Commission:  Bead Boutique, slab built and hand sculpted 12" x 32" hanging sculpture by Tammy Vitale

This is the final Bead Boutique commission piece.  I published it drying a while back.  Thought you might enjoy seeing the final product.

And here is the raku vase I made earlier this week, drying.  I just took the plastic off it.  Because I used a lot of water joining pieces together for this, it was necessary to leave it plastic-ed for a few days to let the water even out in the piece.  This helps avoid explosions from water pockets that boil when firing and blow out sides and seams.  The vase is about 24" tall.  If it makes it through the firing process of raku (see also here), it will be wonderful.  If not, I should have a lot of pretty totem shards. (smile). 

Today I have to get in the studio and clean it up for class on Saturday – not many folks but I want to let the ones who want to learn to glaze and to glaze their pieces have an opportunity to do that.  Boy, it sure it hard coordinating classes with busy people! This includes writing up a handout for the class, which will be good for future classes once it’s done, which makes the times spent feel more worthwhile, somehow.  And I have to take down the forest of clothes hanging around the washing machine.  Husband doesn’t like dryers for his clothes and it’s been very wet, so he’s been hanging in the basement.  The dehumidified I use for my clay works well on clothes too.

thought for the day: ‘ It’s not the surface work that’s needed now’, A Native American teacher told us. ‘ It’s the deep work.  We need to bring our dreams and visions down to earth and put them into our lives.  in my country we can’t just stagger around in our visions – the rattlesnake teaches us that.  We need to be awake and pay attention to where we place our feet.’

When a woman makes the choice to embody spiritual experience in her everyday life, idealizations go out the window.  She has to bring in everything – frailties and strengths, doubts and optimism, whatever she longs to conceal and whatever she’d be delighted to flaunt – and live it out.  Sherry Ruth Anderson and Patricia Hopkins, The Feminine Face of God:  The Unfolding of the Sacred in Women