Mask:  Myth, 25"w x 13"t, ceramic wall sculpture, clay, glaze, cedar driftwood, raw turquoise, amethyst crystals, $145 By Tammy Vitale

I finished Myth day before yesterday – the day I only got around to making 3 masks because of all the other incidentals that needed taking care of, like finishing this mask, that go along with being an artist.  It would be great if I could just wander in and play with clay and the rest would finish itself magically.  Alas, all parts of the process bear this artist’s fingerprints – which is great for the purchaser but not always great for this artist.  I need an attitude adjust so I can enjoy all of it as much as the creative part (which is where the real energy comes rushing through and I get my "fix.").  I’m liking these new masks that are a part of something larger – driftwood.  I have a bin of it from the husband of an artist acquaintance – he walks the dog on the beach every morning and collects very cool driftwood.  I wasn’t using it for a while, so I ended the collection on my behalf.  I could see where I might be using it up more quickly now.

Here are the three masks I made, drying.  They’re ready for glazing right now, and kiln but I still don’t have a kiln load to fire unless I work on the box I made for the  oriole’s nest – I bisque fired it because it was so fragile and now have to figure out how I want to finish it – some way that the writing on it will show up which probably means glazing and wiping off – something earthy, maybe rust, with some glazes randomly brushed on and wiped off – I’ll have to play.  It’s pretty big and would fill up the rest of the kiln which is a good excuse for going ahead and finishing it and seeing if it’s going to work for that nest.

And here, just for the heck of it, is another picture of my pond – you can sort of see the goldfish I was originally after, but they look like an afterthought instead of the main focus of the photo.  I think it’s time for me to put my snake plants in a bigger pot.  These plants all grew from a single plant that came in a planter to me when I was 34 years old (25 years ago!) and going through the very bad breakup with then husband.  Snake plants are so hardy – I think they live off air.  Anyways, whenever I look at them, I think of the kindness and support of the people around me then, in a corporate setting, which I don’t even begin to think I could work in now.  It makes me wonder what happened to all those folks (I still sort of keep in touch every 8 years or so with one of them, who gave me her spider plant, which I still have.  It wouldn’t have babies for her.  I think because it was too young because it certainly has babies now!).

I am a plant collector.  I have lilies by the pond that came from the side of my parents’ house – I got the first lily from a neighbor when I was 8 years old.  By the time we sold that house (and I was 46 by then) the whole side of the house was blanketed with them, so I brought along 3 bulbs which haven’t had many babies here because I have them in pots in the ground to keep the moles/mice away from them.  And then there’s the azaleas in my yard that come from a plant at my parents’ house that came from the first house I ever lived in.  And the Christmas cactus which is now huge that had died back to a nub under Dad’s care, that Momma started from a piece she got from a neighbor (around about 8 or 9 or 10 for me).  And the violets that came from one of Momma’s – and I still have that mother plant too. We have tall palm trees in pots that came from the little garden planters from Husband’s Dad’s funeral ( 20+ years ago), a scheflera (sp?) that is as big as me that came from a garden planter I got as a holiday gift in the late 1980s from an organization I was Executive Director for, and the piece de resistance, the lemon tree Husband grew from a seed that doesn’t bear but that we’ve had for about 16 years now.  Everything goes out for the summer and in for the winter.  We have to schedule a moving day.  This, for me, is family.

thought for the day:  The desire to make art begins early.  Among the very young this is encouraged (or at least indulged as harmless) but the push toward a "serious" education soon exacts a heavy toll on dreams and fantasies (Yes, the authors really have known students whose parents demanded they stop wasting their time on art or they could damn well pay their own tuition).  Yet for some the desire persists and sooner or later must be addressed.  And with good reason:  your desire to make are – beautiful or meaningful or emotive art – is integral to your sens of who you are.  Life and Art, once entwined, can quickly become inseparable.  David Bayles and Ted Orland, Art & Fear:  Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking