Thrown Together Pottery Show and Sale - June 17 and 18 - in Greensboro

 

We will join the “Thrown Together Potters” this June in Greensboro on June 17 and 18! Jen Mecca, Ron Philbeck and Charlie Tefft will be hosting us along with Phil Haralam and Miru Ranganathan at Charlie Tefft’s studios in Summerfield NC. Yeah!

This sale will be taking place- 

Friday June 17th from 7pm - 9pm 

 Saturday June 18th from 10am - 4 pm

4444 Hamburg Mill Road, Summerfield NC

Throwing Ramen and Pho Bowls

Freshly thrown bowls by Samantha Henneke, Bulldog Pottery, Seagrove, North Carolina

We are making bowls for one of our favorite meals, Pho and Ramen. 

These bowls are larger than a regular soup bowl. Their shape needs to have enough room for a handful of noodles, vegetables, two ladles full of broth and our favorite addition -- the Ramen egg.  All of this yumminess needs to fit with room enough to spare so that it doesn't spill out when carrying the meal to the dinner table.

 The past couple of years we have settled on making a Shoyu Ramen we learned from Seonkyoung Longest, a Youtube cooking maven. It is a bone broth based on simmering pork necks for a few hours. (For vegetarians- broths made out of miso are very delicious).  

We love to add a Ramen egg to our soups. A Ramen egg is one that is softly boiled and marinated in a soysauce/mirin mixture for a day. We usually make the Ramen egg in the morning for our evening meal, but you may want to try different marinating times to your taste.

Pho and Ramen are different and are categorized depending on the type of broth and noodles used. This explanation on ChowHound  is an interesting read to learn more about the origins of these delectable soups. 

Samantha is trimming a foot on a bowl, Bulldog Pottery, Seagrove, North Carolina

Freshly decorated bowls, Samantha Henneke, Bulldog Pottery, Seagrove, North Carolina

A bowl full of Shoyu Ramen

"Our Past Shapes Our Present" - Linda Cordell, Samantha Henneke, Kristen Kieffer, Aysha Peltz, Elizabeth Vorlicek, Adero Willard, and Blake Jamison Williams

Patterns of Being, Plate, Samantha Henneke, Bulldog Pottery, Seagrove, North Carolina

"Our Past Shapes Our Present" is an exhibition organized by Elizabeth Vorlicek and Blake Jamison Williams for NCECA (National Ceramics Education for the Ceramic Arts). Originally this show was to be on view during March 2020 in Richmond, Virginia. The Covid-19 pandemic cancelled the conference for 2020. This year March 2021, NCECA- Rivers, Reflections, Reinventions- will be online, the first virtual conference ever. 

Bruce and I attended the Kansas City and Portland NCECA conferences in 2016 and 2017. The NCECA Ceramic Conference is an amazing time to connect with old friends and make new ones. In recent years, an estimated 6,000 ceramic artists have attended the 4 day event -- it is definitely a time to remember.

This exhibition includes seven ceramics artists. What is our common bond? We attended Alfred University in Alfred, New York and graduated together in 1995. 

The invited artists for the show are Linda Cordell, Samantha Henneke, Kristen Kieffer, Aysha Peltz, Elizabeth Vorlicek, Adero Willard, and Blake Jamison Williams. We have joined together to display some of our recent work along with an artist statement, and a forward by Elizabeth Vorlicek. You can view the show here at "Our Past Shapes Our Present" ,

I am showing 6 plates decorated with figures and pattern medley designs. 

Patterns of Being, Plate, Samantha Henneke, Bulldog Pottery, Seagrove, North Carolina

Samantha and Bruce did an artist residency in Paris a few years ago. We lived right in the middle of the city for two months, with people around everywhere, all the time. It fascinated me to walk among so many people, of all cultures, with historic architecture as the landscape. 

Connection was the place, not necessarily the people. It was mesmerizing to be in the flow of city streets, where everyone seems to move to where they need to be among one another in a fluidly symbiotic way.

Coming back to the seclusion of our lifestyle here, with memories of the people on the Paris city streets walking around engaging with one another at that moment in time, but likely never to be encountered again. To see some images of our time in Paris, go to #bulldogpotteryparisresidency2018

Now, with the Covid-19 pandemic, the idea of being in crowds is of an obscure reality. The change for us personally hasn’t been as monumental compared to others because our daily rhythm is secluded at home with the trees. But I can imagine that in the city there is edginess now to this flow that we had experienced back in Paris.

Patterns of Being, Plate, Samantha Henneke, Bulldog Pottery, Seagrove, North Carolina

Patterns of Being, Plate, Samantha Henneke, Bulldog Pottery, Seagrove, North Carolina

Patterns of Being, Plate, Samantha Henneke, Bulldog Pottery, Seagrove, North Carolina

Patterns of Being, Plate, Samantha Henneke, Bulldog Pottery, Seagrove, North Carolina

 

Whirling through January and February 2021

 

It is wild that we are almost through the second month of 2021. The Covid-19 pandemic still is the reason why we keep our shop closed. We are waiting until we feel comfortable opening again -- when the public health scientists feel that it is as good as it will get, and everyone has had an opportunity to get the vaccine. 

Last year we took our sales online and were very pleased with the technology available to be able to keep selling the pottery we make. We focused posting our works on our social media pages, Bulldog Pottery Instagram and Bulldog Pottery Facebook. We want to write more and restart our blog. So we will see. We know a lot of people are not on social media, and also like to take a social-media-break every so often. The world changes, pottery business changes, and we must adapt too.

We miss seeing people, and the daily conversations in our Bulldog Pottery shop. Hopefully, sometime soon, in the near future, we will be opening up our doors again. 

Last year, in 2020, we focused our creative attention to making forms glazed with our crystalline surfaces. For 2021 we are changing our pottery studio process and will concentrate on making pottery with our Moka glaze and Bruce's shino glazed porcelain all fired in our gas kiln. We have an AKAR Gallery show scheduled for this coming October and we will be creating a body of work for this online Artist exhibit.

Stay tuned for more posts!

Collaboration - Working Together - Online Benefit for North Carolina Pottery Center

 

Bruce Gholson and Mark Hewitt pose behind a grouping of porcelain vases thrown by Mark for the upcoming North Carolina Pottery Center Online Auction. The "Working Together" Online Gala and Benefit Auction takes place on October 24, Saturday evening, 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm. 

During the late months of summer Mark Hewitt dropped by a selection of tall porcelain vases for us to glaze with one of our crystalline glazes. 

One or two of these vases will be on the auction block come October 24, 2020......

Check out the North Carolina Pottery Center Gala for details and the complete list of potters participating.

Book and Bowl Giveaway on Cousins in Clay Instagram on May 29- June 1, 2020

Book and Bowl Giveaway on Cousins in Clay instagram on May 29- June 1, 2020

It is "Cousins in Clay" giveaway time! Join in and enter to win this lovely dotted bowl made by Samantha and the cookbook, "Kiln to Kitchen" by Jean Anderson.

Check out our  "Cousins in Clay" Instagram to enter into and hopefully win this Weekend Giveaway between May 29 - June 1, donated by Bulldog Pottery. You will need an Instagram account to be able to enter.

This Giveaway is in honor of this weekend's Seagrove "Cousins in Clay" pottery event that would have been taking place, this Saturday and Sunday (May 30 - 31, 2020). This intimate pottery event had to be postponed until next year due to the global pandemic.  We will miss seeing all of you!  The potters that would have been showing their awesome pottery work here at Bulldog Pottery : us (Bruce Gholson and Samantha Henneke), Michael Kline, Kyle Carpenter, Courtney Martin, along with our guest clay cousins Minsoo Yuh and Sunkoo Yuh from Athens, Georgia, and Ree Soojong from South Korea.

On Friday morning May 29, we will post and provide instructions on the Cousins in Clay instagram with instructions how to enter the Cousins in Clay Giveaway. It is pretty simple: Follow Cousins in Clay Instagram, like the post, and tag someone in the comments, and if you would like to share the post in your story that would be nice to help us get the word out about Cousins in Clay.

On Monday evening, June 1, we will announce the winner. This contest will be limited to the United States. The "Kiln to Kitchen" includes selected recipes from North Carolina Potters. Jean Anderson's "Kiln to Kitchen" cookbook deliciously brings together two of her lifelong passions—great food and North Carolina pottery.

In the "Kiln to Kitchen" book you will find the recipe for our Cousins Granola, a favorite breakfast that we serve during the Cousins in Clay weekend. Also included in the book is Mary Jane's (Bruce's sister) Greek Potato Salad recipe, developed specially for her husband Chronis, who likes food made without mayonnaise.

Listening to Books while working, A Studio Favorite

      We really enjoy our Scribd membership, which is a Monthly Subscription for Audible Books and Ebooks. They have a large selection of books to listen to and read, all free except for the membership. It doesn't have all of the choices or the most recent releases that a membership to Audible has, but for us there is more than enough to choose from. The subscription is $8.99 a month and if you sign up through the link below you can get two free months to try out the service, and if you do pay for a membership you will be gifting us with a free month of service. How cool is that?

The book we are currently listening to is "Sharks in the Time of Saviors" by Kawai Strong Washburn. We are enjoying it and the readers performing it kept our attention while we were glazing this past week.

Earn 30 days of free membership for every friend who joins Scribd. We'll give them 60 days free!

There are other extras to the membership... like sheet music if you play an instrument and articles from magazines to read-- And I just discovered today that included with a membership in Scribd you get extra perks like a Pandora Plus, TuneIn, Mubi, and other educational memberships. I think I will look into that further now that I know all those extras are available.

Walking to Retrieve the Mail

Poppies in the Garden at Bulldog Pottery, Seagrove, North Carolina

One new routine for us since the pandemic is to walk and retrieve the mail. Luna Bella walks with us. We spritz down the mail with a 70% diluted alcohol solution before bringing it into the house. We have been taking the Covid-19 seriously and will continue to practice social distancing, mask-wearing, and hand-washing.

The spring in Seagrove has been beautiful and the temperature cool. The beginning of the spring was incredibly hot and humid early on, and pushed our growth season here 1-2 weeks early.  The prolonged cool nights through April and May has treated our lettuces very well and provided us daily yummy salads. The raised beds we put in last year have worked well for us this growing season. We love them so much we are installing two more this month.

We are in the process of figuring out our cycle of selling our work online. I am sure it will change and develop as the summer progresses. Currently we are listing our pottery on our BulldogArtPottery Etsy page and will post some of the images on our Bulldog Pottery Instagram and Bulldog Pottery Facebook page as we list them. If there is something that we post that you are interested in and it is not on our shop site please don't hesitate to direct message us and ask if the pieces are available. At the moment our plan is to list pottery under 12 inches in height on our BulldogArtPottery Etsy page, and larger sized items will go on our Bulldog Pottery website.

Where will this new world take us?

At the beginning of the pandemic lockdown I remember reading how this will change the world and the way we live. I saw us just picking back up where we left off. Why not? But as the days pass I see that this is not the case, especially since the virus is now here and the counties all around us. We must design our days and movements to protect ourselves, our community, and society. Isn't that what mask wearing is about? Isn't that why we need to practice social distance and respect for one another? We need to keep each other safe and try hard to not pass this virus around to each other.

  So for the time being we don't feel we can responsibly invite you to visit our pottery shop at this time. We will research and implement to the best of our ability, protocols and infrastructure to make things as safe as possible. It is strange, it feels like our identity has been taken away. Our favorite and main way of selling our pottery work is one on one with you and the pots, and at the moment that is not a safe option for you or us. Presently our connection must be here online. We are having to make some of the most difficult decisions that we have ever had to make for our business.

Take Care! Stay healthy and safe in your day to day travels.

Entrance to Bulldog Pottery / Bruce Gholson and Samantha Henneke, Seagrove, North Carolina

Bruce Gholson retrieving the mail, a daily ritual

The Montgomery County water tower landmark at the end of our Bulldog Pottery gravel driveway

Our shadows, Bulldog Pottery, Seagrove, North Carolina

Bulldog Pottery Pandemic Updates

Hello!
First we want to thank you very much for supporting our pottery and artwork. We celebrate everyday that we are able to make pottery.

As our state, North Carolina, enters into Phase One of reopening, we need to make a decision on whether or not to open our Bulldog Pottery shop.

We have decided that our shop will remain closed for now.

We are steadily listing our pottery online, and figuring out what our process will be. We have an Etsy shop - BulldogArtPottery that we will update throughout the month with groupings of our clay artwork.

There are different ways to keep up with what we are making in our studio. Sign up to receive these blog posts in your email box or follow us on Bulldog Pottery Instagram. We will also send out an occasional newsletter. You can sign up for this email on our Bulldog Pottery website or the right hand column of this blog.

Please don’t hesitate to send us an email if you are interested in a particular style of work that we do. We will love to hear from you.

This is such a surreal time for all of us. We are constantly adjusting to the understanding of what the new reality holds for us. We will go through a myriad of feelings over the next weeks and months as we enter into unknown territory. Take care of yourselves and stay healthy. Please keep in touch.

Bulldog Pottery Events Cancelled and Postponed

It has been a bumpy ride this past month with lots of decisions that we made for Bulldog Pottery. We closed our shop on Sunday, March 15th. Cancelled our "Daffie Days" Kiln Opening and postponed our Seagrove "Cousins in Clay" event. We are not sure when we will be open again.  As the orders from the governor are made and information develops about the Covid-19 Coronavirus our decisions will be made on a day to day basis.  We have to look our for the health and safety of our customers and ourselves.

We are slowly making arrangements to move into online sales.  We have a selection of mugs and cups for sale on our BulldogArtPottery Etsy page. It takes preparation and planning to put pots online. The packing investment and shipping learning curve as well online commerce technology is a process that we are delving into. 

We will post when we have pots listed on our website commerce pages, on our Bulldog Pottery Facebook pages and Bulldog Pottery Instagram feed.  We have plans to integrate a newsletter into the mix as well in the coming future. 

We want to thank all of you for your support and appreciation of our creative endeavors and pottery making business. We look forward to actually seeing you again when these trying times are past us.

Stay Safe and Stay Healthy!

We created a digital magazine for Cousins in Clay - May 30-31, 2020

Cousins in Clay - Digital Magazine - Bulldog Pottery - May 30-31, 2020

Digital Magazine for Cousins in Clay at Bulldog Pottery, Seagrove, NC

Hi! We are super thrilled to be hosting Cousins in Clay this year on May 30-31, 2020. 

We created a digital magazine to accompany the Cousins in Clay website. It provides a bit more information about our event, accommodations, and some of the other pottery adventures that are available to visitors near by when you visit us for the weekend.

We are in the process of figuring our the different ways you can peruse the information. 

There is a link from our Bulldog Pottery website where you can view it on your computer.  It is in a pdf format so you can also open it up in your ibooks on your phone or ipad (not sure what that would be on your andorid). 

You can also look at it in magazine format on ISSUU.

Enjoy!

Cousins in Clay is an intimate pottery show and sale that takes place twice a year in North Carolina. At Bulldog Pottery the weekend after Memorial Day in Seagrove and at Michael Kline Pottery near Bakersville on Labor Day Weekend.