Here's Sue with her torso creation so far.  She's taking it home and working on an idea she has that includes chakras and writing.  She showed me the sketch and it looks awesome!  I am so excited about the beeautiful pieces everyone is creating! 

Deb is cold finishing hers with enamels and promises a picture when done, as does Sue (her torso here is cold finished).

For those who wish to know, cold finishing simply means that the piece is fired but not glazed (which would be a fired finish).  After it has been fired and cooled, you can finish the piece in enamels, stains, patinas, acrylics or oils (and probably other things I'm just not thinking of).  That's cold finishing.

Am ready to write up some more classes for the fall, and nows a great time because I'm all enthusiastic about the results of this class.  Thinking:  Ugly Fish, another torso class, a mask class (since Ray Bogle, a real master at raku, has indicated an interest in collaborating with me:  my class makes the piece, his teaches raku.  Which means I get to learn his methods too and that suits me WAY fine!)

Perhaps all this joy is from taking a few days away at Ocracoke NC (where I did a side track to several stores:  2 old and 2 new who might be interested in buying.   Island Artworks/Kathleen O'Neal bought all my Touchstones and existing prose tiles) to listen to the surf, leave the computer and the phone behind and simply rest and walk and enjoy.  In which case I'll just have to include that in my schedule more.

I have just signed up for Christine Kane's Up Level Your Business Course starting mid-month and ending with several days in Asheville NC (and that's the best excuse I've had for driving there…I've been looking for a good excuse forever.  Click on the link and see my YouTube video of old downtown which is nothing but art.  Ahhhhhhh.)  And this Saturday am signed up for Sue O'Kieffe's mandala class (digital – a real challenge for me.  But I am a great admirer of her work and jumped at the opportunity to learn at the knee of the master).

Remember by list of things that I want you to hold me accountable for?  Well, tonight I'm meeting with a group of like-minded women to play at making jewelry (found object), and travel:  just finished the Outer Banks and will be going to Asheville to finish up the Christine Kane program.  My favorite places.  Moving right along!

thought for the day:  Art is made by Ordinary People.  Creatures having only virtues can hardly be imagined making art.  It's difficult to picture the Virgin Mary painting landscapes.  Or Batman throwing pots.  The flawless creature wouldn't need to make art.  And so, ironically, the ideal artist is scarcely a theoretical figure at all.  If art is made by ordinary people, then you'd have to allow that the idea artists would be an ordinary person too, with the whole usual mixed bag of traits that real human beings possess.  This is a giant hint about art, because it suggests that our flaws and weaknesses, while often obstacles to our getting work done, are a source of strength as well.  Something about making art has to do with overcoming things, giving us a clear opportunity for doing things in ways we have always known we should do them.  David Bayles and Ted Orland. Art & Fear:  Obsrevations on the perils (and rewards) of Artmaking    (Ed note:  If you are an artist, and haven't read this book, put it, right now, on your todo list)