Totem: The Arrangement, clay collage; slab, hand and extruder made by Tammy Vitale
Here’s the last totem made last week. The Arrangement takes it’s name from the fact that the smaller end of the extruded (vase-like) portion of th collage will hold a dried arrangement. I have to check, but I think it may also hold a water arrangement (depends on whether or not I knocked a hole in it when I bent it. I can’t remember now).
Yesterday was an extremely productive day. I went to Husband’s work with him, the 9:30 Club, because it’s right off Georgia Avenue and therefore a straight show to Alchemy where I was picking up work that wasn’t selling (Georgia Avenue DC to Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring, MD). Saved me a 5 hour trip of my own around the DC beltway which is nerve wracking. Husband says: "She’ll drive in with me and hang out for 12 hours to avoid driving in herself." Yep. That’s me. When I picked up the work, I discovered that a torso and a totem had just sold – the totem as it was being wrapped for pickup the day before. And there is strong interest in another totem by one of the women who works there, so I gave her my email.
Then back to the 9:30 Club to find a niche (Husband now has a small office where I can hide – this is great) to read the books I had randomly grabbed to go with me. Nothing happens by chance.
Here are the books, read in this order:
Image and Transfer on Clay by Paul Andrew Wandless. A really good overview of making and using decals and "overglaze" (china paints) for some pretty cools effects on clay. You can use screening, transparency (acetate) copies on Lasertran paper (with inkjet), a laser toner copy (which comes our black or sepia and is great for writing), draw on newspaper and then cover the drawing with slip to be put on your piece among other methods. My real complaint about this book, a Lark book, is that it has no information whatsoever on where to start looking for these supplies. No I haven’t Googled yet, but you’d think Lark would have a section on that – they usually do.
Walking in this World: The Practical Art of Creativity, Julia Cameron. Not my first time through, but my first time to see some really important information that is perfect for me right now.
The Ever-Present Origin, Jean Gebser translated by Noel Barstad with Algis Mickunas. Consciousness studies (the stages of awareness of the human race as a whole)(1949). This is heavy duty reading writting with words like systatic and synairetic (and no, even in context I don’t know what they mean and the closest dictionary did not have them). And as it turns out this particular book dives right into creativity: "The Muse is the latent memory of the world…The Muses are an image of the sustenance of the life-soul symbolized by water: 
a likeness of creativity in the world….the creative person ‘draws up’ from the well-srpings of life, from the life-soul bringing to the light of day and th thinking realm of consciousness what has been forgotten as well as what has not yet been realized. The creative person externalizes what has been recalled; recollection becomes memory.
In my thesis I tie water and women together because women, and I as a woman, are forever "diving into the wreck" (Adrian Rich) and "Surfacing" (Margaret Atwood). Water flows through both my environmental work and my poetry and writing and often even in my 2D pictures.
Additionally I did some sketches for clay (see the horse and woman sketch) 
and for my 24 x 36 heron and also did a lot of my own musing writing which I plan to post at myspace (see http://blog.myspace.com/tamsoriginals, today, December 14 (yet to be written as I type this) or click on my myspace link on the upper left column here).
Last but not least I want to give you heads up on a special column tomorrow featuring a blog interview (my first ever!) with Joeann Fossland who founded the Web Women Giving Circle. I want you to share what the energy of one person acting can do…this is great stuff and the time of year to be thinking about it…AND I’m going to be offering word tiles as gifts….so make sure you sign in (upper left, Feedblitz) or make a note somewhere to come back tomorrow. You won’t want to miss this.
thought for the day: Already a symbol of soul to the Greeks, the dove indicates the psychic accentuation of this feminine manifestation of spirit…an equalizing and counterbalancing force of a ‘maternal spirit’ was a necessary pole of the active and vengeful paternal god. We see this psychic polarization even today, although in deficint form; the overly patriarchal, authoritarian European experiences a compensatory obsession and sezirue by the ‘spirit of materialism.’ Jean Gebser as above (in 1949!)
1 Comment
You have myspace! I added you to my friends.
I hate it when you read a book, get all excited about doing what it describes, and then find you have no clue where to buy the things you need in order to do it!