romania ....

i have not been to romania ... but my twins have. and girl.beck.artist bought me a romanian art history book..... so that i can use the pages in my collages. i love that. 

 they were in romania for a habitat for humanity build .... worked on three houses there .... had an amazing time .... learned new things in a new place ... vazut .... decorului ... dezvelli ... cand .... do you know anything about romania?

angels....

raku angels.... rick's turquoise is my favorite glaze i think... but i love them all.

i save these angels to give away on special occasions .... mostly to friends who need an angel present ... cause angel presents can make you feel better when things aren't going so great.

another angel post ....

 look! the raku firing is done .... so the hood has been lifted and everything is FIRE hot .... and glowing ...

i'm a bit intimidated by the whole fiery hotness of the raku firing. the kiln goes up to 1000 degrees or something insane. i'm not in charge of the firing, so i'm not certain .. but i'm pretty sure it is THAT hot.

 the pictures above and below are of my bins that i put the angels in after the raku fire. you need a closed (closable) container full of combustible material ... i used newspaper ... ripped up into a nest.... the angels were put onto the paper and the newspaper instantly caught fire ..... i let it flame a bit and then put the lid on .... so that all sorts of chemical reactions could go on in the heat and fire .....

 the picture below, taken through a smoky, raku haze is two of the three containers i used for my five angels ....

red hot angels ....

 two of my angels lost their halos ... alas, i think they are still angelic ... i hope to add halos later ... some metal or other probably .... a washer perhaps? or fancy, twisty wire ... that's what i did last time i lost a halo ....

 this is the gas raku kiln at the spruill center .... above, you can see the one that is lowered and has my angels inside .... and the one above is lifted up .... you put the pottery on the shelf and then lower the canister/hood/cover ... then gas on and fire up high ....

this last picture is through the peep hole on the top of the kiln .... the inside is aflame ... so hot it is green and blue and everything is glowing ....

when angel wings look like mustaches

i know they look like mustaches ... but they aren't .... you can see that one white card that was the template for the wings ... i just flipped it to make it a double....

 so i made five mustache winged angles .... i tried to give them movement ... not standing quite upright ... with a bit of a tilt to their bodies ....

 so they have some shimmy ... some lean ... some bounce in their step.... maybe even they are dancing angels ....

 the hope is that they make it through the firing without losing wings or heads or halos ....

glazing day at pottery .... five platters ....

blog-o-rama .... playing catch up ....

this is a large bowl... slab rolled pieces .. highly textured .. with three different alphabets, some puzzle bits ... and other favorites ... as well as other usuals... like my index figure.

i did the glaze on this differently ... i underglazed with turquoise.. then wiped it ... then did a blue glaze ... also wiped ... and then clear glazed .... so four firings. a bit excessive... but looking for just right can be obsessive ....

as of this writing, this bowl (dishwasher, oven, microwave safe) has no home to call its own .... just waiting for the perfect reason to gift it ....

new years resolutions.

i was at a dinner party last friday night. 5 couples. one guy said, so.... .who has a  resolution for the new year .... and no one said anything .... it was weird ... and finally said ... oh come on people! none of you have a resolution? i have about 12 ... plenty to share! how can you NOT have a resolution, a plan, a dream, a goal? .... and they all kinda laughed at me ... and quizzed me .... why did i have so many? it was just more to not work out! ... and i explained that if their resolutions weren't working out, they were doing them wrong!! make it something you WANT badly enough to actually do it!  and then i tossed out that last year i had read 87 books. 87. which was about 20 times more than the table's average!  ..... i just said that my resolution was to read every day and as many books as possible ... if it had been 63 books, would they have been unimpressed? no ... that still would have been fine ... if it had been 112? i think it would have been the same surprise as 87 was.  the point is, that aiming for a big target, even if you don't hit it, you did a lot of work to get close .... like, if your goal was to lose 90 pound and you lost 95, was that a fail? don't think so.

in 2011, when i first started keeping track on this blog, i read 100 books

2012, i read 103....

2013, i read ONLY 76 ... but how big is that? 76 books in a year is more than one a week.

in 2014, i read 87 .....

in 2015, so far i've read one. i'm right on track for a big year of reading again.

but other resolutions?

last year i did art more than 100 times (professional)

last year i worked out more than 200 times (physical fitness/health)

last year i went out to lunch more than 50 times with girlfriends (emotional well being) 

last year i weaned myself off artificial sweeteners ....no diet coke since april .... (nutrition)

so this year ... 

i have the books again ... 

and i have some exercise goals .... 

and i have a new one. it's hard and horrid and i know i need to do it and i want to do it ...... 

and it is a super traditional new years resolution that usually fails!! .... i am going to clean and organize my house .... i am going to touch every single thing in my house ... in every drawer, closet, cupboard, shelf ... everything, everywhere ... i am tossing things as fast as i can ... or i hope to..... i 've started in my kitchen/dining room/living room. all sorts of cabinets have been emptied, cleaned, restored .... i've not donated anything yet, but have a big pile ... and threw a bunch away .... 

and here's the junk drawer from the kitchen ... not junky at all ... the label has been in there for ages ... just generally hidden by mounds of stuff.....

but that wasn't too hard .... the hard will be the basement ... the finished basement that i call my studio ... and the unfinished (how did we let it get like that?) part .... THOSE will be hard .... crazy hard. but based on my new years resolution track record, i've got this.

first resolution post of the year.

i am an EXCELLENT new years resolution maker. 

i only make ones i really, really, really want to work on.

i also make ones that are big and vast and maybe a bit ambiguous ... so that even if you don't make it, you do something awesome .... 

who is this quote by? shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land amidst the stars .... 

anyway ...that's my theory.

but this year, i'm going outside my usual box of goals and dreams and resolutions ... 

and doing the most oft failed resolution (besides from stop smoking ... which would be easy for me since i don't) ....organize! clean! purge! tidy up, tessie! 

so this is the impetus for my resolution ... just how badly i've let my studio go ...

 this is a look in and to the right ...

 and this is a look in to the left:

but i'm not worried ... in fact ... i'm going for touching every single thing in my whole house this year .... clearing it out ... organizing ... tidying .... getting rid of extras and too much and unused and unloved .... whew. at least i have a year to show you the after pics! 

the storied life of aj fikry ... book review

of the 87 books i read in 2014, the storied life of aj fikry was one of my very favorites.

the book was everything i love in a novel ..... a super quirky main character with an optimistic outlook ..... that character finding himself and simultaneously finding joy unexpectedly..... sometimes you read a book and all the characters are morally reprehensible ( donna tartt's, the secret history) or you just want them to pull themselves together and save themselves (like lots of characters in oprah's first many book club choices) .... or the book is so full of despair that you only finish it for the happy ending that doesn't happen (gap creek, by robert morgan)...... but aj fikry and most of the people he surrounds himself with are lovely people. aj gets dealt bad cards but makes a grand comeback .... all while living on an island (that i'd love to visit even though it is fictional) and owning a book store .... i think the book store story element was my favorite part ... lots of author name dropping and novel name dropping and literary metaphors .... this book is a about a bookseller and a bookstore and well written for book lovers.

pottery for the new year.

elizabeth, what do you do?

oh, i am an artist, i say.... 

what sort of work do you do?

i do mixed media collage primarily, i like using oddball bits and pieces of paper... from afar i have fairly traditional compositions, but up close, there are secrets hidden in the layers.... lately i've been doing a fair bit of drawing, mandalas, zentangles, calligraphy .... i fear that it is mostly because my studio has gotten to be such a state that i am shunning it by choosing to draw in the family room at the coffee table or at my workstation (otherwise known as the bar in the kitchen) ..... i also do pottery, but that's just a hobby.

i always down play pottery. i sell my canvases. i give away my pottery. and that's ok, i guess .... but i'm not sure why i do it.... some of my pottery is pretty darn good ... some of my pottery is awesome even.

last  semester, in the pottery class i take, i worked on this ....

in my head these are flowers. i know that's weird, cause they are houses, right? but each fat house has a spot at the bottom for me to put a stem ... i'm planting them. i think. this is where my pottery intersects with my painting, cause those houses sure look like my collage houses, right?

pottery class starts back up in just a week or so .... and i'll be back to making fat house flowers, i think ... and if my resolution for art works out, i'll have a couple canvases started before that too.... 

fat house flowers ... the marketing department might need to work on that .... 

happy new year ... and they all lived happily ever after.

happy new year.
i'm bringing the blog back to life this year.
in 2007 and 2008, my art PEAK of effort, production and sales, i had more than 200 blog posts ... cause i had a lot to blog about ...
2009, 10, 11 ... i blogged more than 100 times each of those years.....
and in the last three years, fewer than 100 times each year.

my priorities have changed here and there ... i was doing less art, so having less to blog about ....
but this blog is (one of) my new year's resolutions .... it will get me writing more (i love writing) ... it will get me painting more (i love painting) so that i have something to write about .... and it will get me dreaming more (i love dreaming) because if you put your dreams down in print you are much more likely to work on making dreams come true ....

so ...
i have declutter resolutions (less stuff in my house ... especially my art studio)
i have health resolutions (helps that i'm a fitbit addict)
i have nutrition resolutions (eat more cookies .... actually, i'm still sorting this one out)
i have art resolutions (paint more, draw more, be more creative more often)
i have writing resolutions (i wrote a poem on jan. 1! )
i have a blog resolutions (get back on that horse)
i have computer/photos resolutions (this is the hardest one)
and i have adventure/travel/dream resolutions ....

and on we go ....

this 12 by 12 canvas was the last one of 2014 sent out into the world .... a friend is gifting it as wedding present .....
who doesn't want to live happily ever after?