Trip to Pittsburgh, NCECA conference

This March, during spring break, I went to Pittsburgh to the NCECA conference. My

parents came too- Mom is from the area (Mars! My mom went to Mars High) and they were celebrating their wedding anniversary. Needless to say, traveling with mes parents upped the posh quotient of my trip considerably. The other ceramics students came by train and slept 10 to a room, like a bunch of drunk puppies. We stayed at the conference hotel and ate really well. Mom took us around Pittsburgh, visiting her nursing school, Carnegie Mellon, and other areas. Pittsburgh was great- I loved the way the city looked and felt. Lots of ethnic diversity, great restaurants, culture, shopping...

But the best things of all for me were the markets in the warehouse district. We went to a fish market that was gigantic, filled with fish of every sort and customers everywhere. We noticed that they were serving lunch- they had a sushi bar and a fried-fish extravaganza complete with macaroni and cheese and huge french fries. We ordered fish and chips, macaroni and cheese, and buttery mixed vegetables and ate them. There were at least 50 people eating in the upstairs dining room, and a line out the door for the fried fish... and it was just as good as it looked and smelled. The fish was perfectly fresh, the batter thin, salty, and crisp, and the macaroni oozing yellow cheese sauce, topped with buttered breadcrumbs. Ony 100000 calories per serving, but we walked it off later.

There is simply nothing in Wichita that compares to an east-coast fish shop.

Let's have a little catch up with that...

I make food and dirty dishes. I hate doing dishes, but as I hate all housework, it is a lesser evil than say, vacuuming. I really hate vacuuming.

The entire semester went by in a flash. I have finished the foundations program. I made many objects, including paintings and drawings, some more successful than others. I had my first panic attack, in drawing class on the last day of school. I cooked and ate things. Music was made, including my first concert improvising with Lucky Me. Wayne built a new Split Lip album and Evan is exactly as tall as I am. My best friend's husband left her for a student and now she's moving away to California. I forgave my ex-boyfriend for past hurts and now he's invited us to his wedding. I won a scholarship that pays for half of my classes next year. I designed a golf course kitchen in my old hometown. I danced in my first bellydance show and was a participant in the Renaissance festival (insert irony here).

I have decided that to alleviate my general anxiety I'm going to use this blog to not only comment on my work in art, but also my work in food. I have let food go for the last year or so, not teaching classes, not catering, barely consulting, in order to focus on school. I was okay with it for a while, but food is my first passion...and really the only thing I have ever really mastered. I have begun feeling a little worthless, a bit unimportant. I realized the other day that I have so much school to complete to earn the degree. Evan might complete high school before I finish my BA. Food and cooking are things I can use to comfort and reassure myself that I actually know something about something...

Let

Testing Etsy

I spent most of the weekend photographing, fussing, and posting on Etsy. My shop is called Cloud Machine, and you can look at it here http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5534021.

Necklaces now and other things to come.

Needless to say, this is rather time consuming and takes away from other life things. I have sat on my sweet ass all weekend in front of a screen, obsessing about how many views my things are getting. It has kept me from my New Year's promises to exercise more.

On that note, I have been moving more this week, went to belly dance class and sweated a bunch, then to the Y to watch ER on the elliptical, and then I taught yoga this morning. You'd think I'd be thin and fantastic, but I feel sort of blobby and uncoordinated. I've never had a model's figure, but as I get older and grayer (fuck, yes, grayer, and I am ferociously dyeing my hair) I feel less than frais.

Maybe I need a new tattoo!

Back to it

This is Liesl in my negative space dress made of recycled tee-shirts. She's lovely and shapely.

This semester was really tough. I'm glad it's over, even though I made a lot of great stuff.

My video projection "Hesitation". Gauze, video, shoe polish. Installed in vacant apartment as part of "Expansion" in April 2007.

Speaking of this semester, I have worked my ass off... I was in four shows- one wearable art, two conceptual art, one vessels. I also achieved straight A's, even though I found it nearly impossible to go to class with the babies. One of the hardest things about going back to school at age 38 is that everyone in class with me is 18. I'm old enough to be their mother, but BELIEVE ME, if I were their mother, I'd beat them with a coat hanger. What the hell is going on with kids these days? My son is 14 and far more interesting to talk to (if you discount the subject "video games") than most of my "peers" at WSU.

The kids in my foundations classes are watchers, not doers. They draw anime cartoons and think that being an artist is about doing whatever. Most of them are completely talent-free.

To go to class for 8 hours a day with them is torture. Like listening to piano music or watching Evan play shooter games.

I, on the other hand, am brilliant and talented. More evidence on the way.

Long absence

Back to this again. I finished a crazy semester (more on that later) and Christmas holidays exhausted and wrung out. I was going through some pictures of the Farmer's Market today and they totally cheered me up. I tend to get a little seasonal depression, usually nothing that a few glasses of wine can't cure, but this year seems a little worse than usual.

Looking at these great pictures reminds me of all the great things about summer- without any of the heat that goes with it!

Glaze day, water permitting

Today I'm going into the studio to glaze my pots, that is, if the water main has been fixed and we have running H2O. It is hard to glaze without water to wipe up the mistakes (and there are always many).

The last batch of babies came out of the fire looking kind of sad. The pots were cute enough when they went in, but some of the glazes were contaminated, and some were too thick, some were just not quite what I was expecting. That's shared glaze for you- I'll call it the Goldilocks Effect- some too hot, some too cold, some too big- but occasionally one is just right.

The moral of the story is " Make your own, honey". Then hide them.

I have a nice white white, and a very lavender lavender, a green salt and a water blue for the ones I do today. I'm going to mix up a blue celadon and this time spray them all on.

The thing about clay is that you can't get too attached to the objects you make. It's the perfect medium for those who have to learn to let go- the material is unpredictable, it has it's own personality and issues, it has to be handled with care and then after it looks like the worst is over, you put it in a windowless kiln and light a 2300 degree fire. Then you wait for a few days to see what what happens.

Sometimes it's bad:

Sometimes it's good:

I will sacrifice a soy green tea latte to the glaze goddess today. Perhaps it will please her.