eliot art

Starry Night

2011-12-09T18:18:00.000-08:00

Porcelain tiles....derived, borrowed, appropriated from my favorite art deco picture frame. 3 1/2 inches high or in diameter; fun to "edition" for upcoming sales!

"I'd like to teach the world to sing...."

2011-11-19T18:38:00.000-08:00

This little bird is a three-note whistle.

I made it in Brian Ransom's class at the Penland School of Crafts, and last week I took it with two other instruments to the Savannah Arts Academy where the Ceramics teacher turned one of her pots into a flute with my help.
An award-winning science student in the class is making a sculpture based on a sound wave....and after my little demo, he may try to make the sculpture sing, so to speak.
Artists sing so to speak.
And when we share our knowledge, beautiful songs emerge.

Blooming in Savannah

2011-08-26T20:45:00.000-07:00

I am in the process of moving my studio to Savannah. Reading and re-reading Feng Shui guidebooks in pursuit of perfect harmony, I am moving little bits at a time from the studio in South Carolina.

The first clay I brought with me was Helios. Just one bag of it. And in pursuit of perfect harmony....I prayerfully make a sphere and push my thumb into the center....pinching a pot. Years ago I started pinching the edges paper thin, returning any pieces that pinched off to the face of the pot as folded flowers. Blooming bowls. Hoping for transparent edges. Loving porcelain. Thinner and thinner with the water and feather-light pressure of my fingers. Little molecules of clay standing up, supporting each other in porcelain gymnastics....It seems fitting that in homecoming I also return to this favorite form.
I want to celebrate and honor blooming. And clay, breathing, earth and water. Air and fire.
See? I return home with the romanticism of the young girl I was when I left. But with clay.

Four Tiles Waterfalling

2011-06-27T16:37:00.000-07:00

Water is Heaven to me.

When we speak of "dust to dust" I think we omit an important truth.

That we evaporate.

Some days I feel it already. Don't you?

(Each tile is 4 1/2 x 7 3/4 inches. porcelain, stamped and sprigged and carved.)

Water and Color

2011-05-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

I had a wonderful time preparing this drawing for the recent Lowcountry Juried Art Exhibition. The method I'd worked out in grad school helps me feel at home within the boundaries of the picture plane. I enter the place as if it is a room or a clearing out of doors, then I ask myself what and who else are there.

I began with the placement of a piece of fence in the center. I cut masking tape to its dimensions and decided to place a fishing "water weight" or an anchor of sorts way underneath it, as if the fence were sending down its roots to feel for home.

The fence is derived from an old photograph of my grandmother as a child. She stands in front of a long picket fence which separates two places I imagine were familiar to her: the world in front where she smiles toward someone she loves, and the world behind the fence which may have held the safety of her home.

In this drawing, there are two rocks in the water. This is in case the anchor gets washed away and has to hold on to something. The sky is full of the arcs of ascending spirits in flight and the wave and protection of overhanging limbs.

Maybe it's about feeling grounded in a sea of change and mystery. The activity itself, layering color and shape with water and pencil, this is grounding and pleasant.

Tiny tiles

2011-05-10T15:57:00.000-07:00

Small wearable tiles are a new obsession. I'm making little drawings and embellishing some of my stamps with a tiny dot here and there and color. My favorites so far are the black and white drawings. So like little lithographs....

EGGS made to order

2011-02-20T16:24:00.000-08:00

I hope to make 100 this year for 100 happy people. Each egg is $35. They are slightly oversized or sometimes ostrich-sized. I love painting a child's name on an egg, especially with a birthdate or special message. I am carrying on a tradition; my mother and I spent hours every Easter with intricate embellishments....

Egg-Centric 2011

2011-02-18T11:50:00.000-08:00

Creating handmade personalize-able wheel-thrown colorful EGGS again this season. More pictures to come! Order by March 18th to have in your hand by April 15th! They'll make tax day so much more colorful!
It is a pleasure making these for people's children especially! And painting eggs is a family tradition. Mom taught me. Every year!

New Year's Eve

2011-01-02T18:39:00.000-08:00

The plaster form I made two summers ago has been sitting in various places in my studio waiting for something to happen. It's a dress/figure, about 20 inches tall, the result of playing and playing in wet plaster. I made it during Tom Spleth's mold-making class at Penland. I even finished casting the mold for it here after the weight of bringing most of it home destroyed my muffler. Last year, I threw out the mold, finally realizing I didn't have the facility/space/knowledge for casting slip. I kept the form, intending to someday throw thin slabs of porcelain against it, cut them before they shrank too much, then wire them back together once fired. Like a dress-maker or restorer.

When New Year's plans were made for my daughter to have two friends over, I realized I probably wouldn't be participating in some of their activities, so the studio loomed accessible for the last hours of 2010. The thought of beginning "production" of the vessels I plan to make in 2011 was somewhat attractive, though the plaster lady silently stood her ground, going nowhere.

It's like those motivational time-management writers and speakers who tell you to imagine you only have a month or a week to live. You cull your list. You do those things you'd always wanted.

It was a wonderful night. I rolled very thin slabs of porcelain and dressed her, then I textured the dress with stamps, stopping a few minutes before midnight for sparklers and sparkling grape juice with the girls. Thirty minutes into the new year, it was back to the studio. My joy was only completed, of course, by having my daughter close by, greeting the new year with her, and knowing she and her sweet friends were having (nearly) as much fun as I was.

Though underslept, I was up with excitement the next morning first to make waffles, then to find places for the seams and holes for sewing the piece together. The twelve fragile sections are in the bottom of the kiln now after two days of finishing. If this experiment doesn't pan out, I may have to learn slip-casting or make some clay molds. Either way, the plaster figure has been touched and not forgotten in 2010, and I had a blast of a New Year's Eve. Tomorrow being the first official "work" day of the new year, I begin production work reinvigorated once more by the versatility and expressive potential of my wonderful medium.

Monday Morning Out of the Kiln

2010-12-14T19:48:00.001-08:00

Functional Fossils

2010-12-07T18:34:00.001-08:00

The small figures on these espresso cups are made with a sprig/stamp I created last Summer at Penland.

The wonderful heart shape is an antique shoe buckle that belonged to my grandmother, and the snowflake is a plastic window decal we used on a sliding glass door in the '70s. I am currently a little obsessive about finding new patterns and textures for stamps. "Mom, where's the toothbrush holder?" I hear from the bathroom. I'm using the bottom of it to make another stamp. Combining the impressions of old objects and new images feels archaeological. I feel like I'm making fossils.

Porcelain tile 6x6

2010-11-26T15:40:00.000-08:00

This will be centered over the kitchen sink....surrounded by 2 rows of the glass tile. I hope the color and calculated shrinkage work out. I wanted to imitate what you see in the other direction when you look out the window to the beautiful woods. It's firing now. Anticipation....

Surfaces

2010-11-20T10:59:00.000-08:00

So it's always fun to add a bit of color to a previously carved tile or to hold a loaded brush very lightly against a stamped texture and watch the color flow into the form like a natural puddle. I hope everyone's having as much fun at work....but I do think I'm lucky that way.

so many stories

2010-09-27T17:14:00.000-07:00

There are so many stories to tell, beginning with this one.
(Is what is written on the cup above.) Narrative qualities can be both liberating and confining. Form has a language all its own, though.

"In another Lifetime, you and I...."

2010-07-25T09:12:00.001-07:00

"In another lifetime, you and I...."

Did you really say that?
I am a vessel.
Lifetimes flow through me.

Ladies and Amateurs

2010-07-02T10:54:00.000-07:00

This is the box which houses the carving tools I sometimes use. They were my great-grandmother's, then my mom's, and now mine. I giggle every time I open it. That is: I both giggle and sigh to think of the barriers and assumptions women confronted when they just wanted to make things, or how impossible it was to transcend the rank of amateur if you happened to be a lady. I also think it's very wonderful that the ladies in my family went ahead and used these tools and others to keep making things anyway.

2010-06-12T18:06:00.000-07:00

'Back into the studio after re-arranging, cleaning, re-assessing.
Beading things that have been around for awhile, moving work out to Downtown Books and Espresso, considering how being a mom has taken precedence over making things, feeling good about that....missing my friend Hedi who was always strong enough to make her work and be a parent to my three brothers. Family. Considering how different our family was, unique in our own way as each family is, a family of artists. I see them now in the objects they made, held, and touched. Thank you, Hedi.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,,,,"

2010-06-06T07:25:00.000-07:00

"When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn".
I grew up in my mother's studio, playing with clay, paints, linoleum, and lots of other materials in the beautiful woods of rural Chatham County, Georgia. Mom was a commercial artist who had first learned from her grandmother how to draw and paint. Because my father was a lithographer and the medium intrigued me, I took myself to the University of Georgia to study with a wonderful Tamarind printmaker, Charlie Morgan. I ventured into clay there, too, which has been my primary medium since grad school. I share a studio in the Lowcountry of South Carolina with one of my favorite artists, my daughter.

Penland Again

2010-05-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

We're headed to Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina tomorrow. We'll be assisting photographer David Ramsey as he takes pictures for the Annual Benefit Auction catalog. Our first chance to see and handle the wonderful work that will be auctioned in August. Penland is always inspiring to me, even when I'm not in a class. Creative people, compassionate people, makers, mountains, oh and good food..... Check it out at www.penland.org.

Tooth Fairy Revisited

2010-03-26T17:28:00.000-07:00

I want more magic than they tell me exists, more sparkling enchanted moments, more mysterious circumstances of good fortune and wishes coming true. And I want this right now and happily ever after. Don't you?

I want peace. Don't you?

2010-03-13T17:25:00.000-08:00

Here she is photographed by the wonderful David Ramsey! (Thank you, David!)
Four and twenty blackbirds. Can you imagine?

Reserve Your Eggs!!

2010-03-01T07:41:00.000-08:00

Celebrating hope and rebirth, celebrating Easter.....
Following our annual tradition, I am making ostrich-size ceramic Easter eggs which can be any color or style and have special details such as names, birthdays, messages....

Order by March 5th, then come to an Easter Egg Showing in our gallery on March 20th to retrieve your egg and to see every one else's.....$45.00 each.

Call or email to reserve yours TODAY!!

February Open House

2010-02-20T08:16:00.000-08:00

On February 8th, we invited local friends over to see hearts, birds, vases and other work. It's always nice to clean the studio and focus on the more gallery-like attributes of our quaint storefront. Now, the bags of clay are out again and I'm working toward an Easter Egg show in March. I'm sure I'll make a few dresses, too, while on the Egg roll....
Last Summer we had a very interesting visitor:

Living creatures appear and remind me that the objects I make can never compare to their beauty and vitality and importance.

That said, I am making eggs. The unmistakable reference to nature is a big part of their power, the metaphor of rebirth.
Their decoration and ornamentation is a celebration of fancy and Springtime, which after a long, cold winter will be WONDERful! The decoration also celebrates another aspect of my artistic heritage. My mother was the absolute Easter Egg Queen, sometimes spending more than an hour on one little boiled or hollowed-out chicken egg, painting, resisting, and forgetting all about time as she showed me in yet another way how to be.

Water Weights

2010-02-14T14:30:00.000-08:00

I came to this image last Summer. Sending a weight or projecting my own gravity into a bottomless ocean.
The little shelter afloat. (Someone asked me, "Are they outhouses?" I answered, "No. The people who live in these don't even have outhouses." Like: what could be outside; the experience is in here. Or is it?

I like the way the OM sounds so much like "home".

The red tile is 4in x 4in. The salt-fired tile is 8.25 sq in. The charcoal drawing is 5 x 7.

A Dainty Dish

2009-12-13T07:46:00.000-08:00

The antique shoe buttons really belonged here; 'good thing I saved them.

They were my great-grandmother's.

"Four and twenty blackbirds"....The finished piece is part of a show at Beet Gallery in Charlotte, NC through January. It's 18" high.

In the 1700s there were recipes for baking live birds into pies so that they would fly out when opened. Maybe that's like purgatory?? The Mother Goose rhyme might also have something to do with one of the wives of Henry the Eighth. Nobody knows for sure, but it's a haunting little ditty nonetheless.

In the Studio

2009-11-21T19:47:00.000-08:00

A lovely day spent moving things around, preparing tile molds, and taking a break to wire a majolica dress I made this summer with the tutelage of Posey Bacopoulos....

"soft"

2009-10-23T13:27:00.000-07:00

Last summer, someone observed, "You have one of the softest personalities..."
which caught me entirely off-guard.

Dream a Little Dream

2009-09-27T15:38:00.000-07:00

One of my old hearts about a dream and my place in it.

The coffered ceiling and the animal head on the wall were friendly and inviting in the dream.
That dream rocked my world....
Remembered in porcelain, embellished with antique buttons that were my grandmother's. about 8" high. private collection.
Still remembering. Ever have a dream like that?

books

2009-07-06T09:22:00.000-07:00

Some books I've made....
I've been way too talkative lately, and it's noisy in my head.
I think I'll write in one of these and find some peace and quiet.

Kitchen Tiles

2009-06-01T15:47:00.000-07:00

We are working on handmade tiles for the kitchen. There have been a few mistakes, like miscalculating shrinkage....oops....but generally fun and learning are ongoing.
It's an underwater theme, with my daughter's backsplash being the shore lined with beachgoers and umbrellas, palm trees and houses. We have a large octopus in the corner. The deadline is June 15th. And then in August I'll take a class in tile. A little backwards; but I'll have plenty of questions.

Don't You?

2009-03-07T05:48:00.000-08:00

In 2005 I was asked the Tooth Fairy question: "Is she real?"
Knowing we'd sooner or later get around to Santa Claus, not to mention GOD, I responded with this little dress.

I want more magic than they tell me exists, more sparkling enchanted moments, more mysterious circumstances of good fortune and wishes coming true. And I want this right now and happily ever after. Don't you?

At the Heart of the Matter

2009-01-12T05:33:00.000-08:00

Preparing for An Heart Show, I'll visit that old familiar shape and ask myself "what is my heart's desire?" - as friends Hedi Bak and Charles Counts used to theme their Valentine's Day show.
Peace on Earth, a more perfect union, joy, chocolate?
Follow your heart....what is your heart's desire?
We'll explore that question at SaJa Gallery in downtown Walterboro on Friday, January 30th beginning at 5:00 p.m.

Swan Song

2008-11-12T10:49:00.001-08:00

For some reason, working at Penland School of Crafts inspires me to "work big", or maybe that's been a natural progression in my work.... Last Summer in a wonderful class taught by Brian Ransom, I made this pot flute. The mouthpiece is the crook of the neck, the hollow opening is on the other side. The sound is quite haunting and breath-y. She's nearly 2 feet tall, salt-fired with terra sigilata... Last month, I took another wonderful class at Penland, working in plaster with Tom Spleth. I worked so "big" that I had to replace the muffler in my car after driving home with my creations!
I wonder what's next....
(photo by David Ramsey)
(Check out Penland at www.penland.org)

Imaginary Lives: New Dresses

2008-10-03T06:03:00.000-07:00

Playing "dress-up" is part of the fun of making these clay dresses. Lily in Water, (l) about 9" high, is a living Ophelia, a dream of being a water-plant or a mermaid. Scheherazade, (r) 17" high, is a talented story-teller. Winged Victory, (c) 18" high, isn't victorious in the way of clashing weapons or fallen dead; she's just learned to fly.

(Many thanks to photographer David Ramsey!)

Night Swimming

2008-07-26T21:16:00.000-07:00

This small wall-hanging is based on a memory of swimming at night in a body of water I'd never seen before, a pond. It felt just like a flying dream. There are two possibilities: inhibition or expansion. When I arrived at the photographer's with this piece unfinished, he helped to twist the copper wire into coils for the red flower. They made perfect sense. So do flying dreams.

The piece is a few years old, but it reminds me of my recent paintings and clay dresses, telling the story of spaces which surround and touch me.

Look for new work at Gallery 33 West in Statesboro, GA, August 1st - 31st in "Through Our Eyes" featuring 4 women artists!

The Penland Bell

2008-05-11T07:11:00.000-07:00

Last summer at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina, I took a class in making clay instruments with the wonderful Brian Ransom. Just yesterday, this bell was completed with the addition of a wooden knocker, brass wire, and antique beads and buttons. It sounds beautiful. The design was one I found in Brian's book, an ancient Indian bell shape which reminds me of the brass bells I used to buy at "World Bazaar" It was stamped with clay stamps I've made over the years, painted with terra sigillata and salt-fired. About 4" high.

New Work!

2008-05-11T05:46:00.000-07:00

Unloading a kiln of newly glazed work is really fun. I recently unloaded a group of new dresses and vases and spent yesterday twisting copper and brass wire onto the necks and backs of them, adding pretty beads, and hanging them on the gallery wall for display. Rearranging, stepping back, playing house.

On Friday, after a visitor stopped in briefly and promised to return, my daughter excused herself hurriedly to preheat the oven for a group of her polymer clay creations and to make her display more attractive.
Her "Petite Treats" are beautiful! See the nachos, cakes, pancakes:

After the Melodrama, Merry Christmas.

2008-03-30T16:04:00.000-07:00

Ten or so years ago, feeling insulted and furious, I slashed this painting in half!!! (Aren't all artists supposed to do this once in a while? - NO.) My professor had given me the pre-stretched linen canvas, which I took as a great compliment demanding my most excellent attention: I painted a still life of fresh beets and clay figures. Then I ruint it with phthalo blue and sat it aside. After the slashing, instead of burning it, I put away the two halves. Then last year, in some quest for healing from the insult and low self-esteem of earlier years, I sewed them together with red and gold thread....Not finished, and still inclined to melodrama, I made a metaphor of pain and sacrifice (and pretty radiating lines) with gold nails.....Yesterday, in time for Christmas and as part of general studio clean-up, I began the laborious task of taking out the nails....It's time for the Beet Ladies to have some peace. Enough about sacrifice and stitching. More about the veggies. Happy veggies to all, and to all a good night!

The Way I Read It

2008-01-28T05:16:00.000-08:00

Here's a linoleum print, the largest I've ever made - and hand-printed with a spoon rubbed in circles on the back of it! It is my political statement for the Bible belt, and I have a smaller version of the same message, "We are not so many worlds apart". It's basically a prayer for peace and unity. The other title is "The way I read it", meaning the Bible.

The central image of the marching feet was a happy accident. I use old newspapers underneath clay pieces when I work, and I was in the middle of a series of black and white clay hearts. The article, about the ROTC in Walterboro, happened to be under a clay heart, and when I picked up the clay, the marching feet were outlined by the shape of a heart. I saved it for a while until it found its place in the middle of the print.

Printmaking has a wonderful history in political statement. I enjoy that aspect of the art form, as did my parents and generations of printmakers before us!

Art by Janka

2008-01-27T05:49:00.000-08:00

Here are a few photos of work from the past few years. I made hearts like crazy when we went to war in Iraq. Flowering vases I have made for some time, since teaching a friend how to pinch a pot. This wall-hanging dress is called "Cleopatra". (See the asp?)

Clay is a wonderful medium. I use earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain.

Recently I have ventured back into figurative work.

I also paint and make linoleum prints and woodcuts.

I've been an artist all my life. (Most children are.)