Ugly Fish Totem, hand made ceramic wall sculpture by Tammy Vitale

See – in amongst everything else I’ve been up to, I still have time for art!  Isn’t that exciting?!  Indeed, cleaning the studio has brought to light pieces I’ve been holding for furniture that I’m just not going to do (the furniture is now at the local food pantry for sale) so they are freed up for totems.  I need more totem wood, but once that is in hand I can have a totem frenzy!

I have a wall mermaid ready to glaze and fire, and several pieces in mind that I will work on today because today is art day!  Woohoo!  In the studio, hand in the mud art day!  Tomorrow I will wander up to Leesburg for an artist outing to check out a new outdoor venue I learned of through my Transient Crafter network.  Is it chance or synchronicity that just 2 weeks ago I was contacting Leesburg shops to see if I could find a representative?  Found none that fit.  What do you think?

Was away for two days for the "part-time" job at a workshop sponsored by the Chesapeake Bay Trust.  It was really great because I ran into all kinds of people I know from working in the environmental movement over the years.  I guess if you plant yourself anywhere long enough that happens.  And it’s fun to see where people are now – how they’ve grown, what they’ve accomplished.

Good news from British Ink.  One piece has sold – Husband took the message so I’m not sure which (I put in tiles and masks in addition to the torsos to make a larger price range from which to choose), and there is interest in two more pieces. 

Gracie is a bit less skittish with me and learning to be ok with Husband.  She will be my dog.  [great BIG smile].  We are not making much headway on the housetraining thing.  At the moment I keep her barricaded into the hall (tiled) area with access to my office.  When we’re moving around, we open that to the dining room which is really our living area.  Living room is off limits to Gracie but not Sueno who can jump the barricades (and who took it upon herself to poop in the LR).  So everyone is jockeying for position in the new family configuration.  The two of them are doing very well together which is also what I wanted, and I’m sure that if we can get Sueno to change from the total neurotic bundle of nerves we got 2.5 years ago, there’s plenty of hope for Gracie once she gets used to doors and feet with boots and anyone moving faster than a sloth.

thought for the day:  Many of us don’t seem to know what to do with ourselves when we’re in process.  It’s almost like we see process as failure instead of promise.  It will be like this for you, perhaps.  It’s as if everyone else out there is walking around like a finished product while, in the meantime, our Jell-O hasn’t jelled, and we haven’t even found one of those tinny molds of a dolphin or a rose to hold us.  But that’s okay because Jell-O without a mold is Jell-O genesis that can become absolutely any Jell-O creation it wants to be.  Tama J. Kieves, This Time I Dance:  Trusting the Journey of Creating the Work You Love

note:  Can I say that I’ve fallen in love again with community work?  That I admit to myself that I love fitting pieces of chaos together?  That it is like watching clay move into the form it’s always wanted beneath my fingers?  I’m just the conduit in both instances.  I had forgotten. 

So you can see, it’s been a very good if very busy week.  A little bit of everything, which makes a well rounded me…and today:  studio time!