Commission for Bead Boutique, Prince Frederick, MD, drying.  Hand-made, slab-built clay wall sculpture by Tammy Vitale

I finally have shoe-horned myself back into the studio and discovered why I love clay – I don’t know why I stay away so long.  Am catching up with the "whenever you get around to it" order from Tricia of the Bead Boutique where I made my jean jangle jewelry.  It measures 12" wide by 32.5" wide and will be mounted on a board to hang on the end of her display rack.  I could have attached it, but she wanted to have it free standing so that if she had to change the rack she would still have the sign.

Signed myself up for Christine Kane’s Big Dream Retreat in North Carolina early in March as a birthday gift to myself.  Checked out several other potential retreats but this one really called to me so I went ahead and signed up for it.  Will get to visit a long lost cousin while in the area and plan on scheduling a day or two extra to check out potential shop representation.

I also made 4 new slab-built and hand-formed Women, VI, VII, VIII AND IX, the last two of which are for raku.  Most of the class’s work was dry so I put that in the kiln and straightened up the studio but left the work tables in place because, as it is finally acting like winter around here (we had 30 minutes of snowflakes yesterday!), the basement is warmer than the garage.  Additionally, work left in the garage doesn’t have the benefit of the dehumidifier which I run in the basement and that extends the drying time considerably.

I feel like I got a lot accomplished and am ready to wander back down and do some more today.  I’m also hoping to start putting together an article to shop to some of the ceramic magazines on my public art piece, Chesapeake.  I took a lot of pictures of that which should illustrate an article nicely.  Would love to have that published somewhere.  And I can make a video of it too I just realized!

Speaking of videos, after all that great creative energy in the studio I came upstairs and made a video of our trip to the Grand Canyon.  Unfortunately those pictures all have little yellow dates on them and it was a different camera and I can see the difference in the photo quality.  But I uploaded this one in "best" and it’s nice and only took about 2 hours since I now know enough about what I’m doing to be slightly dangerous.  I used The Tragically Hip’s song Gift Shop as it is about the Grand Canyon.  It has one of my favorite lines:  You get to feel small, but not out of place at all.  The Hip is a Canadian band and one of my and Husband’s favorites – the only one we have actually traveled to see when he wasn’t working.  We went to New Orleans House of Blues several years back.  Maybe because it was New Orleans, too, my only favorite city.  Not a city person, but I love New Orleans.  Another Hip line:  New Orleans is sinking, and I don’t want to swim.  I made a painting named that.  Much before Katrina.  Anyways, the Hip is huge in Canada – stadium size.  But here in the states they do smaller venues, like the 9:30 Club where Husband works (1200 capacity).  And it always fills up with Canadians who travel to see them in a more intimate setting.  They’re coming through DC April 29 and even though it is a Sunday, Husband plans on working and I’ll join him.

thought for the day:  …the creative person who moves from an irrational source of power has to face the fact that this power antagonizes.  Under all the superficial praise of the ‘creative’ is the desire to kill.  May Sarton, Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing

May your insurrection and your resurrection be the same.  Robin Morgan, Going Too Far

Artists, poets – whatever you want to call those people whose job is ‘making’ – take in the commonplace and are forever recognizing it as worthwhile.  Corita Kent and Jan Steward, Learning by Heart:  Teachings to Free the Creative Spirit

The World Watch Institute in Washington, DC, has estimated that the total cost of a 6-year program to protect the soil, reforest the land, reduce population growth, retire the debts of developing countries, raise energy efficiency, and develop renewable sources of energy would amount to around $750 billion…no more than the world currently spends on arms in just one year [written prior to the latest American invasion of and war on Iraq] Peter Russell, Waking Up in Time