Past History: Crystal Bridges

First, I need to make sure you know it's always all about Me.  When I leave your enjoyable companionship I want to know that you'll be thinking of me. Because I will be thinking of me, too! But enough about Me, how about taking a look at Spiderman? He's only about 4 inches high and was supposed to be just a test shape for a runny glaze.  I don't know if I'll ever be able to duplicate the glaze effect but I'm getting sort of attached to him.

In the past: Crystal Bridges.
It's a long day's drive away but the drive isn't too bad once we clear Dallas and get off IH35. The museum is small and do-able in a day and the town is small and nice and clean and the people are friendly and the exhibits are good. Past History? We were there in January. My Blog Wrangler doesn't want to discuss the delay. Moving on....

Zoe Charlton.
What's not to like about an artist who paints a man with ponies and a forest coming out of his butt?

James Lavadour.
His work was great but I'm not sure I can trust a guy who gets up at 3:00 (THREE) a.m. every day to paint.

The show was State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now and it featured 100 artists, none of them had previously been nationally recognized.  The curators made great choices as we liked at least 80% of what we saw.  Lots of interesting stuff on the link above (scroll down).

Pods and Plastic

Some pods or, as Susan calls them, "Fantasy Fruit". They languished on my table for a while and that's dangerous because when things don't move along she starts slapping acrylic paint on them.  Adding the gold was a good final touch.

Plastic? Take a look at what Veronika Richterova does with discarded plastic bottles. Love those flying foxes (although I'd definitely call them bats)!

Stripes

 



 Little bird with stripes. 

 



 Skinny neck pots with stripes.  They were inspired by an artist named Judit Varga.  I really like her work and seeing the work she has done gave me the courage to make pieces that didn't have any glaze on them at all. 

Yetta's Pot

I tried to make a pot with holes in and I succeeded. But now that it's done and glazed I lost interest in the technique, although I like the glaze.  My friend Yetta loved it and made a small saucer to go under it so a candle could be put in it.  So I gave the pot to Yetta.  She's happy and I'm happy to see my work make people happy.

We saw a great show at the Blanton Museum -- James Drake's Anatomy of Drawing and Space (Brain Trash). The whole installation would include over 1200 drawings but I know the Blanton didn't have that many, even though it filled four rooms. Go here for an interesting video of him.

Yes, that's me in the last picture. Don't you recognize my chrome-dome?

Not Pine Cones

They really aren't supposed to look like pine cones. Or even like elaborate hand grenades. They are supposed to be.... never mind.  Anyway, I was experimenting with glazes that puddle and run and change effects on edges.  More to come eventually.

I've been asked, "What do you do with your spare time now that you're retired?"

 

Excuse me while I laugh myself into a fit. WHAT spare time? If it's not ceramics, it's eating. Or working out. Or, as often as possible, a nap.  And then....

 

 

(Susan thinks the only way this is accurate is if my eyes are closed.) 





Easter

When we make hard-boiled eggs I mark them so as to be sure we know they aren't the raw ones. Okay, we really can tell the difference between the ones in the carton (raw) and the hard-boiled ones in this bowl.  So why do we bother?  Well, it was not a pretty picture on the day one of us, being very helpful, put an unmarked raw egg on the counter and the other person (not naming anyone....Susan) thought it was hard-boiled and thumped it hard on the counter.

Susan just puts a boring pencil line on them. I, on the other hand, feel that an egg deserves to be adorned appropriately.  So there.

 

Just in case you live in some foreign country, like Canada or Alaska or Idaho, these are the traditional Easter Peeps. No, I don't know why they are traditional.

If you think you might want to microwave your Peep, don't bother. This (below) is all you'll get.  I'd like to show you some other images but every time I googled "microwave peeps disaster" all I got were links to websites full of advertisements.  Sorry, but I'll try not to throw ads at you.

Bump It Out

This pot stands about 12 inches high. I like the glaze effect I got but not the fact that it looks like a snake that swallowed a large frog.

Susan says it brings to mind this quote from A. A. Milne (the Winnie-the-Pooh author):

 

A bear, however hard he tries,

Grows tubby without exercise.

 

 

The latest in street art (aka Graffiti) as seen on my weekend bike rides.