Mission Accomplished

I think the Christmas rush has passed. I've been hesitant to say so, but I think it's over. It's funny, I spent so much time this year thinking about and preparing for the Christmas rush, and here it is, over already. I want to say thank you so much to everyone who purchased items from me, either through Etsy, at a craft fair, or direct from my studio. Your support means so much to me. Being an artist is never easy financially, but with the economy so rocky, I didn't know what to expect this year. But thanks to all of you, I've had the best Christmas season since I started my business. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I have to say, I think my Holiday Stress Reduction Plan (or Project Anti-Freakout) worked pretty well. The first week of December was rough because I had two craft fairs in addition to the increased Etsy traffic, but other than that, the season went pretty well. (I would say the season started right after Halloween and lasted through the first nine days of December.) Limiting shipping to three days a week was key, because I could fill all the orders that were in at any given time, and then not think about it again for a day or two. Last year, I was shipping nearly every day and that was a big source of stress.

Having set up the designated shipping space in my closet also helped a ton. Having all of my shipping supplies in one place, close at hand, made packing go much so faster and easier. And it was great to close it all away when I was done for the day. I also did not spend a single second standing in line in the post office, thanks to PayPal Multi-Order Shipping and Endicia for Mac. This contributed greatly to my well-being!

I think it's nice that the hectic holiday season for my business is pretty much over by December 10th. That gives me nearly two weeks to enjoy Christmas for what it is, in the present moment. Now that the rush is past, I can bake Christmas cookies and watch Christmas movies. I can wrap presents and plan for the Christmas Eve party I'm having at my house. I can enjoy my Christmas tree, the real evergreen wreath on my front door, and a blazing fire in the fireplace. It's like the real Christmas season is finally here!

To every thing, there is a season...

It's less than three weeks until Christmas, and I'm sitting here thinking about Valentine's Day. Between the holidays and my regular job, I have just eight days to make new work before I go on vacation in mid-January. I'm thinking about Valentine's Day because if I want to try to make anything Valentine-oriented, I have to do it now.

Being ready for holiday/seasonal sales is something I'm trying to improve on. In late April and early May of this year, I had this huge spike in sales in my Etsy store and I had no idea why. I thought maybe the world had finally discovered my work and couldn't get enough! I thought I had finally "made it." Turns out it was for Mother's Day gifts. That one made me feel a bit dense.

So, I am now trying to capitalize on holidays in terms of both merchandise and marketing. I did that this past Halloween when I produced some limited-edition Halloweeny colored jewelry. I don't think I got it into my shop early enough though, because it didn't sell super well online until I put the remaining stock on sale the last week of October. Or maybe it was because Halloween is not really a gift-giving holiday. However, the items did sell very well in person to a friend of mine who went to OSU and therefore loves the color orange to an almost unhealthy level...

The hardest part of this process for me is trying to prepare for a season beyond that which we are currently in. I mean, I'm surrounded by Christmas stuff right now, so it's hard to find Valentine's Day inspiration. I had a hell of a time designing my Christmas ornament this year, because I was trying to do it in August. I was still in a long hot days-bright flowers-garden tomatoes-eating breakfast on the patio frame of mind. I was struggling so badly to come up with an idea, I nearly had to take myself on an inspiration trip to the local year-round Christmas shop.

Christmas is, of course, the big selling highlight of the year for artists and crafters. Last year, I made half of my entire annual sales amount in November and December. But beyond Christmas, what can we do to take advantage of gift-buying holidays? Valentine's Day is the first gift-giving holiday after Christmas, so I would tend to think that people are shopped out. My husband and I still exchange Valentine's gifts, but they're usually of the cheap and quirky handmade variety. One year, he actually made me a heart-shaped pendant out of dried macaroni and glittery ribbon. It's still the best gift I've ever received.

But back to the subject at hand, do very many people buy each other Valentine's Day gifts, especially of the pottery variety? I don't know. I figure I'll try a few ideas and see how things go. I've learned that there's really no other way of doing things in this line of work!

Craft Fair Tales

Today is a cold and snowy day here in Denver, and although I don't like being house-bound by the snow, I'm relishing a little bit of quiet time in a crazy, hectic week.

The week started with a craft fair in downtown Denver, in the lobby of the Denver Newspaper Agency. I was contacted through Etsy about this show months ago, and I decided to go for it because the table fee was only $20. I don't do a lot of shows, but this one seemed easy enough.

I would only have two hours to set up on the day of the sale, so I thought I'd better take a couple of hours ahead of time to figure out how I was going to display everything. I borrowed a table from my friend Pirate Monkey, a bunch of tablecloths from my mom, and a whole jewelry display set up from a friend who used to sell Cookie Lee jewelry. First, I set up the table like this:

I thought my jewelry pieces looked really nice on the velvet-lined jewelry trays, but having all that black off to one side made the table look lopsided, and the pottery almost invisible. So I rearranged everything, and came up with this:

I thought this was better, but all that black in the middle just dominated the table, and the pottery still seemed hardly visible. So I decided to split up the trays, and move everything again:

Ah, third time's a charm! Splitting up the trays did the trick, and put the emphasis back on the pots in the middle.

Having figured out how to set up the table made me feel pretty prepared, so I was very surprised to find I couldn't sleep the night before the show! I wanted to sleep, I was very tired, but I just couldn't. My mind wasn't even racing with things I needed to do or remember, I was just wide awake. So I stayed like that most of the night, finally falling asleep sometime after 3 am and then waking up to my alarm at 5 am.

Despite feeling like a zombie all day, the show went pretty well. It was slow in the morning, which made me think no one would buy anything, but then sales picked up later in the day. My mom worked the table with me, which is so nice. If you've ever done a craft show, you know how nice it is to have a little help and company!

I think the best part of the day was getting to meet some other Etsy folks. My closest tablemates turned out to be two of the loveliest Etsyians you could ever meet. As soon as she had her table set up, Angie (spacemonkey on Etsy) walked up to my table and said, "Are you MSpottery?" My first real-life Etsy encounter! Angie turned out to be wonderfully funny and friendly, with an utterly fabulous collection of all-natural handmade bath and body products. I couldn't resist the gorgeous smells, and had to buy myself a Chai Tea lip balm and a White Jasmine bath bomb. I was going to use the bath bomb last night, but I couldn't bring myself to dissolve all that lovely scent just yet! It will have to wait a few more days...

Two tables down from me was the very sweet and adorable Susan (susanporteous on Etsy), with her beautiful handmade books and sock animals. I have to tell you, this woman has incredible craftsmanship. Her books and animals were so beautifully made, I wanted to buy everything. I had to restrain myself and walked away with only a little, colorful book and something else that I can't tell you about, because it's a Christmas gift for someone who's probably reading this right now!

All in all, the show went really well and I had a good time. Now, I'm going to take advantage of my quiet, snowy day and relax a little!

New Work

Happy Belated Thanksgiving! I hope you all had a wonderful day with friends and family. I had a great day, visiting my mother-in-law's house early in the day and then my sister's house in the evening. It was wonderful to be with so many friends and relatives, and to eat so much terrific food!

With Thanksgiving over, the holiday season is officially here! I've been busy with lots of orders from my Etsy store, and I've been adding tons of new pottery pieces. Here's a few for you to check out:

Set of Three Nesting Bowls in Aqua, $85

Chopstick Gift Sets are back! Set of Four in Magenta, $24

Small Dish in Sage Green, $12

There's plenty more in the shop, including new mugs and tea bowls. It's nice to have more pottery in the shop again. For a while, it seemed like I had nothing but jewelry pieces in there, which makes Michelle Swafford Pottery a bit of a misnomer!

2008 ornaments are here!

The shop is hopping! I've been busy adding lots of new jewelry and pottery items, including this year's holiday ornament!

Every year, I create a new design and produce just 50 ornaments. Each ornament in the run is signed and numbered on the back, just like a limited-edition print.

These went up in my shop last week, and I'm already running low. There are just 16 of these ornaments left, so if you have your eye on one, don't wait! You can also save a bit on ornaments this year by buying three or more!

Starting over. Again.

Years ago, when I was a junior in college, I lost all of the contents of my beloved Apple G4 computer when the hard drive crashed. I was majoring in multimedia and graphic design, and the crash wiped out my entire portfolio. I had to start completely over.


When bad things happen, I tend to cope by trying to find the lessons that can be learned from the situation. The lesson I learned from that crash years ago was to always back up important data. And I did. For a while.

For quite some time, my aging 2002 Mac has been making weird noises and if you tried to shut it down, it would restart instead. I kept thinking I needed to take the computer in and have it looked at, but I never got around to it. I kept thinking I needed to buy an external hard drive and back everything up, but I never did. It was too expensive, I'd do it later, on and on. Besides, I had some data backed up here and there on CDs and thumb drives. I wasn't worried. Surely the old girl would carry on!

Then one day last week, the computer began behaving strangely. Applications wouldn't open up and everything was running really slowly. I printed off my packing slips and shipping labels for the day's Etsy orders, and then restarted the computer to try to get it working right again. It never came back.

I took the poor dear into the Apple store and they managed to get it up and running again through their Genius Bar voodoo magic, but they weren't able to retrieve any of my data thanks to a little thing called FileVault, which comes standard with the operating system. If you have a Mac, and you use FileVault, turn it off this instant! I mean it, stop reading this, open up your System Preferences and turn it off right now.

The guy at the Apple store described FileVault as a "Department of Defense level of data encryption." It comes with the following handy warning:
"WARNING: Your files will be encrypted using your login password. If you forget your login password and you don't know the master password, your data will be lost."

This didn't exactly make me shake in my boots when I first turned on FileVault. I thought securing my data against all sorts of computer threats was a good idea. Was I ever wrong! The warning should really go something like this:
"WARNING: Use at your own risk. If your hard drive fails, and you don't have your data backed up, you will lose everything. Don't think the guys at the Apple store will be able to help you in the event of a crash, because they won't. They will only roll their eyes at you and make you feel like an idiot by saying, "You have FileVault turned on?!" like you're supposed to know that this is an obviously stupid and dangerous thing, which of course you would expect from something that comes standard with the operating system. Seriously, don't turn on FileVault unless you've got all your data backed up on an external hard drive, or preferably two, with one drive located on site and the other stored in a safety deposit box, fireproof vault, or possibly the Vatican."

So, now I'm starting totally over, trying to retrieve what data I can from my little collection of CDs and other disks. I'm reinstalling all of my software. I have lost all of my images of my pottery and jewelry, save for the ones that have been uploaded to Etsy. I am relearning all the lessons I learned from that first computer crash years ago, which stings a lot more than learning them the first time.

I've purchased a new little Apple Mini to replace my dead G4, but more importantly, I bought a shiny new 500 GB external hard drive that backs up my computer every hour. I'm not doing this a third time...

An instant uplift

My dear friend Pirate Monkey just introduced me to possibly the best thing to ever hit the Internet:

Live Streaming by Ustream.TV

Puppies on demand! I could honestly sit here and watch this live, streaming video all day.

I'm a huge animal lover and my husband and I used to do foster care for a local animal shelter. I miss having all those puppies and kittens around, but foster care is how I wound up with three cats when I never meant to get one. Go figure!

New Items

I've in the process of adding some new jewelry items to my Etsy store. For the first time, both the round and oval earrings will be available in my midnight blue and magenta colors! I create these colors using either a black or red underglaze and my pearly white glaze (which you can see on other items). The result is a beautiful, saturated color with a kind of shiny, starry depth. I love it.

I've also got new solid round pendants to post. These are the same size as my open round pendants, but with a smaller opening. I love how well the large surface shows off the glaze patterns my reactive glazes.

Vote!

Just in case you've been living under a rock or something, today is Election Day! Get out there and exercise your right to vote! It's a real privilege and something that those of us in the free world should never take for granted.

The nightmare before Christmas

Today is only Halloween, and yet I've felt it for months, creeping into my peripheral vision, lurking around with its insidious, low-grade stress and endless to-do lists.

Christmas.

Or, more correctly, the winter holiday gift-buying season, which seems to officially begin November 1st.

I used to love Christmas, I really did. I still like Christmas, but ever since I got more seriously into the business of being an artist, Christmas has come to equal a lot of work. All of my summer now is consumed with thinking about what to make for the Christmas season, because nothing happens quickly in the ceramics world. Even if I'm really pushing my schedule, it takes me at least a month to make something start to finish, due to the drying time and multiple-stage ceramic process.

So I spend all summer thinking about what to make, when to make it, how to sell it, where to sell it, how much to sell it for. In the fall, I finally get down to the actual making of things and by then, I'm usually already behind. Take this year for instance. I'm already behind on my self-imposed schedule. I do a special Christmas ornament every year, and this year I wanted to debut them on November 1st, but due to delays in my studio, it's going to be more like November 10th, assuming they all turn out ok in the firing, which a good potter never assumes!

This will be my third Christmas on Etsy. Before Etsy (BE?), I usually did one small group holiday sale with the Foothills Clay Arts program, and I thought that was pretty difficult. Then, on a whim, I opened an Etsy shop in the summer of 2006 and did pretty much nothing with it until right before Christmas of that year. After my Foothills holiday sale was over, I posted all the remaining pieces to my shop. And then I got slammed. By "slammed," I mean that I got about 12 orders in five days, which was total overload for a person who had had three Etsy sales to date. I didn't know how to package stuff for shipping, that you could print postage online, none of that. And I had the most awful stomach flu. It was craziness.

In 2007, I was more prepared. I had been selling more regularly on Etsy, and therefore knew a lot more tricks. Still, my monthly sales more than doubled in both November and December, and I was spending long hours after work every night packaging orders up in my little office/guest bedroom. And I got sick again, and had to spend an evening in the ER.

I'm determined that Christmas 2008 is going to be less stressful. I've been working on a holiday attack plan since June, which has helped with all the necessary planning (although I'm already behind). And I spent a day last week organizing my office with my mom, who is very organized and tends to have more energy than me. We created this cool little shipping nook inside the closet. I'm hoping that having a designated shipping/packaging space helps me stay more sane this year.Priority Mail boxes are lined up under the table, jewelry inventory is ready to go in gift boxes, and mailers are up on the top shelf. My bubble wrap is inside the door on the other side, along with my packing peanuts. I even cable-tied a little halogen light to the clothes pole so I can see what I'm doing. It's worked pretty well so far, and I love that I can close the door on it and put it completely out of sight.

I'm doing some other things to try to reduce my stress this year. I'm going to be using Endicia.com for my shipping, instead of PayPal shipping, which is what I normally use. The reason for the switch is that Endicia can print First Class International postage, while PayPal shipping can't. International orders are the only reason I have to stand in line at the post office anymore, and being at the post office during the Christmas season makes me absolutely crazy. My goal is to not set foot in there this year. I'm going to rely on carrier pick up and the drive-up drop boxes. I'm also going to pack and ship orders only three days a week. Last year, I packed and shipped orders as they came in, which was every single day. That was too much!

I'm not a real high-energy person, so I've come to accept that I must have some built-in downtime during this stressful season. Therefore, I've declared Sundays off-limits to all studio and Etsy work, and to any and all social engagements. Sundays from now until the end of the year are reserved for sleeping in, staying home, eating snacks, and watching Broncos' games. I'll still renew listings on Etsy to stay visible, but I'm be doing it in my jammies!

In the beginning

I first threw clay on a potter's wheel when I was about nine years old. I was taking a kids' clay class at the local community college, and they actually let us attempt to throw on the kickwheels. I remember it being so HARD, and couldn't even begin to imagine that anyone could ever get this crazy throwing thing down. I turned out a little tiny gritty pot and glazed it a bright yellow. I kept jewelry in it as a teenager, but now I don't know where it is.

Because I was showing an interest in clay, my parents bought me a "pottery wheel" like this one for Christmas. I don't remember how old I was, but I was ecstatic! How cool to have a wheel of one's own! The only problem was that you can't actually throw on these things. The wheel grinds to a halt as you apply the pressure needed to move the clay around. It didn't turn out good pots of any sort, but it was really fun. I got a HearthSong catalog yesterday and was so surprised to see this little wheel for sale. It brought back a flood of memories.

I got into my first "real" clay class when I was eighteen. I had just graduated from high school, and had always wanted to take a ceramics course in school, but had never had the time for it in my schedule. I got on a waiting list for the one ceramics class offered at my local rec center, and after a few months, I finally got in. My first pot was a very short cylinder, about four inches across and maybe an inch tall. I glazed it with green and white glazes and was very proud of it. It still is with me every day in my studio, holding the little posts for my Giffin Grip. It reminds me of how far I've come.

Now, I've been making pottery for nearly 10 years and have just started learning how to sculpt in clay. The excitement I feel every week in my sculpture class reminds me of my early pottery days, when I had no idea what I was doing, but was loving every minute. I still love to make pottery, but that excitement is sometimes tempered by thoughts on pricing, marketing, personal development, and so on. Some days, there's a heaviness of it that makes me wonder why I do this in the first place. Then I go to my sculpture class, tired and sore from a long day already spent in the clay studio. When I pull out my sculpture from my cubby, my heart lifts and I feel a rush of that first love feeling. And I am reminded of why I do what I do.

Sculpture Update

Here we are at the end of another week, and I have another sculpture update for you!

I think she's coming along pretty well! This week, I added her hair and refined her cheeks and chin a bit more. As I was working to add more fullness to the cheeks, I was suddenly hit by the fact that the piece is really starting to look like my little niece. With this being my first sculpture ever, I never really thought it would resemble her at all. Bob is truly a gifted artist and teacher.

I took this photo right before I had to cut off the top of her head, pull out the newspaper, and begin hollowing her out. That was very traumatic! It reminded me a bit of cleaning out a Halloween pumpkin.

My class is almost over already! I think I need to sign up for the next one too, because I am loving this sculpture thing. It's such a different process from making pottery, which requires so much time management. With clay sculpting, you just keep working it until it looks right, and you can always carve things off and replace them with new clay, because you don't have to worry about the piece cracking in the firing and being ruined. Bob showed us how most of the sculptures will crack in the kiln, but they can be repaired with various fillers and fixed right up. This is a totally radical notion to a potter like me!

Halloween Jewelry!

This year, I've created some very special, limited-edition versions of my jewelry line just for Halloween! Very limited quantities of my pendants, earrings and rings are available in pumpkin orange and a very cool variegated black and white pattern. These will only be available in my Etsy shop for the month of October, so don't wait to get yours!

Back in the saddle again

Well, I'm back from Wisconsin. The trip was a whirlwind, but it was nice. My grandma's funeral and burial went well, and most of my family was there. It's hard to say goodbye to a loved one, but it was really nice to see so many family members too. I think we gave her the send-off she deserved. Thanks to everyone who has contacted me with sympathies, I truly appreciate it.

I was able to get to my sculpture class Wednesday night and get back on the portrait head band wagon. I worked on her features mostly, working off of photos of my niece to sculpt the nose and eyes. My instructor Bob showed me how to do the eyes, carving a recess to create the colored iris of each eye. A little speck of clay gets put back in to create the little white highlight we all have in our eyes, and then all of a sudden, the sculpture is staring right at you! It was really eerie, to suddenly have this sculpture making eye contact with me...

I still don't think this sculpture looks like my niece, but it does now look like a fairly realistic human being. Next week, she gets hair!

Life comes at you fast...

Unfortunately, I have no update on my sculpture for you this week. My grandmother passed away yesterday and I just didn't have the energy to go to class and be creative. My grandma had been sick for some time, living in a nursing home for the last year, and had just been moved to hospice this week. She had widespread cancer and it just finally got the best of her.

I think this photo from earlier this year shows my Grandma as I'll always remember her. I'm trying to pose for a photo with her, but can't get her attention because she's totally cracking up over a joke my dad is telling her. She was a tough, funny, stubborn, and incredibly loving woman who always fascinated me with her stories. She was the child of Eastern European immigrants and would teach me sayings in her native Slovenian language. My favorite is Na zdravje ("to your health"), which we would always say during a toast.

I'll be flying back to Wisconsin this weekend, just as I did in July when my grandfather passed away. It will be strange to go there and not see my grandparents, not to go to the old farm on which they lived for more than 60 years, not to hear all the old stories. I take comfort in knowing that my grandparents are freed from their failing bodies and that their suffering is over, and I'm so grateful that they each lived long, full lives. But I'll miss them just the same.

Weekend Update

Hooray, it's Friday! I'm excited the weekend is about here, especially because the beautiful 80-degree weather is supposed to hold out for a few more days.

Here's the latest version of my portrait head from my sculpture class. As you recall, it's supposed to be of my three-year-old niece. It still doesn't really look like her, but it no longer looks like a monkey-alien either. It now somewhat resembles a human, and for that, I'm grateful.

Summerset Festival went well this weekend. We had a record number of Foothills students and staff participating in the sale, so our booth was full of great pieces. I sold a ton of jewelry and discovered that I need a much better display method for my necklaces, as they got continually tangled while customers looked through them all. If you have any ideas, let me know!

Dear Texas...

I'm so saddened by the devastation Hurricane Ike has caused along the Texas coast. It sounds like Galveston Island, which I wrote about it an earlier post, has been just devastated in parts, along with several other communities along the coast. I hope everyone affected will be able to put their lives back together again. You're in my thoughts and prayers.

Summerset Festival

Hey all! I almost forgot to mention that my work will be available for sale this weekend at Summerset Festival in Littleton, Colorado. My stuff will be part of the Foothills Clay Arts program booth, which will be the great big pottery booth right out front.

I'm unloading some stuff in preparation for the holiday season, so stop by to save a bundle on jewelry pieces and pottery too! The weather looks to be fantastic, so I hope to see you there!

Another time and place

So, this is not clay-related, but I feel there is something you need to know about me, especially if you're going to follow this blog, because I'm sure it's going to come up over and over again.

I am totally in love with old houses.

I have an complete and total fascination with almost any building built before 1950. (Even though my jewelry line has a bit of a modern flair to it, I just don't like mid-century modern buildings. I think they pale in comparison to what came before them. But that's just me.)

I swoon over traditional architectural details like rafter tails, crown moulding, and dormer windows. I pine away for my very own wraparound front porch, beadboard walls, and subway-tiled shower. I love the elegant stained glass windows found in stately Victorians, and the humble grace of Craftsman-style built-ins.

That being said, I have only lived in an old house for two years of my life. The house I grew up in was built in the late 1970s, and my current house was built in 1983. My husband and I tried in vain to buy a vintage home, but we couldn't find one in our budget that wasn't totally falling apart. Because we were under the gun, we settled on a very nice and well-laid out, if slightly vanilla, suburban tri-level. It's been a lovely home for us, in a safe and friendly neighborhood, and I feel so lucky to even have a home in this time of foreclosures following risky mortgages. That being said, part of me is still looking for The House, the one with the wood floors, wide baseboards, and divided-light windows.

Because of this longing, I spend quite a bit of time on the realtor.com website, looking at lovely houses all around the country. I routinely hit the "Saved Properties" limit of 100 houses and have to delete some that are not as great as others.

Because Hurricane Ike is headed towards the Texas coastline, today's photos are from one of the fabulous houses for sale on the island of Galveston, Texas. Galveston has a tremendous concentration of late 19th- and early 20th-century architecture, and I've always wanted to visit there to see these buildings for myself. I do hope the hurricane weakens and that the people (and the houses) of the Gulf Coast will be safe.

The teacher has become the student...

For the last five years, I've been teaching adult pottery classes for Foothills Park & Recreation District here in Colorado. Right now though, I'm taking some time off from teaching in order to be a student myself! Foothills has just started offering sculpture classes with the very talented Bob Allison, and I had my very first sculpture class last night. Despite working in clay for ten years now, I've never done any clay sculpture. I've found that most clay classes don't offer it as part of the standard curriculum.

Here's what I had by the end of class last night. Bob is a wonderful figurative sculptor, so I'm taking advantage of his expertise and trying my hand at a portrait head of my three-year-old niece. So far, I think it looks a bit like a generic monkeyish alien, but hopefully it will resemble her in the end! I'll take photos every week and post them here to track my progress.

It was so lovely to be a student again. Lately, I've been into taking more classes and really enjoying getting to be the person with lots of questions, instead of needing to be the person with lots of answers. I took a really wonderful World Ceramics class at Arapahoe Community College this past January with the always-awesome Kathy Holt. If you're in the Denver area and into clay, I highly recommend you take an ACC class at some point. It's a terrific clay program.

And on a total tangent, I took the above photo with my cell phone and was able to beam it to my computer using wireless Bluetooth technology. Isn't that amazing? Technology is so cool (when it's working...)

Pots and Gunshots?

You know, real controversy is pretty rare in the pottery world. Potters will argue over where to place pots in a wood kiln or over the merits of Gerstley Borate as a glaze material, but real honest-to-God controversy is rare.

That's why I was so surprised to see this article while on AOL today:

Pottery Feud Divides NC Town of Seagrove

In case this link stops working in the future, basically a new pottery festival has been planned for the same weekend as one that's been running for the last 26 years. Here's an explanation from the article:

"The schism generally involves differences between potters who support the Museum of North Carolina Traditional Pottery — which is more of a welcome center with samples of local work — and artisans who have broken from it.

Some in the breakaway group also support the financially struggling North Carolina Pottery Center, which displays and promotes work from artists statewide, not just those based in Seagrove. It also sells pottery, which critics say hurts local artists and takes business away from their shops."

Also from the article:

"The divide, and all the confusing reasons for a fight over pottery, can appear ridiculous to outsiders. But it's venomous for those involved, resulting in ugly propaganda, reports of a gunshot fired at one shop and allegations of assault. Attempts to settle it have gotten nowhere."

A gunshot?! Over pottery festivals?! Now, I know the people of North Carolina take their pottery very seriously because they have several hundred years worth of clay traditions. But really, they're coming to gunshots over it? Wow. This is definitely NOT something that happens every day in the clay world!

(On a sidenote: Why is Seagrove called Seagrove when it's several hours from the coast? I've always wondered...)

The Almost Perfect Studio Day

Yesterday was one of those rare, almost-perfect days in the studio. I really didn't think it would be because I was having most of the windows in my house replaced, which I thought would make it hard to focus. There was a lot of noise and racket, but I was forced to stay holed up in my home studio with my dog Josie all day and just work, which was lovely and somewhat rare! I hate studio days that get broken up by appointments and trips to the grocery store, vet, post office, and so on. I just lose momentum and energy...

Yesterday was a plate-throwing and jewelry-making extravaganza. I'm working on a custom dinner plate order right now and some of the plates from my original round of throwing didn't quite turn out, so I needed to throw replacements. I've also been trying to get as much jewelry made as possible this summer, because each piece requires quite a bit of sanding and it has to be done outside. My tentative plan was to spend the summer mostly making jewelry, and then go back to pot-making once the weather turned colder.


Speaking of summer, I absolutely love it, it's my all time favorite season! Summer in Colorado is fantastically gorgeous, and yesterday was a beautiful day with a high around 70 degrees and the sun shining brightly. My studio opens onto my deck, which I consider an extension of my work space for four months out of the year. I still at the table and sand jewelry and listen to music and bask in the warmth. Why can't every day be like this? :)

The First Post

Ah, blogs. I love blogs, and I read a lot of them, especially artists' blogs. I love seeing artists' lives through their own eyes, especially when they write openly and honestly about their struggles as well as their triumphs. I love vicariously getting to know the people behind the work.

I lose interest in blogs that consist only of pictures, or that seem to be censored into a picture-perfect rendering of the artist's life. The reality is, things go wrong for everyone once in a while, and if you happen to work in clay, things go wrong often!

Despite this, I resisted writing a blog for a long time because I was afraid that then people would find out something most horrifying about me:

I HAVE ALMOST NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING.

It's true, I have really no idea how to be an artist. I've been working at it for a few years now, and although I almost never feel like I know what I'm doing, I look back now and I see that I've become an artist in spite of that. I'm not a full-time, professional, self-supporting artist, but I am a part-time artist who has managed to have some success amidst all the struggles.

So, rather than trying to write a blog that shows me only in my best light, I thought it would be far better for me, and far more interesting for you, to learn about my actual life in clay, with all its ups and downs. Maybe we'll both learn something along the way...