Week 14 - Back to Kentuckiana

I spent all of Monday and Tuesday driving back home, with a couple quick stops in New Mexico. I dropped by Taos Ceramics Center in Taos, New Mexico and toured their space. I didn’t have time to see anything else in Taos — just got a view of the town from afar. It reminded me a lot of how my part of Montana looks in the early spring. I’m really glad I visited the studio in person. They have very nice, clean facilities and a ton of plans/potential for growth. In all honesty, I’m not sure I could see myself living in Taos, however. It doesn’t feel like my place for a handful of reasons. In the same way, it was super cool to drive through Santa Fe; the adobe architecture is beautiful and I really appreciate the beauty of the landscape, but I have no real ties to the culture and history of this land beyond that.

I drove through Abiquiu and walked around Ghost Ranch, which was gorgeous.

And then spent a very boring next 20 hours driving back to Indiana.

Since I’ve been back, my main focus has been on moving out of the apartment. Moving sucks, and I can’t wait to be done with it for now. I’ve been getting rid of everything I can, including old pots/sculptures. I had some impromptu Instagram story sales that were shockingly successful, so pretty much all of my time in the studio the past couple days has been packing and shipping out old work. I’m so very, very grateful and amazed that people want my stuff in their homes, let alone are willing to pay money for it. It’s such a great feeling clearing out old work. Out with the old, in with the new!

I whipped up some button tests and tiles with various soils and clays I collected during my trip and snuck them into the cone 10. I am looking forward to processing and testing everything this next month. That’ll be my main focus for the rest of the semester.

My triaxial blend turned out really awesome and has me very excited to continue developing natural glazes with the materials I’ve collected.