Site specific architectural tile installation, hand-made tile design for mantle piece by Tammy Vitale.

Yesterday was a day away Husband and I planned on Friday.  He was ready to get away from the house and so was I.

I got up early, finished unloading the kiln, finished a few pieces with glazes (the kind that don’t have to fire) and gluing so I had my productive piece of the day out of the way.  We left later than planned – originally he anticipated getting home earlier because he had gone in early and there was an all night show happening so he usually has a 2nd sound engineer come in and take that.  Well, things happen and he didn’t get in until 2:30 am so we didn’t get out of the house until around 11:30.  We decided that we’d head down into the Northern Neck of Virginia instead of going to the mountains since we started late, and stopped at Room with a Brew (which shows my art) for coffee.  Which we purchased and when we got back in the car it wouldn’t start.  Sigh.

But it’s a stick shift, and Husband said:  it’s hot, we can push start it.  So he pushed and I did the clutch thing and wah-la that’s what we did for the rest of the day.  The key to doing this successfully is putting it in second gear!  My younger years were full of this stuff but apparently then husband didn’t know about the 2nd gear thing because we always had it in first gear and it tends to buck and cut off (and that tends to make things wind up in in-tenseness).  So it became an adventure instead of a problem – how cool is that?!

We wound up in Colonial Beach, VA, a small beach town that is becoming a retirement haven.  It is getting artsy and we stopped at one gallery who sent us to another who sent us to another.  It was very fun.

There are several galleries and Colonial Beach is starting a 2nd Friday art walk.  The first gallery, and my favorite, is WideRiver Gallery.  Hubert Jackson, artist/co-owner was there.  Hubert taught in the D.C. school system, has his fine arts degree from Howard University, and knows clay.  He does these wonderful textured abstracts that I immediately loved even before he engaged us in conversation – don’t you love it when you go in a gallery and the sitter is friendly and chatty?!  I do – it takes away some of the, oh, I don’t know, some of the oooh, here I am in a gallery, are they friendly or snobby…is that only me?  anyways, Hubert and I had a lovely conversation about clay and glazes and exchanged cards.  I followed up with him this morning about showing if possible, because his gallery is really nice – great lighting (and old, converted Esso station! with and Expresso coffee shop in the front) and a nice feel and interesting work.

Hubert sent us up around the corner (walking) to Jarrett Thor Fine Arts gallery where I talked with owner Joyce Thor.  More conventional art than WideRiver Gallery, but Joyce was very friendly.  They just opened in June.  They also have some beautiful crystals there – some really huge ones!  I wound up buying an amysthyst cluster that I can break apart and use with my masks and totems.  I was looking at some of the bigger crystals thinking how I could use them in my art, but they run $125 and up and that would really jack up the price of the art (but hey, if it didn’t sell, I could keep it and I don’t know that that would be such a bad thing….). 

Joyce sent us down the street to Sherri’s Pottery Place where we chatted with owner Sherri and visited her house full of slab built functional wear, jewelry and art from local artists.

Then we rode around a bit further south and discovered that we were right on the path to Ingleside Winery – one of our favorites, so of course we had to stop, taste some wine, and buy a few bottles to bring home.  Back to Colonial Beach where we had dinner on the water at a fairly new restaurant whose name I totally forget, but which had yummy food, and then we came home.  Not a bad day.

Saturday I got a call from Transient/C’ville Crafters (where you will remember I day tripped to middle of last week to hang new work).  Someone came in and wanted one of the torsos and they couldn’t find a price tag (and the torsos had big price tags on the wall, sigh)(I must figure out a better way to tag.  Husband thinks the sticker tags take away from the look of the pieces.  I think tags you can’t find keep people from buying because they won’t ask – I won’t when I’m looking!  and I’m an artist! – anyone have a good tag idea?).  Supposedly he would be back to check in because he thought the price on the torso in the front ($450) was reasonable and was ready to buy this one ($425) if it were in the same price range.  So I hope he comes back.  I also had already sold several tiles – so that got me back into the studio on Saturday for a good day of creating. 

It’s been a great weekend!  Hope yours was too!

thought for the day:  The natural state of Abundance is flow, endless and interconnected…Aligning doesn’t keep life from being messy, it just keeps the mess from becoming a permanent stain.  Life will do what it does.  But nothing it does has the power to limit your world of possibilities.  Victoria Castle, The Transe of Scarcity:  Hey! Stop Holding Your Breath and Start Living Your Life

All things are inventions of holiness.  Some more rascally than others.  Mary Oliver quoted by Victoria Castle