Farewell Asheville

Happy summer everyone!  Sorry for the delayed posting of new work and updates on where my work has taken me.  Here's a few places I've been since I last posted!

Asheville Mountains

Magic Waterfall in NC

Wisconsin

Rollins Pond Campground, NY

Industrial Shapes in the Adirondacks

Since the Containment show, I have been busy filling some commission orders, making work for shows, and finishing up my last pieces at Odyssey.  My two years at Odyssey Ceramic Center was up in mid-June (and I can't believe how fast these past two years have gone!).  I am very grateful for the wonderful connections I have made at not just Odyssey but also by being in Western North Carolina.  From being a part of the River Arts District and Crimson Laurel Gallery, to having Penland and many talented ceramic artists in the area to visit, I was fortunate to have a plethora of inspirational people close by to meet.

I was very fortunate to have worked with many other resident artists while I was at Odyssey.  The residents that were there when I first started at the residency were Patty Bilbro, Beth Bond, Alex Irvine, Leslie Hinton, Amanda Humphreys.  It was a great group of artists to join first arriving in Asheville.  They are all very talented ceramic artists that I enjoyed working with for the few months that our time overlapped!

After the above artists' 2 years were up at Odyssey, I had the pleasure of getting to know and work with five more talented ceramic artists.  This past year, Bailey Arend, Mellie Mae Lonnemann, Elaine Buss, Ashley Roberts, and Andrew Massey have been a great crew of residents to work with.  We challenged and supported each other in our work and came together as residents to help the Odyssey program in many ways.  Big thanks to all of them for being such great studio mates and friends!  Here are some images of work that I completed my last few months in Asheville.

Flask and Cup set

Three Flasks

Scalloped stacked bowls

Casserole Jar

Back side of Plate

Four Plates

Mugs

New mixed media work

At the end of June I packed up my cozy studio along with my house, stored it all in a u-box to be shipped up to Minneapolis which is awaiting my arrival in early August, and said good bye to the lovely and beautiful home Asheville has been for the past two years.  What a crazy hectic month June was!  Now, I get to have some relaxation and time with family and friends before my adventure of  being a graduate student starts!

Containment lll

Just a quick update!  I am in a show at Crimson Laurel in Bakersville, NC called Containment lll.   The opening is tonight, May 5th from 6-9.  The show will be up and on their website until June 29th.  It will be a great show!  If you're in the area you should take the drive to go check it out.  Here's one of my pieces that made it into the show!

April News

Hello once again!  It's been a busy few weeks traveling around the country and getting work done at the studio.  At least trying to!

At the end of March I traveled to my soon to be new home in Minneapolis, MN.  I'm excited to say that I will be a Ceramic Graduate student at the University of Minnesota this coming fall!  It was a great visit and proved to be a great program to become a part of.  While I was there I was walking around campus and realized that one of the architects that I have admired for many years had built the University Art Museum.  It was a pretty surprising and influential moment for me.  Here's the museum that Frank Gehry built.

With not much of a break after that trip I was then off to Seattle for the NCECA conference!  It was a great time meeting up with some friends and helping out at the artstream.  It was a pretty great experience meeting some influential and established artists like Alleghany Meadows and Sam Harvey.  

While there I also saw some pretty wonderful exhibits.  It was definitely a stimulating experience seeing all of the magnificent work there in such a short period of time.  Here are some of my favorite images from just a few of the shows I went to.  

Mathew McConnell 

Lee Somers

Andrew Casto

Richard Serra (close up)

At the end of Andrew Casto's statement about his recent body of work, he wrote in reference to some subtle gold luster details that it "suggests that additions of emotional weight in our lives can serve as creative opportunities for refinement and purification, rather than functioning as tools of our undoing."   

I feel that that is a huge thing to remember about art making.  Artists are in a lucky field to use that possible emotional stress to our advantage.  That is probably a quote worth hanging in my studio to remind myself of the purification qualities of my practice.  

I will hopefully post some new work in the coming weeks!  

Thanks for reading!  

Fun Flasks!

Is it really mid-March already?  Well I'm thankful for the time change.  Longer days and longer day light is always a good thing, right?  I've been busy working on some orders and one order in particular was a set of flasks for my sister's wedding for her bridesmaids (including myself)!  It was a fun project for me to work on and a good challenge for me technically.  Here's a snap shot of them in my studio space!  

With my sculptural work, I am trying get to the core of where my ideas and intent are coming from.  I'm starting to realize my work isn't just about my interest in architecture and that it may be coming from a more personal place.  This is an interesting place to be in, realizing that I should be putting more of myself into my work then I have done before.  But there is something powerful I think, in work that incorporates identity and self.  We'll see how my work develops with these thoughts in mind.  Here are some other hand built forms for the wall that I'm working on to go along with the pieces from my last blog that aren't necessarily incorporating these ideas but just experimenting with some different possibilities.  

On my way home, I was going through the Philly airport and just happened to take a look to my right and lucky for me, there was a small exhibit of potters called "Ceramic Vessels: Variations in Form."  Rebecca Chappell (who I worked with in Colorado who is a very talented ceramic artist!) was there with one of her amazing vase set ups.  It was so great to finally see one of these in person!

Along with her also were Naomi Cleary, Ryan Greenheck, Jennifer Martin, Melissa Mytty.  I haven't seen Melissa Mytty's work before but I was immediately intrigued.  Here's an image of her work that I saw.  

It was such a great, unexpected surprise to see this show!  Glad I got some art viewing in on my trip back home.  

And I don't know if I've said this before but thanks for reading!  

Hello, February

What  a quick month January seemed to be!  Maybe all the unexpected nice, sunny weather made it seem less like winter and got us outside more.  With the end of January, the end of my application process is about to be completed tomorrow as I send out my last application!  Yay!  It's been a lot of work but my artist statement and portfolio are stronger than ever.  

For the month of February and March I will be in a show at Studio 550 called "Made for Each Other."  I'm very excited to be a part of this show with many other talented artist!  Check it out!

Here are some images of the new wall structures I'm working on and experimenting with.  

I plan to do a combination of glaze, bare clay, and paint with other mixed media in a wall hanging.  The simple shapes are leaving room for me to figure out the ideas I'd like to articulate to viewers.  It's a nice size to be working with to develop my thoughts.

Along with these I am working on some fun flasks and soap dishes for my sister's wedding in March!  It's a good project for me to have right now.  It's nice to have multiple things going on in the studio to balance my time and energy into different processes.  

Hopefully next time I can update you with some finished work!  Have a great week everyone! 

  

New Year New Ideas

Happy 2012 everyone!  I'm excited for a fresh start this year in the studio.  I have some time right now to explore my sculptural ideas and really solidify my thoughts and processes.  I'm ready to have a clear direction for that side of my work.  Having my installation up for 2 months and periodically "checking in" on it, and also getting the feedback from some local artists, I have a clearer idea of where my coil build forms will be going.  That installation was a huge project that has needed to happen for a while now and I'm glad I had the space and time to do it.  Here's a detailed shots that I thought was a nice view of the piece.

I am still busy finishing up graduate school applications, editing my statements over and over again, but the end seems to be in sight!  I'm excited to see the outcome of this process!

I had talked about a longer tray that I was working on a few blogs ago and thought I'd share with you the finished product.  It was a good challenge for me to step outside of my comfort zone and work on something larger.  I need to do more of this!  New ideas and processes will come out of it.

Happy January everyone!  I'll take some shots of my in process coil built shapes soon and share with you my evolving work.