Hand and slab built clay mask, Athene, by Tammy Vitale of Tam’s Originals

Today was going to be a day of photos from Heron’s Way Gallery – the closing of Seeking the Divine Feminine (my show); however, I seem to have left my camera there.  Frantic call to put it somewhere safe until Tuesday when I go to load out the show and refresh the rest of my work.  Bummer.  I feel naked without my camera.

The closing was terrific.  I believe I had close to my best one day event ever.  It closed out a great month but I won’t get the net proceeds until October (we’re in October!  where has this year gone?!) so they will count toward October not September.  A great start for the month for sure!

I have a kiln load open and almost cool in the studio.  Very full again.  A mask on the top blew out a bit (not bad, just added on clay popped off).  I think I’ll wait until I get the camera back so I can take pictures of how it looks and then how you fix that.  Because it will be a patina and was not glazed, it is very easy to fix and mostly no one will be able to tell once I’m finished, I think.  But I planned to call this mask "Artifact" anyways, an allusion to finding it in Mayan ruins (okay, I have all these stories I tell myself, or the piece tells me when/if it names itself), and so the name will make the actuality just fine.  Hmmm.  I’m going to need some turqoise rub’n’buff and I don’t think I have it.

Anyways, I have two raku torsos and one raku mask (which is way too ornate for raku – I’ll take a picture before and cross my fingers it makes it through – and take a picture after).  Of course, you see, all these pictures are required now that my camera isn’t in hand. There are 3 other masks – all of which were presented here on September 29th’s post.  Six fish that I refired after reglazing because I wasn’t happy with the first go round.  Usually a 2nd glazing doesn’t work really well, but I’m hoping it at least darkens up the color (pinkish red) again.

There’s almost a full load waiting from Stacy who is directory of Bay Arts in North Beach.  I fire her kids’ work for her.  It’s fun to see how really good they are at putting together clay animals, at least one teapot and cup and a birdhouse!  Tenacity!

Have a busy week ahead with preparations for a show next weekend (Patuxent River Apprectiation Days, PRAD, Solomons Island, MD), a raku firing on Thursday for which I need to make a new batch of glaze.  Last batch I played with percentages of coloring and didn’t like the outcome.  I’ll go back to the originals, which is great:  tuquoise when applied thick and oxidized (aired for a while) before going into the pit, and bronzey copper when applied thin and gotten from the kiln to the pit quickly.  In raku, timing is everything.

Off for coffee which I smell finished brewing.  Then up to the grocery store for some fresh fruit and flour (pancakes maybe fore breakfast, from scratch) for when Daughter and Grandson get here. 

thought for the day:  From a biological viewpoint, patriarchal religion denied women the natural rights of every other mammalian female:  the right to choose her stud, to control the circumstances of her mating, to occupy and govern her own nest, or to refuse all males when preoccupied with the important business of raising her young….Today’s scholars habitually call all female and male deities of that ancient world ‘gods,’ as they also call humanity ‘man.’  …Early Christian thinkers rightly perceived that destruction of the women’s Goddess would mean a crushing blow to women’s pride and confidence, since men’s pride depended greatly on their vision of a God like themselves, only better.  Women were not called daughters of this God, who gave men their souls.  In the sixth century, churchmen even denied that women had any souls.  Barbara G. Walker, The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets