Happy New Year! Take ride on the ZOOM QUILT.....

Happy New Year from us to you. This is always such an exciting time of the year. Here is a fun art trip for you and your friends to check out. Very Cool, and an exciting colloborative project that we bumped into while surfing the magic cyberspace ride.

This may take a tiny bit of time to load down.

You can slow it down, go forwards and backwards when sliding the stick line left to right. Also if you put your mouse on the image the words go away so you can see the pictures on your full screen

Here is the link to ZoomQuilt II - 2007

Tis the Season for Extra Scooby Snacks

Seasons Greetings from all of us at Bulldog to everyone out there in cyber space and beyond. We convinced Maxwell that he looks absolutely handsome in his Santa's hat. His Great Aunt Judy supplied him with the red and white hat for the holidays. He is not sure if he was very happy about this addition to his wardrobe, but felt that joining in the festivities is fun to do and worth the extra scooby snacks.

While Matt Dances Around the World

While Matt dances around the world and figures out where he will be dancing next, we will be working on fixing up our new studio, moving in, and thinking out where we will place everything. I find it intriguing and fascinating when I discover people like Matt who has a focus that revolves around travel and adventure. Our travel mostly revolves around a triangle on our property or maybe a circle, sometimes we go in a few more directions maybe making an octagon, but for the most part our travels cover a few acres. Thank you to Matt for taking us to places that we have never been, and most likely won't ever get to go to except through books and the eyes of his camera. I have been aware of Matt since around 2006 when my brother sent me his video via e-mail. It made me happy and every once in awhile I think about Matt and go and check out his website or search for him on You Tube. He has his videos from past years posted on his website. The one I posted here is his most recent one from 2008. I love the concept of dancing with all of the different folks of the world--a positive common thread amongst us.

We thoroughly appreciate Matt, and others (13 Months) on the Internet as a vehicle to find out what is out there, way beyond our place here in Seagrove, NC.

Maybe Matt will come and dance with the Seagrove Potters someday.

Check out Mud Bucket Blog

We have been following along the past couple of months a blog called Mud Bucket. Her name is Jesse Lu and she does a wonderful job finding diversity among the ceramics world.

Amazing Sand Castle

I ran into this website today called acid cow and found some great insect portraits. If you are interested in seeing those look at my Twitter in the side bar and follow that link. These are some incredible images of a sand castle a fellow sculpted. To see the 16 images of his process click on this link.

Baby its Cold Outside

We like to listen to the 40's station on XM satellite radio while working in our studio. Since Thanksgiving they have been playing classic Holiday music. This is one of the songs that they have been playing. I always enjoy this song when it comes on, so I thought I will share it with you.

Cheers.

Carolina Designer Craftsmen: Some more images

Bruce and I had a good weekend at the Carolina Designer Craftsmen in Raleigh. The turn out of the public for the Friday afternoon preview party and evening hours went well too. On Saturday there was a NC State/UNC football game at the State Fair Grounds, so I think this kept some people home. We met some new folks and talked with some old friends. We enjoy doing this show.

I uploaded the images that I took at the CDC show onto my flicker page. To see a sampling of the artists that showed there this past weekend visit my Carolina Designer Craftsmen album.
This was our neighbor on the right hand side of us. His name is Charles Pinckney. He is a jeweler from Athens, Georgia.
On the left hand side of us was a fiber artist from Greensboro, her name is Paige Cox. We found out later in the show that she grew up in Asheboro which is around 15 miles from where we live.
This is an image from Friday evening.
Here is Lisa Oakley from Cedar Creek Gallery. She is a glass blower and told us of the recent visit from Dale Chihuly made to her glass studio. Wow what a great day she had when he turned up. You can read about it at her blog.

Carolina Designer Craftsmen: this past weekend

We are home and very pleased with this past weekends event in Raleigh at the Carolina Designer Craftsmen 40th annual Fine craft and Design show. Lisa Oakely awarded us with the Cedar Creek Gallery Award of Excellence. Every year the Cedar Creek Gallery presents this award to a CDC Guild member. Last year the award went to Sandra McEwen.

Here is the description of the award:

"Sid and Pat Oakley started Cedar Creek Pottery and Gallery in 1968 on what used to be an old tobacco field. Today their daughter Lisa continues their legacy. The Gallery has evolved into one of the largest collections of fine crafts on the East coast featuring the work of over 200 of America's most accomplished craftsmen, including many of our CDCG exhibitors, whose work is on display and sold year round. The Award of Excellence is the mark of excellent work deserving of special recognition."

We are very honored to be presented this award by Lisa from Cedar Creek Gallery.

Back in the beginning of the summer we delivered some pieces there for their Art of the State exhibition. To see the two blog posts that we did about their wonderful gallery, go here, and here.

Moka Glaze Kiln.... and we are off to Raleigh

We were quite happy with how the Moka glaze kiln came out today. Here are a few pictures of the pottery. We will bring our art glazed vases and our Moka glaze pottery to the Carolina Designer Craftsmen today and we will be leaving some in our shop for the weekend. Ed and Gloria will be here to greet the Seagrove visitors. All is well and Happy Thanksgiving to you.

Check out Tom Starland's blog at Carolina Unleashed. We want to thank him for being such a great supporter of us Seagrovean potters.

Masterpieces out of the kiln

Well we were very happy and relieved this morning with how our "masterpeices" for the Carolina Designer Craftsmen came out. We have decided to put the crab handled urn into the CDC Masterworks display. We liked all of them and we are excited about the potential for more works like these in the future. A project like this is good for us. Now to unload the Moka glaze kiln. More images of those pieces soon.

Here is a close-up of the crab urn. I like the streamers and the greenish "bubbles" around the crab.

"Masterworks" - Carolina Designer Craftsmen-Thanksgiving weekend

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Above I am carefully glazing in and around all of the handles

Yesterday we glazed the three large handled urns that we made for this weekend. The 40th annual Carolina Designer Craftsmen is taking place at the Raleigh State Fair Grounds. Our fingers are crossed that we will be happy tomorrow morning when we unload. One of these pieces is destined for the "Masterworks" display at the CDC Fine Craft Show. These works are a collaborative efforts, between Bruce and I. We found it tricky trying to foresee what glazes to use and how to glaze the transitions around the handles - into the images - and then into his fossil imagery.

We were very happy when we finished that last piece. We turned off the gas kiln at 2:45 am and finished loading the urns about the same time.
We were able to tuck some of my vases around the urns.

Loading the Kiln for Carolina Designer Craftsmen..for this weekend

Bruce is waxing the bottom of the pots in the image above

The past few days have been super busy. Here are the highlights of loading the Moka glazed pottery into our gas kiln. We finished glazing on Sunday and Monday. I glazed late into Monday evening while Bruce and Ed loaded the kiln. The kiln is cooling right now and we will unload Thanksgiving Day. What a treat.

Below Samantha is glazing a creamer

Monday was stormy but luckily not raining hard when we carried the glazed pots out to the hog parlor.
There Bruce goes. I love the color of the rust on the metal next to the green grass.
Bruce is working on the back level of the kiln.

Ratatoulle kept me company all day and night. I like it when she is in a good mood.
Ed was a big help to Bruce. We usually load over two days, but this time it was all done in one day.
Ed is handing the bricks to Bruce. This is the final step of the kiln loading process and a very welcomed one.
Bruce has cut soft brick to fit in just right at the arch.

CDC "Masterpieces"' in the kiln

Bruce and I took on a project for this coming Carolina Designer Craftsmen. We have judged the timing a bit close, but that is what happens sometimes in our studio. Yesterday when I got home from the Celebration I helped finish these pieces and load them into the bisque kiln for their first firing around 1:00am. We have them soaking for around 15 hours to make sure they are throughly dry. Calling them "masterpiece" is a bit strong of a term for us, but that is what they call it so we will go with it. See below for their definition. These pieces are the first time we have brought together some of our newer techniques, new imagery on a larger handled form. Stay Tuned

The Carolina Designer Craftsmen's Definition of a Masterworks piece: "A piece that is superior in design, quality, originality, price and/or size to what you would routinely make and display in your booth. This piece must be in the same medium and style of work that you are creating now, just more elaborate and more unique. That dream piece, the one that you’ve held in your heart…that you have always wanted to make, or even a collaboration with another guild member."

Celebration of Seagrove Potters -- Gala

I wanted to load some images up from last night. I need to go eat my oatmeal and back to the Luck's Cannery to set up for this morning. Last night was a lot of fun and we all enjoyed ourselves. I will fill in who is in the pictures another day.

Celebration of Seagrove Potters -- Set Up

The North Carolina Pottery Center has a display table at the entrance with historic NC Pottery books and other NCPC information including membership.
Last night Ed and I went back to the Luck's Cannery to set out our pottery. We hit the wall around 8:45 and thought that we would continue in the morning. We met Will McCanless (McCanless Pottery) and Meredith Smildson leaving about the same time as we were. It is all up from here!

Below is our booth as we left it. Gloria and Ed will go back this morning and finish up. We need to be completed by noon so the caterers have plenty of room to set up for this evening's Gala. I am going to work on glazing for the Carolina Designer Craftsman which is next week in Raleigh.

I went around really quick to see if I could find any smiling faces. There were a few left right before Ed and I left.

Below is Chris and Lisa Luther of Chris Luther Pottery

Dan Triece of Dirtworks Pottery came on over to see what was going on and expressed a how do you do to all of you.
Here is Randy and Sherry James of Dixieland Pottery. You may remember them from a previous post that we did back in August about the Luck's Legacy Kiln Opening. They were just about set up and putting a few finishing touches on their booth.
Michelle Kovack of Kovack Pottery is set up beside them.

Paul Ray of Ray Pottery is sporting his Alice Cooper t-shirt, we like it too.

Sheila Ray (Paul's wife) is hanging out talking with David and Alexa Fernandez of Seagrove Stoneware.
Blaine Avery of Avery Pottery and Tileworks is getting set up and ready to display his pottery.