The Annual Purge

 

The remaining unfinished Melly Tiles, reject Joy ornaments and the Joy press molds in a smashed splatter on the ceramic studio floor.

For the last three days, I've labored to shovel 2010 out of my studios. My creative impulses are so strong that they often override the smarter strategy of cleaning up as I go along, and so disorder gradually expands over the course of the year. The Holiday Season then adds the topping glory to create a house crammed with utter devastation, so by the time the New Year rolls around, my studio spaces resemble a festering, jumbled riot of inanimate object anarchy. You cannot see the floor and any flat surface has become encrusted with a dense artistic strata. My ever-patient husband attempts to ignore it all. "Attempts" being the operative word.

 

 

 The ceramic studio before The Great Expunging. The sculpting/painting studio and the office were just as bad, with debris creeping up the walls and piles teetering in Seussian curves.

So it's become a tradition here that the first two weeks of January become dedicated to wiping the slate clean. Dusting, washing, organizing and dispensing with worn out items also is part of the drill and, predictably, I find items I've been looking for and discover those I'd forgotten about! It's also helpful from a mental standpoint -- to walk into an orderly studio is (cough cough) so novel here, it helps me to rethink my art and my goals because I've taken a proverbial breath of fresh air. It's such a shock, that my sensibilities are shocked, too -- and that's good.

The freshly cleaned ceramic studio in the garage. I even washed all the items that had piled up in my utility sink all year.

So now I'm in the right frame of mind to dive back into studio work, with a fresh outlook and perhaps new expectations. A clean studio offers such beguiling promises! As such, I've started to retool those stamp designs in earnest and plan to get back to sculpting this week. I've pulled out some prepped pieces to get back to painting again, too! I'm eager to create a new mess to clean in 2012!

"Each one of us has a fire in our heart for something. It's our goal in life to find it and to keep it lit." ~ Mary Lou Retton

The Annual Purge

Empty Nest Syndrome

Sniff. The little Mourning Dove babies have grown up and flown away, the morning of the 22nd. It was over far too soon, but it was so fun while it lasted!

Sigh.

"Our whole life is but a greater and longer childhood." ~ Benjamin Franklin

Empty Nest Syndrome

Births A-Plenty

This is what 500 lbs of clay looks like in the trunk of a Mazda.

Big Al is scheduled to fire all 300 "Melly Tiles" on Sunday and hatch them out on Monday. Mom is going to help me pack them up and ship them off to all the anxiously waiting glazers, and then it's a free-for-all from there!

I'm so excited to see what all these creative minds do with them -- it'll be like The Mane Event!

The support for Melly and Herm has been inspiring and uplifting to me in ways I never expected. Gosh -- it just feels so good to know I'm part of a community effort to make a positive difference in their lives! Our society has become so fractured and anonymous nowadays, and here we can tap into our primeval need to be part of something good and personal. Almost tribal. I like it.

Along those lines, the Mourning Dove pair hatched their babies! The pink arrow is pointing to one of them (below). I didn't see them at first because they look just like the nest and they do not move. They're as still as stones. But Ham's sharp eye spotted the bitty beady eyes of one baby and then it all became wonderfully obvious.

Here's a close-up with my zoom lens. You can see a wee beady eye on the right, by the stick, with the head, breast and wing. They're about the size of tennis balls. They're so cute I could scream!

And of course -- our platy fish are having babies again! I spotted a tiny fry in the bottom rocks today. Our fancy male guppies fall madly in love with the female platys and I think it all goes downhill from there.

Plus, I'm getting close to releasing the first batch of Haffie sets, and I'm stoked to see how painters "dress" them in pigment! Speaking of which, I started painting a delightful Laf'n Bear Smittyn...

Here's a sneak peek of little Miss Smittyn! I'm not sure if my reference photo is of a silver or liver chestnut, but I guess I'll worry about that later. This is just a preliminary layer.

I needed something to do that I could walk away from when it came time to ship off the Melly tiles, so painting was it. The problem is that once I start sculpting, I fixate and there's only one short-term consequence to that: Procrastination with shipping those tiles. Not good. Now I really should be finishing the glazing on that Taboo, but well...this little lady was calling to me louder. Besides, I want all that terra cotta outta the ceramic studio before I touch white bisque!

But the big question now is: How long will it be 'till I finish both of them? Argh. I have piles of unfinished projects scattered all over. Dag gum. I need to work on generating the discipline to finish what I start! The inspiration of an idea demands the birth of the finished piece!

"There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start." ~ Charles Baudelaire

Births A-Plenty

OK -- Now I'm Dead

I carefully snapped this pic this morning, and I just couldn't wait to share it with you! Do you see the little mommy bird nested there in the wreath? In the middle, there? Couldn't you just die!? I did! How cute is that!? This nest is right outside our front door, and we get to hear her happily chirping through the windows of our front living room! What a wonderful Spring gift! I can't believe our luck! There are eggs in there, so I'm anxiously waiting little cheepy-chirpy baby birds! This is too exciting! Stay tuned!

Anyhoo -- I often get asked, "Why do you refer to your rats as The Well Wells?" and the answer to that would be -- because whenever I walk in on them, they're invariably doing something that compels me to say, "Well Well Well!" For instance, things such as this:

Note how Jeepie is using Wuzzle to lean on while he eats his morning scrambled egg. Leaning on him like a counter-top. Well Well WELL!

Now back to the studio to continue work on the Haflinger mare!

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away." ~ George Carlin

OK -- Now I'm Dead