Robots

In my latest fascination with robots and our future with them, I got a bit glum about our prospects.  Then my neighbor shared this poem with me, written in 1927, and it lifted my spirits.  The robots are still coming, but humanity appears to survive regardless....

The poem:   Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be critical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

© Max Ehrmann 1927

It’s all about the line

Heron Vase before firing.
The black ink on the decal contains
iron oxide which will leave a rust-red
marking when the rest burns away.

    In experimenting with these decals, I kept getting disappointed by the dullness of the filled spaces.  The decal bubbles and leaves a gap, but it’s otherwise unimpressive, a sort of faded rust.  What excites, and what the decal can do nicely, is produce a precise line.  Even if it fades or is interrupted by a bubble, the movement of the line survives.  So I reverted my images back to the original path of that dulled dental needle through the clay.  I cleaned it up on Photoshop, printed it out big,  exaggerated the line with pens, scanned it, cleaned in Photoshop, repeat.  (I’m making some great wrapping paper in the process).     

    The day it occurred to me, on a therapeutic visit to the ocean, I stayed up late into the night and awoke rooster-early the next morning to continue.  What has resulted is a design consistency that I believe can satisfy sets of dishes, or of bowls, cups or tiles.  I think I've found my use for the decals!… and it’s only going to get better from here!  So many pots to be saved!  Look out Salvation Army Outlet, here I come!

The process in detail:

1. Here is the original image: of a bowl freshly painted, not even fired yet (which is why the slip color is dull grey rather than black)









2. Then I altered it in Photoshop to a striking black and white.

3. To work on the white lines (like on the wing), I invert the image, print it out and redraw them with pen.  Scan it back again and invert back.

4. Then I hollowed out all the solid spaces and turned them into lines in Photoshop.  Print out. Alter with pens. Scan again.

5. Then I cram as many of these images as I can onto one sheet of label paper. (Sorry, about the image, but after all that work, I wanted to make sure no one would easily steal all my work)

Living Room Table/Workspace
Coming soon......
MOVING OUT OF THE HOUSE!

6. Finally, I cut out the decals (printed with my HP LaserJet), drop them in a bowl of water to free them from the backing, and apply them to a pot.  And I cross my fingers that when I fire them they don't explode or bubble the glaze or otherwise self-destruct.

new REDUX line for 2013!

REDUX, sounds like "reduce", sort of, defined as “Brought back; returned. Used postpositively.“ 

     As a potter contributing to the non-degrading mass of ceramics on this planet, it pains me to find mountains of discarded clay-wares landfill-bound simply because they have passed fashion or lost a useful home (see my previous post "Viva Ceramica")  

     All the while I work my tail off to create new ceramics that may too soon face the same demise. I smash up broken or too hideous pieces for mosaics, drainage and ground cover. But there are many plain pots that I can revive into functionality with decals I create from my own designs and fire into these rejected compatriots. 

    The first load was a bit disappointing.  I was able to wipe off the design and some of the glazes bubbled into strange tracks.  Of course some cracked too.  

  I read some articles, consulted some online forums, and took the firing up to a higher cone.  Much better!  Clearly not a perfect process, but it gives me a deeper understanding of the entire process. 

They will be a lower cost product (see my etsy link below)  which is not necessarily the most brilliant business move, but they help alleviate the concern about my own contribution to the indestructible heap.  

Please, tell me what you think!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/rhoneypots?section_id=12951599

Not so Abandoned Albertsons

View from below

     So the county bought this bowling alley and failed Albertson's with great notions of turning them into a community center.  Unfortunately, as seems to happen with increasing frequency, funding disappeared and the county merely maintains the property.  We have been to several of these properties since the bees in their industrious ways, take advantage of the lack of human activity to move in and make tremendous hives.  Such was the case with this Albertson’s. 
     On first inspection, I hoped that we could approach the hive from the inside, through sheetrock with minimal ladder work.  As it turned out, however, the bees were too far up inside the wall, behind massive, load-bearing beams for us to access easily.  So, in lieu of scaffolding, which wouldn’t fit in the narrow pathway below the wall, Joey mounted the 30’ ladder.  Luckily, Jose, the county worker assigned to accompany us on the job, had a harness for Joey that we anchored to the roof with one end of the rope while using the other end to heave a bucket for tools and, eventually, bees. 

View from roof

     The building was constructed in 1946 so the siding was massive thick redwood boards.  Between Joey on the ladder and me on the roof, we exposed the hive.  It filled one wide 16” bay from the roof down to a foot about the window (approximately 4’ in length and 8” in depth).  A very thriving hive.  Starting from the bottom, Joey sliced off comb and passed it up in the bucket to me on the roof where, if I could use it, I fit it into frames and secured it with rubber bands (the bees remove them with ease within days).  When he came in passing range, he began scooping bees in a cup to pour over the brood frames I secured.  At the top of the hive was mostly honey which, though tasty, is a death trap for the bees once it starts flowing.  It gets all over tools, suits… everything, and the poor bees can’t fly when they’re covered in it.  It’s definitely my least favorite part.  We filled two five gallon buckets with the comb and bees were everywhere cleaning it up.  We scraped the bay as clean as we could and anchored the new box/home in place so the bees could move in.  As long as yellow jackets don’t clue in and slaughter everyone, the bees do an excellent clean up job if left to it.  

     The next day, they were still wandering aimlessly, like they’d lost focus (their queen).  Given the awkward circumstances, it's difficult to locate and avoid harming the queen.  We stuffed sheets all around the hive to prevent her from running to another, even more inconvenient, location.  But she may have flown off, or been crushed in honey.  Luckily, we were planning on combining this hive with one of our small hives that would otherwise not make it through the winter so we had a queen to spare.  I captured her in an aerated cottage cheese cup (I tried to put her in a proper queen cage but she kept curling up in resistance!).  We were concerned that the bees might, in their riled up state, attack and kill her, but she walked in the front entrance to a welcoming hum.  When we checked back again, they had returned to their regular, focused, behavior.

Me on the roof, Jose in room below

Removing last comb

     Finally, we returned Saturday morning to remove them to our apiary.  They were cooperatively all inside the box, the walls were honey free, and, aside from Joey having a bout of vertigo that had him puking and me going up and down the ladder, all went smoothly.  We have another booming Sonoma County hive in our apiary.

Rooster Crooning

We’re on our third summer of chickens, and second batch of chicks.  This time one of the hens is not.  We wanted an all-hen flock to stay on the good side of the neighbors (and our weekend sleep).  But sexual politics among chickens turns out to be not so simple.    A hen in the first batch developed spurs and made teenage-voice-cracking attempts of crows at random hours.  Most of the hens hopped on top of each other in some imitation of sex, but now we have the real deal.  The surprised squawk of mounted chickens exclaims the day.  Supposedly, the presence of a rooster will tame the viciousness of the pecking order, which I’m sure the two balding hens appreciate.  Though his spurs are only just starting to emerge as little wart-like growths on his legs, his neck and tail feathers have grown long and luxurious, which I imagine him flaunting Fabio-style.  His comb is bigger and redder than the rest.  And this week he began to crow.  It sounds like a young girls’ giggle, a double-syllabled coo, still unsure and timid.  But he is taller than the rest and always in the forefront.  Maybe his song will strengthen when his flock sisters begin to lay and thus provide evidence of his prowess.  The old ladies’ egg production is down to a trickle while the young ones are just figuring out what the boxes  are for ( seems we should have gotten a new batch of chicks EACH spring rather than skipping one).

http://www.trumblydesigns.com/Gallery.html
     For our 13-year anniversary, we bought ourselves a painting of a glorious rooster by Trumbly.  On it is written, “He dreamt of a land where roosters ruled and magnolias never ceased to bloom”. 

I hope our rooster has such notions….

Dragons

Whenever I come back from a trip or a several-day throwing and trimming session, I sit down to paint a set of dragons. I twirl their tails, pin them under their toes, wedge them in their teeth. The claws are in my muscle memory, the scales train my wrist in a uniform motion, the wings are exercises in straight lines. When they are complete, I have a tray of dragons proudly egging me onward: praise to the childhood fascination with myth that keeps the human story just slightly undefined. It is impossible to draw an inaccurate dragon since none such ever existed, but there are some traditions of form that we cling to: the wings must protrude somewhere along a shoulder blade. The creases have to occur the way a lizard's leg would, and the angles of the limbs can't be more absurd than that of a frog's. 

     There is a fear of exposing myself as a D&D-playing, fantasy-consumed, nerd. But, then, if those are the experiences that gave me pleasure, what is there to be ashamed about? I embraced that feeling of promise with the various shaped dice in my palm, while my older cousin intoned, "Have a look, have a listen" and the result of the dice would decide whether or not I was aware of the Balrog waiting to attack behind the corner of his graph paper labyrinth. 

     Formative moments of imagination include dragons. Of course there were fairies too, but they were too timid to be seen. The mighty dragon, however, isn't shy. I've had a picture by Mercer Meyer of a girl and her dragon above my bed since I was 10. (From a book of Unicorns). I never liked the unicorn, especially as it seems to be taking pride in the dragon's demise. I always thought they were prissy, unicorns. But I loved the liquid drop of dream that oozes into the real world (and the nod to the Cheshire Cat, of course).

"Amanda Dreams of Dragons", Mercer Meyer

     Everyone has a story about a dragon, or how they gain strength from the idea of them. So I make big, hearty, dragon mugs to usher in a more powerful day, full to overflowing with unknowns and imagination

A friend emailed me this photo and I completely fell in love with the concept.  So I made my own version, and added high-fiving divers to my scuba repertoire.  They make me smile.  And keep the whale-human scale in perspective.  

  At the Gaia Festival, I met a bioacoutistician  who studies the effect of sound on animals.  The ones getting the most attention these days are the disoriented and beached whales due to shipping noise and Navy testing. As a side note, he mentioned that octopuses can apparently hear but don't react to sound.  I glibly commented that the fish weren't exactly barking their presence for an octopus to notice, and he told me that actually, they do.  In addition to his research, he has recordings of them doing so on his website: http://ocr.org/.  Check it out.

The jug in the center is one of my newest examples of the bedside water jug/wine carafe with cup:

 Hope you like it....