Art on A Cup / The Decorated Yunomi

These images are details of Samantha's Yunomis.

Searching around for different ways to decorate my pottery is still a fascinating focus that I have enjoyed since I started in clay. These glazes that Bruce and I have been working with recently have kept our attention, interest, and enthusiasm. They are fluid, rich, sparkly, and can vary from series to series. They have a lot of action jackson to keep us on our toes and our minds occupied. After taking these detailed images of the two Horse Yunomis, they sparked my memory of the Expressionist group called Der Blauer Reiter (The Blue Rider), and the artist Franz Marc. Bruce and I had a conversation about this artist, and when I described the famous Blue Horse painting that Franz Marc created back in the early 1900's he remembered who I was referring too. That afternoon we ran into a Expressionism book at Barnes and Noble that had the Franz Marc's painting on the cover. I like it when a serendipitous occurrence happen like this. We had just come out of the movie theater where we had treated ourselves to the movie Avatar, which we highly recommend seeing while you can on the big screen.

When designing and glazing these Yunomis I was not thinking about the Blue Horse painting, but when I look at the glaze detail they do remind me of his work, though if you were to put them side by side they may look nothing alike. Maybe the only reason that they remind me of the Blue Horse painting is simply because the details are bluish and the image is a horse. Even if that is the only reason, I feel an excitement about pursuing these images and glaze effects.

Too see the images of the Yunomis I sent to AKAR you can visit our Flickr set here.

Marketing Art : Two Workshops at STARworks

I thought I would pass this on to the artists that live nearby here. See you there!

There are two marketing workshops scheduled to take place at STARworks in Star, NC.

Jan. 21: 6:00 pm Jan Lukens will talk about "Art as Business"

Jan. 28: 6:00 pm A panel of artists : Samantha Henneke, Debby Thompson, and Mac Metz will talk about their art businesses. The open forum will explore needs of local artists and strategies to create a brighter future for all.

To register call 910-428-9001 or e-mail marla@centralparknc.org

Art on A Cup / The Decorated Yunomi

This past week we shipped our Yunomis to AKAR's Yunmoi Invitational, which opens online on March 26 and continues through April 16, 2010. Around 200 potters have been selected to send 5 Yunomi's each. We find this show always fun to participate in, and we look forward to seeing the other potter's Yunomis. If you have not purchased from AKAR yet, it is a wise idea to sign up on their website before the show opens, and be ready-because this is a very popular exhibition.
On one of Bruce's cups, he played around with collaging skulls with the bodies of seahorses. This method in the clay world is called sprigging, and has been done throughout clay history. One ceramic artist that comes to mind that worked this method wonderfully is Palissy. He is from France, and made some really wild and cool stuff back in the 1500's which spawned a whole bunch of emulators. We found a website about him that explains some history and links to various museums that have his work in their collections. There are also a couple of good books about Palissy and the Palissy "School" of work.
We have added images of Bruce's Yunomis to our Flicker page. I had fun taking detailed images of the Yunomis this year. There are some characteristics of our glazes I think really benefit from closeups, such as the iridescence that you see on the fossil fish detail.

We will post Samantha's Yunomis later this week.