PINCHED at Maine Craft Portland

 I missed this opening, but the show is still up for the rest of the month. Ingrid is a friend - I met her when I worked at Watershed - and a rare professional pinch potter. CHeck it out! 

Going for it!

The poster for the 2022
Common Ground Fair

I have been on the fence about doing art fairs again after a long pandemic break, & then just unsure whether I wanted to go to the trouble & expense of rebuilding my booth, which I deconstructed after more than 25 years of service & one facelift. In the spirit of The Big Push - my New Year's Resolution - I decided to go for it, starting with the Common Ground Fair in Unity. 

There's no guarantee that I will be accepted, of course! The Common Ground is a competitive juried event. I didn't apply to this fair last year, & the two years before that I was accepted (but the fair, of course, was cancelled both times due to the pandemic) but if I recall correctly I was not chosen in 2019. It sucks, of course, to be juried out, but that is a necessary risk of applying to the best shows. The best shows in Maine, anyway; I've made a decision that I will not be applying to any show more than about 100 miles away. This is largely for environmental reasons - all those emissions from all those artists driving all those trucks & vans to all those art fairs! We forget that the flip side of "Shop Local" is "Sell Local." I have other considerations as well, mostly travel time & travel expenses.

Anyway, I've sent in my application & my ten bucks, now we wait & see. 

Today in the studio, I am finishing a jaunty jar & making some pasta bowls for Bay View Company, and also reclaiming clay - not my favorite job, but I'll turn it into a meditation. 

Pricing, Sorting, Packing...

 

After a 2-year hiatus, I am once again preparing for the Portland Pottery Holiday Show! The show runs from December 16th - 23rd, at the studio at 118 Washington Avenue. 

The opening is Thursday night from 6-9, & I am especially looking forward to this, as there are many friends & colleagues I only see at this event. 

In other news, I have deleted my twitter account. I thought I wouldn't care who owns the site, & I wish I didn't have to care, but I really don't want my business showing up next to Nazi tweets. Will it affect traffic to this blog? Maybe! But I can find other avenues. Like Post! 

I think the main thing affecting traffic to this blog is the thin stream of content. In the New Year - you remember how I love New Year's resolutions - I will attempt to post at least once a week. 

Anyway! If you are anywhere near Portland Thursday night, stop in at PP - I'll be tending bar. Merry, happy, holly-jolly, etc. 

Win for the New Year

 

Remember back in November when I was struggling with that grant application, for funding for the Maine Pottery Tour from the Maine Arts Commission? I received notification this week: my project was funded! I am, as you might expect, super excited about this; it'll mean getting paid for my organizing work, and also much more money for advertising & other efforts to get the word out. 

Nice to get a win right out of the gate. I don't want to jinx anything but 2022 might be the best year we've had in a while. It's the Year of the Tiger, in the Chinese zodiac; the tiger is emblematic of courage, strength, the defeat of evil (& couldn't we ALL use some of that! ) The water Tiger specifically is about self esteem & about learning. 

Anyway! if you are a Maine potter or ceramic sculptor & want your studio to be a stop on the Maine Pottery Tour, give me a shout at info[at]finemesspottery[dot]com. Looking forward to our best year yet! 

So, I applied for a Grant

Towards the end of October, the Maine Arts Commission announced a grant opportunity: the Arts Jobs grant. Usually grants have some very specific parameters, and though I always read through them, usually by the 4th sentence I'm thinking, "Well, that lets me out." Not so the Arts Jobs grant! 

I've decided to apply for funding for the Maine Pottery Tour. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take, right? Give it whirl, shoot your shot, pay ya money & take ya chance, right? No harm in trying. 

I mean, that's how it ought to go, but I can only do it if I do it with my whole self. I can only find the confidence to apply at all if I am 100% convinced that I should win this grant - no wait, I will win this grant, because it's an awesome project and I deserve it! I have that electrified feeling like when you are about to ask your crush out on a date. 

I have to keep reminding myself that the worst thing that happens is, my project isn't funded, and that's exactly what happens if I don't apply at all. Things will just go on as they have been. I have to keep reminding myself that it's not: Win & you get the money! Lose & it's into the shark tank with you! 

Now, it's been decades since I applied for a grant and it's fair to say I didn't know what I was doing, even then*. But I am remembering: I did win that grant. Actually I won an earlier one, too, a tiny undergraduate grant. HEY Y'ALL I AM BATTING 1000 ON GRANTS! So far. 

After approximately ten million rewrites & reviews, I have submitted this application. Deadline is Thursday - hey, I made the deadline, so far so good! - & I don't know when the notification date is, but the award cycle is December 1 of this year, so the notification must be soon. Wish my luck! Or break a leg, or whatever the kids are calling it these days. 

In other news, the propane guy is coming tomorrow! Although I can think of several things that could delay it further, assuming all goes well I could be loading a bisque by this time tomorrow. :)

A Maker's Journey

I & the other members of the professional organization I belong to, the Central Maine Clay Artists, will be part of a group show at Monkitree this summer! I've done many fairs & sales but it has been years since I've had work in a gallery show. 

There are reasons for that!

When I was young and full of energy, right out of grad school, I planned to be the kind of academic potter who got on the cover of Ceramics Monthly. I applied to themed gallery shows alot. I got in sometimes, too! Trouble was, I had to charge so much to cover the jury fees, which were $25 -$45 (a pile of money in 1992 making $6.75/hr) - and you have to charge enough to cover the shows you applied to & didn't get in, also - the shipping to & from (and again, prices had to cover the shipping costs of the ones that didn't sell - and the packing material. The galleries always took 50%, too, which I never minded - a good gallery earns that fee, and it costs money to keep a business like that open - but it meant I had to double all those previous fees in order to cover them. I was making functional ware, so if I applied with, say, a pitcher, it might have to be three or four hundred dollars. Which made it harder to sell. Which meant the price of the ones that did sell had to go up to cover the shipping and so on of the ones that didn't, etc, etc, world without end, amen. Were there people willing to pay those prices, in the 90s, for functional ware? Sure, and there are now, too, but mostly for the work of potters they've heard of. If the price was a vicious spiral, reputation was whatever the opposite of that is - a fortunate spiral? If you became known, more people were willing to pay more money for your work, and that increased your reputation so that more galleries wanted to carry you, creating scarcity, pushing the price you could ask up, etc, etc, world without end, amen. It does work for some people! Maybe they are better potters, maybe they were luckier, maybe they were better at networking. No shade here - I'd have done it if I could have picked that lock. 

All of that also applied to time - the time I spent applying, packing & shipping ware, unpacking the ones that didn't sell (not to mention the time & cost of bringing pieces to a professional photographer, which was the only option, then) was time that I didn't spend making stuff, resulting in fewer pieces to sell. 

Anyway I stopped doing that once I started doing art fairs & discovered the joy of selling directly to the people who were going to use the pots. Art fairs cost money & time, too, but the ratio of time making/time selling/money made was a happier one for me. I supplemented - I still do - with consignment & wholesale. 

Yikes that was a long & mostly irrelevant story. But a gallery show after all this time is exciting! Especially since I get to skip over all the tedious applying and shipping. The show is called Exploring Maine: A Maker's Journey:

Potters explore new shapes and designs with Maine in Mind.  

​

Central Maine Clay Artists offer artistic and functional designs that allow you to take Maine with you. Each of the clay artists has their identifiable style but with this show they are exploring new shapes and designs that gather inspiration from the state that offers so much- powerful ocean, scenic lakes, rugged mountains, delicate wildflowers, exceptional dining, dramatic seasonal changes, and so much more. 

I love the theme, because, you know how you've got your body of work, and you like your body of work & want to keep making it, but there are also a bunch of other, half-formed ideas pressing on the inside of your head? Maybe you make them but they don't fit with your main work so they sit in the studio getting dusty, or maybe you don't quite find the time to make them. This show is specifically for those ideas. For me, it's the torn-edge dark clay slab plates & platters. I have a few, and have committed to make about 15 pieces for A Maker's Journey.  

Holy Crap It's Time Already

In the random way of things - and it is at least a little random - last year I got into every fair to which I applied. Then God said, "HA!" and all of them were cancelled. I took a moment...maybe two...or perhaps as many as four...to be bummed about that, then set it aside & got on with the business of surviving. 

Well, the time has come once again to start the application process. It will be an act of hope, tinged with a bit of anxiety; what if it was a fluke? I know there's a random factor, what if the dice all roll the wrong way for me this time? 

To complicate matters, in August someone stole my laptop, which contained the images which succeeded so well last year. Three of them I had stored in Dropbox, but I have not succeeded in recovering the 4th - so I will not be applying with the exact some images. Maybe there was some alchemic magic in those 4? 

Well. There is one way to find out, I guess. Topping today's to-do list: Apply to the Common Ground Fair. 

Wish me luck! 

8 Weeks Out

On Leap Day I saw a crocus. Not blooming, yet; just the pale tip of growth poking through the frozen earth. A sign of spring! It seems far off, still, but in truth it will be here before we know it.

In fact there are only 8 weeks left before the Maine Pottery Tour! I organize the tour every year (well, mostly) so I know: that is a very short amount of time for all the stuff that needs to be done! We have 50 studios on the tour this year - more than ever! - and there are postcards to order, maps to create, and signs to distribute. That's in addtion to my own studio event to plan - I'll be doing a kiln opening Saturday morning May 2, have plates available for people to paint, and a tabletop potter's wheel if anyone wants to give it a whirl, so to speak - not to mention making pots for the sale part of the event.

Whew.

I don't have full maps ready yet, but if you are looking to plan your pottery road trip, we do have several new studios on the tour this year. Here's a list, with web links, if you want to check them out:

Common Street Arts - Waterville
Top of the Hill Pottery- Augusta
Jeffrey Lipton Pottery - Litchfield
Dragon's Breath Pottery - Warren
Maine-ly Pottery - Belfast
Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts - Newcastle
EC Ceramics - Blue Hill
Tim Christensen Porcelain - Portland
Adrian King Pottery - Portland
Bentley Pottery - Portland
Heather Abt - Portland
Muddy Toes Pottery- New Gloucester
MEC Pottery - Cape Neddick

Christmas Sweater Ornament Party!

Friday, December 6
6 - 7:30 pm
Drop-in event at Hallowell Clay Works
157 Water St, Hallowell

It's fun cooking up ideas with my clay buddy Malley Webber, of Hallowell Clay Works fame. Mostly because I happen to have the appropriate cookie cutter, I suggested we do an Ugly Christmas Sweater Ornament party!

Like everything I do, it's more work that I thought it would be...rolling & cutting the clay is only the beginning. I realized once I started that people are going to need images & help getting started - most people need a little priming to get their creative juices flowing. To help out, I've been doing web searches for "ugly christmas sweater" images.

That phrase has changed with the popularity of Ugly Christmas Sweater parties, as now there is a whole genre of "utterly repulsive Christmas sweaters," including Santa's-ass, reindeer-face-as-boob, humping-reindeer, elves-on-the-toilet, and profanity-laced-holiday greeting. These are pretty far from the original idea of ugly christmas sweaters, which were originally just sort of tacky & over-decorated. I'm sure such low comedy has its place at parties, but they aren't quite what I am looking for.
I had better luck searching for "Ugly Christmas Sweater Cookies," the designs for which are largely based on the classic ugly Christmas sweaters. Downside: now I want a cookie! I found lots of good designs, though:

In addition to not being repulsive, the cookie designs have the advantage of being already simplified. 

I will be printing out some sweater outlines for people to draw out their designs first - so many people who are not artists forget this step! You get a better result if you plan what you are doing before you begin. 

This is gonna be so much fun! I hope you can join us. 

Pots by the Pound, Saturday October 5

Maine Craft Weekend is coming up, October 5 & 6th! Here at FIne Mess Pottery I am celebrating with my annual Pots by the Pound Sale.

Because I now teach 6 classes, I have what might be a literal ton of demo pots. And that's only the ones that I fire! I do a lot of demos, usually planning at least 2 per class, plus demos by request. Some just get wedged up, but many go through the whole process (there are a lot of glazing techniques to demo also!) In addition, every firing produces a few pots that are just not quite up to snuff. You know the story: soda blobs, tiny cracks in a rim, pasty color. I wouldn't sell any pot that's functionally compromised, but lots of things that make a pot not-great don't affect function at all. The demos, of course, may not even have flaws, they just aren't a fit with my body of work.
All that is to say, I have a lot of pots to shift! Here's how Pots by the Pound works:

• Each pot will have a colored sticker, coding a price per pound: red for $1 a pound, blue for $2 a pound, yellow for $5 a pound, green for FREE! (Yes, there will be a few free ones.)
• Customers make their choices, then we weigh all the same-color-code pots together. Weight is rounded up to nearest pound.
• Price is determined by multiplying the weight of the group of pots by the price code of their sticker. So, if your pile of blue-sticker pots is 3.5 pounds, that rounds up to 4; 4 x $2 is $8. 

This event has been a great lot of fun in previous years, both for me & for shoppers. I hope my local peeps will stop by. Early October is a great time for a road trip in Maine.

Morning in Belfast

I don't know if I've ever done an art fair in a more beautiful location that Belfast, Maine. It was insufferably hot yesterday, so we didn't get a lot of visitors, but today promises to be sunny and 70s - the perfect Maine summer day.

As often happens after an extremely hot day, we got some thunderstorms last night. I didn't take my tent down but I did remove all the pots from the shelves & put them in crates on the ground. That turned out to be an unnecessary precaution, as winds did not get about 10 mph in Belfast last night! Still, better no to take the chance.
As always, I worried about the display; in particular if I would have enough pots to fill it. I do! Hopefully at the end of the day I will have none. 😉

Belfast Arts in the Park

Wow, it's July already, and only a few days away from Belfast Arts in the Park. I'll be in Booth 111, with the hopefully-wonderful pots from the Murphy's Law firing! Come see me.

Steins for the 'Shed

So, you know about Salad Days, right? If not, I've been remiss! Salad Days is a huge lawn party to benefit the Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts. For $40, you get a handmade plate, designed specially for the event, all the salad you can eat, and a day of bluegrass music with all your potter and potter-supporting friends on Watershed's 30 rural acres. This year it's happening July 13th, a Saturday. (The "Days" part of the name is something of a misnomer, referencing the expression which means "the days when you could only afford to eat salad," itself somewhat odd, since - these days anyway - salad is kinda spendy! But I digress.) The event happens from 10-3.

In addition to the famous Salad Days plates, designed & created by a different artist every year, there's a Salad Days Stein Sale. Click the link, go on, I dare ya! WHOSE POTS ARE THOSE, RIGHT THERE AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE?? That's right, Yours So Very Truly! I was super excited to get the invite to make steins for the event. I got a start on them last week.

Like, whoa! Those look ginormous. I weighed out 2 1/4 pounds of clay, and they are about 7 1/2 inches high. which our old friend arithmetic tells me will shrink to 6 1/2, not at all an absurd size for  a stein.Trust the math, right? Math don't lie.

And anyway they look a little less silly-big with the handles on:

They've asked for 10-12; I made 15, for safety, but that means that (hopefully!) even if you can't make it to Salad Days, there will be a few Salad Days steins available. Actually, I'm enjoying them so much, I think I might make a few pilsner shapes as well.

One Good Thing

A little over a year ago, I did the first cat dish fundraiser, followed quickly by the second. Together we were able to sponsor the adoption fees for 3 shelter cats, all of whom found their forever homes shortly thereafter.

At that time, I had 5 cats; in the intervening months, a sixth cat has managed to worm his naughty, adorable way into our home. Six really is the limit, though; if I needed any further persuading, Skinny is my first-ever sprayer, which means finding and wiping up cat pee is my new hobby! Toward that end I bought a blacklight, to help find the invisible pee spots.

Like they use on Bones. only it's for pee!

But I digress.

It's time once again for the Sorta-Annual Cat Dish Fundraiser! If I can sell 10 of these sweet little dishes, I can sponsor a cat's adoption fee at KVHS.  I've got my eye on an older cat named Sweatpants, if she hasn't found a home by the time this fundraiser is done. 

Let me highlight a couple of my favorites: 

Cat Dish 9: PINK HURRICANE

Cat Dish 2: Serene Green

Cat Dish 1: Spring Tartan

There are lots more in the online shop. Check them out & choose your favorite! I sold some during the Maine Pottery Tour, so I only need to sell five more to sponsor a cat. 

Because I can't adopt them all! 

I know this may not come to you at a good time to buy; and I know you have causes & obligations of your own! Believe me I understand not having money to support every good cause that comes along. If you can buy one, awesome! If not, maybe you can share this post, so it can reach a person who can. Thanks!

A Pinker Shade of Pale

Ugly pink bisqueware! But it will get better. At least I hope it will.

With just over a week left before the Maine Pottery Tour, I am scrambling to get a firing cycle completed. It's a nice problem to have - I thought i had plenty of inventory, but sales over the winter were better than expected, so I need to squeezed out enough to fill the shelves. Today I have two classes to teach, so I may not get much studio work done; Friday & Saturday promise to be glazing marathons, in order to fire on Sunday. If that doesn't happen, I may quite accidentally be including a kiln opening as a tour event on Saturday morning! that wouldn't be the worst thing, although, given how disappointing my last firing was, it's a bit of a roll of the dice - I wouldn't want an audience for the unveiling of a crap firing.

On the other hand, people DO love an unloading! And it's not like i have no pots, I'd just like more, to give the shelves that compelling sense of abundance that makes people want to take some home with them.

Probably my best plan is to shoot for firing Sunday, then, if need be, I can push it back.

So much to do!
Local peeps - all of you peeps, actually - I hope I see you! May 4th & 5th.

Pottery Road Trip!

Above is a Google map of the 37 stops on the Maine Pottery Tour, plus a couple of lunch & shopping suggestions (AKA sponsors.) You can send this map to your phone - or so I'm told - or if you are old-school like me, you can download maps of the legs of the tour you want to visit at these links:

Central Region of the Maine Pottery Tour -12 Stops; Fine Mess Pottery is one of them!
Coastal Region of the Maine Pottery Tour - 11 Stops
Southern Region of the Maine Pottery Tour - 13 Stops

Hope to see you then!

Committed: See You In MPLS!!

Just booked my flight for NCECA, which is in Minneapolis this year. I can't afford to go to NCECA every year, but since I lived in the Twin Cities for several years, and haven't been back in almost 20 years, I couldn't resist the opportunity.

Our first real snowstorm of the year is happening right now (18-24" predicted, although forecast have been a little less reliable since the federal government has been shut down - some of the folks who interpret the data are furloughed, I guess? IDK) This weather is making me remember that Minneapolis is not a garden spot, in March! It will still be deep winter, in fact; but it's not the weather I am travelling for.

Workshops, demos, discussions, exhibits, those are all marvelous reasons to attend the conference, but I am mostly excited to see old friends, and maybe make some new ones.

I've been listening to a new podcast in the studio - this one is called "Happier," and it's all about little actions and habits that make overall for a happier life. A theme the main presenter, Gretchen Rubin, keeps returning to is the idea that relationships are one of, if not the, key feature in happy lives. During the Week of Reflection, I arrived at the conclusion that I don't put enough effort into maintaining friendships, and resolved to do better. Here's me, keeping a promise!

Hope to see you there.

A Workshop Adventure!

Just wanted to offer a heads' up about what looks like an amazing workshop featuring Maine's own Tim Christensen in Palermo, Sicily!

In this exciting and multifaceted class, participants will learn two different, though related, media and techniques: Black and white sgraffito on porcelain, and dry point etching on PET resin. We will focus on the skies and sea of Sicily, working outside as much as possible to capture the light drenched and ever-shifting natural beauty of this enchanted place. Artists will leave with bisque-fired porcelain pieces suitable for display or further firing, and stabilized for travel, as well as a number of plates for printing. If time allows, artists will learn to wipe and pull prints from their plates. Artists should expect to be able to make one completed sgraffito piece or etched plate per day of class. All tools and materials will be provided, and of course bring your own tools if you have favorites! This will be a fun exploration of technique, with a special focus on strengthening visual memory skills.

The venue, Casa Pergola, is owned by two friends of mine, Paul Mahoney and David Henderson, both artists and American ex-pats. I watched long distance as they transformed the former olive mill into a beautiful destination villa with handcrafted details in every corner. Paul & David are fun & funny, charming & talented, and their company a,one would make the trip worthwhile.

I so so wish I could attend this workshop...but next best thing would be you going & coming back to tell us all about it.

All the Pretty Cones

They will be prettier once they are all lying down, of course, but it's hard to get a photo of them, then! The pots, too, are never so beautiful as when they are glowing with the heat that creates them. All those little knobs belong to sugar bowls, and all those sugar bowls are coming with me to the Portland Fine Crafts show on Saturday. Come see me in Booth 69!

The Real Test

Though I have already successfully fired a bisque under the newly repaired arch, it hardly counts as a test. I could bisque in a trash can, with some minor modifications, or in a hole in the ground ( I actually have done that.) Today I am unloading the first glaze firing!

I am a bit nervous about it, because even small changes to the kiln can affect the way it fires - and in addition to patching up the arch, I made a couple of other changes. I dropped the height of the bag wall one course. I used to need the extra height, or the soda would get sucked straight out the flue - this little kiln used to draw like a mad bastard. When I rebuilt the stack (2 summers ago? ) I built it one course smaller, which - I hoped - would diminish the draw a little. I'm only just now getting around to testing that idea, because the kiln was firing so beautifully I didn't want to rock the boat. If I can fire successfully with a lower bag wall, though, that will increase the stacking space, which will increase my yield: I'll get more pots & therefore more money, for the same amount of propane.

Assuming, of course, it works out. Let's see what we've got:

First peek looks good! My big fear - that the top half of the kiln would be pasty & dry - is alleviated. Now to go lower; we'll be looking for good coverage there as well, and hoping hoping for no major cool spots. 

w00t! Still looks good!

At that point I stopped taking photos, but here's the scoop: Most of the load was really good, but the bottom layer was a little cool. Probably salable, but they will be much better pots if I refire them, and really I lost almost none of this load to the usual mishaps: soda drops, random cracks, little hunks of kiln shit landing in bowls, so I don't mind pulling a few to get a jump on my next firing. So, mostly good news! I think if I had laid ^10 down flat, that would have been just enough to bring the bottom layer the rest of the way. 

Some of these are for a standing order (YAY STANDING ORDERS!) but most will be coming with me to the Center for Maine Craft tomorrow, where I will have my own mini pop-up shop from 10 to 3. Come see me! The Center is located at the travel plaza in West Gardiner - take exit 51 if you are coming north on 295. 

See you there!