2/25 Index

Here is this week's top 10 based on largest percentage change of followers since last week.  [for the complete list click here. ]

I am still adding pages as I have time.

I am getting some awesome help from my database expert/potter friend, Scott Williamson of Butterfly Bend Pottery to fine tune this index and expedite the tedium of data entry.

If you would like to add your Facebook Business Page leave the FB URL in a comment below.

I also hope you find new artists through this index and this list is something of value to you.

Thanks!

Michael

Directions: Each Page Box is scrollable and if you click on posts within these boxes you will be transported to the FB Page. You don't have to be logged onto FB unless you want to comment or like pages.

Movers and Shakers

Here is this week's FB Ceramic Index. For this post, I've sorted the list to reflect the fastest growing pages from the last two weeks. If you would like to see the complete (to date) list click here. If you are interested in looking at the artist's pages, you can click on their names to be magically transported to their FB sites.

Of the current roster of ceramic Facebook Pages, these artists saw the biggest positive change in their following in the last 2 weeks. It could have been from active posting and/or sharing, or an invitation campaign. Anyway, I hope you discover some artists that you weren't aware of and find this information useful!

Tony Clennell: Brought home friends

Heartfelt blogging at its best. Tony Clennell: Brought home friends

Looking Forward to Some Florida Heat

It has been a beautiful day that started with some ice skating on a NC mountain top and ended with an intriguing episode of our favorite soap from Masterpiece, (not to mention an earthquake in the hometown of  southern celadon, Edgefield, S.C!

Yet, it remains February and cold.

Ice and snow and cold winds blow.

But I have sights set for St Petersburg Florida and St. Pete Clay's Florida Heat Surface Extravaganza coming this week! I can't wait to work among some of my favorite potters and, of course, steal some of their tricks, for sure!


 maybe I will see some of you there, too?

Swirlin' and a Whirlin'

"Darling, down and down I go round and round I go
In a spin, I'm loving the spin I'm in"

I'm in a spin, for sure. But I don't know if I'm "loving" it.  I'm a little dizzy, and sleep deprived, to be honest. But I do like these swirl mugs that I made. Tomorrow I will load these in the salt kiln up at Penland for a good salting! Then it's off to Florida for some Heat!

Half Baked

pots and slip ready for this weeks painting and glazing

Tomorrow begins the clumsy transition between the wetness and sloppiness of shaping pots at the Shimpo to the dressing up with patterns of carefully painted wax resist brushwork. Pottery making is full of paradoxes and the dance between the impermanence of damp clay and the rock hardness of the fired pot usually has me standing with my back to the wall, waiting for the right song to inspire me to the dancefloor. Always a little shy and wallflowerish, I'm reluctant to let go of my slippery spinning world of forming for the whirling of the brush mark on the lovely beautiful pink bisque. I wonder why?

Ha!

Bisqueware stands somewhere between its ceramic puberty and its vitrified adulthood, always a little awkward, uncomfortable in this transitive state.  Impatient as a not-yet-old-enough teenager to drive.

This Week's FB Index

My work on the Facebook Clay Artists Index is taking a back seat to my work in the studio as I prep for a firing later this week but I wanted to offer you this group of pages for this week's Index. The complete list is growing and includes almost 300 artists and hopefully I will be able to configure a page with all of them soon. I know there are so many more out there that haven't been added to the Index yet, sorry. This is becoming bigger than I anticipated. So, thanks for your patience.

I hope you can check out these artist's pages and I'll have another group for you next week!

Directions: you can scroll down in each individual box to see posts in reverse chronology. If you want to go directly to the FB page to comment or like,  just click on the post.

Hoops

All the while pots wait for handles, feet, and lids. Today I will balance my time between the throwing at the wheel and chasing plastic around the table. Also looking forward to Lillian's basketball game this afternoon. Hoops and jumping through hoops. Hope you are having a great weekend!

In The Beginning: Some Pottery Bloggery Firsts

Feeling nostalgic after yesterday's blogiversary, I put this list together during my lunch break. It contains the blog posts from some of the early pottery blogs that I followed back in the early days and some that jumped on the blog-wagon in the years to follow. I couldn't find some blogs as they seem to have been discontinued and/or have been taken over by robots selling septic tanks and viagra. I'm sure I left some out, but if you can think of someone I forgot or am leaving out please leave that in a comment. I want to use this list in my NCECA talk. Thanks!

So here you go on your trip down memory lane!

Click on the potter's name to go to that post. The list is in order of the date of the first post.

Scott Cooper: Rare Earth March 6, 2001
Emily Murphy/Pottery Blog July 19, 2004
Ron Philbeck/Potter's Journal September 8, 2005
Judi Tavill October 1, 2005
Mary Anne Davis January 5, 2006
Anne Webb January 21, 2006
Jennifer Mecca April 6, 2006
Cynthia Guajardo April 28, 2006
Shannon Garson/Strange Fragments May 12, 2006
Diana Fayt/one black bird May 31, 2006
Gary Rith August 20, 2006
Whitney Smith/An Artist's Life October 3, 2006
Mel Robson/Feffakookan December 6, 2006
Rae Dunn December 21, 2006
Euan Craig January 24, 2007
Jeanette Manchester Harris January 27, 2007
Michael Kline February 6, 2007
Brandon Phillips February 16, 2007
Carole Epp April 15, 2007
Vicki Gill April 18, 2007
Christa Assad May 21, 2007
Scott Cooper: TW@SE June 10, 2007
Shane Mickey July 29, 2007
Kari Radasch August 6, 2007
Tony Clennell August 10, 2007
Elaine Spallone August 28, 2007
Joe Bennion Oct 15, 2007**
Ang Walford November 3, 2007
Lori Watts/Fine Mess December 8, 2007
Hannah McAndrew January 10, 2008
Margaret Brampton January 19, 2008
Kyle Houser/Homefry Sketchbook January 27, 2008
Doug Fitch January 29, 2008*
Paul Jessop February 7, 2008
Kristen Kieffer March 11, 2008
Keith Kreeger April 20, 2008
Tracey Broome May 5, 2008
Dan Finnegan May 28, 2008
Meredith Haywood/Whynot Pottery May 29, 2008
John Britt/Clay Club June 4, 2008
Bulldog Pottery June 6, 2008
Priscilla Mouritzen July 7, 2008
Hollis Engley August 15, 2008
Zygote Blum September 7, 2008
Michael Mahan September 18, 2008
Steven Colby October 18, 2008
Jim Gottuso/Sophia's Dad's Pots February 2, 2009

*(Doug's first blog appeared much earlier than this, but the archive of that web site doesn't exist, so this is the date of his second blog)

**(this is Joe's second blog, his first was eaten by an evil cyber nerd)

7 Year Itch

what the blog looked like in 2008 (courtesy of Rosti Eismont of The Studio Potter!)

Today is the anniversary/birthday of ye olde Sawdust and Dirt blog! My first blog post was 2/6/2007! You can read that first post here.

And my my! How times have changed!

But back in the day there weren't many potters taking the time to journal about their pottery, potters were late bloomers to the technology. I remember the excitement of reading Ron's adventures, which was a portal into an unseen world of pottery bloggery leading me to potters all over the place! But after a short while it seemed that the potter bloggery was all the rage! [Wasn't it? ;-)]

early blogroll screen shot

While there was scattered contempt in our field of the early adoption by potter bloggers, these early blogs opened the many doors and windows into the potter's work to the pottery community at large. As we became comfortable with the  technology of sharing through the blog, the community expanded with  the likes [no pun intended] of Facebook and later Instagram (among others) as that online community grew worldwide. Although joining the world of FB was slow in our field in those early days it eventually became a huge presence in our lives. and how we keep up with each other.

Because of the Facebook explosion and it's ever increasing community and functionality, my blogging slowed down and eventually I gave it up for a short time. FB just seemed to be easier and the I tried to reach a slightly wider audience of not only potters, but collectors as well. Eventually I came back to the blog because it was a more appropriate format for me to dive deeper into ideas. Besides, it was a better archive and easier to search.

Blogging is still, for me, a better format for writing, while Instagram and it's parent, Facebook are better visual storytelling. Today I maintain a Facebook presence, an Instagram stream, AND try to write on this blog occasionally. Although these communities sometimes seem like a hall of mirrors,  there are still folks who haven't adopted FB and IG, or have tried and dropped it.

Well, I'd love to write more about this subject, but my Shimpo Scream awaits me. I will be speaking at NCECA about social media next month and will be sharing more thoughts on where all of this is going for me, personally.

So for now, I wanted to thank all of you who read this blog and have supported me over the years. I especially want to thank Ron, Shane, Emily, Doug, Hannah, and all the others who inspired me to take the time to start a blog.

As the times and the technology changes, I think we will always have a hunger to be better at what we do and I think by taking the time to share what we do in whatever ways we can with each other, satisfies that hunger and helps to make our ceramic culture the best it can be.

And of course, thanks to all 577, 039 visitors to the blog (to date so far). Without your support I probably wouldn't be here today.

Onward!