turquoise!

i adore this new glaze. 

i forget the real name, but it is turquoise wonderful to me .... and did well highlighting the textures i love so much .... i have a quartish jar of it and had to brush on three coats, front and back .... so i need to sort out if i can buy it by the gallon .... or the five gallon ... or whatever amount those massive buckets of glaze are.... so here are three platters in new turquoise.

red! with specks!

hey!

red glaze!! with specks.

it is a crystalline glaze. while i was glazing them, andy saw them and said, what are all those chunks? .... and those were the crystals .... that then awesomely melt into the glaze .... 

i think this looks awesome on the bowls (they are small, see last post) ..... but not as super on the textured plates. it's not terrible on the texture, but i think the crystals obscure some of the texture .... 

still learning. i like that.

happy bowls ....

i pulled four happy bowls out of the kiln this morning .... 

so on my kiln/glazing learning curve, i've at least found an excellent clear glaze that i love..... 

on the wheel throwing learning curve, i'm still WAY at the beginning. but happy here. i'm just practicing small to improve my technique. i can throw bigger, but they aren't as technically proficient ... so i'm upping my proficiency small this week ..... 

i'll probably make big here and there cause its fun, but in my head, i'm going for higher quality (of which these are fine but not FINE)

ioh

 interfaith outreach house .... its transitional housing for folks who need a hand up .... help making it from homelessness, or near homelessness .... its a two year living arrangement in safe apartments where the family commits to working, saving, life skill classes and much more ... my women's group at church helped in the turnover of one of these apartments this go round ... a family graduated and moved on .... and my pals reset the apartment with bedding and kitchen gear and the whole shebang you'd need if you were moving your family into a new apartment ..... and .... i made this painting for the wall ... mixed media acrylic collage ....

this is the back of the painting .... likely the new owner of the painting won't know what the back of the painting says until she moves into her new home in two years.

8 balls of clay

i'm not an excellent potter on the wheel .... i've done it sporadically in my life .... and was pretty good .....and now i'm trying to get back to pretty good .... 

so, no surprise that i'm having trouble .... but the funny thing is, most of my trouble is gravity ... hence, this bowl, drying upside down so that its rim doesn't flip down .... not sure it'll make it to someone's kitchen, but, i'm trying! 

 i made 8 balls of clay ... each a pound and a half ..... five were decent bowls, one was a half sized bowl cause i wrecked it, trimmed it, and saved it... one was that upside down one above .... and one was a pile of mush that's now been seasoned with a few curse words .... i didn't feel the curse words really, they just slipped out. 

happy, happy, joy, joy

so now my pottery studio is up an running.... 

i've done quite a bit of hand building ... quite a bit of wheel throwing .... 

i'm still most drawn to texture, text and color..... 

.... and now i get to discover the joy of choosing my glazes from an infinite variety! oh joy! happy, happy, joy, joy! 

happy bowls

here i am in my NEW pottery studio .... throwing my first pot .... it's a bowl actually ... those empty shelves are striking to me ... what am i going to put on them? i shouldn't have worn my favorite orange shoes ... they got clay all over them .... 

 and here is the first bowl on my new to me wheel in my brand new pottery studio.... i actually made four happy bowls ... a little bit like bob ross, the painter, and his happy trees ... i've started a happy bowl series. ta da!

blue

 i'm not sure i've even announced to the world of blog that my hair is blue. it is. blue highlights. because i can. when i had to get new glasses, i got them to match my hair. that's what you're supposed to do, right?

altered book

at my current long term sub job, i am SO SO SO SO SO lucky that i get to do art with high school kids .... they work on an altered book in their free time ... so i do too.

i heart andy warhol

 i went to the andy warhol museum in pittsburgh .... that's where he was born ... the museum was excellent ... a good smattering of history ...lots about him .... and the evolution of his art ...

 these giant bold flowers have always been favorites of mine .... though i also love the typical pop art pieces of commercial art ... like the soup cans and brillo and such ....

 there were impressive amounts of portraits .... there were about a dozen life sized portraits of elvis ... he took up a whole wall of a gallery ....

 the silver cloud room was my favorite ... cause sophie and i played with the clouds .... i always love the idea of the viewer interacting/becoming the art .... the joy of people bouncing silver pillows of air off the ceiling was  just what andy warhol wanted, i think ....

 above, sophie has captured a silver cloud ...

and here's another i appreciate ... venus ... taken from art history and made into andy warhol's .... i didn't copy a.w. on purpose, but this is how i feel about mona lisa ... that i take her and make her mine sometimes ... 

and last .... but out of order, because it was the first pic i took in the museum ... he started his art career in advertising .... and drew ordinary things in gorgeous ways .... like bathtubs. ... 

college visit

 i took little.e.beck.artist (who is no longer little.at.all. buy why change blog continuity now?) to pennsylvania .... in this pic, specifically to carnegie mellon university .... as we start to help her sort out what college she might go to. this art alone made me think it was the right school for ME:

walking to the sky by jonathon borofsky ... at carnegie mellon university .... on a beautiful day just an hour or so before it started snowing on us!

together

together, 12x12 mixed media, vintage papers and acrylics on canvas board. NFS

this was a valentine's gift for my husband. that's us. he's the skinny one. i love him. when we sit on the couch, i'm always scooching closer just like that bird .... don't mind me while i get in your space.