clay: palo alto clay & glass festival

I wasn’t feeling it earlier in the week to go to a clay show and sale, but I’m glad I did after my banana pancake breakfast.  I had two bananas I thought I was going to bake into a chocolate chip banana bread and decided instead to turn into pancakes and eat with the lilikoi syrup I wanted to try.

 

My pancake looked almost ready to flip.

I'm more in like with regular old fluffy pancakes and maple syrup, but I'll eat the rest of these banana pancakes with the lilikoi syrup and Spam in order to evoke my Kauai vacation. 

And then it was onward to pick up Meral and hit up the Palo Alto Clay & Glass Festival for ceramic inspiration. I had to find Laura Hennig's booth. Last year we fell in love with her huge fire sculpture, which a patron bought right away. And last year, there were no clay classes at the community studio where we practice and it was interesting to see how the pandemic had changed up some of the ceramics of artists we liked. This year, Hennig's theme was the ocean, which I've also always been drawn to when I went through a phase of sculpting whales and making ocean mugs. The biggest sculpture in front of Hennig's booth this year was a crab claw. If I owned a seafood restaurant that served cioppino and crab salad like the Beach Chalet, I would display this.

Likewise, if I had a coastal home for these other sculptures of a clamshell with barnacles and a mermaid in a wave.

 

This sculpture made me think "I am the Walrus....Goo goo g'joob goo goo g'joob." Hennig's surfaces are so awesome.

I walked to the back of this wave to find the squid on the other side.

And Laura Hennig insisted that we look at the glaze on the waves outside of the booth in the glare of the sunshine.

And then I got distracted by these twin dogs with their dyed tails.

Meral asked if this was Poseidon, but I think Hennig called it Rushing Water whereas to me, the face looks like the Green Man.

And I'm always drawn to more functional pieces and could see this bowl being a bird bath.

Of course, her son Ivar's booth was next to hers, where I admired his animal sculptures. I wonder if he had been the one to sculpt the walrus on his mother's wave.

I bought a tiny cup for just $12 from Don Jower, who explained how the wood firing had trapped the carbon gasses on one side of this mug, but didn't affect the other side and the interior which reflected some gorgeous glazing. It didn't matter that I hadn't bought one of his larger raven sculptures like the woman behind me in line, he just kept nerding out with me and Meral over his clay processes.

 

My new wood fired mug is displayed next to the little whiskey cup I had made with speckled buff and gloss white glaze. I rather love the exposed surface where the glaze crawled. I had also bought this little bud vase from another potter, who had only priced this at $7. In the sunlight, the glazing looked gorgeous.

I had spent less than 20 bucks on pottery and so I bought cherry dipped chocolate cones from the Mister Softee ice cream truck. We dripped ice cream and wilted in the blazing heat before walking a tree lined street back to my car. T'was a good afternoon for ceramics inspiration.