Letter Art

I once had pen pals in my childhood:  my aunt in the Philippines and a fellow pre-teen in Australia, who was into clothes, fashion and makeup, which I wasn't so much into.  However, I do love the art of correspondence, literally.  I'll be starting an intro drawing and painting class next week and want to gussy up letters.  My geographically close friends may be into receiving handwritten notes, but they don't reciprocate.  I get it.  They're busy.  It's easier to email or post on Facebook or text message (which I wouldn't receive because I refuse to have a cell phone).  Hence, I signed up for http://oldfashionsnailmailpenpals.webs.com and already scrawled three letters--one each for women in Maryland, Indiana, and the United Kingdom yesterday.  I used cute fold + mail stationery, but am ready to take it to the next level.  I remembered that I had Carolee Gilligan Wheeler as an instructor for a day book at the San Francisco Center for the Book--Google it because they've some wonderful classes.  Above is the book that she mentioned in her class.

Ceramics: Ring Dish

I was stoked yesterday to be back at my city's parks and rec ceramics studio though it was super CROWDED....so different from my community college ceramics class where there's only 5 students, and so we don't have to share tables and have lots of storage as well as fancier equipment.  This is a ring tray of the Bmix clay I had left at the leather hard stage that I love, love, love--the leather hard stage, not my crooked letter pressing.  The lighting for this pic is not great--night time is the worst time to take a pic on a mediocre camera.  I'll probably fill in the black letters of our niece's names and wedding date and paint the dish white and maybe paint a tiny heart sometime before the firing and glazing process.
Update:  Unfortunately I put a cone 5 glaze, White Sperry Crawl along with black underglaze.  It looks terrible.  I should have just dipped it in Majolica.  Oh well, back to the drawing board.

Summer reading for creating every day

When I return from a work trip after next week, my plan is to go into my ersatz studio (the textbook workroom of my school library) and create art for my walls--either a mosaic or ceramic tiles.  I won't be taking classes anytime soon from the Institute of Mosaic Art, now in Berkeley rather than in Oakland.  I did see that Ellen Blakeley will be teaching tempered glass mosaics, but that won't be until September.  In the meantime, I'd been wanting forever to create a Rajasthani tapestry a technique that Laurel Skye occasionally teaches.

I'll also be continuing to work with the medium of clay.  This summer, I'm enrolled through my city's parks and recreation department in a drawing and painting class as well as a throwing class.  And if that weren't enough, I'll also be taking "Explorations in Clay" at a community college.  I bought frost porcelain clay (Cone 5) from Leslie Ceramics to make a driftwood mobile as well as translucent, snowy white tiles text and imagery.  Stay tuned!