Central Washington Artists' Exhibition Award Winner at Larson Galllery

 

my face bulbs at CWAE this weekend

This weekend was the opening of the Central Washington Artists' Exhibition at Larson Gallery in Yakima. I have two pieces in the show this year, my Chartreucat sculpture and a small wall-installation of face bulbs.

the CWAE program

This is the 64th annual Central Washington Artists' Exhibition and I believe this is the first year in the new Larson Gallery on the new west side campus of Yakima Valley College, behind Taco Bell. The show runs through December 11. The gallery is open Tuesday-Friday 10-5 and Saturdays 12-5.

my installation at CWAE this weekend (I really like the neighboring work by Yu-Hen Dade)

The new gallery is much larger and nicer than the already pretty decent gallery across the street. The new space has multiple rooms, including a totally separate sales gallery with small art and gifts for sale. The new gallery also boasts better parking.

Chartreucat, also at CWAE (picture taken at home)

This was the first year in a bit that I remembered to enter this show. I can't remember if they had a show last year, but it's been a busy couple of years for me. This Chartreucat sculpture was one of several abstract sculptures I started last spring and finished this summer(with one not quite finished yet). I felt pretty good about finding the time to make these pieces.

my award certificate

My wall installation was also built last summer and mostly finished in Spring 2021. This installation won an award, the Jeffery Schaap & Gilbert Young Award, which was great news, and even better when I realized it was a monetary award.

detail with sold stickers Saturday afternoon

The installation features 15 unique face bulbs with a range of features, colors and expressions. When I arrived at the gallery this weekend, a couple was in the process of purchasing a pair of the bulbs. The woman indicated that she liked the masked pieces. Someone asked about the bulbs with plants coming out of their mouths, thinking they were like a scene from Trolls 2 (which I haven't seen).

weeds as speech

I explained that when I made these, I was thinking of the weeds coming out of mouth as a metaphor for hateful language, the way it spreads quickly and chokes out the beautiful flowers or healthy vegetables that might otherwise grow in that space.

invasive choking weeds/speech

Most of the bulbs were specifically created as a reference to the hateful political climate of the past several years. The masks were clearly created post-pandemic, but the screaming faces started showing up before the pandemic in the lead up to the last election.

masked face

 

I believe more of these may have sold since I left the show on Saturday. I was asked to provide some written explanation yesterday for Larson Gallery to use on their social media. It's not up yet, but these may be featured later on Larson Gallery's Facebook or Instagram. 

detail of installation

I'm happy to get these seen. It is sometimes challenging to keep up with teaching, union work, and my own work. Especially when my own work includes making, applying, showing, advertising, and keeping up an online presence here, on my website, and (kind of) on social media. 

my face bulbs and other (abstract) bulbs in my home studio this September

I showed these pieces this summer at my home studio for the Yakima Artists Studio Tour in September, but this was the first year for this show and I think all of us are still kind of gearing back up from pandemic to semi-post-pandemic mode for attending shows and going out in public. It is strange how long it has taken to start to move back to operating how we did before the pandemic.

award page of the CWAE program

After I published this, Larson Gallery added a video tour of the CWAE show:

Face bulbs from Summer 2020/Spring 2021

face bulb, I particularly like the texture that happened on the tongue

At the end of spring I finally glazed and fired a batch of face bulbs that I had made last summer. These face bulbs are (in my mind) related to both my scream/face mugs and the protest/resist bulbs I was working on in 2018. 

installed face bulb group in my studio

 

The academic year, which last year meant moving my studio classes online for the first time, and my AFT faculty union work, meant that I didn't have a ton of time in my studio in summer 2020 because I spent so much time on union stuff.

masked face bulb

I was able to finish these in Spring 2021, in part becacuse I was teaching classes that had moved online in fall/winter and because my teaching schedule is irregular, leaving me with an overload in fall and winter and a slightly lighter load in spring.

here the weeds coming out of the mouth are meant to be a metaphor for toxic or hateful speech

I wasn't able to get good pictures of these in May, though, because I couldn't figure out how to set them up in my photo booth. They are designed to hang on the wall, so I needed to wait until I had a wall available.

the temporary wall of bulbs in my studio for the tour

If that part of the house weren't being remodeled, I probably would have hung these up in the laundry room/hallway where I've had a wall set up for bulbs like this ever since my home was the the Larson Gallery's Tour of Artist Homes and Studios in 2013. 

hand on face bulb (sold)

This wall was unavailable for most of the summer as my husband was remodeling and repainting first the laundry room, then the hallway, and now he's moved on to the stairway. 

I don't remember if this was actually based on 45, but the expression seems familiar 

During the Yakima Artist's Studio Tour over Labor day, I set up my temporary walls in the studio and in the yard. These temporary walls were made for a show I did at Yakima Makers' Space (now the Collab Coffee space) in 2017. 

temporary wall installed on the fence in the yard

Hanging these temporary walls on the slightly open drawers of my work table in my studio and over the fence in the yard worked really well. And I was finally able to get some photos of these hanging like they are supposed to.

too much shine :-( but this one is modeled on a colleague's face

I probably need to work on getting some photos of the work hung up and with better lighting. The dark and glossy pieces in particular didn't photograph as well as they might have because I just used the room lighting.

again, weeds from the mouth

The light colored bulbs look better, but they could do with some intentional lighting and maybe the use of a tripod.

bulbs on the wall (detail)

I could theoretically take care of this now, since I have yet to put one of my walls away, but over the last two weeks I've been sucked into the melee that is the start of the quarter and convocation. 

back on campus, I've really only had one student who has trouble keeping the mask covering the nose

I've been really busy. This quarter I am converting my 100% in-person throwing class to a hybrid class with 2 hours of the week entirely online. I've also been converting the handbuilding class I've taught online this past year into a hybrid class, which is more work than you realize. 

I kind of want to fill the mouth with something

It seems like the conversion to online should be the hard part and the conversion back to campus should be easy, but it requires reconfiguring basically the whole class, including adjusting projects so as to take advantage of the shared space and tools, but also basically every online page and assignment has to be adjusted to remove references to the challenges of working at home, bringing work in to be fired, and how to contact the instructor.

using this form for heads makes such a funny pointy shaped head

Both classes have the added challenge this quarter of needing to adjust to accomodate the new 3' social distancing guidelines we need to observe in the studio. Keeping the student's work spaces and wheels 3' apart isn't particularly difficult (nor is it new), but keeping myself 3' away at all time while showing them tools and techniques and checking what they are working on is tough.

more bulbs on the wall together

The start of the quarter also encompasses a lot of faculty union work. We've had meetings and discussions with our membership, administration, and quite a few different work groups on special topics. 

the matte texture photographed failry well

One of our goals this year/quarter is to spread some of the work around to more people so that the workload that falls on my shoulders is reduced. But it even takes work to shift that load. People are stepping up admirably, but there's a lot of information share in my notes and my brain that they need to be successful, so these past few weeks have had a lot of focus on getting folks to where they can take over.

This one hangs a little to the side, like he's yelling at his neighbor

And, of course, everyone has those same start-of-quarter work loads. The union work is incredibly valuable, but all of us do it on top of our full-time jobs, which just makes busy times busier.

in the studio,

This post feels like it will be the last post of my work for Summer 2021. This is a bittersweet time of year, knowing I have to set this work aside for a while. I haven't even finished putting away work from the labor day tour and finding the time to do so is a bit of a challenge.

again, trying to express the nastiness of current political speech

I also know that I had quite a few more posts planned of student work from my online design and handbuilding classes of the past year. Those posts take a bit more effort as I need to check names and permission to share student work as I write them. Posts about my work only require that I take the pictures sometime and then write whatever I'm thinking about. As time allows, I do plan to add those student posts this year.

I don't have 30 face bulbs, so the rest of the wall was abstract and politics bulbs

The sadness of not getting to do my own work during the school year is tempered greatly this year by the fact that I will get to see my potters and hand-builders and their work in person. Both classes started this past week. Though being back on campus was more exhausting than I anticipated, I think the first week back (especially after 18 months) was always going to be especially exhausting. Going into next week, I am really excited to see what they are able to produce.

Works in Progress: Zoom Meetings in the Clay Studio

The sculpture I finished building during the meeting in question

 

I've spent an inordinate amount of time on Zoom and Zoom-like applications this year. Some of this is teaching. Though all my classses were asychronous, I held regular office hours/student hours and student meetings via Zoom. I also met with my colleages both locally and across the state via Zoom, Teams, etc. For student meetings Zoom is a bit better and a bit worse. The increase in convenience for students who work is a great feature, but the meetings require a bit more effort for me to arrange (when we're on campus, these short meeting often happen before or after class or students simply walk into my office during the day). As far as what we can communicate, the meetings are pretty good, but some tools and techniques would be easier to show without the computer /video in between. On the other hand, more students came to my (required) Zoom meetings than come to my (not required) office hours on campus.

Another angle on the sculpture above

For statewide meetings, Zooming has been a real improvement over how things used to be. Before March 2020, statewide meetings usually required driving. For folks in Yakima, that often means driving 2.5 to 3 hours over the pass to Seattle or Olympia, making for 5-6 hours driving time total. Pre-pandemic I was regularly attending some statewide meetings via Zoom, but with most everyone else in the same room, the sound was atrocious for folks trying to attend via Zoom. People speaking sounded like they were underwater and it was often difficult to tell who was speaking, based on the poor video and the direction in which the camera was pointed.

After the second layer of underglaze (purple on white) to highlight the stamped texture

Moving the meeting to Zoom and sitting everyone in front of their own mic and camera evens things out. The ocassional slow internet connect is annoying, but there isn't one group that can hear well in person and another group that is just trying to keep up. I suspect a lot of it is also that the pandemic forced folks to upgrade their technology. I am sure I am not the only person who had to acquire a new computer and new router to be able to work from home. Not to mention new electrical outlets at our house.

The surface decoration in progress, two layers of underglaze on the "background" and one on the sprigs

An ancillary advantage of my new router at home is that I can be online in my home studio which is in the back of the house--a later addition to the house. The wifi signal never used to reach the back of the house. With a new router setup, I can bring my laptop into the studio to do a live demonstrations of techniques for students in my online studio classes. Before the new router, I was recording videos in the studio just fine, but I'd have to come into to the house to upload them or bring materials into the house if I wanted to show something during a Zoom meeting. This works fine for Design, but not so great for messy clay.

selfie during a zoom meeting in my studio

Something I discovered late in the year was that I could now attend a Zoom meeting while working in my home studio. I don't do this much, since most meetings worth attending are worth taking notes during or require me to interact in ways that involve touching the computer keyboard (which I can't do if my hands are full of clay). But this particular spring meeting was one I felt I should attend but I also one where I felt I could simply listen and not interact much. So I set up my banding wheel, got out my clay and worked on a couple of projects while I listened to the speakers.

mostly I was attaching sprigs (like this but different texture) during this meeting

This was towards the end of the year, so it really felt like a great break, to just be able to chill and work in my studio. The endless meetings and emails and planning and putting everything online and fixing and triple checking links and just the unending computer work of this year was starting to wear thin (she says, while typing a post in a completely unnecessary online blog). During this meeting, I believe I finished the surface decoration of the first sculptures I made in 2021. I also dropped a sculpture on the floor, but that's another story.

Unfortuantely, I'm less happy with this angle of this sculpture

Cone 6 Covids

Blue, triangular and bumpy surfaced COVID balls

Earlier this month I fired a kiln load with a whole bunch of different items, including bulbs from last summer, planters and mugs with a COVID theme, and a batch of cone 6 glazed COVID balls.

COVID balls underglazed like the original batch

I've been playing around with these COVID balls since December/January of this year. and I've tried out a few different decoration and glaze options, as well as different clay.

Blue and bumpy cone 6 celadon COVID balls

I thought I'd try these ones fired to cone 6. I've been using some cone 6 glazes, mostly celadons for my functional work, but haven't used them much for sculpture (I usually fire my sculpture to low temperatures with layered underglazes).

Martianware COVID ball

For the new year's bulbs, my approach was very much my typical color approach, bright and loud with chartreuse and red. I admit I was also thinking kind of Christmas-y colors, too. 

Underglaze and Mt. St. Helen's glaze COVID ball

When I made more bulbs to order, I kept these same colors but also added some of my Mt. St. Helen's Ash glaze from last spring. The Mt. St. Helen's ash is actually a cone 6 glaze, but I fired it to a lower temperature because that's what I had done last time for the Mt. St. Helen's show.

Martianware clay gives varigated colors, depending on either the drying or firing

After Seattle Pottery came out with their Martianware clay, I made some more COVIDs with that clay to test it out. These are low temperature bulbs because the clay basically glazes itself. 

Green/grey textured cone 6 COVID balls

The cone 6 COVID balls were done to test out a few things. First, in buiding them I was testing out adding little bits of dry or semi-dry clay to the surface of the forms to make a chunky, slightly icky surface texture. I also experimented with triangular bits sticking out from the balls instead of round. The triangles are harder to make, or at least take a bit more concentration.

I think these are probably closest to the famous photo

Part of the reason I wanted to fire these to a higher temperature was because I really like my red cone 6 glaze (Amaco's Deep Firebrick), and partly because I wanted the base glaze to have a little more variation to highlight the textures I'd added. The most familiar COVID image that we've all seen everywhere for the past year and a half is grey and red with orange, though I remembered it as blue and red. With this batch, I used light blue, dark green, and grey glazes to try out a few different options.

all the COVID balls in this post are looking for new homes, if you are interested

I don't know if I've decided which ones I prefer. I enjoyed the process of trying out the various options and I still have a batch waiting to be glazed and fired. I also just pulled the last three of the Martianware pieces out of the kiln yesterday. These ones sat around longer and at first glance the surface is different, too. I'll have to take some time to compare more closely. 

Martianware COVIDS

I think I'll be doing a show in September and I expect to have most of this stuff available then. If you need a COVID ball now, let me know.

Mars Clay

Martianware Covid balls the day after they were made

If you're a fan of space exploration, the most recent Mars rover, or clay, you might have heard that Seattle Pottery has made and is selling "Martianware" clay, a clay based on the chemical composition of soil on Mars. The idea is that if Mars had clay, this is what it would be like. Or maybe the idea is that people doing pottery think this would be amusing.

A freshly made Covid ball next to ones made yesterday.

As a potter, I found this amusing. If only to delight the 12-year old version of me, I bought some of this clay to play with. The wet color and even the texture does remind me of the surface of Mars that I made in elementary school for a science fair, though that was made of plaster and paint, I believe (and later was turned into a toy golf course after it sat in the basement for a while).

A freshly press molded bulb after being smoothed with a rib.

The clay is a low-fire, self-glazing clay, a bit like Egyptian faience. The materials in the clay include soluble salts inside the clay body. These salts react during the firing to form a glaze without needing to add glaze to the surface of the clay. This is similar to salt firing, where salt is added to the kiln during the firing. The salt adheres to and reacts with the surface of the clay, creating a slightly bumpy glazed surface.  

A bit of salt inside the raw clay

The clay feels very strange to work with. I only bought a small amount and this weekend I made some of my Covid balls shapes with it, as well as a couple of press-molded bulb forms. The clay is stiff and tends to want to crack, though it can be smoothed. It's work-able, but certainly not the most pleasant clay I've used. As I was cutting into my small block of clay, I encoutered several fairly large chunks of salt inside the clay block. I assume these pieces of crystalized salt had developed between when the clay was mixed and when I worked this it. I was easily able to crush the pieces, but they were large enough that I jsut removed them from the clay I was building with.

A press molded bulb resisting removal from the mold

It was fairly easy to build the hollow forms, but the clay did not want to be press-molded. Usually I can press clay into my plaster mold, leave it for 20 minutes and it just pops out. Though this clay already felt drier than usual when I put it in the mold, I couldn't get it out of the mold until the next day. After I tried it, I started wondering whether the salt of this clay was actually bad for the plaster of the mold. 
 

Thrown saggars for firing

I'm also slightly concerned about the elements in my kiln. Salt firing is only done in hard brick kilns fired by gas or wood because the firing process destroys electric elements and the soft bricks of most electric kilns. In fact, firing a non-salt firing in a kiln normally used for salt firing may yeild strange results, as the bricks themselves contain residual salt. For this reason, I also threw some containers to use as saggars, ceramic boxes to contain the clay. Firing the pieces in saggars should protect the kiln from the worst of the salt, but I think I'll double check Seattle Pottery's recommendations before firing, regardless.

Martianware Covid balls drying

The immediate change in the clay is interesting. I made some of the pieces last night and already this morning they've developed a salty fur over their surfaces. The salt is growing on the surface of the clay. It looks a bit like mold, but feels brittle and crumbly. 

my studio assistant was recently asked not to walk on my wet teacups

As I've gotten into the sudio fairly regularly over the last few weeks, its looking like I'll have a chance to fire fairly soon. Yesterday I mopped and cleaned all the tables, cabinets, bats, and my mixer. It's amazing how good it feels to work in a freshly cleaned studio.