Greetings from Kings Beach, Lake Tahoe! I'm one week into my roadtrip/onggi workshop tour of the SF Bay Area. Get the full story on the following blog:
http://www.thepotterswife.blogspot.com/

Thanks Robin & Eden for being such great hosts during my stay in Logan.

The Long Way Home

In one weeks time I'll be ready for our journey! My son Juno and I will be making the 8 hour drive from Durango to my hometown, Arvada (a suburb of Denver). While we plan to spend a lot of time with family and friends, I will be dedicating most of our week-long stay to giving a workshop. 

The venue for this workshop, The Arvada Center of the Arts and Humanities, holds a special spot in my memory. As a young child I took many field trips to the Arvada Center whether it was to see a play, take an art class, view an exhibition, explore the extensive pioneer museum, or just for a picnic I always looked forward to the next visit.

Now, fifteen years after moving away, I am excited and honored to be able to offer something back to the community from which I came.





To start off the workshop I will be giving a FREE slide talk on Thursday June, 25th from 7-8:30 PM at the Arvada Center (see map below), I will show images from my travels and will discuss my inspirations and motivations behind my work. The slide talk is open to the public, so if you or anyone you know is in the area come on by!

The main part of the workshop will take place on Saturday and Sunday, June 27th & 28th. For details please follow this link to the Arvada Center workshop description page. To register for the workshop contact the Arvada Center directly (contact info below).  Hope to see you there!




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Unbeatable!

Spotted this scene at my local "Wal-E-World", good thing they added the word "prices" to the sign.

San Juan College "Clay Fest" Workshops

A few weeks ago I taught a workshop at San Juan College as part of their annual "Clay Fest" event. This years fest included a visit from the Art-stream Nomadic Gallery and demonstration/workshops by Christa Assad, Andy Brayman, Steven Colby, Angus Graham, Peter Karner and myself.

Angus Graham with his new toaster form!

Waldemar "Wink" Winkler, of Waldemar Winkler Viedogrophy, was kind enough to photograph some of my workshop, I particularly like the plate sequence below, thanks Wink!

NAU Anagama highlights

The large Anagama kiln at NAU was unloaded more then a month ago and I am really starting to appreciate the results. It usually takes me a while to get over my expectations and to really view the pieces more objectively. Here are a few images of my favorites as arranged by my new friend Timothy Hsu. Mr. Hsu is into tea about as much as I am into clay, he documents his tea experiences on a beautiful blog: The Mandarin's Tea

NCECA Onggi

After shutting down the NAU anagama at 2 AM and sleeping for 3 hours it was off to Phoenix for NCECA. An amazing Korean Onggi potter, Mr. Heo Jin-Gyu, was one of the demonstrators at this years conference. After an introduction and conversation in Konglish (Korean/English mix) we decided it would be helpful for me to be his technical translator. It was a great opportunity for me to talk to a large crowd about Onggi as well as answer questions from the folks watching the demo. This was also a great opportunity to spread the word about the upcoming tour I will host to Korea in October. It was quite an honor to assist such a skilled potter. Though most who saw the demo wouldn't know it, Mr. Heo later said that the clay he was using was literally "the worst clay" he had ever worked with, yet he was able to make five beautiful (and extremely large) pieces, each taking about an hour to create.

Long time no Blog...

Since the last post I have been keeping busy. Somehow I thought it would be a good idea to squeeze an Anagama firing into the whole NCECA Pre-conference and conference experience. The firing took place during the NCECA pre-conference at Northern Arizona University, in their larger Anagama (about 30'), the crew consisted of some long-time friends from the USU grad program, Trevor Dunn & Robin DuPont, as well as some new friends Cole Taylor (Durango) and Steve Schaffaer (Studio tech @ NAU), some of the NAU students also pitched in too. While it was great fun, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't try it again.
Between stoking and splitting wood we were able to sneak away to the studio to check out the Pre-conference demonstrations by; Don Reitz, Eva Kwong, Christa Assad, Brad Schwieger and Russell Wrankle. The Artstream Nomadic Gallery was also there and set up shop right next to the kiln whed where we were firing. This all made for a bit more entertainment/distraction then your usual woodfiring.

My studio full of greenware bound for the NAU Anagama

Nice rock formation between Durango and Flagstaff, this one's for you Tony Clennell

Loading the Anagama

The Crew (far to near) Steve Schaffaer, Cole Taylor, Robin DuPont and Trevor Dunn