Labor Day Artist Tour Wrap up

 

My studio on Tour day

Last weekend was the Labor Day Tour of Artists Studios in Yakima. I hadn't posted here for over a month, in large part because I was getting ready for this. (Though we also took a 3 week vacation and I took a total break for the first time in years!)

sign for our tour

My home studio was on the Tour, along with 5 other sites. At my house, Monika Lemmon, Chris Otten, and Kayo Nakamura showed their work this year, too. All four of us have been teaching studio art classes at YVC this year, with Monika teaching drawing online and in Grandview, Chris teaching photography online and in Yakima, and Monika teaching drawing, painting, and printmaking in Yakima.

Drawings by Monika Lemmon

Monika showed her drawings and paintings and had some prints for sale. Chris showed his photography, and you can tell he's the photographer, because his is the only work display that wasn't photographed (he took pictures of everyones work and I took pictures of mine).

Installation detail by Kayo Nakamura

Kayo was new to the tour this year. She is a versitile mixed media artists and at the show she had prints and drawings as well as sculpture and installation. We also got to see some of her video projects. 

My bulbs on display (see if you can find Kayo's addition)

It was great fun having these 3 artists at my studio because we all get along very well and we got to hang out and get to know each other better. Though the tour was a bit less busy than last year at my studio, we did a lot of laughing during the down times.

my bulbs with a Kayo sculpture joining in 

As with the past two years of tour shows, my daughter and her friends (Dezignosaur) also showed their jewelry. The older girls are now in high school and the younger in middle school which changes their dynamic a bit. They started making jewelry during the pandemic when they didn't have much school, but they are a lot busier than they used to be now.

thrown jewelry bowl

This year I made a lot of new functional work, including some jewelry display pieces for Dezignosaur.

jewelry display vase

My "throwing prescription" had me on the wheel a lot this summer. By default, and when I'm not thinking very hard, I naturally throw bowls, so I had a lot of bowls on display and for sale this year. Honestly, I might have had too many, as it was hard to fit them on on my shelves.

new bowls for the tour

All this throwing, and the required glazing that must follow, also explains my absence from this blog this summer. As Chris put it, I have four jobs (teaching, ceramics, the union, and being a band mom), so some stuff doesn't get done.

rainbow mugs and bowl 

Besides lots of functional stuff, I've been throwing sculptural forms using the wheel this summer, too. 

thrown wall sculptures

The sculptural forms take a bit more time after throwing. I throw them, but then have to alter or combine the thrown forms. 

thrown and altered sculpture

I made several standing sculptures, as well as some wall pieces that I intend to display at the Larson Gallery for our faculy show in January 2024. However, I also threw some sculptures that are a little more interactivem, where the bulbs can be picked up and moved around.

thrown and altered sculpture

One of these sculptures sold at my show. When the buyer came back to purchase the sculpture, he asked if he could swap out some of the bulbs for others (I had three sculptures with moveable bulbs and a few extra bulbs on the table as well). 

...with some of the bulbs removed

Today is my last day of summer, as convocation starts tomorrow at YVC. I've got a very full fall, but I hope to still be able to finish more work before the January show. With that in mind, I better post this and get to work.

another moveable bulb sculpture

First Summer 2016 Sculpture(s) in Progress (1 of 3)

finished wiggly rim selfie

Last week I was finally able to begin my first serious sculpture of 2016, after completing commission work and glazing through most of June.

one not-very-exciting thrown piece of the eventual sculpture

I threw some pieces on Tuesday and started putting them together over the next couple days. I had a fairly good idea of the basic structure of the one piece and the top of another, but the form of the pieces developed further while the thrown parts were pieced together. 

the basic form in progress

I wanted to build a piece that had a large bulb-like shape on the bottom rather than a simple round base. I was thinking of the form of the piece I did for the SRAM Bike Project, way back in 2012. However, now that I look back at that piece, the forms are less directly similar than they were in my head. Regardless, I wanted to explore this bulbous base for a bike-part form again.

texture, sprigs, and chain track in progress

I wanted to incorporate bike parts into this piece as well, but I didn't want the bottom part to be plain or all bike-part-y, so I incorporated some sprigs from a mold I've had for quite a while. The mold is off a bell pepper. It's one of the biggest sprig molds I have and it allowed me to make sprigs of different sizes for this piece.

part of the chain in its track

One issue that came up in building this form is that the chain doesn't really want to bend the way I'd like to use it. I decided to put the chain "track" where I want the chain to go and manually adjust the chain later, after firing. I want the chain to curve in both dimensions. I haven't altered the chain much previously, aside from length, so this will be a new challenge...to deal with later.

texture, sprigs, and chain track

As often happens, while I am building, I got so carried away with the surface texture on this piece (and two others I was working on concurrently), that the project surface took up the bulk of my time compared to the relatively fast building of the form.

the base, formed and mostly textured

I didn't work on the projects over the long weekend, though I was a little worried about them drying too much in that time. When I came back to them today, some parts for a different piece were a little dry, but this form was fine to build on.

 

the opening with gear stack (left) and the neck more completely textured (right)

Today I spent my time working mostly on the neck and the top opening of this form, but I am not finished. I want the gear cassette to be prominent in the opening at the top of the form, so I plan to cut the rim a little shorter than it is in these pictures and wave the edges.

the form and texture nearly complete for the day

When I finished working on this piece today, the rim was a little too dry to move how I wanted it too, so I wet it, compressed it, and wrapped it up in plastic. Then I started on the other larger sculpture I was working on and never got back to the first one. If all goes well, I should finish building this form tomorrow. Edit: I finished building this form Wednesday.

finished wiggly rim