Phineas Dragon, hand made, hand built clay sculpture by Tammy Vitale

This is Phineas.  I don’t know that I’ve mentioned that I am a total dragon lover.  I used to make baby dragons, and then dragons with messages but they didn’t sell.  So I gave some away and kept some, my favorites, out and about.  A month or so ago while playing in the mud, Phineas was born.  He had to sit for a very long time so that I could be sure he wouldn’t blow up – he’s very thick and heavy.  And because he has that finger and those horns, I bisque fired him first and then glaze fired him.  He has quite a bit of personality, and I do believe it’s because of that finger and his wise and peaceful face.

Post is short today by necessity – rose late (8 am!!!) and am doing a raku firing today so much prepare.  Dhyana is coming to keep company.  Everything (leaves, pine needles) is wet, wet, wet.  I didn’t realize yesterday was going to be drizzley all day too.  So I’m going to go with newspapers and maybe some wood twigs (raid the houses kindling stack) and saw dust and see what happens.  Two Women (IV and V) and a torso to fire.  Last firing I left all the accoutrements of firing stored in the car that’s parked up there under the shed with the raku kiln so that’s about 2 trips less that I have to make back and forth.  Makes absolute sense.  Don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.

So here’s today’s AEM (Art Everyday Month)….coming down the home stretch and truthfully this week has been the hardest so far.  But the "A student" in me won’t let me "fail" this assignment I have given myself.  I can’t say enough about how this has made me stretch and how happy I am that I am participating!   These are pages 9 and 10 of my altered book and titled "To Be Alive I and II."

Thought for the day:  The wise fool refuses to succumb to the tyranny of the dull collective mind.  However, because the world is corrupt, wisdom and goodness may well be veiwed as foolishness…Such wise fools may live quite effective lives, or they may destroy themselves, but they are not passive, weak Little Nells.  However foolish they may seem, they are active, powerful women.  So, too the artist who uses the dichotomy between self and society to advantage may appear trivial and artificial.  She is unlike the heroine…whose fear causes her to hide her true nature behind an expected role;  in contract, the artist, having returned from the [heroic] journey, is secure in her identity; if she uses masks she does so not merely to hide, but to alter her environment.  Like Orpheus, she translates the truth she knows into appearance that others can handle.  As such, she is an example of the highest form of intellect, as John Keats defines it, the one that can sustain opposing truths at once.  Carol Pearson and Katherin Pope, The Female Heron In American and British Literature