Chapter 6 clay work of 2019

And that's about all...except I could look through all this year's blogs.  Nah.  These are what I thought would be worth showing you.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a great holiday!

Yet another generation...

My granddaughter Caroline, has just been working in clay in her high school art class!
Yay, another one gets the bug!

The work that wasn't

 I started a new mandala form the other day, and the concentric rings aren't pleasing yet, so I haven't tried to design anything on it.  I may just chuck it back in the bucket.

 On the same day I started this one, which needs to have more carving on the mountains, and some texturing as well.  I should have worked on it today.  But life interfered.

The 5 piece mandala is almost dry, but not quite.  Several of the pieces seem bowed up in the middle, which is the opposite of what I expected.  We shal see how it fires.

Life's interference was strange. Saturday I had all these mandalas to work on, but my hands were kind of jittery. I had trouble breathing so used my inhaler. Maybe asthma? But still didn't feel right. Then I noticed my face felt hot, and was red and flushed.  That meant the sun block I'd put on (for the first time this year) was causing some irritation.  I decided it was an allergic type reaction, tried washing it off with water and a napkin.  I ended up putting everything away and going home where I could do hot water and soap removal.  My face still was flushed for another coupe of hours.  This was the same sunblock I used last year. I threw it out.  I never went for the walk I had hoped to, and the sun went behind clouds most of the afternoon, as if she were sorry I'd not gone walking in her sunbeams.

Back in clay...sort of

I started with hand building, using slabs to create 3 trees (here waiting to be bisque fired).

Right behind them are 3 small cups, which I threw on the hump on the wheel...meaning one lump of clay which was centered, throw one cup, the first cup cut off with a wire, then another cup thrown, cut off, etc.

After driving to Asheville through stormy rain and wind, the sun came out.  Here the window of my allergist's office shows how rain hit it by all the wet drops remaining, but the sun and blue sky show the storm had passed over (for a while at least.)

Our weather has kept us wondering what's going to happen next all week long.  Spring and winter are certainly in a struggle around here.

Today's quote:


“In the woods, we return to reason and faith… Standing on the bare ground – my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me…”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 1836