Surfaces

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

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...."

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

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

Ladies and Amateurs

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.

'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,,,,"

"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

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.