Hearts and Flowers

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We were well overdue for a change of picture on this blog, if nothing else.  Dare I say it?  The picture of Charlie in the snow was beginning to look unseasonal. Yes, I know, there's still plenty of winter left for more snow.

But on the other hand, Valentine's Day approaches and M reckons that if you start with midsummer's day being 21st June and then divide the year up accordingly, 14th February marks the beginning of spring.  It's a cheering thought.

Anyway, I'm celebrating this particular season with a new exhibition Downstairs at Cotswold Craftsmen, in Nailsworth. I've always done the silk-painted cards with hearts on and hearts have been one of the shapes on lustred mugs and last year I started making heart-shaped dishes and mugs and bowls with a heart design.  The cards sell out throughout the year and all the heart-shaped dishes sold out too, so it seemed a good opportunity to just go for it and enter the spirit of the thing.

You can't see on the photo but there is a lovely sugar-pink border of hearts on the poster.  What you can see is heart-shaped cut-outs of various work and this was fun to learn.  These days it seems that whatever you need to learn, someone has put a tutorial for it on the internet, and so I was able to learn about heart-shaped masks and produced the poster above. 

Last week was spent firing heart pots, making Valentine cards (of which more in another blog) and delivering to By Local, Gloucestershire Arts and Crafts Centre and The Made In Stroud Shop.  This week I need to make more general greetings cards and pack up for setting up the exhibition next Sunday.  Today, though, is nominally a day off and I'll be ironing and cooking.  And maybe dipping into my book on learning CSS as well ...

Lists

This photo of Charlie, taken in January last year, has nothing to do with lists at all.  It's just a particularly nice photo of him, which I used as our Christmas card and which Heather kindly commented on in my last post and I thought I'd like to share it with those to whom I don't send Christmas cards.

Lists, though.  I'm feeling more like my normal self each day and today realised that I have a mental list of things I want to achieve today, which means I am getting back into the swing of things.  However, it's 10.21 as I start to write this and I haven't done anything on my list yet!  So I'm still obviously taking time out and taking life slowly, which is a Good Thing.

The downside of being more laid back is that I have forgotten to do something that I would normally have done as soon as I was asked, which is to write an A5 page of info for people who may be wanting to book the workshop I am doing at Nature In Art in March.  It annoys me that I have forgotten and it is No. 1 task on my list for today.  It won't take me that long and I really hope I haven't held things up at NIA.  It's the sort of thing I've always been very conscientious about.  Yes, I've the excuses of ill health and (non-)Christmas, but still excuses don't make any difference to deadlines, as I know too well as someone always asking others to send things to me.

This task was written on a list somewhere but because I am recuperating/chilling/getting a life I was trying not to be too anal about everything and making lists literally on the backs of envelopes, together with calculations of how much cash I needed, people's phone numbers and other bits and pieces.

I hope it's the only thing I've overlooked.

The subject of lists needs returning to later on, I feel.

New Years' Resolutions

I don't usually make New Years' Resolutions, mostly because I'm not very successful at keeping them. This year, however, I have made two and am quietly confident!

My first resolution is to Say No. Not right across the board, you understand, but selectively. It's something I was rubbish at in 2010 and I ended the year with rubbish health as a result of not saying no to whatever I was asked to do. My chiropractor, a very calm man who normally reacts to whatever he finds with knowing nods and quiet sympathy and little else, exclaimed "what on earth have you been doing?" when he saw my back just before Christmas. I hadn't got far through my explanation before he just said, "You've obviously been over-doing it." My acupuncturist told me a couple of months ago that she was worried I would just become ill. I suppose I was worried too, but didn't manage to extract myself soon enough.

When Christmas turned into a non-event because I wasn't able to make presents, buy presents, wrap presents, visit friends or family or cook properly, I made my resolution and I am pleased to say that so far I am sticking to it. To assist me in my resolve, I have told many other people, including, now, you, so I will look even more of an idiot if I don't keep this one.

My second resolution is to learn CSS, which, for those who don't know, is a useful web-designing tool which will save me time in building web pages and save the viewer time in waiting for those pages to download. I've bought a book and will work through it methodically. It's not the way I do everything but it is a method I've used to learn things before and one I like and it's the one I've chosen this time. Building websites is something I'm hoping to move into even more in the future.

To encourage me on my way, and because it would be enjoyable, I wondered today if I could learn to make heart-shaped masks in Photoshop. I had an idea for the publicity of my next exhibition, of which more anon. In the meantime enjoy, or not, the fact that I was successful.  More or less.  If anyone knows why I get a white dot in the middle of some of my hearts, I'd be very grateful for advice for getting rid of it!

Life has its compensations .....

 

... and here is one.  These were on my desk as I walked in from the cold yesterday evening.  I think I liked them better in the milk bottle with the note than if they had been in a vase.

SURPRISE!

You know you see on TV programmes and films that people turn up at their own houses on their birthdays, open the door into a dark room and then all their friends and rellies shout "SURPRISE!"?   Well, it was a bit like that when I opened the kiln door on Wednesday morning.  And all these blue and orange stripey mugs shouted out at me.

What was the surprise?  Well, I didn't know I'd painted orange stripes.  They were meant to be dark blue ones.  I quite like them, though.  I hope other people do too as I've got eight of them.

The flan dishes weren't a surprise as such.  What's more of a surprise is that I've never done blue ones before.  I've only either done them in the oatmeal star design for the Made In Stroud shop, where they've usually gone quite quickly.  I like these very much indeed.  I'm getting more into serving dishes, I find.

Being creative

Being creative is so much more than making concrete objects or being able to draw, as I'm sure most people would agree.  I sometimes feel, however, that this idea is offered as a sort of sop to those who sound ashamed of not being able to make things.  "Oh, but you're creative in other ways!" isn't really all that encouraging to people who are probably just expressing envy of those who can paint pictures or, yes, make pots.  It doesn't stop them wishing they could paint too.   I'd rather explore with people what is much more likely, which is that someone told them once they were no good at art.  It takes a few seconds to say this to a child or young person but a lifetime to recover from and it makes me very sad.  I try to encourage people by explaining how I failed my "O" level in art, and not just by one grade but quite convincingly, but I can see that often they just don't believe me. 

When I was Artist in Residence at Nature in Art a couple of weeks ago, the door opened one day and a woman entered saying even before she got through the door, "I'm sorry, I don't know anything about art at all.  I've been trying to think of an intelligent question to ask."  Her friend, it seemed, knew more, and in fact paints a little and we were all three able to get into a relaxed conversation in the end.  But I felt very sorry that someone had come through the education system believing not only that they couldn't 'do art' but that they had to apologise for wanting to look at it without being able to demonstrate some knowledge.

I've written here a month or two back about how much I'm enjoying writing websites and how, for me, the work is just as creative as making a wallhanging or a pot. I'm still pretty proud of the websites I've designed and written from scratch but am also enjoying making one to order where there is less of a design element and more of a making to commission feel about it.  I'll provide a link once it's finished.  This week, though, I've been aware of another aspect to my creativity which is certainly something common to many more people than those who can paint or make things - the idea of being creative with a situation.  If you're given nothing but lemons, make lemonade.

The first lemon has been kilnloads of pots which haven't turned out the colours I was expecting.  This has happened because learning to work with a gas kiln is a little like learning to live with an animal - not so much a question of taming a beast but of learning its natural habits and accepting a degree of unpredictability.  After 100 firings I eventually found how to get the temperature to distribute more evenly throughout the kiln.  This was a great discovery and huge progress rather than a final destination.  The next stage is to find out exactly what to do to achieve the different temperatures that result in different colours in the glazes. The first firing at a lower temperature proved not to be all that much lower.  One expects the first guess at an experiment not to succeed but I was left with lots of pots which weren't the colour I had hoped.  Next time I'll use the information gained and have another guess. 

The other lemon has been the situation which has made me stressed and gloomy - finding out that I have fallen so far behind with my production that whole chunks of ranges I normally keep stocked have disappeared and no real hope of catching up to where I was.

Where's the lemonade? 

The photo at the top shows seven mugs, all rather different in colour.  They are produced with two glazes and two clays only.  Some of the colours are understandable by me, one, at least, is very surprising and so far unexplained.   When my analytical brain eventually switched off trying to work this out, my creative brain took over and I suddenly realised the way forward.  Let go of having to produce everthing within 'ranges'.  Make more of the individuality of pots!  How simple.  I expect some of you out there are wondering what took me so long.  Maybe that's a question for another time.

I really like all these colours coming out of the firings lately.  Some are old and some are new but they've all got their attractions and I'm pretty sure that those who buy my pots will feel the same.  So instead of thinking I've still not got replacements for the things that have run out, I'm thinking I have lovely new replacements!  If anyone wants things to match existing ranges, I can do them, but just not straight away.  J asked me if the iris mugs were to be a new range and the answer is yes, I think I'll make some more of them, and perhaps some other items if the mood takes me, but no, they're not going to be a range as such.  No more pressure of keeping enough of everything in stock.  Time to celebrate the pots I've got instead of bemoaning the ones I haven't.

It's an idea I've been pondering on for a few months, in fact, without the ideas reallly forming into a plan.  Next time I'll show you a couple of new teapots.  In the mean time, creativity in another form.  How do you get good lighting and dry conditions for taking studio shots of pots in the winter?  In your underused shiny new greenhouse, of course!

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Can you tell what it is yet? #2

What you need to know is that dark green lustre and light green lustre don't work for everyone and I am one of the people they don't work for.  So I now use them in ways appropriate to the colour they usually turn out.  Usually is about 95% of the time, at least.  On this occasion, they decided to be halfway between the colour they usually do and the greens they are meant to be, resulting in a sort of greyish colour.  I don't mind the effect, actually.  I was reasonably happy with the results, until I asked M what he thought, and was rather taken aback to find that he didn't even know what they were supposed to be and didn't sound convinced when I told him.

Feedback from others gratefully received!