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:

Custom Dishes for Brooke and Victor

Brooke and Victor's large bowl

My friend Brooke got married in Spain this past summer. I had been hoping that we could join them, but COVID and uncertainties about traveling made me hesitant to plan international travel this summer. Instead of booking a trip to see her and her wedding, I threw some pieces for her and her new husband, Victor.

Wide bowl with B(heart)V stamp

I wanted to do more than just create bowls that looked nice, I wanted to personalize them, so I tried a few things. One was to create a stamp with their initials and a little heart in between. I used this stamp as decorative motif on two of the bowls, and as a stamp on the bottom of another.

bowl with B(heart)V stamp at the bottom

I throw bowls regularly during the year, but rarely at home. I find throwing bowls to be kind of calming and pleasant, but I don't tend to spend a ton of time on decoration because I'm usually making them for demonstrations at school.

Wide rim with stamp

I wanted to try something more interesting for these bowls, so I did some of what I know and some of what I don't.  I used the stamps to impress a pattern around the rim on some. On the largest, I decided to carve decorations on one of them. I spent a lot of time planning and carving and glazing the design, but I didn't do a lot of practicing beforehand. I'm basically happy with the design, even though it isn't as sophisticated as would be the carved decoration of someone who does this regularly. 

Inside the large carved bowl

I am pretty happy with the interiors of all the bowls. I kept these free of decoration, kept the colors of the liner glazes simple, and the dribbled other glazes over the top to add some variety and interest. The interior of the carved piece contrasts with the busy exterior.

Underside of the stampled rim bowl

In the carved decoration, I planned for the height of each row of letters, marking a guide all the way around the bowl while it was on a banding wheel. I then staggered the letters in columns, trying to take account of the changing witdth of the bowls. (the lowest band has less space than the highest because bowls are round). After I had started carving, I decided to add the hearts, which means I didn't quite leave enough space for all of them.

I used a variety of glazes to highlight the carving on the outside

I glazed the letters and hearts carefully, painting in a blue glaze then wiping it from the surface so it could highlight the carved background. I then glazed the hearts with a pink glaze (Amaco Celadon Cherry Blossom) waxed the hearts and applied a semitransparent glaze over the top of everything so as to highlight the letters.  

I dribbled contrasting glazes inside most of the bowls

Highlighting the indents like this is something I did in one of the stamped bowls as well. The glaze combination is the same, but the application of the light green semi-stransparent glaze may have been a bit thicker on the smaller bowl.

the red galze moved a bit during firing, which I didn't anticipate

I realized after I had finished the pink and semi-transparent glazes that I preferred the hearts in a darker red. I applied this over the top, but unfortunately glazes move during firing. The clear and the pink both melted during the firing, as expected. This caused some of the red to move on the surface of that melting glaze, resulting in red splotches that are off set from some of the hearts. The result looks a bit like what you sometimes see in comic strips or old ads in the paper where the different colors plates weren't correctly registered so one color hasn't lined up correctly.

the same red glaze mooved on the rim which I had planned for

Up on the rims, I was planning for some of this. I had tested some glaze combinations before this firing and liked the layering and melting effect of my red glaze (Amaco Potter's Choice name glaze) over my green (Amaco Potter's Choice Vert Luster). These colors melt and move down the side of the pot creating a nice variation and irregularity. In one of the bowls this melting somwhat obscures the impressed BV stamp.

I think the inside drizzles look great in the sun

Some of this movement can been seen inside as well, where the dribbled glazes melt over the top of the clear and white liner glazes. The pink glaze was particularly thin in the jar, which means it was lighter where I dribbled it over the others inside. 

I had fun making these and think the color combos worked out pretty well

This batch of pieces that I sent aren't really a set. I played too much with both decoration and color for them to match, though they are all similar in texture and interior decoration. Though the process of making, glazing, firing, packing, and shipping took a couple of months, I felt a bit like I didn't have as much time as I would have liked. I would have been happy to experiment with my techinques for one whole kiln load before doing these pieces, but I never seem to find that kind of time during the school year. Here's hoping Brooke and Victor will enjoy the bowls. 

Contratulations Brooke and Victor!

 

 

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.

New Face Mugs from August

 

some of the face mugs at the Tour

Last weekend at the Yakima Artist's Studio Tour, I showed (and shared pictures of) my most recent batch of screaming face mugs. But I never got around to sharing pictures of them here on my blog.

Orange and red scream mug

I made 11 new mugs this summer for this show. I started and finished them all in August, along with some other functional work, and only pulled the finished pieces out of the kiln the week before the show, as I was setting up.

some of the face mugs ready to come out of the last bisque firing

The mugs all fired successfully and the glazes did what I wanted them to do. I think some of the faces are more striking than others, and some ended up being my favorites or less favorites.

wet clay roughed-in for the face on this mug

I remembered to take some in-progress photos of the mugs from wheel to sculpting to glazing to finished. Some of them look completely amateur while they are in progress. I actually get a kick out of taking photos at this stage.

this blue on blue face mug is the finished version of the rough one above

They can also look like a bit of a mess while I'm glazing, as can my work space. I like to make the colors bright and unrealistic, but I also like to make the color combinations more complex to highlight the indents and textures of the faces.

first layer of glaze on the faces before being wiped away

What that means is that at one point I have painted the first layer of color over the faces and they just look like the person glazing is bad at painting.

green on red screaming face

I had some color combinations in mind that I wanted to replicate (and avoid) from my earlier mugs, but I was doing a whole bunch of glazing at once, monitoring the levels of each glaze I had on hand, and trying to pay attention to a few other things, so I lost track sometimes of which colors I planned to do more of.

green on green (or possibly blue) scream mug

The result was that I used less red than intended and more green. A few of the blue and green faces have less contrast between the first and second layers of glazes.

first layer of glaze wiped away from the faces to highlight texture

After the first layer of glaze dried, I wiped away the glaze like I do with my top underglaze layers in textured sculptures. At this point the faces photograph pretty well, especially with the darker colors and from a distance.

blue on blue mask mug

I then apply a semi-transparent glaze over the entire piece, covering the darker highlight layer of glaze. In the firing, the darker color will show through, though it becomes invisible before it goes into the kiln.

glazing in progress, interiors and first layer exterior done

Underglazes change tone and texture during firing, but generally don't change color much. So I can often gauge basically what the color combination will look like after firing and I can see how the colors layer, as long as my first coats are thick enough.

green on green scream mug with crooked eyes

Because the colorants, fluxes, and other materials in the glazes react to the heat of the kiln, the colors of the glazed but unfired work don't really reflect what we will see after the firing.

fully glazed face mugs ready for firing

The color change can be a challenge for beginning potters to learn, since glazes that look pink in the jar or the bucket might turn out blue or red or transparent.

My nose is not connected to my respiratory system face mug

This was a pretty good kiln load for me. It was probably helped along by the mistakes and practice pieces that I fired earlier in the summer or last year, and the results of this firing will help me choose and avoid certain glazes and combinations next time I fire.

fired face mugs, bowl, and mini vases

I expected to like the green over red, and it is one of my favorite color combinations, but I was pleasantly surprised by the orange over red and the orange over blue.

orange on red scream mug (with raised eyes)

The mugs themselves were thrown on the same day, using basically the same amount of clay, but I neither weighed the clay nor measured the height or width of the cups. I like the variation in heights and widths, but I also noticed some variation in width near the top. 

orange on blue scream mug

While most of the mugs have straight walls, one is shorter and a bit wider than the others and flares very slightly from the bottom to the top. The white glaze inside this one brightens the interior further. I think this particular mug feels like the kind of mug that makes you slow down, or the kind that has room on top for foam art.

wide green on red scream mug

I was a bit surprised that I didn't sell more of these mugs during the tour. I'm actually wondering if some people were thinking they'd be able to contact me later to purchase items closer to the holidays. Lots of people talked about, laughed at, and reacted to the mugs. 

scream mugs on display for the Tour

My studio was very clean for the tour and I had lots of work out in the studio. I hid my packing materials, my tools, my clay, and my mess for the show, but as soon as I start working in the studio again (sometime after the busy start of the quarter, as I am transitioning to teaching on campus this quarter!), I will bring out all the mess (because I'll need the tools and clay and works in progress).

Very early stages of a scream mug

I have already started putting away some of the items, including everything from the lawn and much of the functional work besides the mugs. The other day I had to take out some of my citrus squeezers because someone wanted to buy one. Luckily the combination of cleaning for the show and my husband's partly finished hallway remodel allowed me to pack these items away more carefully than I did after the Fresh Air Art Festival, so It was easy to find the box and unpack it.

green on green and blue on green scream mugs

I also plan to bring some of these pieces to Oak Hollow Gallery in the next week or so and have them available for the holiday season. I plan to bring some scream mugs, bowls, mini pots, and maybe some of the citrus squeezers if they want them.

scream mug in progress