My Ball of Yarn

I got published for the second time in Art to Art Palet http://www.arttoartpalette.com/PotterAsksDepartment.html

Ralph asked; what do I see next for me?

And all I could think of is this giant ball of yarn that I am precariously perched atop.

People say they are at a cross roads but I am at a Ball of yarn, It has so many loose ends I cannot find the end that will unravel it.

Color, form, function, beauty, emotion, profundity, lightness, playfulness, heart warming, wrenching. Where to go? How to get there?

My Claybeings are my success, “you cannot argue with success” yet they are my limitation “you cannot argue with success” for without argument there is no clash of thought and without clash of thought there is no change, growing and evolving.

So I have to put my success aside, keep it in a compartment and try to regain that feeling when I started working with clay 13 years ago, that wide eyed wonder at the possibilities yet I want to keep my energy focused and not get lost in my giant ball of yarn and all the beginnings it offers me.

I want me to concentrate on evolving from my success into a new direction, I want to bring my deeper feelings out in my work, I want to elaborate, expand and stretch the limits of my work both physically and emotionally.

So next will be seriousness to my work without loosing the playfulness, a maturing without becoming old and a focus without rigidity. Or so I hope.

After Thoughts

As I was talking, selling and watching I noticed the kids. All the kids wanted to climb the steps behind me. The steps were something to achieve slow or fast. cautiously or recklessly but one way or another the steps needed to be conquered by every kid except one who resisted his mother's encouragements and just wanted to stay where he was.

Parents reactions were quite varied too from encouragement to worry to out right NO DO NOT climb those steps too dangerous.

But sooner or later they all will have to climb the steps slow or fast, cautiously or recklessly they, we, all have to find our own way to climb those steps.

People Watching

As people were watching me and my work I was watching them. There were kids playing with marshmallow guns, a man carrying a tall log impregnated with Shitaaki spores to take home and grow some mushrooms; There were many motorcyclists, families, people showing off their well behaved, well groomed dogs; And of course there were the crafters demonstrating their way of creating things.

Vandalia Gathering

I am home now after two hard,wonderful, boring, amusing, hot and cool days on the beautiful Capitol grounds here in Charleston.

The attendance was good this year as the weather was excellent and the music was good as usual.

There were liar contests and fiddle competitions, There was food for sale, choruses and dancers and plants to be got.

Vandalia Gathering

Saturday, I will be setting up for 2 days of music, liars’ contests, food and of course us artists and crafters.

I am trying a new booth configuration and am showing a lot of my new work; size, content, and method.

Come down if you are near, the Capitol grounds in Charleston, WV are beautiful and the weather is supposed to be gorgeous. And the music is bluegrass and fiddle contests plus all the craft demonstrators, from wheel throwing to flower pressing to weaving.

Today I cleaned my studio:

I don’t mean cleaned it with water and got it clean which I do often. I cleaned it of stuff and that led me to review all the paths I went or didn’t go through, all the ideas abandoned all the projects started and not finished for the lack of time or distraction by orders for my usual Claybeings that I like making and always sell well but…

Before the Claybeings: ideas would attack me from every bush, every sky, every child, every work of art and on and on.. But the success of the Claybeings made the attacks less frequent and intense. So when I cleaned my studio I rememberd the slip trailing I intended to do, the clay paintings I was to experiment with, the favorite painters I wanted to reference in a series. And many more started and abandoned projects for a later time that seemed to never come.

Friends of mine went back to school to expand their horizons, but it is too late, too confining and too impractical for me to do it at this stage of my life. But I think cleaning my studio will do that for me, at least for a little while until success interferes again.