Friday, May 11, 2012

Dragon's debut

The dragon that grew in my studio and lived there for several weeks is now on display at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, along with the work of other students and their mentors in the program run through the museum by Linda Kemp. Linda matches up professional artists with high school students for eight weeks of work together. The show that formally opened last night (to a huge crowd of admiring friends and relatives, as always) is the culmination of those months of work together. Alex Urbina, my intern the dragon-maker, was there with her mom.
It's good to have the responsibility for the mythical sculpture out of my hands. It survived bisque- and glaze-firing more or less intact, only to fracture once it was delivered to the museum. (Not the museum's fault, by the way.) Careful gluing by yours truly restored the animal enough that most people last night had no idea that it wasn't perfect. Intact or not, it was a great effort by Alex, who worked tirelessly to complete the dragon, beginning to end.
She is going on to an All-State art program, recognized as a talented Massachusetts kid, and she will work soon with others at the Worcester Center for the Arts. Alex wore her prom outfit to the opening, which was pretty cool. For those of you who want to see it, sorry. I didn't photograph her, only the dragon. My bad.
I'm firing this morning. This load of pots is almost entirely glazed in Nuka or some combination of Nuka and a couple of other glazes. It's an experiment. As always ... we'll see.
The photos: Top, the dragon, guarding Alex's copper red vase of flowers; two visitors contemplating Alex's work; mentor Steve Kemp's magnificent wood-fired covered jar, my somewhat overshadowed Shino jar, the work of one of Steve's students.




7 comments:

gz said...

Glad it showed well in the exhibition

Barry said...

Nice work and wonderful of you to mentor. Love the dragon! My partner's daughter had a painting there as well.

Tracey Broome said...

Not overshadowed at all, the pieces are amazing and wonderful, all of them!!

cookingwithgas said...

High School students... the work is pretty darn good and ambitious to say the least.
The dragon is a work of art and I hope that she goes on to make more things out of clay.
Now- you might both be over shadowed by the better than the NY Times set of breast. Another student?

Hollis Engley said...

Yes, another student. I so seldom get bare breasts in my blog ...

Dan Finnegan said...

..and there I was, looking at the butt...

Hollis Engley said...

That probably explains ... something, Dan