365 Day 298

long day, lotsa stuff


Today started out at 8 a.m. at Tuscan Cafe in Northville with Suzanne Schimanski-Gross. Suzanne is a Teen Services Librarian at Northville District Library.

We met up this morning for coffee and shared a sandwich and talked about all kinds of stuff...like Detroit Derby Girls season and Art-o-mat and sewing and sock monkeys and artist trading cards. Suzanne also brought me a bagful of plastic lids and tops for me to use in my plaster cloth projects.








Next it was on to Brenda's house in Harrison Township.

Brenda has a kiln and we have been playing with clay on and off for a while. Today we unloaded the kiln from last week.

Brenda glaze fired two of her large leaf pieces that she makes for gardens.

I am planning my things for Art-o-mat (of course). Since I don't have my own kiln (yet) and Brenda is about 45 minutes away on the other side of town, this is becoming a drawn out/time-and-labor-intensive project. I am going ahead and making the pieces all at once, but the prototype still has to be submitted and approved first. That is why I am not going to reveal exactly what it is I am making just yet.


Here is Brenda unloading the kiln.


















This large leaf has a baby's face on it.


















This one has a dragonfly.
















My stuff was way underneath everything else.


















ta-daaaaaaa

















sneak peek...no details yet













Today I put a second color of watercolor underglaze on them.










On the way out to Brenda's this morning I stopped off and got us both a large canvas.

It has been quite a long time since I made my last vision board. I first learned about this exercise in "The Artists Way". Actually, that is how I met Brenda...she was the instructor when we took the course. I figured it was about time she and I both made new vision boards (and the last one I made proved to be really powerful).

When I got home this afternoon one of the first things I did was to pull the wrapper off of the canvas, take it outside and spray it with two colors of paint. Then I brought it in the house and slathered the canvas with matte medium and laid down a piece of mulberry paper -- all so that I couldn't stall and say I was chicken to start on a blank canvas. It is hard to tell with the lighting in that photo, but half of the canvas is "Sugar Melon" and half is "Poison Light" -- both colors by Montana Gold. The mulberry paper is a light pink color. It looks better in person...LOL. Now I have no excuse to not get started on it.



And then -- a little later on -- Matt Gordon came over so we could talk about my painting some more.


And we talked a little more about doing something for Art-o-mat. That will done in small increments. It'll take a while...but it will be worth the wait.





And now...back to the next step in the Tookies assembly line!

365 Day 118

a full, fun day!

Let's see...I started off packing up Listia auctions to mail out. Then I got Arto-art packed up to switch out in the machine at LIFT. Then I packed up my clay guys to take to Brenda's. Then I went to the post office, then to Sam's Club to get sandwichy stuff for dinner, then to Juana's to get her and we went to lunch at Ahan Thai and had a good tasty meal.



Art-o-mat artpacks packed into the boxes at my house





Then we went to LIFT and bought a bunch of new Tokidoki blind box unicorn toys and talked with Kent. Then I changed the art in the machine and Juana put the binder pages in for me.




the machine at LIFT (can't see the last column, sorry)









Then we went out to Brenda's to play with clay and the dogs.
On the way to Brenda's we sat in traffic for a bit...I hate traffic on the highway.






looking across the table...Juana is off camera to my left and Brenda is over at the counter working on her big leaves and faces










We had a great time with Brenda and Rocky and Ginger. We got to see James, too. Man...he has grown up -- looks like a rock star. Then we talked more and worked on clay projects more and had sandwiches and yummy vegetables and talked more and laughed lots.


Ginger with her half-a-tennis-ball














Rocky and his tennis ball -- he is incredibly focused













there's Juana...and Brenda















all of my "guys" are reunited...LOL

















the little "guys" I am working on...they look like a forest of monoliths or something...Brenda is going to fire them










Then we drove back to Juana's and dropped her off and I came home and was delighted to find a big box of art books that arrived from Amazon. Then I fed the cats and now I am writing this.

Next I am going to go look at my new books and watch my shows that were dvr'd.

FULL, FUN DAY!

365 Day 76

ceramics day -- at last!

Today Juana and I were finally able to get back over to Brenda's house to play with clay. Between wintry weather, various seasonal illnesses, and deadlines dictating we finish our other projects first it has been about a month since our initial clay play/work session with Brenda. In our absence she graciously took on the role of Keeper of the Clay and tended to our early pieces to make sure they didn't dry out or get wrecked. THANK YOU, Brenda!






Brenda stirring some glaze.










Juana working on her stuff.











Brenda has two very sweet and very energetic dogs. The larger one is Ginger and the smaller one is Rocky. They are not related, although they really look to me like they could be.



Ginger likes to walk between the chairs by going under the table.













Ginger coming out from under the table on the other side.














Rocky is quite a character. I never realized this fact until I was taking photos and Brenda mentioned it: Rocky's head is rarely not in motion.

This really cracked me up. His body can be nice and still, but his head IS constantly in motion.










I tricked Rocky to be still in this photo -- I was holding a ball on top of the camera...he gets really fixated on his ball...LOL













There he goes again...body is still, head is in motion.












LOL -- one more pic of the dogs...guess which one is Rocky.














One of my clay projects will be an Art-o-mat series. I want to make something relatively simple in form and shape but that has several steps in the process of making it. I think these little shapes are going to be creatures. I love underglazes and I really love sgraffito. I want to try and make little creatures using both techniques. I don't know yet whether they will be separate series or some of each in the same series...that is a ways down the road yet.














Quite different from my intense dislike of painting, I really enjoy all of the process involved in underglazing. Layering on of colors and firing in between...using the underglazes like watercolors and building up the colors and shades...and never knowing for sure how it will turn out until it comes out of the kiln. Yeah, you do know a bit more in advance how it will turn out with underglazes versus regular glazes (that often don't even look like the color they start out as) but there is still an element of the depth and intensity of the underglaze colors as the layers build up after firing and after the clear coat.








The very beginning stages of my clay Art-o-mat idea. I will need to submit a ready-to-vend prototype first.