Totem:  Rebecca’s Dream, 21" tall, clay shards and found objects, ceramic wall sculpture by Tammy Vitale

I’ve gone and scheduled myself out of the house at 8:30 a.m., am running late getting up (slept in until 6:30 – way late for me these days) and still need to eat some breakfast.  So today I am going to treat you to three new totems. 

This last batch are created around pulls from cast designs where I only pulled a piece of the design.  I’ve had many of the casts (originally used for designed tiles and sometimes for something a bit larger) for years and am tired of making the same thing with a few different details, so I took scraps of clay one day and started just making impressions randomly.  And those are what I used for these totems.  The green tiled with the swirls used as base tiles are from a round piece that broke in half before I fired it, but I glazed and fired anyways, thinking to make a wall hanging, but they’ve been around a good two years and nothing has happened to I took a hammer to them.  Rebecca’s Dream here also has a fin that broke off a Fish! which happened to be one of my favorite ones and I was the one who dropped it.  Nothing is every wasted.

  Totem:  Mystery is one of the largest I’ve made to date, 38" tall.  It combines pieces of designer tiles Linda’s Angel (the mask at the top of the totem, which is a partial of the main face for Rebecca’s Dream), Bloom and Promise finished with some new metallic acrylic paint.  Again the background tiles are from the broken circular wall hanging.  If you look closely in the detail picture (under the figure) you can see tacks which I put in the wet clay and fired.  They only melted a little and I thought that was rather a cool look.   I’ve also included some amethyst crystals.  I was trying to break an amethyst geode into piece but all I got was crystals, and they worked fine. 

Last but not least is Totem:  The Family Tree, which is named for the rock at the very top of the totem which has a tree engraved in it.  Linda’s Angel again forms the basis for the whole work – it’s one of my favorites and a big piece with lots of design and texture so It becomes a favorite.  I’ve also included a Wylde Woman who’s skirt saying got filled in by the glaze.  So I covered that up with shards and gave her some great hair.  Use it all up – don’t throw anything out!  Now, what am I going to do with that Wylde Woman head…..I haven’t found a way to use that that doesn’t look a bit macabre.  But maybe I’ll need macabre some day, so head with hair is in the holding bin.

thought for the day:  Learning to see "nonjudgmentally," that is, to see what is happening rather than how well or how badly you think it is happening is another important inner game skill.  This practice corrects the problem of "trying too hard."  Gallwey points out that there is no absolutely good or bad event in a tennis game.  If the server serves out of bounds, for example, the server considers that bad, but the opponent considers the same ball good, which the referee just considers it "out of bounds."  Our labeling things as "good" and "bad" gets in the way of clear observation and learning…It is by seeing things as they are that we can learn to change them…For many of us a competitive instinct encouraged by our culture not only can get in the way of achieving proficiency, but can turn the experience of playing into an isolating and stressful one.  ed:  Rick Fields, et al, Chop Wood, Carry Water:  A Guide to Finding Spiritual Fulfillment in Everyday Life