ART IS A PASSION NO MATTER WHAT AGE WE ARE!

One of the special things about art is you are never too young or to old to be an artist and do art.  Maryann is a fellow student and friend of mine in art class. She is my role model for an active 80 year old! We take pottery together at a wonderful city recreation program offered by the city of Tampa. She comes to class dressed to kill in pressed jeans and heels.  She says she throws better on the  pottery wheel with heels!  Her jeans had a crease that is just so, and her boot heels are always polished to a shine.  She doesn't do pretty little Sunday art, she dives in raku and big clay projects.  She brings handmade chocolates and deserts to class ever time.  She is always putting some major party together or off on a cruise with her husband Don.  She is positive, smiling and full of " I can do spirit"!   Here she is learning to saggar fire with Kathy, our teacher.  

Our teacher Kathy and fellow friend and  classmate  Maryanne

Our Best Dressed Artist in Class, Maryann

She even throws with heels on!!

Etching solution pour 

Applying etching compound for saggar firing

   

experimenting with different materials for a sager firing

Aluminum foil wrap

Kathy is a teacher who has a wonderful sense of  humor and loves her students

Monica is another student who started classes at the same time I did.  Monica is from Peru, she is an art history major and has worked at the Dali museum as an education ass. co-ordinator.  She met Brian this past year and they married.  I think she will be staying in America!  She is a dynamo of persistence and patience. She has accomplished major skills in a short amount of time.  She and I have become the best of friends and it amazing to watch her grow in art and life.

Trim work takes time and patience

Monica Guerrero is fast becoming an accomplished potter

These are the latest raku pieces that I worked on.  The faces are from a mold which causes me some conflict. I have always had trouble reconciling my art training which called for total self creation as opposed to the use of molds.  I prefer to create everything with my own hand, but in some cases I have decided to use molds for repetition in larger projects, as a part of a whole. I have a concept for a large show that has many components and these faces would be part of a total concept.  I like the way both faces turned out.  I had an idea the white crackle glaze would work well.    I also layered strips of torn newspapers over sections of the form, then applied the glazes. Laying on the newspaper strips blocks the glaze and leaves that area unglazed for firing. In the raku firing the unglazed area turns black. I thought more contrast and texture would add interest to the finished product.  I am very pleased with both.  

My Raku Faces

Raku with White Crackle

Raku with Sagent Green

 When I started these city funded art classes I was still very ill and struggling with fatigue.  Just to being at class part of a day took all my strength. Some days when taking glass and clay class together in the same day I could only make parts of a day or  I would go to my car at lunch break and take a nap. 

 These days I am fine and making a whole day is no problem.  But I credit these people and these art classes to my healing.  Check and see if your city offers art programs.  It can often be a great deal and offer you a knew lease on life. The classes are very reasonable cost wise. 

 Thank you Tampa Recreation Department for providing quality art instructors and a studio atmosphere environment! Kudos to you.! 

If you city doesn't offer these, the have them call Tampa Recreation Programs or check for other cities that successful have programs like this. I will provide links for you here: City of Tampa Recreation Art Classes.

The Fear Of Experimentation Among Artists

Critics, galleries, museums and the art community, as a whole, do not encourage and support experimentation among artists.

 How many times do you go to an art show or gallery and think when is that artist going to change, they are doing the same thing over and over, year after year? It can be monetarily safe for artist on outdoor circuits to do so, or so they think.  It is truly an illusion because people like change and growth. 

 The Medici's during the Renaissance  understood artist need a supportive atmosphere, so they provided the financial support and let the artists create.  Many a master artist has stood in fear of what the critics would say if they changed their style or medium, but it is an natural evolution.  So they supported artists like Michelangelo and others.  As a result we have a period of time in which great art was made and valued.

Artists are human beings, they experience and change their opinions and feelings like the rest of us.  And as they do it reflects in how they perceive the world. They also need time to process those changes and how they will express them to others.  It takes a process of failure and success.

Raku 

Raku kiln being loaded, experimentation with form and glaze

But as a society we do not encourage that process, we decide an artist is washed up or done when they move from one style to another and initially it does not appear as successful as the original style.

Experimentation is key to art.  An artist must be not only allowed, but encourage to experiment.

So I have been experimenting in glass and clay for quite a while this last year, feeling my way through two new mediums for me.  I have tried to approach them without paying attention to what others have done before me for the large part, and just see what I could create without thinking of what should be done.

Of course I have failure or something I did not happen I wanted or thought would happen! But you know and I know it is not failure, it is as Edison said when asked about all his failures in the attempt to invent a light bulb, that it was just 3,000 attempts that led him to the light bulbs invention.  It is all how you look at it.  But, for me, it is a learning process of what the medium will allow and what journey evolves from me.

I am working on a sculptural form that is additive and reductive.

The Raku kiln firing up, love that inner glow.

The Raku process depends on intense heat, and then shocking the clay by taking the pot out when it is red hot.

It involves a more playful mind, not taking each step so seriously, nor seeking perfection of others ideas of what a good pot or clay sculpture should look like...or what form glass fusion can take, watching the glass seek its own form and adhere or not according to its properties.

Pot hot out of kiln, first peak at glazing

Looking at the coppers and greens that are emerging

The glaze is the same all over, but the fire and oxygen cause some parts to be greener or copper

Art has always depended on experimentation from the invention of the crayon, to paint in tubes, to the invention of the camera, to the development of acrylic medium, to now the new digital and technology that have opened up an new world of possibilities.

To be an artist it takes courage, for there will always be critics, either professional or others.   That is how impressionism was born, pop art, conceptual art, abstract art....it is artists trying new concepts and ideas and processes.

I say experiment!  I take a risk, don't just create to sell to who bought last year.  I say evolve as an artist, not exist.  

Raku and Glass Fusion Tomorrow!!!

I can hardly wait, Raku!

Raku Tongs/photo  by Elizabeth Gordon

 Being on the road for two weeks in New Orleans was wonderful, but I missed my classes and my art buddies.  It is so wonderful to discover new things and be in a studio atmosphere.  I am especially excited about Raku.  I have three pieces waiting to be fired.  I love the whole process of raku: the fire, the drama, and the surprise.  The new pieces are high relief, really sculptural.  They are based on nature, either insects, birds or flora.  I plan to work on a series of these as a homage to my Mother who will be 99 in April.  She was a biology and science teacher and taught me to love every thing in nature. I find that background appears and reappears in my work continually, even when I am not conscious of it.  

Art series with insects, clay using clay ink and transfers

detail photo showing sculptural leave design

detail shot showing high relief insect

The raku pot below is one that is similar to those I am firing tomorrow.  I used a raku glaze called Hawaiian Blue that is a matt glaze.  It brings out blues and coppers in the firing. You can see the leaves wrapping around the pot and folding to the inside.  

Raku sculptural Vase by Elizabeth Gordon

I will share the results of the firing tomorrow with you when they are complete.  Lets do art!

Artist Date/Pottery Workshop Continued

Emily using calipers to measure lids and tops

The first day of the workshops at the Clay Company was a full day program starting at 9am with a throwing demonstration. Emily Reason was the potter doing demonstration.  She is also doing a residency at the Clay Company.  She was using porcelain which is so beautiful and fine.  I have never worked with porcelain, but understand it can be difficult to work with though immensely satisfying.  Of course a master thrower makes it look so easy, but any of us who have ever tried to throw on the wheel know how hard mastering center can be.  Once you learn to center then it is a matter of various techniques of cylinder building, forming bowl, plates and so on.  Of course all of this takes years, not days. 

Clay company sponsored workshops

throwing a large porcelain pot

throwing demonstration Clay Company

Emily Reason Potter

hand placement in throwing a bowl

 I will never forget taking ceramics in college.  I had worked weeks to learn to throw a cylinder that was centered and well formed.  My professor came by and said good job, then took a wire and sliced it right down the middle.  I was crestfallen, how could he have done that!  He said, now you know how to throw, you can do it again!  And of course he was right, it just took me a while to get over the shock and realize it. The workshop was crowded and people asked many questions.  The teacher  was patient and shared her studies in China and other ceramic studies.  Her descriptions of her studies in China through a University of West Virginia art program were interesting. One of the most interesting parts was about how production pottery is done in China.   One person throws, one trims and one decorates..the last person is called the potter!

Chattaway Drive In(click for video)

Lunch beak....with artist friend Monica Guerrero (from Peru) to a wonderful old Florida historic cafe, the Chattaway.  This old Florida at its best! Topical, laid back, flowering and green...wonderful aroma's drifting in the breeze.  It is essential in an artist date for yourself to relax that is when creativity and inspiration sneaks in, allow yourself to play!  

Funky Gator sculpture at the Chataway

Quirky  fun in door dinning at the Chataway

a little jazz makes for a relaxing day

 Afternoon was what I was there for....Raku!  They had sample bisque pots to purchase to try out different underglazes and raku glazes. It was a perfect Winter Florida day.  70 degrees, no humidity, no mosquitos and a warming sun.  The afternoon pottery teacher was brought in from Tallahasse.  She teachers at the Florida school of the Arts.  We learned about a new style of raku kiln that is affordable and light weight.  We also used pine straw, rather than torn paper, in the oxygen reduction chamber, which I like a lot.  We put on safety glasses, welders gloves, and grabbed our tongs...then we pulled the red orange glowing pots straight from the heat and plunged them into the cans with pine straw.  We allowed them to catch fire, the closed the lids tight to deprive oxygen and forced the smoke into the crackles of the glaze that are formed with temperature shock.  It is a process I love, as well as, the unpredictability of the outcome. 

I encourage you to take yourself on artists dates, take workshops, go on walks on the beach or in the woods, go to thrift stores, visit a gallery, do anything that is fun that gets those creative juices going. 

Monic Guerrero observing raku resutlts 

Light weight raku kiln/Brachers Kilns(click on for kiln info)

Fire brick and gas burner 

My sample pot with red, blue and yellow underglazes and raku overglaze