glaze, etc! as always, you can click the pic to get a closer look]