LeRoy and Follow Up on Inspiration Post
LeRoy – mixed media movable sculpture
Remember the post I wrote about the “Mixed Media Movable Sculpture” class that I taught at Anderson Ranch Arts Center about a month ago? I finally got around to photographing my sculpture that I made in advance of the class to show my students. He’s been sitting on my piano ever since I returned home, just hangin’ with some ceramic bugs that my daughter and I made last year. I sort of forgot about him, until yesterday when one of my daughter’s buds was over and made a bee-line for him. You can see the sculptures my student’s made by clicking here.
LeRoy's fancy wingtip shoes,
I had a lot of fun making this sculpture which is really a caricature of my dog, Danzig, who we adopted in April from Front Range German Shepherd Rescue. Incidentally, we didn’t change his name because we decided that he had lived with this name for the past 6 years and it might add stress upon relocation stress to change it when he came to live with us. We think he was named after the the ’80′s heavy metal band of the same name, though Danzig is also the German version of the Polish town, Gdansk. We think it’s the former, however, since his previous owners kept him locked in a garage for most of his life. We’ve discovered a few issues over the past few months, but love him anyway. Despite his intense dislike of anything on wheels, he’s a goofy, gentle, lovable and good looking dog – this is what I think he would look like if he had a few human qualities thrown in. My daughter has christened Danzig’s effigy, “LeRoy Guajardo”, after I asked for help naming him.
My movable mixed media sculpture is constructed with low fire earthenware clay, wire, wood, fabric, stuffing, thread, beads, acrylic paint, glue, nichrome wire and a few misc. items that I can’t recall at the moment.
Meanwhile, I wanted to revise my last post on inspiration. I am not lacking inspiration and have a ton of it floating around in my head right now. I’m merely finding it difficult to switch gears from teaching and writing lesson plans to creating my own work. It’s taking me longer to do so than normal. Mary commented that it’s okay to take a break once in awhile and to just breathe. Beth emailed me and mentioned that teaching and creating use different parts of our brains and it gave me more food for thought.
Then yesterday, I listened to a podcast of Craftcast’s Alison Lee interviewing photographer Kathleen Carr and I felt validated just a bit afterwards. One of the things the two discussed was the notion that if an artist isn’t creating every single day then are they really just a pseudo artist?. The answer is no, that’s not true. We are constantly gathering information, inspiration, and formulating a creative response even when not making any work directly.
At the end of the podcast, Alison mentioned a gift one of her friends had given her. It’s an “inspiration tray” to store and display items that one finds interesting sort of like a creative incubator.
After listening to the podcast, I was reminded of the slide show that Dan Essig presented at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in July and his inspiration files. He showed a couple of slides of all the things he has collected over the years since childhood that he keeps in tiny little boxes in his studio. It was fascinating and it looked like he had 100′s, if not 1,000′s of little boxes filled with collected bits and pieces that he finds interesting – some of his collected artifacts even ends up in his sculptural mixed media books when the time is right.
I think I’m going to give the inspiration tray a try and I can start by adding the seed pods (see last post) to the tray so that my thoughts and ideas can develop and grow.
~Cynthia
& an Interview">Ceramic Buttons, Fundraisers & an Interview
This past weekend was a busy one! In addition to running on an ING Marathon Relay team, I participated in a small craft fair at my daughter’s school on Sunday afternoon. It was the school’s annual Fall Carnival – one of several annual school fund raising events and the kid’s favorite. It’s normally held outside; however, this year we awoke to freezing rain and temps in the high 30′s. Needless to say the event was held inside which was actually quite fun – though noisy.
I brought my ceramic jewelry and buttons to the event. After running that morning, I had no desire to lug my pottery over to the school. As it turns out, the jewelry was the perfect choice. I sold a little bit, with 20% of the proceeds going back to the school. There were other Moms/crafters selling a variety of items including handmade balms, felted purses, sewn purses and belts, jewelry, cards, kid’s art smocks and little dolls. I sold the buttons (above) to the woman making sewn purses and belts and she ordered 5 more custom buttons to use in her creations. I purchased some organic lip balm from Tulip’s Balms who began making organic creams and balms for her son. It’s fabulous and a product I highly recommend.
Meanwhile, did I mention that I ran the first leg of the Denver Marathon – 6 miles in the freezing rain and cold? I wouldn’t have chosen to run in the rain, but you get what you get on race day. I ran strong (for me), 6 miles in 1:05. While that is a sub 11 minute mile, it’s much faster than my leisurely 12-13 minute miles I run with the ladies in my training group! We’re a chatty group and very social – not hard core running machines. Instead of talking about fartleks, interval training, carbo-loading, favorite sports gels etc., we talk about the newest cupcake shop or Italian restaurant to open. We share stories about work, family, and favorite recipes. It makes those 2 hours Saturday training runs go so much faster! My training season is over now, and I now go into maintenance mode – solo runs 4 days a week. I plug in my iPod and veg out to the latest Craftcast.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos to share right now. I did feel special, however, because I was running with 3 ING executives and got to go in the VIP tent – I even saw some of the elite runners! That’s always amazing. ING is the title sponsor for the next 5 years, so there was quite an ING presence. Our team finished the marathon in 4:03 – not too bad for 3 execs and a middle aged woman. I was the slowest person on the team. Since I was running with the big guys, I had company from the ING New York employee, Chris Solarz and his fiancee, who doubled as official ING marathon photographer. There should be a slide show coming soon to the ING website. I’ll post a link when it becomes available.
Oh, I almost forgot, Nancy Van Blaricom asked if she could interview lil’ ole me for her blog a few weeks ago and you can read about what we talked about on her site. Thanks Nancy!
That’s it for today – I must go tend to my glaze firing now,
~Cynthia
New work fresh out of the kiln!
Here’s new work freshly glaze fired at the Art Student’s League of Denver that I picked up this past Wednesday. These pieces were fired to cone 6 in oxidation, ie., approximately 2230 degrees F in an electric kiln. I love the celadon glaze that we have mixed up at the ASL – it’s a beautiful cool, translucent light aqua color; however, on this stoneware clay body I give it a B-. Mile Hi Ceramics in Denver has, until recently, been out of the porcelain clay that I normally use so I had opted to try a stoneware called 4010 which fires to a buff color.
In my opinion, it’s not the best background color for the celadon glaze. The pure white of porcelain would be a better backdrop much like a painter often chooses to use the white of the canvas to highlight the actual color of the paint. Lesson learned, and I’ll be adding this to my notebook for future reference in case I’m ever tempted to try this again. It really depends on what the artist is striving for though, so it’s all good. I learned that my personal preference would be to use an opaque glaze on the 4010. Good news: I just picked up 500 pounds of Aspen porcelain from Mile Hi Ceramics last Wednesday!
In other news, the online marketing class that I took from Art Biz Coach ended yesterday. I learned so much and highly recommend taking one of Alyson’s classes. She uses Yahoo groups which I found to be a little cumbersome, but I learned so, so much. Could I have learned this info from a book? Yes – probably, but I would not have been disciplined enough to follow through. The book would probably still be sitting on my night stand collecting dust. Every day we received an action in our inbox, so she makes it really easy to break down the task of marketing one’s art business duties. I have a plan now and feel really confident.
If you want to get a feel about what Alyson has to offer, listen to this 30 minute interview by Craftcast owner Alison Lee. I found it really inspiring. I also subscribed to Alison Lee’s newsletter while I was visiting her amazing site. In case you missed it, “How to Energize Your Studio with Feng Shui” is currently available as an mp3 to download for free from Alyson’s site. Listen to it on your computer, or do what I did – I put it on my iPod and listened to it while I slogged around the park yesterday. It made the time pass quickly.
Meanwhile, the glaze tests I recently conducted turned out great! I’ll be sharing those within the next few days. I will also be doing my first bisque firing in my old (but new to me) Paragon A88-b kiln this next week. It fired up to cone 6 in my testing so I’m ready to rock and roll!
I’ll leave you with this quote my friend Nikki sent my way:
It’s really scary to quit your job at an average company doing average work just because you know that if you stay, you’ll end up just like them. Which is why it’s such a great opportunity.
-Seth Godin, bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change.
You see Nikki and I have to remind each other every so often why we quit our jobs to become creative entrepreneurs.
