Mask: Avalon, hand made ceramic wall sculpture, 15"t x 8"w, by Tammy Vitale, $145.00

Am keeping myself out of trouble by staying very busy.  Have 7 new Wylde Women finished, several masks, more prose tiles made – more to make. And the raku masks are morphing – I’ll show you when finished (they’re finding driftwood they want to bond with).

Husband and I are plorking (play and work together – usually outside because although it’s work, we are together and enjoying ourselves) more at the cottage – finishing up with mulching some bare areas from putting the new room up, maybe mulching some of the yard trimmings that are mountaining in the side yard.  Yesterday we repaired and painted the white picket fence (don’t you love it?  cottage, white picket fence), trimmed back the forsythia, and started mulching….we just didn’t have enough.  Off to buy more today.  We also found a new spot to have a crab feast close to home and went there and stuffed ourselves (really really).  It was very good.  And of course picking crabs (especially feast crabs which tend to be very small) is always conducive to relaxing and talking   and generally having a great time.  Yesterday was a very good day!

Saturday night I went to the community show opening at the Arts Council of Calvert County’s Gallery where I have 2 pieces.  Many community artists I know are showing so it was nice catching up with them and meeting some new folks.  The highlight of the evening, though, was meeting the Gallery’s raku artist, Ray Bogle – he does lovely vases and gets the best crackle.  And if you read this blog much you know I am in search of crackle and not doing well.  He shared the clay he uses (yes it makes a difference), where to buy it and the recipe for his clear glaze which it turns out is the base recipe for my favorite raku glaze (base glaze plus 1 ingredient which I’d tell you but the name of that chemical has just run away and if I chase it, it’ll run faster).  We went over process and the last thing he asked if I fire my pieces face down in my reduction material – which I do.  He said flip it over.  He noticed that his vases crackled best on the side that was up (he now sits the whole vase up) and figured that the side that is touching the reduction material insulates the glaze and clay.  Be sure to click over and enjoy his work (and leave him a message on his message page if you’re so inclined).

So of course now I have to make a bunch more raku and try that out (and also make plans to run over to Alexandria Va and buy some of the clay he uses).  Don’t you just love it when other artists share with you?!  Like the blogging world, the art world can be very loving and generous.

But first I have to go plork at the cottage.

t hought for the day:  For art, no matter how high its mission, serves in yet a higher.  It is a bridge between the visible and invisible worlds…Artistic vision registers and prophesies the expanding consciousness of [humanity].  I am not speaking only of works of art, but of artistic vision wherever it imbues living acts.  Artistic imagination creates what has never before existed.  To live artistically is to embody in social forms the unique individual and the intuitions of union.  In the prophetic artist, genesis again will create the firmament and the day and night and the world of plants and animals, and into this creation…will enter and …will be its voice and its guardian and will giver to everything its name which is poetry and to everything its sound which is music and to everything its color which is painting and to everything its shape which is architecture and to everything its motion which is dance and to everything its metamorphosis which is sculpture. M. C. Richards, Centering:  In Pottery, Poetry and the Person

Mask:  Diana, 12.5"t x 9.5"w, hand made, goddess wall sculpture, by Tammy Vitale $110.00