Better late than never, I am writing this blog following an equally exciting and exhausting work weekend. The warm weather must’ve drove people out of their homes this weekend, as my bar was more busy this Friday and Saturday than it has been since before the holidays. Despite the Superbowl lining up with the Dirtbags final sale/fundraising push, a good amount of people also showed up to Canary on Sunday. I was on the clock throughout the sale, seeing it from behind the bar, but nevertheless am extremely proud of my cohort for exceeding our goal and raising enough funds to cover NCECA costs!

This week in the studio, I finished the stein I’d been working on, and assembled and carved a big goblet. I focused especially on grip with the goblet, creating natural divets and holds for the fingers to explore. I don’t want any sort of “intended” grip spots to be visible by the eye, but rather to feel natural to the user as they navigate the vessel through touch. I put a lot of intention and care into this piece. It took me an embarrassingly long time to complete; I had to force myself to be done with it.

I said I was going to start sculpting with my dark clay test batch this week, and I ended up holding off. I want to have sculptures going whose ends I can (somewhat) predict/that I know will not be a total waste of time, so that I am still contributing to my portfolio and goals. The search for a new clay body that doesn’t rely on custer feldspar is going to be a long one, and I wanted a stash of class stoneware to continue working with in the meantime, so I reclaimed ~150lb of it from the slop bucket and my paper clay reclaim.

I pulled an all nighter in the studio on Thursday night/Friday morning (let’s not get into my wild sleep schedule) and began two new Propriocepta forms. They are currently in their awkward middle-school-art-project stage. I plan to manipulate/play with these ones more than I have in the past once I flip them over, bending them so that they break out of the flat plane. It’s hard to explain what I mean in words. Basically, I hope for these ones to be more ... twisty.