Porcelain to the people!


































Read all about and buy Matt & Dave's Clay here


I orderd some of 'the coup' earlier this week and it just arrived!!  Matt was really fast to respond to my questions, and really nice!  So, what they're sayin' is they have an easier, more workable, MID-Fire porcelain!  Sign me up?  Perfect timing; I've been fantasizing about really moving to porcelain and wanting to find a mid-fire.  Looks like I have; I am excited to see how it performs.

At the very least; check out Matt & Dave's Blog Slipcast - it's all ceramics - all the time! 

The Bedlam of Beefy












Check out the Bedlam of Beefy; found on one of my far flung web safari's.  It fast became a daily read...

Uncle Beefy came by We Swim with the Fishes and found something he liked!  Cheers, love the Uncle Beefy!

a big thank you back for the mention.  big thank you, seriously!

Can we talk about Susannah Israel







I admire her work so much, I find it almost formidable.  She is definitely one of the major influences for my venturing into sculpture work at all.  I attended a 'talk' Susannah did at Ruby's Clay Studio in San Francisco a few years ago.  I was so impressed with her approach, philosophy, ease and confidence in working.  She is so sure of where she is going with her pieces and their underlying stories and themes.  And she is a masterful at working loose & fast.   I admit I'm intimidated, but look forward to any time I can spend learning every little thing she is willing to teach me.


Clay Sculpture Workshop in West Petaluma
Saturday & Sunday, March 20 - 21, 2010

$250 for the two day workshop includes lunch
Reservations and Information:
katehanna7@yahoo.com 707-765-2802

effective techniques for expressive sculpting open to all skill levels
I talked with Kathleen and they are thinking about having 10 - 12 attend. 

Molly Hatch Workshop at Fourth&Clay





My pals over at Fourth&Clay are hosting a workshop with Molly Hatch!

You might not want to miss this one.

In case you haven't heard; Fourth&Clay is home to Christa Assad, Rae Dunn & Josie Jurczenia - all fabulous ceramic talents! 

Anat Shiftan










































































I am loving Anat Shiftan's pieces.  Maybe better described as collections.  There is ambivalance and tension in her composition of pieces balancing off a very rooted base.  It's almost as if you're watching growth in nature happening before your eyes.

and...

a good article on Howard Zinn.

do something good for yourself; read some Zinn.

Holden Caulfield would like to have a word...











"Salinger drew from Sherwood Anderson, Isak Dinesen, F. Scott Fitzgerald and especially Ring Lardner, whose wise-guy voice you hear chiming in the snappy banalities and sometimes desperate patter spoken by Salinger's characters, a tone that found its way years later into the neurotic chatter of Woody Allen's New Yorkers. But Salinger bent it all into something new, a tone that drew from the secular and the religious, the worldly and the otherworldly, the ecstatic and the unconsolable. It's customary to assume that the seven Glass children — the Glass family, an intricate hybrid of showbiz and spirituality, was his other enduring creation — make up a kind of group portrait of Salinger, each of them a reflection of his different dimensions: the writer and the actor, the searcher and the researcher, the spiritual adept and the pratfalling schmuck. That may very well be true. He made sure we could never be sure. Holden Caulfield says, "Don't ever tell anybody anything." That's one time you know it's Salinger talking"



article from TIME

old friends


































I have BAD ASS friends!

My new 'Old Friends' slippers
Almost as great as my old greg tshirt.

almost.
Thanks guys!!! 

more balls than most


















































































































from the Contemporist:  New Zealand designer Fletcher Vaughan has shared some photos with us of the Stratospheric sculpture he created for the Brick Bay Sculpture Trail in Matakana, New Zealand.  link to post

Contemporist website
Fletcher Vaughan's website




love the balls, love that it lights up, goddamn LOVE New Zealand! 

Conor Wilson
















































Conor Wilson website
Conor Wilson Blog


Sexy!  but it's sexiness isn't dominating the design; worth checking out more deeply

:)  happy monday !

Ann Roberts

































































































Meteora, by Ann Roberts more about her here.

shades of blues and greens

















right now, all over color themes - my inspiration superhighways.



I wanted to give you more greys today - but, didn't.  So, enjoy the deeply satisfying feeling of these greens & blues.

the cool grey city of love




Tho I die on a distant strand,
And they give me a grave in that land,
Yet carry me back to my own city!
Carry me back to her grace and pity!
For I think I could not rest
Afar from her mighty breast.
She is fairer than others are
Whom they sing the beauty of.
Her heart is a song and a star—
My cool, grey city of love.


Tho they tear the rose from her brow,
To her is ever my vow;
Ever to her I give my duty—
First in rapture and first in beauty,
Wayward, passionate, brave,
Glad of the life God gave.
The sea-winds are her kiss,
And the sea-gull is her dove;
Cleanly and strong she is—
My cool, grey city of love.


The winds of the Future wait
At the iron walls of her Gate,
And the western ocean breaks in thunder,
And the western stars go slowly under,
And her gaze is ever West
In the dream of her young unrest.
Her sea is a voice that calls,
And her star a voice above,
And her wind a voice on her walls—
My cool, grey city of love.


Tho they stay her feet at the dance,
In her is the far romance.
Under the rain of winter falling,
Vine and rose will await recalling.
Tho the dark be cold and blind,
Yet her sea-fog’s touch is kind,
And her mightier caress
Is joy and the pain thereof;
And great is thy tenderness,
O cool, grey city of love!

(San Francisco)
George Sterling (1869–1926)



Grisaille



















beauty and elegance in the warm tones of grey