Ceramic Abuse!

Whoa! I'm really worried about the ceramic squirrel. I can't find any more data than this.

Should I get nervous about my birds? Susan wouldn't fuss about beer but she sure likes to be sure there is cream for her coffee in the morning.

Frank and Susan Collaborate

Above is their final result.  Susan told Frank, our next-door neighbor, that doodling was really an art form called Zentangle and if he would just start giving his doodling (could that word be any weirder?) an art form name it would mean he actually was an artist.

So Frank produced this doodle, I mean Zentangle, while he was on a phone call one day and gave it to Susan.

Susan scanned it in her computer and started playing with it with Photoshop Elements 2.0, which she refuses to upgrade*.  The beginning is below and the final result is at the top of this post.

Susan speaks: Upgrading just gives me grief. I made the fatal mistake of upgrading Microsoft's Street & Trips 2009 to the 2013 version. How is it possible for a company like Microsoft to totally ruin a decent product? How can they take a road that was in use in 2009 and still exists today and runs for nearly 300 miles and is heavily traveled and completely remove it from the program? How can it be that IE 10 is slower than IE 9? Why is the sky blue?

I Have No Idea

I have no idea what creature this skull came from. Nan G guessed a "teeny owl" but he'd have to be really teeny because that's just a big soup spoon he's in.

Susan took these pictures for me and said I need to dust. As if.

When we were at the MOMA we saw a large installation of these hanging bottles and found the knotting to be really interesting. The artist is Nari Ward. I'm thinking I could do something like that with some ceramic pods I could make but then I'd have to make a whole bunch of them and that sounds like work....

Odd Ends

Sometimes I make really tiny birds. The bigger ones in the back were made by Debra Fritts, one of my very early instructors. She makes really interesting sculptures and she taught me a lot about letting your hands "listen" to the clay.

These guys are really interesting. They were a Christmas present from Susan -- a new pillowcase. How cool is that!??! Bet nobody else got a zombie pillowcase from their Bed Buddy.

Really Flummoxed

We were at The Metropolitan Museum at Thanksgiving. Everytime we go there we spend time wandering around into different areas that we don't plan on. This time it was the Hall of Armor that was a surprise. What the heck were they thinking when they put that doodad on his guy-parts? How in the heck is he going to get on a horse with that? OK, I definitely understand protecting the guy-parts but what the....?

These guys (from Germany, in 1525) look like they could be coming from the future instead of the past. Way cool.

We saw a Balthus exhibit - the guy was a little weird with the girls and cats so I wonder if he got all his fame from his subject matter rather than his painting skills. We also wandered through a textile exhibit where we learned enough history to make our heads explode.

As for my art, here is a rerun of what I was previously starting to paint (very small canvases):

 And here is what I wound up with, all sold at our Student Art sale: