Taking Stock

Me -- a few  years ago...

Twenty years ago in the early 90s I started building a pottery business. I'd been doing pottery for quite a few years with sales here and there. I had participated in Ceramic Showcase with VERY funky displays that at least improved year to year. My best pots seemed to sell, but I didn't have what one would call a "body of work" yet.

A friend was just beginning to do art fairs around the Northwest and encouraged me to do so with her. At the time I taught a hand building pottery class at the local community college, as well as being the lab rat/firing assistant for the studio. I was just beginning to build a downdraft kiln and shed, thanks to a friend with construction knowledge. And, I'd volunteered for a job with the Board of the Oregon Potters Assn as membership chair because I had a computer and knew how to use it.

Taking the good advice of others who were doing the fairs and wholesale markets, I invested in good professionally shot images. Voila, even tho I didn't know what I was doing, started getting acceptances into some good shows and art festival fairs. Within a couple of years I'd passed my modest sales goals and had been published in Ceramics Monthly -- something that was much easier to do back then -- one of my personal goals. So I set my sights a little higher, upped my production and began working my tail off to keep up.

So many factors, taken together, helped me grow my business:  support from partner, good friends, students in my class, and fellow OPA members who were happy to share advice. I read almost every small biz self-help book out there. Began with simple budgets, sales goals and record keeping. I got much better at being a production potter, and developed work schedules based on how much I could make in a day.

The early 90s economy was in a roller coaster ride back up from a recessionary dip from the end of the fast times 80s. As my business grew and I added wholesale accounts across the country, I got to ride the coaster up through some great sales years. Best years came in 1998 and 1999 when I got into every show I applied for, got flown back east to jury ACC Ceramics back in Fishkill, NY, turned 40, and served as OPA President.

Then the 2000s hit. In 2002 I only took two orders at San Francisco ACC and one cancelled before I got home. Galleries told me they still loved my work, but with another recession afoot, people were only purchasing brighter colored wares. (My earth tone glazes did not meet Pantone's "Colors of the Year" of pink, purple and orange together.) Some in the pottery world take that as a challenge to reinvent their work and change. I was not eager to do so myself and thought a hiatus until the economy picked up again would be better. Luckily the Fall Festival job landed at my feet.

Nine years later...As the FF job wound down I created sculpture for a show at the Guardino Gallery in Portland that comes down this weekend. Peapods, Wishes, little pieces of paper I likened to fortune cookie messages, sculptures with twists and turns -- these all popped up and even with all that symbology, it only hit me recently that I'm starting out all over again. Damn, starting out all over... I'm still processing, obviously...

Lucky Me, I've got two new classes on tap for Winter Term:  experiments in finishes so there will be a class of potters testing out all sorts of things for me, and an Art Marketing Support Group masquerading as a class that I'll be facilitating. I'm hopeful all of this kick-starts some new work and new ideas for selling pottery to the masses. Have been checking out galleries I worked with 10 years ago, and many of them are still going strong, Yay! I want to be ready to ride the next wave, should it come, UP!

Another Day, Another Trip to FedEx

Stacking Sculpture
in Sunset Colors

Pottery sales tend to ebb and flow for me. For a few years I sold all of the "Happy Children" and stacking sculpture like this that I made. It takes quite a few pots to add up to selling a bigger piece. They help sales quite a bit.

Well, then the 2000s hit and I would haul these to fairs and haul them home. After doing that a couple of times it gets to be a drag -- especially since these are supposed to be my fun, spontaneous pieces.

Fast forward to 2012 and Sunset magazine reprinted some photos of Ketzel Levine's garden with one of my stackers in the background. A couple people managed to track down who made the sculpture. They contacted me, weren't too shocked by the price and commissioned sculptures for their gardens.

I've always used fairly light bright colors to show up in a Pacific Northwest garden, but one of the clients wanted sunset colors for her home in the San Diego area. Here's how it turned out. And yes, I cut the pole so the bird wasn't left high and dry before shipping. Just didn't have time to stack it all back up and take a photo before shipping it onward.

It would be nice to think that selling a few larger pieces again is a good sign that the economy might be picking up, but it feels a little ego-driven, small world-centric. And I wouldn't want to jinx anything. (smile!)

Is It Done Yet?

"Seaform Figure" at Ceramic Showcase 2012

Theme shows can push us to explore in fun new ways. In the two weeks leading up to my deadline, the big piece in the middle of this photo was still in a state of Yuck! It was part of our Bette Feves Tribute installation at Ceramic Showcase last weekend at the Oregon Convention Center.

The base was a sculpture from 2010 (as it states so permanently next to my signature) but I'd never liked the top so it has been clogging my tiny studio since then waiting for me to do something with it. So I started my Betty tribute at a bit of a disadvantage as remaking tops to fit bottoms is always tricky. I erred on the side of too big instead of too small.

After firing the top, using the same clay body and layered velvet underglazes on it as I had the bottom, the results were very different and mis-matched looking. So heated up the entire sculpture, added Apt 2 to some white glaze to have a clean surface to start anew and cooked it. Still not so great. Another coat of white to cover it all up a bit more. Finally just a hint of its previous life showing through. While still warm from the kiln dripped and poured some glazes, ala Betty, and back in the kiln to cook. It took a few hot from the kiln glaze painting, dripping and pouring sessions (8 in all) to get this pebbly, drippy look. At the show, with these other pieces the blue worked just fine. Love how the drips accentuate the curves. But now back at home there might be a 9th firing in her future...

Is it a Series Yet?

Second Pod

I can blame the lack of production a little bit on the new pup in our household, but that would be wrong. It's really more a matter of not really knowing where these are going. The long lag time between making and firing and whether or not the glazing works out or not is being complicated even further by my desire to wire these up post-firing. That will certainly change their look and it's hard to know what it will be then. Unfinished work is so unnerving. Doesn't help that I kinda need a kiln load worth to be bisque fired at a longer and lower temp than my production stoneware.

The concept for the pod above came about on the back of an envelope after envisioning it strung with a spiderweb-like wiring that may or may not get papered.

Moonscape Pod

The moonscape pod was just a shape that turned into a moonscape along the way. Funny when that happens.

The pod below just came about and changed many times as it was being formed. Still a lot of finish shaping to do, but it's getting there. All three of these are a mix of sculpture and paper clay. The two pods on top have been layered with velvet underglazes

Shell-like Pod

Maybe after I get three of these finished I'll waste a little kiln space and fire them up so I can go to the next step.

Phase One of a New Series

This form, created a couple weeks ago, was bisque fired and received some color via oil paints mixed with cold wax medium. Hard to see in these photos, but when dry, the surface was buffed to a nice waxy sheen. Feels nice. Kept the colors simple. At some point it came to me that I was painting the colors of a big egg--one with concentric hollows inside.

WIred it up using some little tin weights from the fishing supply store and should've taken a photo with just the wire web before adding the tissue. But, impatient person that I am working in fits and starts, I just wanted to get down to adding the paper. First thought was using some old letters on air-gramme paper. Nice with the text on it but not thin enough. Next, tried my old high school graduation present bible's tissue paper pages, cutting out the GENESIS of the first page. (Calling Dr. Freud!). Still a little too thick. Settled on some tissue wrapping paper with some bits of text added for good measure.

It's funny when a piece is filled with so much symbology that just happened due to the materials on hand. As the start of a new series of work, an egg-shaped Genesis is pretty funny as well as apropo.

Expanding an Idea

Behold... something new from the studio. (Ha! doesn't it feel that monumental some days!)

These are first editions for The Arts Center's Portals show later on this year.

Last month attended the mini-workshop hosted by Gale Everett-Stahlke of the StickStones PaperStew Blog. She showed how to create wire sculptures with either layered paper or gut skins. It was a process that I thought could be a nice variation on the "inside/outside" theme I've toyed with over the years on the sculptures with 23k gold leaf (see example below).

Anyhoo, these two porcelain beauties have had some holes made in them for wiring up after they've been fired. Both were pinch pots that just grew organically as I pinched. On the first one I tried to smooth out my finger marks and on the second one I accentuated them. I'm going to low-fire cook them so that the clay will accept some cold wax/oil paint treatment after they've been fired.

Will be interesting to see where this goes from here.