Water, Wind, and Time

 

Sunday, March 10, 2013
Women's Art: A Conversation with Elizabeth Ostrander and Shanna Wheelock
3:00 p.m.at the Eastport Arts Center
36 Washington Street, Eastport, Maine
Click here for Shanna Wheelock's website.
Click here Elizabeth Ostrander's website
Click here for the Eastport Art Center website.


Thursday, March 21, 2013
Machias Women's Forum
5:30-8:00 p.m.
Helen's Restaurant, Machias, ME
Presenters: Shanna Wheelock, Elizabeth Ostrander, and Sherry Ashby Cunningham
Topic: How Spirituality informs and inspires our artwork
Save the date and check back for more info.


 Click here for a recent article about the marathon and my artwork in the Bangor Daily News

Check out Maine artist Kenny Cole's blog about his current project "Parabellum".
Chris is collaborating on part of the project. Very cool!
 

 

Factory C (or Columbian Canning Plant?) Located behind the old Columbian Store , Lubec, Maine

I have been photographing these ruins for a current art project.

Click here to see photo of what it once looked like.

 

Another shot of the factory ruins.

 

 

I collected bricks from the American Can Factory site, North Lubec, and am experimenting with pulverizing the fragments and embedding the dust into clay.

 

 

Just a few days after winter storm NEMO, our big boy Bello Shroom was outside enjoying the sunny day melt-off.

 

 

I found a recipe that clued me in on how to fry tofu perfectly. No batter involved - just straight up tofu and sesame seeds in olive oil. It is so yummy that we have eaten a version of this three times in the past four or five days.

 

 

2013 Bay of Fundy Marathon

 

Click here for an Article about the marathon and my work in the Bangor Daily News

 

Awards are coming along for the Bay of Fundy Marathon. I am giving my wrists a break for a week before tackling the next group of pieces which will be the most intricate and complex of the bunch. These are the tumblers that will be awarded to the teams in the 10k and marathon.

 

If you are traveling to Lubec during the marathon be sure to book your accommodations sooner rather than later. I know that as of this morning, Away Downeast still has a couple awesome and affordable cottage available.

 

For a more comprehensive list of B&B's and motels, etc, check out the VisitLubecMaine website.

 

If you still need help finding accommodations, contact the Bay of Fundy Marathon organizers for suggestions.

 

 

Thinking maybe I should change my blog title to "Food, Cats and Art." That seems to sum up most days here in our little nook in the far reaches of the country. The past couple weeks have been fulfilling on all fronts. Chris and I have our super busy times where we find ourselves on the road to various readings, exhibits, meetings, or family events, but other times we are able to find these stretches where retreating to our respective work spaces is unfettered by outside distractions.

 

I set aside one week to (almost) fully dedicate to the beginning stages of a new art project. Most weeks I am juggling a little bit of "this" and little bit of "that" but this week I wanted to be able to solidify some ideas. For an artist to have that time without outside distractions is worth the weight of any hefty item in gold.

 

I had been waiting for the right conditions to visit the ruins of an old factory site here in Lubec. On Friday I finally had the opportunity. I needed compliant weather, tide, and Chris. I had never been to the site before and was unsure how approachable it would be. It is not a safe space by any stretch with the massive deterioration but was in better condition than I had expected. I snapped over a hundred photos that have been filed and later this morning I will begin printing them to use as inspiration in both clay, conte, and encaustic.

 

I am excited by my level of excitement. When I got to the ruins close-up, I swear my heart skipped a beat. Something resonated with me so strongly on such a deep level. With some things in our lives, we don't always understand our reactions, but over time, clarity begins to come forth presenting the bigger picture. For me, with this site visit, I started to understand some of the images that had been emerging in my work over the past couple years. At the time of creating those works, or even recently seeing images in my mind but not being able to translate, this one afternoon allowed all kinds of connections to be realized. The images, understandings, and connections is only in the most infantile stage but at the precipice of unfolding in a most profound way. I can feel it.

 

It is amazing to look at these ruins and to know that this is not a war-torn village and that these walls and ceilings are not collapsed because of bombs. Merely, it is water, wind, and time that has eroded the structure. Such awesome power in the elements.

 

Looking at these ruins, even though used for a period of time and when no longer profitable abandoned and left succumb to the elements, there is beauty and reverence. The energy is still. In some ways, a ghostly still. But also, a reverent stillness. Pier stubs emerge from the sand like gravestones. Columns, broken, and slanted, lean against one another like Stonehenge dolmens. Slabs of concrete hang from steel rods exposing an opening in the ceiling that is a gateway to infinite sky. Every square foot guards a memory or story.

 

At the moment, my mind is buzzing with ideas. This part of the process takes a while for me to decipher. Images snap through mind's eye and it is an art in snagging the right one that can carry and artist through from conception to artwork. My cave is warming up now, waiting me to begin this journey.

Out of the Snow and Into the Studio

Got a wee bit of snow a few days ago...

Current sculpture in progress

This past week has kept me fairly focused in the studio. Yet another snow day allowed time to work on a new sculpture. This one, when finished, will reach over three feet tall and is quite hefty. Throwing and wedging the larger-than-usual clumps of clay left me fearing I had permanently damaged my stomach muscles, but a few days later all returned to normal, noting to myself that I better be a bit more careful next time!!!

Creating artwork is not always fun. Just like with any job, there are parts that you enjoy and there are parts that you despise. Not that I fully despise any part of working with clay, but there are definitely some things that are more "grunt work" than pleasurable. Wedging is always a source of discomfort. It is taxing on my shoulders and takes quite a bit of time to get all those unruly clumps and lumps back into a smooth, workable ball. With the current sculpture, I spent perhaps equal time researching and sketching as I did forming the structure. The part that I do love, though, is carving. This particular piece is carving-intensive so I was in all of my glory for a few hours while I toggled from tool to tool to get the look and feel of my vision. Now I wait (hope/pray) that it survives the kiln firing so that the next phase of the process may occur.

In between shoveling last week's storm, I spent hours holed-up in my "cave". Chris said to me that I must really have a passion for what I do when I am willing to spend several hours in a cold, damp, concreted space below the earth, and actually crave and enjoy it. I never thought of it like that before, but when you break it down, yeah, it is kinda strange.

Amazingly, I am comfortable in that space, engulfed in messy, dry clay dust and mounds. For someone who seeks the just-so feng shui feeling of a home space, it is kind of odd that I don't pay attention to the lack of "homeyness" in the basement. Maybe it has something to do with being in a space that is natural to clay; deep within the earthen underground. Or maybe I am just so enthralled by the project at hand that my peripheral vision ceases and I am completely zoned into the form that is before me.

I probably shouldn't try to hard to understand it all.

A bit of rain this morning sunk the snowy yard and has created a new ice rink. It's like last week's "Snowmageddon" never occurred. Chris narrowly averted the intense shoveling schedule, boasting of sunny skies and warm temps while taking his afternoon walk with his father in California. He somehow dodged all flight delays, once again, upon his return to Maine on Friday. Bello and I are glad to have him back home with us. Now, I'm just hoping for another massive snowstorm so that he may experience the endless shoveling as I did this past month. I wouldn't want him to feel left out of all the fun, afterall!

I have some things to tend to over the next two to three weeks and suspect that I will not have a chance to blog. If you don't see a post next time you check in, just keep checking back. All should return to the regular normally scheduled life routine by the end of the month.

Hope all you romantics out there have a memorable St. Valentine's Day! (or at least your fill of quality chocolate confections!!!!)

Annual Holiday Open Studio Sale

The new studio space - still in progress

Displaying my sister Kristin's Jewelry: The Indigo Iris

A shelf with the Barley glaze: yunomi cups, rice bowls, and spiral bowls

Display with Earth and Sky glaze, sake set, and the new Mead mugs

Corner display with spiral bowls and some of the Machine series pieces

The upstairs relaxation space

I started blogging just about a year ago, and one of the initial entries was about my annual holiday open studio sale. It seems unreal that a year has passed already. This past weekend was the 2009 sale at our shop "Cobscook Pottery". It was certainly a success, on many levels, but most amazing was the realization of how much has happened in the past year since the 2008 open house. Between the shop space in the barn changing, the new studio addition on the house, new series of work, and my own personal physical transformation, it was as if the returning customers were visiting for the first time!

Days before the sale, Chris and I lugged equipment and furniture out of the space. Shelves were cleared of all production supplies and most of the clay and glaze messes were mopped-up. Pottery studios aren't by nature clean or neat. I do what I can, but when in the middle of a production frenzy, there just isn't extra time or energy to clean-up.

The glaze firing for the sale was a bit of a stress. An Err1 (undetermined error of some sort) switched the kiln off 42 degrees short of maturity. Given the schedule with the contractor and his energy-hog equipment/compressors etc., I knew that I wouldn't have a day to safely fire again before the sale, and in this kiln load was better than 60 hours of work. But by some miracle, when we checked the kiln load the next day, the glazes were spot-on.

As with all holiday sales, my sister Kristin and her partner Neal spent the weekend with us. Neal usually hikes and paints, Chris follows his regular writing routine, and Kristin and I stay pretty busy greeting folks, answering questions, and packaging gift items. This year we added on tours of the new studio space. We ended the day with a delicious home cooked meal and lively conversation.

The time leading up to the sale weekend is non-stop busy. Night before opening, I felt the most exhausted I think I have ever felt in my life. My mind and body were both shutting down, having pushed myself too hard the days before. We had Veteran's Day off from school, and I did a 16-hour marathon session of baking, weaving, cleaning, organizing, moving, soapmaking, and printing tags and cards.

Somehow it all pulled together as it usually does. It was the most heavily attended sale we have ever had here in Lubec, with lots of first-time folks stopping by. Sunday afternoon, which is usually quiet on sale weekend, kept me so busy that I didn't even get breakfast until 2:00 in the afternoon. The last customer left 45 minutes after closing time.

Monday, even though I was back at school teaching, felt like a break for me. I now feel a mental relief knowing that I have a small window to time to catch my breath, and enjoy the approaching holidays. It's cookie-making, gift-wrapping, tree-decorating, yankee-swap, cozy-winter-approaching time. The next month will be steeped in the usual traditions, as well as the excitment of moving fully into the new studio space.

January will be here before I know it, and that begins a whole new chapter in my life as I begin an MFA program. But until then, I will revel in the scents of christmas cookies and the joy of children who are excitedly awaiting the return of the red-suited jolly bearded-man and all his brightly wrapped presents.