Deadlines coming up for our "Facets of the Harbor" show in New Bedford

About two weeks ago, Kim Medeiros (The Barn Pottery in Pocasset) and I were offered a show in nearby New Bedford at Gallery 65 on William. It's a lovely and big cooperative gallery in a former hardware store right in the old fishing city's downtown. And it's only two blocks from the wonderful New Bedford Whaling Museum.
The show of pots was to be paired with photographs of the old port by John Robson. Could we show perhaps 20 with a "port" theme, asked the gallery's Nicole St. Pierre? Of course, we said. We've been making pots together for the past six months. I can throw big pots, Kim is a great thrower and decorator. Of course we can do that.
The problem - the show opens June 8, pots are due June 3. I got right on the big shallow bowls, smaller dinner plate-size bowls and tall jars. Let them dry a bit, then got them in my truck over to Kim's studio in Pocasset. There, the painstaking detail work happened. Stamps were conceived. What do we need? Ospreys? Flounder? Cod? Haddock? Horseshoe crabs? Swordfish? What the hell does a haddock look like, anyway? Find pictures of fishing trawlers, sailing schooners from a century ago, the old city skyline, sperm whales, bowhead whales, right whales, whaling ships, old copies of Moby Dick with those stunning woodcuts by Rockwell Kent. Googled photos zipped between Hatchville and Pocasset.
Kim has sgraffitoed herself right to the limit. She's just about done now. I have three of the big bowls here in my studio for putting in the bisque kiln tomorrow. I brought them very carefully back here in my truck today.
All of this, and we still have to glaze and fire the big pots, along with smaller cups and bowls that will be in the show. Oh, and we have two big pots due in July for a show on estuaries at the Falmouth Center for the Arts and the Waquoit Bay National Estuarial Reserve.
Here are some photos of the work in progress, the top two with Kim at work.