Deadlines coming up for our "Facets of the Harbor" show in New Bedford

About two weeks ago, Kim Medeiros (The Barn Pottery in Pocasset) and I were offered a show in nearby New Bedford at Gallery 65 on William. It's a lovely and big cooperative gallery in a former hardware store right in the old fishing city's downtown. And it's only two blocks from the wonderful New Bedford Whaling Museum.
The show of pots was to be paired with photographs of the old port by John Robson. Could we show perhaps 20 with a "port" theme, asked the gallery's Nicole St. Pierre? Of course, we said. We've been making pots together for the past six months. I can throw big pots, Kim is a great thrower and decorator. Of course we can do that.
The problem - the show opens June 8, pots are due June 3. I got right on the big shallow bowls, smaller dinner plate-size bowls and tall jars. Let them dry a bit, then got them in my truck over to Kim's studio in Pocasset. There, the painstaking detail work happened. Stamps were conceived. What do we need? Ospreys? Flounder? Cod? Haddock? Horseshoe crabs? Swordfish? What the hell does a haddock look like, anyway? Find pictures of fishing trawlers, sailing schooners from a century ago, the old city skyline, sperm whales, bowhead whales, right whales, whaling ships, old copies of Moby Dick with those stunning woodcuts by Rockwell Kent. Googled photos zipped between Hatchville and Pocasset.
Kim has sgraffitoed herself right to the limit. She's just about done now. I have three of the big bowls here in my studio for putting in the bisque kiln tomorrow. I brought them very carefully back here in my truck today.
All of this, and we still have to glaze and fire the big pots, along with smaller cups and bowls that will be in the show. Oh, and we have two big pots due in July for a show on estuaries at the Falmouth Center for the Arts and the Waquoit Bay National Estuarial Reserve.
Here are some photos of the work in progress, the top two with Kim at work.

Upper Cape Cod Pottery Trail brochures just in!

Some months ago, a group of potters on the western end of Cape Cod decided that we ought to have our own brochure and map to guide those thousands of clay-lovers on this part of the Cape to our studios. After several meetings, planning, discussion, no arguments, brainstorming, etc., the brochure it out. And it's just what we were all hoping for.
A photo of each potter's work accompanies his or her listing, there's a good and usable map, as well as the QR code for the free arts app of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce. (Go ahead and download it for your next trip to Cape Cod.) And it looks pretty cool, too. Many thanks to everyone involved, particularly Tessa Morgan of Flying Pig Pottery in Woods Hole, who hooked us up with graphic artist Mary Sellner Orr of Orr Studio, who designed the brochure.

Chris Gustin kiln-opening today

I love seeing new pots come from a warm kiln. Pretty much any kiln, actually. But I really love seeing something like 2,000 pots come from Chris Gustin's three-chamber kiln in South Dartmouth, not far from here on the mainland.
Chris's large front anagama chamber and the two noborigama chambers behind it take about six days to fire to temperature. So it's a big crew that fires it just a few times a year. I've fired it, but not for some years. It's work, but there are great rewards.
And there is usually a crowd at the opening, given how many potters participate and given the chance for lovers of woodfired pottery to see new pots coming out. Kim Medeiros and I drove down this morning for a couple of hours to see the first pots.
Here are some photos: After the firebox door and grate are disassembled and the area swept, Chris gets in to inspect the pots in the front of the anagama chamber; the front stack, on the edge of the firebox; Steve Murphy, handing out pots; Arnie Zimmerman emerges with one of his sculptures; Chris's large jar from the front stack, in the adjacent field; Zimmerman with two of his sculptures; one of the back chambers before unloading; Chris's teabowls in his gallery.

For the past eight months or so I've been making these faceted bowls, cutting the coned clay and then opening up the cone into a bowl. The facets are torqued as I my hand pushes open the clay cone from the inside, the rims go wonky sometimes because of the uneven facets, sometimes the rims break and have to be patched. Ordinarily I wouldn't patch a standard bowl, but these faceted pieces are so misshapen that a patch just looks like one more accidental deformation.
And the bowls take the Shino glazes - and some others - very well. I often overlap two or three of my Shinos on them. And lately I've been adding pours of rutile, copper red, Temmoku, Nuka, even (gasp!) cobalt blue. Makes for lively bowls.
I've sold some of these over the past year, but the test will come in the next few months, as the customer base expands with the arrival of summer visitors to Cape Cod. We'll see.
Here are a few of the bowls from last week's firing. Top to bottom: Malcolm's orange trap Shino with ash celadon overlap; Kim's Genuine Rutile; rutile with Erin's Red; Orange Shino with cobalt, copper red and rutile pours; Orange Shino with cobalt, copper red and ash pours; crackled Orange Shino with rutile pour.

Spring must be here ...

I drove home from the coffee shop this sunny morning past my favorite farm stand. It's a little wooden cart that shows up this time of year at the end of a driveway near Falmouth High School. A Chinese family lives in the house and the mother - raised in southern China - grows vegetables there throughout the spring and summer. I use her beautiful fresh parsley all summer long. This time of year, with snow only a few weeks in the past, she's picking parsley, lovely small leeks, rhubarb and garlic chives. Most of what she grows is priced to sell - $1 a bunch for most of it, $2 for a half-dozen leeks.
Two nights ago we had stir-fried cod with garlic, ginger and her chopped garlic chives. Tonight it's frittata with her leeks and Trader Joe's artichokes. I love this time of year.
In the studio, it's mugs and vases today. My friend Anne Halpin was here to watch me pull handles. Made a few faceted vases and some shallow teabowls after getting all the mugs handled. More tomorrow.

Bigger jars for the top shelf

The next firing is probably a week away, with a bunch of mugs (and other pots) yet to be thrown in the next few days. Should have a group of the collaborative pots Kim Medeiros and I have been working on, as well as some tall jars from my own wheel.
Kim and I have worked in the past couple of weeks on estuary-related pots for a summer 2013 show at the Falmouth Art Center. We were invited to participate together by Suzy Bergmann, the center director. These pots - a wide, shallow platter and a tall jar - will reflect the flow of the water in our Cape estuaries and the life that lives in that flow. We're both pretty excited about both the work and the invitation.
The top photo is of the drying jars in my own studio; next one down is Kim with the estuary platter this morning, after she's finished the decoration. More detailed photos to follow, once these pieces are fired.

Photos from the mill

Not long ago, I visited a small one-man sawmill on the mainland, about 45 minutes from this part of Cape Cod. These small mills are scattered across the country in rural and semi-rural areas, usually a part-time job for someone whose father or grandfather once milled logs for a living. Old country professions can hang on that way for a long time, as long as descendants want to honor the tradition, enjoy the work and can make a dollar from it. This one is clearly that way.
I was there with a friend to pick up some dimensional lumber for lining a raised-bed garden, milled, I think, from old telephone poles. Good wood, perfect for the job, not too much money.
What I loved about the mill was the light that flooded in onto the machinery from the open bay where the logs sat before cutting. Open sky light, not direct sunlight. It turned the worn wood and saw blades silvery. Here are the photos I made there.
We'll get back to pottery in the next post.