happy new year!

 I was excited to greet the morning and 2013.  Excited to start thinking and acting creatively.  Coffee made, we built a gingerbread house (why not? we missed the annual party and had the kit in the kitchen).

My favorite annual sketchbook is back-ordered and won't arrive for some weeks, so I razored out the unused pages from this year's book to begin my daily drawings.  This green ladyslipper orchid was my first subject.  I want to be less rigid this year (in my drawings and in my life), which is difficult for me.  I'm a rule follower and I like for things to be predictable.  If 2012 taught me one thing, it was that my preferences don't always work out for me so well.  So I'll try to go with the flow a little more.

The holiday season was one of my best for sales.  It was difficult personally because of so much loss.  I scaled back and made things more quiet than usual.  I set a firm deadline for stopping work and stuck by it.  Didn't bake a single holiday treat (until I made baguette the day after Christmas) but that worked this year.  Less pressure, fewer events.  More sitting and knitting and resting.

Now I'm ready (I think) to begin again.  One of my favorite gifts was a huge 11x13 600 page sketchbook from Gary.  It is enormous.  A little intimidating.  Today it is at the kitchen table, but it will probably live in the studio.  I'd love to make it my daily sketchbook, but it's not so portable, and I like to have the daily sketches all in one single volume.  I decided, after reading a pottery magazine one night, that I wanted to really explore pitchers this year.  I've always loved them- for pouring, serving, pressing into use as vases, just admiring their heft.  My plan is to sketch out an idea, throw and alter or hand-build a pitcher and really work with the form each week.  One pitcher for each week of the year, sketches for form and surface design, an unfired vessel each week, and then four finished glazed pieces each month, resulting in a body of 52 pitchers, large and small.  Knowing some will be things I want to keep forever, some I'll hate, some will crack and break.  I want this to be process-oriented, less product oriented (but you know I want good product, too!).

Happy New Year's, friends. Thanks for reading along with me.

wound down

The last week of my work year, Dec 9-15, was so busy that this week I've done not much more than sit, knit, wrap packages, and breathe.  I have not baked a single holiday treat.  Oh well.

I am so pleased and grateful for my holiday sales.  I had three sets of staff gifts and so many friends (and their husbands!) came to me for gifts.  I'm so grateful.

I'm looking forward to a tiny bit of travel, a lot of knitting, some crane folding, and champagne for the rest of the year.  Keeping the holidays simple, minimal, sincere.

Merry Christmas, y'all.

CASH MOB

 

You've heard of flash mobs, and cash mobs might also be on your radar, but today's Memphis Cash Mob is going to be BIG!  About 20 women who are a part of my Creative Collective group (an all-female, all creative entrepreneurial incubator and cheerleading group of sorts) are setting out their wares at Literacy Mid South, 902 South Cooper, in Memphis TODAY from 2-4.  Shannon Dixon, one of our members, created this organization to strengthen small businesses and foster community in Memphis.  This event will be short and sweet (much like Shannon), and 10% of all proceeds go back to Literacy Mid South, which services adults and children and trains tutors to help our community become more literate.  If you're in town, this is my last big sale of the season. 

good morning

December has come and I feel as if I am simultaneously gearing up for my last big burst and winding down, ready to wrap everything up for the year.  I am still working and throwing and glazing and shipping every day until Dec. 15 (actually, I'll stop throwing by Wednesday of this week to focus on the finishing work), then I'll turn my focus to my family and tucking my business things to bed for 2012.  

 

I have one last sale event coming up next Sunday, December 9, at Literacy MidSouth from 2-4 pm.  Late this summer I created a group for creative female entrepreneurs in the Memphis area to explore some of our business and personal issues and learn how to grow, reshape, expand our businesses by learning from each others' experiences.  It is more virtual than real-time, although we do meet.  I struggled through growing my business- especially with taxes and licensing- mostly by myself.  When several women asked me to informally mentor them as they grew into their businesses, I thought about other "hive" organizations like these in other areas.  Since its inception, the group has taken on a life of its own and I've taken my hands off the reins.  This event, a "cash mob" is one that one of our members created to showcase independent retailers in Memphis, and this one is for our group.   I'm super excited about it, and about the group.  I think the group may be the best thing I've done this year.

These ornaments, by the way, are available locally and I have a few online in the shop.  They're simple unglazed porcelain.  I'll have some at the cash mob and at the Trolley Stop Market.

I hope to be back in this space more in 2013, at least once more this year.  Happy holiday season, friends.

anatomy study

I picked these bees up from the "bee graveyard" in front of my hive after watching the golden colored bees (on the left) trying to get into the hive (it's robbing season) and being battled down by my darker ladies (to the right).  I'm still working in my daily sketchbook and from time to time go and get the dead bees (their adult lifespan is 30-60+ days, and if you notice dead bees with tattered wings, they've flown themselves to death) to better understand and render them in my drawings and on my pottery.  I was amazed by the huge orange pollen baskets on the top bee.  They're almost florescent.   My bees are Russian hybrid bees, and it's interesting how their abdomen seems to be a completely different shape than these golden (Italian?) bees.

Last week I went to trim some bowls that I'd planned to turn into berry bowls, but they were too dry.  They became bee bowls instead, with a bright aqua interior.  I have plans to make more bee mugs before Christmas, too.

papatya

 

Three weeks ago today one of my closest friends died.  It was sudden, tragic, unforseen, preventable.  There has been so much blame and sorrow and support and anguish and for the first time I'm really understanding that you can't just get up and move on.  I've always known that death and loss is something you get used to, over time, but not over.

After she died, I began making these origami-esque cranes out of porcelain.  I gave two to her mother and sister, one to her mother in law.  I kept one.  I folded dozens out of paper the first week after her death, and will fold more.  We've all heard the story of the thousand cranes and how they represent hopes for peace.  My cranes give me a bit of hope- hope to make more, hope to make them better, hope to make them a memorial somehow, but I don't yet know how.  I don't believe that I will ever sell these- they're too close, especially right now. 

_____

Mourning aside, I still have 3 more holiday sales between Thanksgiving and December 9.  I am still working and am trying to make time to update my etsy shop and restock my local vendors.  My husband had a large birthday party last weekend and my son's 9th birthday is Monday.  Life marches on.  I'm going to be pretty quiet here, perfunctory at best, but I'll post notices of the events and work I'll have for them as they come.

Thanks for reading.

Preview

All of my work is finished- ready to be dusted off and priced.  Debi and I will be ready with pottery and wooly Sweaterlove goods Friday from 5:30-9, Saturday 10-5:30.
719 Dickinson St, Memphis TN, 38107.