Hard to believe, but I think I’m caught up and happy. Sorry but I had to Blog about it and I know with Holiday shopping and art making for all the upcoming shows, most of you are a bit envious. Without a heap of work needing to be welded up I was able to enjoy Art Coffee yesterday a bit longer than normal –the
pictures are of some of the artists who attended our gathering at Middle Way Café. We had a record turnout and a few new faces. Art Coffee is an informal gathering of independent artists who meet to share, Grinch or crow about all topics relating to life & art. A few of the highlights were announcing all the First Friday openings last night including the new Upstairs Studio grand opening. Spearheaded by my friend and painter, Katie Sevigny (who has endless energy and is also a partner in Fiddlehead Gallery) the new Upstairs Studio is a large upstairs space at 416 G Street featuring the work of 10 local artists who have their working studio spaces with a large common gallery area that is totally HIP and has Katie’s touch written all over it! The GAGA’s (Garage
Art Girls Alliance) Linda Warford passed around beautiful post card mailers and announced her group had an art opening and reception at Snow City Café. Half Moon Creek Gallery –my Gallery of choice, celebrated their 7th anniversary last night with plenty of new works and a celebration at 510 W. Tudor. Another friend, Mary Hertert shared her new location for Color Creek Fiber Art at the corner of 36th and Arctic. I congratulated her on her “Wasp Bride” being accepted in the Earth Fire & Fiber Exhibit at the Museum! My footloose and fancy
-free schedule yesterday allowed me to visit her in her new space and get fired up about doing some felting –which is all Marjorie’s fault. All pretty cool and I’ll Blog about that next week after I take some pictures and get my laptop back…
With the studio table cleared of metal sculptures, I’ve finally had some brain space for clay. There’s been too long of a break since my last firing and my supplies are low. I did pull out these buckets of glaze I bought off of Cr@igs list for only $30. Short story long is that the person who was selling the glaze was a friend of a friend who was being transferred and the selling friend had no idea what cone temp the glazes were and needed the buckets out of her garage. She didn’t really even know what the glazes were used for… the other problem was I felt I had to purchase the buckets of glaze after the friend of a friend’s, DAD actually drove them off of the Air Force base and met me at the front gate (after Daddy-O and I had an hour wait) to show them to me because I couldn’t get on Base to take a look at them… Sooooo, not to have them go to waste, my thought was to just use some of my test tiles (in the photo above) I made and fire the glazes at maybe a ^04?? Some of the names on the buckets are Satin Wh
ite, Smokey Mt. Mist, Sea Spray, Galaxy, Autumn Frost, Antique Iron, Blue Monday, Eggshell, Calico and Paprika -any of these sound familiar to anyone? I hate to NOT use them if I can figure out what cone they are as I’m currently glaze poor. BTW, I should admit that I really dislike glazing! My larger clay goal is to settle on ONE type of stoneware(?) clay, maybe something tan/gold/brownish with a bit of grog for my slab work and sculptures -any suggestions? I don't do any wheel throwing and I have two large electric kilns that have an electronic controller. I need to start fireing higher than ^04-05 and also know that I need to start using larger quantities of glaze so I can DIP and start mixing my own instead of the high priced commercial quart sizes I've been buying. What do my potter friends think?
