Tic Tac Toe, Ryan 5th grade

The second session of my kid’s after school clay class began 3 weeks ago and I aspire not to repeat lessons that I’ve taught for the past year, unless requested, because I have a dedicated core group of returning students.  I’m a fairly democratic teacher and give the kids a vote, though I am allowed veto power if I feel strongly about a project – and I have one of those coming up on the horizon – kids were rolling their eyes at me.  The kids had never crafted any games, so I put this on the docket for the first class of the session since the project is a little labor intensive.

I made some paper templates for classic games such as tic, tac, toe and chess & checkers, along with printing out the rules for each and also found a gazillion games on About.com, including many that use a 8×8 board like chess and checkers.  I also allowed the students to make up their own games and that is what most of them decided to do.

Rolling ball labyrinth game, Jasmine 5th grade

My daughter made a variation on the classic wooden labyrinth puzzle that I used to play as a child.  One of my great aunts kept this puzzle in her basement rec room and I would steal down the stairs while visiting and play this for hours.

Chess and Checkers board game, Natalie 4th grade

While I really encouraged the kids to make an 8×8 game because there’s so many games based on this template, only Natalie did.  She made her pieces to be used either as checkers or as chess pieces.  For checkers, she needed to make 24 playing pieces (12 each person different colors) and for chess, each player needs 16 playing pieces per player.  Her solution was to make 32 flat pieces like checkers and then she stamped different designs into the pieces which signify whether the piece is a rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, and glazed 1/2 in lavender – 1/2 in pink.  Pretty clever!

Made up game, Cole 3rd grade

Cole made up his own game with little animal playing pieces and one giant die.  I’m not sure if he has actually drafted the rules yet or not, but his game sure is cute!  Cole is my little owl obsessed sculptor – nearly every class, owl iconography makes its way into his work.

My daughter graduates from 5th grade this school year and I have warned my students that this might be the last year that I teach the clay class which is part of the after school enrichment program.  After class on Tuesday, one of the parents asked me if it truly was my last year teaching clay after school – not very fair to get their kids addicted to clay, is it?  Teaching the kid’s class is truly a labor of love – there’s a lot of work involved before, during and after class, and I don’t charge much since it’s one of the ways that I can give back to the school by making it affordable and accessible.  The PTA also provides scholarships for kids who want to take enrichment classes and that might not be able to afford it otherwise.

Most public schools have some sort of enrichment program including, sports, arts and crafts, technology, foreign languages, drama, science and more.  It wasn’t hard to get my class up and running once I proposed the class to the PTA and School Principal.  I did have to go through security screening since I’d be working with children, but since I was already licensed to substitute teach through the state of Colorado, all that info was already on file with the district.  If I didn’t have the license on file, it would have been easy to fill out the background check application, get fingerprinted and return to the school district.

There’s a demand for these kinds of kid’s activities and I could fill up my class 5 days a week if I had the energy.  It’s something to think about for those of you who are interested in teaching, yet haven’t been hired by an art or rec center, many of which are often fully staffed.

Meanwhile, I just received an email from the programming director at the Art Student’s League of Denver yesterday.  He put the call out for summer art camp proposals for next year – ack, I’m not sure I can project that far in advance.  Last summer, I taught 4 clay camps — 3 at the Art Students League of Denver and 1 at Anderson Ranch Arts Center and I’m not sure I want to do more than one or 2 camps next summer.  Teaching takes a lot out of me.

I’m almost current with my to-do list; though between yesterday and today, I’ve put in way more than my goal of no more than 2 hours of daily computer time.  Sometimes, necessity calls and I just have to oblige her – it doesn’t hurt that we’re having a bit of freezing rain today and it’s colder than heck out in my garagio.  I did manage to squeeze in a few studio hours, but it was more busy work cleaning up my kids stuff, loading their work in the kiln – but that frees up time for my own work this afternoon and tomorrow.

Toodles,

~Cynthia

Untitled 2005, collage, rubbed texture, photo copies, vellum, marker

Last week, I was searching through some of my old sketch books for something to use as a screen print experiment and came across some collages that I made for a graphic studio that I took in Landscape Architecture grad school in 2005.  I go back to my stint in grad school a lot because I really pushed myself during that time period and made some interesting work.  In some ways it was $9,000 well spent even if I didn’t graduate from the program.

Untitled 2005, collage, photo copies, vellum, marker

The three collages I’ve included in this post caught my eye and as I sat there with them for a moment in silence, I realized that they represent how I want to approach surface decoration on my ceramic work.  After writing a few posts recently about screen printing and making ceramic decals from scratch here and here, I came to the conclusion that I would like to create a layered effect with imagery, texture, glaze and decals on clay.  So when I found these collages, a light went off in my head – just like a cartoon…

Can you see the brain synapses firing away?

Since you can’t really see the layering in the collage on a computer screen as well as you would in person, allow me to explain.  In these collages, I used a variety of graphic textures, text and imagery pulled from newspapers, texture rubs, magazines, and my own mark making.  In two of these, I colored some vellum with a translucent markers used by architecture professionals (brands like Prismacolor or Letraset) and collaged it on top of the black and white imagery which in my mind represents the glaze layer.  What I didn’t add to these collages is a third layer or the ceramic decal – but I could easily simulate this by transferring toner based photo copies with a colorless Chartpak Blender Marker on top of the vellum.

Untitled 2005, collage, photo copies, vellum, conte crayon

The collages are not meant to be great art works – they’re more like quick creative exercises to spark design ideas.  It was exciting to me when I rediscovered these, each measuring approximately 7″ x 9″.  They’re playful, not overly thought out, spontaneous and will be a good addition to my studio practices to push my work or at least the surface of my work to become more complex and all mine.  Since first discovering clay in 2002, I have enjoyed the process of  working with wet clay much more than the finishing aspect of ceramics.  Glazing has always been a sometimes painful after thought, and I confess a single dip in the glaze bucket was about as creative as I dared in regards to finishing my work – sometimes even going as far as to use a one color for the interior and another for the exterior.  Hold the phone, keep your pants on!

Minimal and quiet does have its place in ceramics, but it doesn’t really describe me or my personal preferences.  Consequently, it feels sort of hypocritical to cop out and apply a minimalistic look to my ceramic work.  If you were to visit my house, you would be greeted by a riot of color, mismatched heirloom/purchased/thrift store furniture, family photographs, art work – other’s, my daughter’s and mine, my grandmother’s glass and tea cup collection, mementos, along with piles of newspapers, magazines, and books covering the entire surface of the coffee table that reflect my family and a well lived in home.  And, if you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you know I’m sometimes scattered, focused, colorful, loud, quiet, opinionated, empathetic, interested in many different ideas and philosophies and I think my work should reflect that as well, much like my home reflects my family.

I wonder if the past few months of mental wrangling, studio avoidance and general gnashing of teeth has been in response to this dialog that’s been going on inside my head.  When I think about it, all of this started when I returned home from my teaching stint at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in August.  I was so inspired by my stay there, that I made the decision then and there to push myself to make better work – I just didn’t know what the answer or path was when I came home.  That dialog has been playing in my head around the clock in the background ever since returning much like a computer security scan works behind the scenes allowing normal use of the computer yet slowing everything down at the same time.  Processing…processing…scan complete!

Whew.

I’m not ruling out a touch of ADD, left brain deficiency or general off kilterness either. 

Meanwhile, that’s me in the photo above holding a tiny porcelain faceted bottle I made for a miniature swap as part of the Etsy Mud Team this month and was taken by my daughter.  I haven’t been a very active participant in Etsy since early July because I haven’t made any new work in awhile – it’s a wonder I haven’t been kicked out.  If any fellow Etsy Mud Team members are reading this – I’m getting back into the swing of things, pinky promise.

Paul McCartney and Wings are currently serenading me as I write this and the upbeat music blast from the past sounds so apropos for this picture perfect movie moment in my life – cue zoom in for close up.  Smile of contentment on my face.  Fade to future – End on positive note.

C’est tout,

~Cynthia

Woody Creek Tavern former hangout of “Gonzo Writer” Hunter S. Thompson in the unincorporated town of Woody Creek, CO.  I think I just might have to read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

We arrived home safe and sound late Saturday afternoon after my week long teaching stint at Anderson Ranch Arts Center last week.  We took our time driving home and I have a few more pictures to share before moving on and posting some images of new art work.  I hope to hit the studio tomorrow (temps are supposed to drop into the 80’s for the rest of the week) and am allowing myself a day to do nothing before getting busy again.

We decided to venture into Basalt, which is about a 30 minute drive from Aspen, for dinner and drove through Woody Creek on the way home.  We probably should have dined at Woody Creek Tavern instead of the place we choose in Basalt – I won’t divulge the name of the overpriced noisy restaurant we did dine at on Friday night.  We wanted to drive further away from Aspen/Snowmass to see where the real people lived – you know the working class population.  Most have to commute some distance to find a reasonably priced place to live.

Woody Creek is itself mostly a trailer park with the Tavern in the middle.  It’s an unassuming place made famous by Hunter S. Thompson.  Surrounding Woody Creek is populated with ranches and larger homes.

My class at Anderson Ranch wrapped up yesterday afternoon and my students worked almost up till the time of our reception at 3:15 to finish their sculptures.  Some finished early and then many were on a mission to add as many details as possible to their work before the end of class.  I had 13 children enrolled, though 1 had to return home to California 2 days early and didn’t finish his piece.

It was a luxury to have an assistant to help me out in class but certainly necessary for this project.  We did some hand sewing which can be tricky for the younger kids.