I've Got the Many-Day-No-Clay-pre-Reno Blues

This is what used to be: a big mess. I had a jewelry corner filled to bursting with beads and wire, and a cabinet of out-of-date office machines. There were three folding tables, and about 80 pieces of pottery on tables, stands and shelves. Long ago, I had improvised onother table of cinder blocks and a board, and yet two more tables of sawhorses and boards. It all stood in the drab, poorly lit space I want to call The Gallery Downstairs. (I can’t yet; but you can bet I’m going to, when it loses its sad old vinyl floor and stops being a playground for mouse visitors).

First on the agenda was saying bye bye to that mouse and any of its family. I set traps, found and sealed a hole, and hung a Not Welcome sign below the sink that read, Adios, ratons.

The cabinet full of defunct office machines took up prime real estate. Machines were sent elsewhere so that I had a big, empty cabinet. It filled up quickly with the collection of beads (thousands, in many little drawers), spools of wire, and all other non-clay craft supplies. I kept the jewelry bench and my tools out, though. An artisan always has use for good files and pliers and a Flexi-Shaft tool for fine cutting, polishing and drilling.

I packed up the pottery in bubble wrap and old clean towels and boxed it for storage. There was more pottery than bubble wrap, so I loaded up the ware cart and rolled the rest of the pots to the kiln room in shifts, where they’ve been transferred to shelves. Tired and far from done, I took a little "Pot Drop therapy", also known as the Breaking of the Pottery, which not only kept me calmer but also rid the studio of bad “seconds.” This activity is surprisingly good for releasing negative energy. The only downside is sweeping up after.

Too nice to give away, too sentimentally connected to sell, boxes of my mother-in-law’s china and keepsakes from her house got hauled from their old home beneath the open gallery steps and were stowed upstairs to an attic crawl space instead.

We have yet to roll the extra fridge out of the future gallery and into the laundry/extra kitchen-ish room, but when we do, there will be more room yet to display art.

With tables folded, sawhorses too, big boards stowed away, three ugly old bookshelf units emptied of children's toys and pottery and removed; (with that attic area also cleaned and the toys relocated to it;) with eight cinder blocks hauled out back under the deck; suddenly you can see lots of floor.

Tony the Floor Man came to talk estimates with me, for putting down a new vinyl floor. The price was twice my expectation.

Robert the Electrician came to discuss wiring, upgrading the existing can lights to show the work better, and adding adjustable spot lighting. He could not give me a price because I have yet to figure out the display shelving and thus the placement of spotlights. Robert is a stickler for code and safety, and he’s slow and meticulous. I expect better lighting to cost fully as much as the floor.

Meanwhile, a hacker attacked my website yesterday, and it was blacklisted on Google and made inaccessible to the public. Leah at iPoint Web Design is on a search and destroy mission as I write this.

Very long story made very short, it’s been a while since I had my hands in clay. Withdrawal symptoms are too many to enumerate… sing with me...I've got the Many-Day-No-Clay-pre-Reno Ba-lllu-uuues!

A Hiatus, and Studio Plans

Out of the studio for all of December, of necessity, I found it hard to sleep. With my hands not busy in all things clay, my mind compensated by percolating way overtime during the night.

Plans for studio improvements have been going down on paper. I have little post-it bits cut to scale that I am moving around the rough floor plan sketch, representing potter's wheel, ware carts and tables. The new layout is a work in progress.

The pottery in the gallery part of the studio is still partly packed up from the show I was in the first Sunday in December. I have more pots to box up, tables to fold away, cinder blocks to take away, a jewelry kiln and supplies to sell, and many, many beads to store somewhere else. The jewelry corner is going to become the bookkeeping, sales and pack-and-ship corner. The rest of the gallery plan is for a new floor, much better lighting that can be adjusted to spotlight the work, fresh paint on the walls, and a much improved display system.

The clay and glaze areas are going to be switched, with a wall removed in the process and, I hope, some glass doors between the gallery and the very dusty studio.

I've made drawings of pots. There's a small pile of drawings on the beds in the spare room. Here's a page of items I'm thinking about for the Gift Registry I want to put on my website.

There's a bookmark migrating slowly through The Business of Being an Artist. I'm in the website marketing section. I hope this will be helpful. Not sure yet.

I have a new, super nice business card. Shaindy P. cheerfully steered me through 12 adaptations. She swapped the work for studio time. This is the best kind of barter. A good time was had by all.

What happens to a one-person studio operation when the one person is temporarily out of commission? My wrist has to heal before I can push and pull clay, but heck, I can stay up nights, planning. And I can line up helpers... Studio time, anyone?

Who Won the Honey Jar Set?

I've been a little under the weather and out of the studio, so you haven't heard from me in a while. But I want to post the result of the raffle drawing from my last show finally, in case you didn't see it on my Mimi Stadler Pottery Facebook page!

Shana Lowell now owns a lovely black honey jar set.

Shana has been having a lucky streak with my raffles! When I post the next one, give Shana a run for her money! Enter!

Win a Free Raffle, Get a Really Nice Honey Jar

I'm celebrating being in this good show by offering a free raffle to browsers here, at the show, and also on my Mimi Stadler Pottery page on Facebook.

The very nice piece of pottery being given is a black honey jar with a few turquoise dots. It comes with its own plate and stoneware dipper. It's a nice size for lots of honey, or, with a spoon instead of a dipper, makes an excellent jam jar.

This is FREE. It would be awesome if you would come to the show, to which I previously posted an invitation, (and bring friends!) and fill out a raffle ticket there. But if you can't come, and you live in the U.S., you can send me an e-mail at mimi@mimistadlerpottery.com, with Enter Me for the Honey Jar Raffle! in the subject line, and I will enter you into the drawing automatically.

I will draw a ticket from the jar around 9 p.m. Sunday, December 4th, 2011. Go for it!

Come to the Show!

Leading up to a show, life is always a bit busier. The vessels are mostly made, with a glaze kiln still firing as I write this, and one more glaze fire to do. Now the vessels must be priced and tagged, inventoried, wrapped and boxed. New business cards are almost ready. A few more show invitations must go out. After that, an hour's drive and a show setup, and then it’s just ‘enjoy the show’.

Come visit my booth and see what I've been up to, at the

show I am in Sunday, December 4th, at Nanuet Hebrew Center (10 a.m. to 5 p.m.) at 411 South Little Tor Road, New City, NY!

Becoming an artist bit by bit is certainly work. The learning-by-doing never ends. Ever and always, there’s room to improve. I’ve been complimented on my “talent.” While the early bud of talent took me a step or two along, the desire to learn and years of practice took over from there a long time ago. Willingness to work hard and develop skills became my pottery life. It is ongoing. I aspire, like the art potter Beatrice Wood, (click on her name to see a video of the amazing Beatrice) to work and develop my craft till I’m 105, and plain old talent sure isn’t going to get me there.

Pottery at its best has very little to do with what you do at a paint-your-own place. Nobody provides the “bisque” ready for you to “paint.” It has everything to do with taking an idea and a lump of clay, and following the idea through until a special object is created. Sometimes you’ve made something poetic. Sometimes you've made a vessel that needs to be part of a chain of vessels, where the first ones will be an idea with promise, and the last ones will be poems.

Hope to see you on Sunday!

The Way It's Supposed to Be

I think this is the way it’s supposed to be in a business. Busy, and varied.
Tureen (not pictured but it's a nice one!), Seder plate and teacups are drying on the rawware shelves.

Someone is creating a new, better business card for me.
Someone else is fixing a broken Contact link on my website (which, if you haven’t seen it in a while, is http://mimistadlerpottery.com).
I am discussing details with someone else about the space I will have at an art show in Nanuet, NY on December 4th.
Bisqued tureens with vinelike handles, and salad bowls with raised (shellac resist) designs cover the table in the glazing area as they await coats of glaze.

My electric kiln moves well along towards 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, loaded with glazed tureens and more. You can't see the heat, and it looks cold and prosaic in this photo,

but this kiln is the facilitator of poetic unions. When I put the pots into the kiln they wore coats of powdery dry raw glaze, but right now, every glaze in the kiln is molten stuff, insinuating itself in a close and gleaming interface with the skin of the pot it is clinging to. It's like the core of the earth, only cooler, with rock melting and re-forming.
And last but not least, the room where I display the finished pottery between shows is my next big project. It will turn into the Gallery Downstairs. With some de-cluttering, added lighting and shelves, paint and new flooring, and the addition of the work of a few friends to enhance the collection, it should become quite a nice place to visit.

If at First (2nd, 3rd, 4th) You Don't Succeed...

A customer asked me for really nice, big handmade tureens to give as wedding gifts. It’s been a long time since I made any, and since all I could make were small ones back then, I’m glad to have the challenge of making a new item.

So I made a group of big tureens over a couple of weeks. They really are the perfect serving pieces for soup, or your-mama’s-recipe chulent, or whatever hot food item you want to look extra nice and keep hot when you bring it to the table.

This took place in the last few weeks before the freak snowfall, when the leaves were changing colors and the gourds in the farms and markets were making their splashy debut. I thought of squash and pumpkins as I worked, and some tureens grew vines and leaves for handles.

I've applied handles for two dozen years and more. For some reason, I used (do not fear, this is a really isolated instance!) too light a hand when pressing handles onto two of the tureens. So these nice, curvy, textured handles began to separate from the pots. They were a bit too dry to fix, so I took them off completely, smoothed the spots where they were inadequately joined, and I now have two tureens that have a handleless, clean, modern style. Accidental design! The other, handled tureens will be easier to carry to the table, though. All in all, nine lidded tureens are drying, almost ready to go into the kiln.

Today I woke up with a seder plate design in my head. I think it could work this time. (Hope springs eternal!) Over the years, I’ve designed and tried at least five Seder plate versions with various levels of complexity, from way simple to image-heavy. Some were fairly nice but none, in my opinion, was quite right. THIS is the one. (I’m telling you, THIS IS THE ONE.) Try and try again. (If this one is NOT the one, I will try again.) I made the first one today, the trial run, all except for the little dishes and the graphics, which I plan to do tomorrow. The handbuilt plate is firming up, upside down on a piece of upholstery foam, on the slab roller table in the studio. Can't wait to turn it right side up tomorrow. Here's hoping I'm right about it being The One. Photos soon. And I hope to put up some new tureens on my website in about two weeks.