hand-built clay wall sculpture, 13th Moon, by Tammy Vitale of Tam’s Originals.

Please excuse me if I am starting to repeat photos.  I need some new photos and haven’t been back to the cottage to get pictures of the floor – promise, it is coming – we did the shopping yesterday for the commercial tiles and of course Lowe’s is in the midst of a topsy turvey house cleaning and it was the tile section’s turn.  We found some sage green tiles.  I was looking for something a bit darker, more of a forest green to match the ones around the jacuzzi but settled for what I could get.  We only had one 10% off coupon so sage green it is.

Made more fish yesterday and now have a total of 65 with about half of that drying and waiting to be glazed to go in the kiln.  Hoping to get to that today so I can get them fired and start wiring them and see where I am.  Any time left over (glazing takes an inordinate amount of time – always longer than I anticipate.  Longer when I start being creative, which is my plan with this batch – 2 colors, crystals, etc) I’ll start pulling designer tiles (I picked up a set of the butterfly  series- that’s Discoverature, # 5 of what may eventually get to 12 designs for the series –  when I swapped out at Inner Equinox the other day)  because I have none in stock to speak of and need to make 2 torsos so I have a good batch to pick from when I go to Island Artworks on Ocracoke to drop off next month.  I hope to design at least one new OBX tile for those shops and am sitting here thinking about how to incorporate sea oats into a torso.  I guess the oats are as ubiquitous on the Outer Banks as birds, barns and boats are here, but I like the oats so don’t mind working with them – and didn’t see them everywhere when I was down there, unlike blue herons which I do see everywhere here.

When I was in graduate school at Goddard doing Story and Social Change, one of the other students was doing an MFA and her facilitator had her do 100 abstracts of pretty much the same picture.  Of course over the course of 100, it mutated.  That’s what’s happening with the fish.  Some of them are really taking on personalities (it’s all in the eye and mouth) and they aren’t taking much more time than any other one that particular size (although glazing will add time because I plan to do them 2 tone).  I’m closing in on 100 in a week.  It’s fun to see that they do change because it keeps me interested to see what’s coming out and keeps it from getting boring.  It’s also good to know that no matter how many I make, each is its individual self so anyone who buys one gets a unique piece of art.  I like that!

thought for the day :  Clearly the Earth is our primary revelatory environment.  Our most sacred scripture is the ‘holy book’ of Nature…While the distinction between spirit and matter is valid, no one can separate the two, no one can draw a line between them.  Spirit and matter are not two different realms of reality, two different layers of the universe.  One and the same reality will be material or spiritual depending on how we approach it.  No matter where we immerse ourselves in the stream of reality, we can touch the spiritual source of all that is natural.   Earth Prayers, not attributed, ed by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon