An autumn exhibit of keyboarding potters

A pottery show called "Clay and Blogs: Telling a Story" will open at the Campbell House in Moore County, N.C., on October 1. The opening will be from 6 to 8 p.m.
Though the exhibition is in the state that is one of the taproots of U.S. pottery, this show includes potters from around the country and across more than one ocean. I'm lucky to be one of the nearly 50 blogging potters invited to be part of the show, which is being put together by incredibly hardworking volunteer organizer (and blogging potter) Meredith Heywood of North Carolina's Whynot Pottery.
I started blogging a bit more than a year ago, encouraged by Fredericksburg, Va., potter and friend Dan Finnegan. I made my living as a newspaper photographer, writer and editor for many years, but writing about my own work and the fits and starts of pot-making on Cape Cod is an entirely different endeavor.
But other potters linked to my blog through Dan's, and to Dan's through mine, and through Tracey Broome's and the marvelous U.K colloquialisms of Doug Fitch's blog and Paul Jessop's and Hannah McAndrew's and Ang's in Australia and Maria Bosch's in Barcelona (in Catalan, no less) and before I knew it, I had a circle of friends I'd never met. I explain this blogging thing to my coffee table friends in the morning at Coffee Obsession and ... they ... don't ... get it. "Read a blog? I don't have time to read a blog!"
But I couldn't start the day without a perusal of who has said what overnight. Have the grit lorries cleared snow from the road to Doug's place? Is Dan back in his country studio after recuperating from surgery? Has Tracey worked out her kiln problems? How's the thatching going on that cottage near Paul Jessop's Barrington Court studio?
This is the kind of thing we'd talk about at the bar or the pub or the coffee shop if we were a group of potters working in the same town. But we're a group of potters working on the same planet, and we get to share these things through this marvelous blogosphere. A sort of virtual pub, actually, though we can't buy each other a pint.
So about 50 blogging potters will send pots from all over the world this fall to the Campbell House in Moore County, N.C. I'm hoping to be able to drive down for the opening on October 1. It should be a great show.
The photos from a few of the potters, from the top: Hannah McAndrews's wonderful photo of her hands throwing a wide bowl; Doug Fitch's beautiful jug, recently acquired by a prestigious U.K. museum; the Shino bowls of Australia's Angela Walford; Brandon Phillips's Texas teapot; a fine woodfired Dan Finnegan gift mug; and Tracey Broome's freshly-made ... ummm ... what? ... goat? Tracey works in Chapel Hill.

What's that on my wheelhead???

Why, it's a fine slipware mug by Doug Fitch, also known in Trans-Atlantic circles as Santa Doug. I had the good fortune of being matched up in the Blogger Secret Santa Project with Mr. Fitch, of Hollyford in Devon, UK.
The mug arrived Saturday, via Royal Mail, and has since been shown off at the Sunday morning services of the Church of Coffee Obsession in Woods Hole and is now holding my morning coffee in the studio. Thank you, Doug. A fine addition to our kitchen mug cabinet.
By the way, there is out there at least one potter who is thinking that Santa forgot him. Never fear. Santa was waylaid by the holidays ... but he will keep all of his appointed rounds.

Moving right along ...

I'm working on pots for the next firing (and next year's warm-weather shows) this week. With luck, I'll fire again within two weeks.
The gallery gets virtually no visitors over the cold months, so it will get pretty crowded out there until the summer visitors come back. Over the past couple of days, I've thrown and finished a couple of big two-part jars, fairly roughly. Basically, each is made of an 11-inch-rim bowl, joined rim-to-rim and finished with a short neck, vestigial handles and a footring. There will be more of those, but I wanted to start with just two; it's been a while since I did that kind of thing.
Today I spent time throwing 11 13-inch-tall six-pound cylindrical bottle vases, which I'll square up with some gentle pounding and ribbing once they're leather hard. I'll attach a photo of those tall ones and maybe one of a similar finished one in brown stoneware.
All for now. Still cold out here on Cape Cod, with morning temperatures today around 15 F. Warmer weather coming later this week.

First new pots of 2010, out this morning

I think I may have enough small Shino bowls on hand now, after another 30 or so came out of the kiln this morning. I fired yesterday, lighting up at 8:30 a.m. and shutting down six hours later. Lots of brown stoneware bowls, summer teabowl size, mostly in multi-layer Shinos and ash glazes. There's a photo of some of them at the top.
I've been doing a lot of these bowls in the past few months. They take to the glazing so well and I make them quickly, plus people seem to buy them, which is a little extra bonus. It's always good to sell pots.
Dee and I unloaded the kiln, and later our friends Jo Ann Muramoto and Lafe Coppola showed up to see the new pots. And each found a couple to take home. Jo Ann was looking for mugs, and found two. Lafe is always looking for pots of one kind or another for his new house in W. Falmouth, and he took home a small Shino cereal bowl and a teabowl. Other good things came out of the kiln, too, including a nice Shino/ash jar, seen here with Dee peering over it. And Alli Connolly, my student intern, got a very nice tall two-piece vase, which will probably be exhibited in the student show this spring at the Cape Cod Museum of Art.
A good firing. Now, on to make more pots.

Extending the season ...

I was walking out to the mail box this evening, just as the sun had gone down and the sky was darkening. Had to walk past the lighted sign on Boxberry Hill Road and I loved the way the Christmas lights were brightening the dusk. So I got the mail and went back in and got my camera to post one last shot at the 2009 holiday season.
Technically, I don't think the Magi have made it to Bethlehem yet ...

Warren McKenzie show extended at the Fuller

Apparently, I should have looked elsewhere on the Fuller craft museum website (http://www.fullercraft.org/exhibitions.html#MacKenzie). Turns out the Warren McKenzie show has been extended to January 31 at the Brockton, Mass., museum. Good news for anyone who's missed it up to now.

Warren McKenzie and Randy Johnston

I took too long getting to this post. Today, Jan. 3, Warren McKenzie's restrospective show at the Fuller Craft Museum closes.
The Fuller is a wonderful small museum in Brockton, Mass., about 45 minutes from us in Falmouth and a half-hour from Boston. Well worth visiting. Brockton is a down-at-the-heels small city known for its long-gone shoe industry and also as the birthplace of undefeated (and also long-gone) American heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Marciano. You approach the museum from the highway, driving past the usual fast-food restaurants and gas stations. But the museum itself sits isolated and quiet on a pond surrounded by woods. It is known for adventurous and quality exhibitions of craft. McKenzie's show was vast, more than 200 works that traced his long career. A beautiful show, spoiled just a bit because no one could touch the work. I hate that. But it's a museum, after all. Guards kept a sharp lookout for touchers flouting the rules.
Randy Johnston's show, on the other hand, is at the Pucker Gallery on Newbury St. in Boston, where touching is allowed, even encouraged. Johnston's show is up through the Jan. 18. Johnston was one of McKenzie's students at the University of Minnesota and long ago established himself as a fine potter, as is his wife and studio partner Jan McKeachie Johnston. This show at the Pucker is smaller and is not a retrospective, but a snapshot look of a potter in mid-career. All of the pots are wood-fired in an anagama kiln, all are ... I want to say they're roughly made, but that's not right ... they're carefully made but they are the kind of loose, imperfect pots that are best served by firing in an anagama, where the flame and ash batter the clay walls and leave no question of how they were fired. The Pucker's fine catalog is available as a download from the gallery website, at http://www.puckergallery.com/exhibitions.html. Do it. It's worth seeing.
Or, better, visit the gallery. You can touch the pots.
Above, Randy Johnston jar at top and Warren McKenzie serving dish below.