big new white bowls...

Sometimes when I  am making these oversized bowls I feel like a pizza chef- tossing the clay like a saucer of dough, balancing the shape under my hands, carefully placing on the "pan"..and making very sure to handle with great care. Clay has a memory and when it is stretched in a certain way when wet, it recalls a fold or a crease and sometimes that will find it's way back to the finished piece, no matter how much smoothing with one's hand. I really love this actually because it reminds you that the clay is alive, it is from the earth--and wields a power over the maker and creates its own mark.
These bowls wrestled from the earth, will hold your beautiful summer salads and fruit just perfectly...just out of the kiln and packed up to go to New York for the NYIGF..heading out soon.
Handmade Booth 9413 if you are planning on going..
happy middle summer to all!

A slice of pure heaven on earth...

I just had the privilege of spending a couple of weeks in Northern New Mexico- breathing in the warm dry air punctuated by brief monsoons of blowing rain and drama, ending with rainbows on all sides. My husband and son were busy building a platform on our land there- so that now instead of sitting on the dirt we can now sit on a chair, on a deck overlooking the magnificence.

 It's a start and we agreed that maybe next summer we will build a kiln house and I can use the platform as a make-shift studio in which to work. How nice is that.

Being there immediately evokes a sense of calm, serenity and a belief in what is right, peeling away the stresses we bring to it. Crawling around searching for ancient pottery shards, carved flint spear heads and coming face to face with some desert creatures- always a thrill. 

I carried back home my requisite tumbleweed-did you know that you can carry a tumbleweed through airport security and onto a plane, but you cannot cross the border into California with one in your car? It will be confiscated. It happened to me last year. Successfully brought home to very chilly summer surroundings in my San Francisco studio it now rests. And a new bag full of collected branches and rocks for use in the clay. 

And a lot of inspiration and wellness too.