Maker Faire

I expected 3D printers and Burning Man vehicles, which I saw... but there was so much more!  I love this new (10 years old) truly empowering trend, breaking away from mere consumer fair to engaged and interactive.  They had small children using sewing machines, learning silk screening, observing glass blowing and metallurgy, puppets, legos, making buttons with LED lights...
    While there was certainly a technological focus, flying robots and such, the main thrust of the whole event is to support creativity in all its forms.  In the spirit of things, I handed out my "How I make a Mug" card.  Our neighbors on one side made dresses from dress shirts salvaged from salvation army bins.  On the other side, Frankenstuffies swapped heads and other parts to make new creations from discarded stuffed animals. 
     We met a club of people who "haunt" each others' houses with moving skeletons that have grotesque rotting flesh thanks to plastic sheeting melted with a heat gun and painted with gel stain.  People walked around in massive, complex and uncomfortable costumes. While the Burning Man crowd made explosions and apocalyptic organ noises, the Greenies collected and sorted the waste, sending me home ecstatic with two massive bags of clean bubble wrap. 
     This was the most inspiring event I have ever attended!   I will most certainly be back for more!

2 swarms in 1 weekend!

 

     I was putting the finishing touches on a large stag tree bowl when I got the call.  A swarm sprawled across a potter's Art Walk display downtown Guerneville. Couldn't be more appropriate for the first call of the year! I grabbed my nuc with freshly waxed frames, my smoker, my eager neighbor and we took off.  At the bottom of our hill, the woman called again.  

     "Are you on your way?"

     "Be there in a couple minutes.."     "Good! He wants to power wash them off..."

     "Did you slap him?"

       She didn't, and he didn't either.  I parked my car in the center lane with hazards on and joined the small crowd.  As soon as I put my box on the table, the bees paraded in, to an appreciative ooh from the observers.  They asked questions while I coerced more speed from the bees with my smoker.  They all entered the box and got wrapped up, burrito style, in a towel from my car in less that an hour.  Then home for a jar of sugar water until they find a decent nectar source.

Who could resist?

     Sunday I got a text from a woman in Santa Rosa.  She said a swarm was hanging on a tree in front of a busy shopping center for the last couple days.   When she texted this photo and another photo of the tree for orientation, I called the high school student who wanted to explore bees for his senior project.

   "Are you ready to go?"

     Luckily, he was and he and his parents met me in the parking lot with a ladder.  The branch the bees were on was too large to simply snip or give a decent shake, so we set the box under them and smoked and scooped them down into it.  Ian, still grinning from a perfect prom the night before, calmly worked the smoker, unfazed by bees landing on him.

   Soon we wrapped these bees up too, burrito style, in a sheet this time, and took them to his high school where he built a Ware hive.  This is a top bar style hive, no prepared beeswax foundation like the Langstroth hives I use now (though similar to the Kenya Top Bar hives I was promoting in Peace Corps Paraguay).  I shook the bees off my frames into his box and coaxed them again with smoke.  Without the obvious lure of beeswax (though he said he rubbed the bars with wax), the bees were not as easily convinced of its merits. 

     I found a clump on a corner of the box that, with a little examination with a stick, contained the queen.  She climbed onto my stick and I delivered her into the entrance. Hopefully, now they will stay.  

    We put a feeder at the entrance which should help the bees with their reorientation, but I warned Ian that, while in the search for the new nectar source, the bees might be a little more all-over-the-place for a few days.  Since the hive is directly adjacent to the school, it might make them temporarily unpopular.

     Few things give me more joy than capturing a swarm.  In that state, they are so focused on finding a new home, there is no need for protective gear. You can stand in the middle of cloud of bees, have them banging against your face, and, unless you crush one, you won't get stung.  I love the opportunity to talk about bees, their castes, challenges, behaviors.  And I love the awe that they generally inspire in the lucky observers. 

     And I got to see the queen!  Lucky me!  So please, if you see a swarm, call your local beekeepers.  Often the police have their numbers, or even exterminators do (since they're not allowed to kill them).  Certainly, any store that sells bee equipment can help out.  In Sonoma, Marin and Napa counties, if I can't get them, here's our swarm list: 

 http://sonomabees.org/swarm/index.html

but call me first...(707) 696-0861 

UPDATE: 5/24 - Guerneville bees moved into their permanent new home.  They filled out the 5 frames of foundation beautifully and were clearly ready for more.  For all those observers who asked what I was going to do with them, here's the answer:  They are now pollinating and making honey in Santa Rosa.

To Market...

Bodega Bay Fishermen Festival..our "backyard"

     I am daily amazed that I can do what I do for a living.  In my own little studio, in the companionship of podcasts and recorded books, I can feel very disconnected...from reality, from people, from the economics of it all.  Which is why I love selling my wares in person.  Not only am I able to gauge reactions to my pottery, but I collect stories that people associate with different creatures.  Like the ladies who love hedgehogs because they raised a hubub by mistakenly identifying a frayed carpet as one in a zoo.  Or the marine biologists who nerd out on my creatures and introduce me to new ones (from oarfish to roosterfish then nudibranchs).  The familiar context of the marketplace allows conversation between strangers that do not normally occur.  I feel a genuine connection to people, most of whom are not making purchases, just simply enjoying a day out.  Maybe it's because I'm more of a sunlight person than a night one, but I have more interesting conversations in my booth than I do at most parties.  Thank you all who visit!

Tentacle found at Goat Rock Sun morn

     At a market, there are no middlemen (aside from the show promoters & the credit card processors).. it's about as fundamental as you can get.  I love the vendor scene.  There's a nervousness on Saturday morning, setting up expectations along with displays.  We peer sideways at each others' prices and marketing schpiels.  In close quarters, we hear their repeated phrases as I parrot my own ("an you can put them in the dishwasher too!").  This year I got to know the family who raise jellyfish and cast them in resin when they die.  They make great, glowing lamps.  Of course there are always products that you wonder how or why they filled a whole booth with them, though the same can be said of many manufactured products (like shipping containers of blow-up Santas crossing the oceans.. and the engineers who brought them to reality).   There's Sunday sales comparisons and then the joyful closing down racket and dance of the vehicles at the end.  Being so close to home, this time, we even got to squeeze in some boogie boarding at Doran Beach before crashing from over stimulation.

Hanging with my Oarfish.. current favorite

     I can see that, on the whole, I'm bringing joy to people... even if they're just passing by, or noticing that my dress matches the booth.  And I'm OK with that on my tombstone.

Praise to the Bugs!

I listen to a lot of podcasts while I throw, trim, paint and glaze my pottery.  One theme that it is absolutely impossible to ignore is that there are more people, less land, less water, less clean air and less food.  Ted Talks suggest viable ideas from sustainable fish farms, self-stuffing foie gras, and many other notions that keep you wondering.  In California, we're experiencing the longest stretch of drought I've ever seen.  Even glorious Lake Tahoe sports peers over rocky expanses instead of water, there's hardly any snow to play on, the bees are thrown off (this was the first year we didn't harvest honey because they so clearly needed it more than we did), mushrooms are even scarce... it makes you think.  Then I heard about this book, Edible: An Adventure into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet.   I've read books about eating bugs before, but they always focus on the gross-out and the aren't-they-weird factors so that it was not something to take seriously.  But when you consider that 80% of US water use goes to agriculture and half of that is going to livestock, it would be wise to choose less water-consumptive, and even more importantly, less methane-producing protein sources.  Bugs offer more protein, with less input and output, in less space.  All the other considerations you would want to apply to standard livestock, like being able to turn around or get fresh air, don't apply to bugs.  They like it cozy and crowded and confined.  We've already been eating "acceptable" amounts of insects in all our processed foods.  The paper strip around the neck of the ketchup bottle was initially placed there to disguise the black line of insect bits that floated there before they figured out a better method to incorporate them.  With all the ingenious food scientists and chefs, I expect to see tasty bug-based products on our shelves.  They can be cleverly disguised. The revulsion reveal of "Snowpiercer" that the otherwise unappealing protein slabs were made of insects was a non-issue.  How else would you provide food for a sample of humanity contained on a train?   If this catches on, maybe we can cut back on the pesticides and genetic manipulations that are killing us and the beneficial insects we love (like bees).

Cicadas are apparently tasty

     Which brings me to my new design plan for the year: Edible Insects.  I've started out with Cicadas (because they have beautiful red highlights), crickets, and wood lice (sow bugs, rolly pollies).. there are a ton more and I plan on tasting them too (heard there is a bug food truck that shows up at Fort Mason on occasion).  Dragonflies are apparently delicious, so they will be coming back too....
  Never fear, cephalopod fans, I will never abandon the octopus in my quest for new designs. They will just have a lot of varied company, a couple fewer legs.....



Another bug-eating Ted Talk
Cricket Protein Bars
Cricket Flour

Travel

     Under normal circumstances, I am so busy my husband calls me a hummingbird.  In a car, I become a caged tiger.. a case of restless leg syndrome takes over my entire body.  So I have learned to prepare a project to complete in the car to keep myself occupied instead of insane.  I have worked on quilts, tied labels for my Anthropologie order, made cards, and this latest trip to Portland... decorated postcards.   

     To prepare, I cut some discarded album covers into postcard dimensions ( First-Class Mail postcard: At least 3.5 x 5", no more than 4.25 x 6"  x 0.016" thick).  Cereal boxes also work.  I put these in a zip-lock bag with glue sticks and scissors.  I also bring any books that would be better as images.  Children's encyclopedias or science books are awesome as the illustrations are precise but outdated to assuage the book-destroying guilt.  Many children's books have brilliant graphics and insipid text... And you can make gift cards from the pages too.  Avoid reading, naturally, to deter car sickness.

      Leg-stretching stops can occur at thrift stores to find more image resources.  

And thus I am amused for hours with hilarious juxtapositions: angler fish with the Andrew Sisters, John Travolta with a shark dance partner, Puffins in space....  

2 gluesticks, 80 postcards, and many many podcasts later, we made it home again....Best to embrace that "artist disposition"

....Happy travels this holiday season!

Monterey

People always ask where I get my inspiration and the amazing (ongoing) "Tentacles" exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium certainly qualifies.  The town is decorated in banners of tentacles.  Heaven!  I want them as curtains, or bed spreads, or just to snuggle up with on the couch!  As the name indicates, they feature every kind of cephalopod  (my darling octopuses, squid, cuttlefishes and nautiluses) and some artwork they inspire.  In addition to scientific illustration and robot versions of each cephalopod, they display samples of pottery and glassware and other art forms seduced by the tentacle.

My favorite was the flamboyant cuttlefish, a mini bulldog of a cuttlefish that appears to walk on its tentacles and changes colors as it demonstrates dominance, curiosity, submission, tantrum...  The following evening I spend looking up videos of the little guys and exclaiming with rapture (Nova video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-cxg8mF_Lw).  And then I painted them.

Flamboyant Cuttlefish

    Also present was the angelic reef squid, the first cephalopod I interacted with when learning how do dive in Honduras.  A line of five of them flapped their "wings" and examined us while we adapted to breathing underwater, clearly the only creature actually interested in our bumbling presence.
  Naturally, there were also octopuses of every color and personality, and instructive videos about the differences in eye shape, propulsion, tentacles of the cephalopods and the kind of mischief the octopuses get up to in the aquariums (i.e. sneaking out and stealing fish at night from other tanks then returning undetected except by security cameras).

   And then I got to feed the bat rays.  No tentacles, but as the presenter described them, with "nibbling gums like a horse".  You had to hold a sardine through your fingers, perpendicular to your palm, so the bat rays could come up and gobble the fish out.  You could pet their velvety skin as they passed by!  They were amazingly unbothered by the fondling hands despite the presence of three venomous barbed spines at the base of their long tails (apparently they are as disinclined to use them as honey bees.. for defense only)

Bat Ray in Kelp

 To complete the exploration, we decided to dive the bay, since it is purported to be the best cold water diving (as long as the visibility holds).   I heard that the kelp forests were mesmerizing to swim through.  Well, it was cold.  And clear enough.  We were joined by an otter.  A variety of nudibranchs, which I am desperately in love with (like flamboyant sea slugs), showed off their color through the murk.  As of yet, I haven't quite figured out how to bring out their majesty in clay and black and white. Might have to learn glass blowing to fully capture them.

Nudibranchs.... their variety seems endless.  Usually very small too. Found in every shape all over the world

    But the most amazing sight hovered in the water near us.  When lit from below, it glowed like an old Metal-halide lamp.  Our dive master wasn't sure what it was so I researched it that evening while the image was still fresh.

Gelatinous Zooplankton

Apparently it was some kind of gelatinous zooplankton (a group that includes jellyfish), and possibly was a Thetys vagina, which has asexual solitary form, the oozooid, which buds and develops into a colony of sexual individuals, the blastozooids (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak3uc3aBvHI).  Not only a fascinating creature but a rare functional use of 'z's!

So, life inspires.  Endlessly.  Thankfully.  And my job is to remain inspired.  Love it.

Maybe not...

A while back I wrote about the dubious adventure of saying, "Yes".  Here's the followup to the big Yes I said to Anthropologie...

I should have said, "No thanks."

While the wholesale price seemed fair, I was completely unaware of the reality of working with a massive corporation.  Nonetheless, I dove in with what my husband calls, "reckless abandon."  Like all corporations, they involve lots of middle people.  Each connected me to websites of videos and documents about how they wanted things done, but no one person could provide all the answers.  Like where I was shipping them to, specifically, how to use their bizarre database system to make packing lists... I had to pay one company to make labels, two different kinds and individually mailed.  Being a required element of the process, they have no incentive to charge a decent price or even share an envelope, so I paid $19.50 for 40 labels ($10 to ship from LA) and the same amount for 100 labels.  These then had to be applied, per their specifications, along with a  personal tag (which I strung with emrboidery thread on the 3 hour trip home from Monterey) to each mug.

   And then there was  the packaging.  One of our business philosophies is to tread environmentally as lightly as possible.  With islands of plastic clogging the seas, I don't feel comfortable contributing new bubblewrap and polybags to the mess.  For this massive packing project, we diverged from the recommended materials and used:

• a roll of foam floor padding
• a swimming pool cover (the thick blue bubble-wrap style)
• foam padding from the dump's Recycle Town (sterilized, naturally)
• a yoga mat
• unused farmer's market produce bags (from our friend, Jason, who used to farm) 
• dumpster dived cardboard (from the recylce bins in a business park, of course)
• lots of packing tape
• and friends' and family's collections of bubble-wrap, cardboard and styrofoam...

     It took a solid 3 days to pack up all these mugs.  Only 140 of them, but they became 10 massive boxes headed to two different locations in Reno (one for distribution to stores, one for distribution online).  The livingroom became buried under styrofoam snowfall.
     Overall, it was a stressful experience.  In the painting, my owls and octopuses did begin to feel jailed.  I got more robotic than I was comfortable with, a little too mass production, a little too soul seduction. A lot of time was expended figuring out how to maneuver through their system.  And when I was finally ready to wipe my hands of them, the freight pickup man called and insisted that my boxes had to be "palletized and shrink-wrapped".  I told him that was impossible as this was a residential location (like I told the operator who took the order) and I don't have pallets.  Another operator sent me a regular UPS truck and said I could make the labels online or the driver would have them.   But I couldn't fill out the forms online because they wanted to charge me rather than the receiver and when Tom arrived, he laughed that she was clearly "in another state", that he didn't carry labels but was friendly with the UPS shop in town.  He called her and she had labels that would work, but I couldn't transport the boxes in my tiny Honda Civic.  So we loaded up his truck and he delivered them to her shop for me (saint!).  I spent another hour there manually filling out forms and attaching them to boxes.

  Now I just cross my fingers that they get there.  And I get paid.  And they return my samples.  And maybe the exposure will make it all worthwhile.....

Back to selling my pottery to humans.. one at a time