clay: pin friends

I posted a photo of some of my clay pins in progress on Facebook and then solicited ideas on what other pins to make. Am trying to run with their ideas. Anna typed, Om. Silvia suggested sun and moon and corgi  

And while looking for simple images online to re-create, this branding for an oyster restaurant caught my eye. 

I love this graphic design. The single image of an oyster shell that's just a line drawing with some cross hatches and shadings. The stark contrast between black and white and more importantly, black background. The fonts, especially the serif of a swirl of a Helvetica letter in the word, Pearl. The truncation of the word trademark and placement of the year the restaurant was founded. I would love to take Kat's class on typography because I don't really know what typography is and know how to render my fondness for letters and simple drawings.

I'm also noting the details on my new necklace. I do love it and want to render it in ceramic. I can't find my clay journal with all the measurements I wanted to tinker with for a candelabra, and so maybe today at the community studio, I'll just mist my coils with more water and save it to build next week. Or make a small coil pot. I need to deviate from straight cylinders and make some organic and curvilinear outlines in my pots. Or make a few of these pendants.

I also really like the mystic sun pendant.

However, much I intend to make the pendants in my sketchbook, I get distracted by all the tools in the high school ceramics classroom. Yesterday in order to decompress, I used stamps and silicon molds to make a bunch more pins.

 

This pin I made from a plaster mold, and I can't wait to glaze the pots on this pin in three different glazes.

I made a couple pins semi-identical with the llama and the dachsund stamps, and of course, I had to play with letter stamps.

I wasn't really fond of the heart pin I made until I slip and scored a dog outline to it.

And now it's just about lunch time, which means I've got a couple hours to get into the headset for hand building. Oh what will I make today?

chores: a pot of beans and window shopping

Hubs bought a package of cranberry beans from Gordo to plant a few, giving me the rest to cook. Even after soaking them overnight and simmering for a couple hours, the beans were still too firm for consumption.

 

And so I turned up the burner for an additional hour of furious boiling and chopped white onion and sliced lime and toasted garlic bread in the meantime. Finally our vegan dinner was ready for consumption.

The beans are still a bit too al dente, and so I plan to boil them longer along with a can of kidney and pinto beans with salt pork for another bean dinner. And so Saturday breakfast was fried rice with Chinese sausage and a fried egg on top, for which I could finally use up the carrots and onion in my fridge.                      

 

And these leftovers have served us well during a very busy work week. It’s the weekend, and my brain is a bit too tired to even ponder what to cook of thawed chicken thighs.

cook: widowmaker white chicken chili

I watched this recipe being made with Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy playing in the background. I've been wanting to change up my chili game. I’ve always cooked my chili with chorizo or ground beef and pinto and kidney beans in a tomato base for years now. Let’s do chili differently. Somewhere I've got dried white cannellini beans and more than likely a brick of cream cheese too in the fridge though I'm a bit dubious of that ingredient. And I just bought avocados.                           

 

And so here’s my first iteration. The ingredient of cream cheese, again, had me doubtful and definitely makes it a very Northern European dish rather than a Latin American one. All the dairy called for in the recipe makes for perhaps a too luxurious bean stew. However, I changed up the recipe by using kidney and pinto beans added to my leftover cranberry beans and had no green chilies though I did at least have green enchilada sauce.

However, I kept tasting as I was cooking because the chili was so awesomely delicious, and I packed it away for the next night for dinner when Patrick and I both had either a meeting or preparing for work the next day.

 

The next night, I set out condiments of chopped white onion, cilantro, avocado, cheese and sour cream (the dairy was to offset some of the spiciness for my husband). The semi-white chili was delicious for me even without the additional dairy. And so I will cook this again according to the recipe directions and maybe use only half the cream cheese (4 ounces is plenty) and again omit the sour cream. Also no seeds in the fresh green jalapeno to make it less spicy for hubs.

clay and composition: pins and drawing

I’ve been on a tear, making pins. Zan brought out the plaster slip cast molds, and I somewhat squared off this one to make a ceramic name tag for Meral.

And there are quite a few more I made on the greenware shelf at school. This past Saturday I made even more.             

I've had this drawing exercise book for a few years....obviously, drawing wasn't a daily practice as I left off on Day 7 a couple years ago.

But I did doodle and watercolor over the weekend and can see a wee bit of improvement. I think I’ll even make some clay mugs to turn these 2-D ideas into 3-D actual objects.

This drawing exercise to render tools of my trade (really not my trade but my passion) was very fun.               

At school before assigning kids to make a ceramic pin, I created an example in my sketchbook to share with them.                         

I, of course, plan to sketch more.

And here's a quote I can practice calligraphy on a watercolor wash in tribute to MLK, Jr.

The next exercise is to doodle to music, which I’ll draw and paint to this afternoon.

a ferris wheel: jean michel basquiat

 

a carousel: keith haring

 

travel: luna luna

What I like about getting older is caring less what people think. However, I do still experience fear of missing out, and in a way, that is the same thing as approval-seeking and showing off. However, I truly want to look forward to aging and finding older happiness. Here's one concern I share from an Atlantic article about "How to Be Happy Growing Older": "Your weaknesses as you age are more subjective and a matter of personal judgment. For example, is a reduced openness to new experiences good, bad, or neutral?" For me, I see less inclination to try new things as bad, and as something I want to improve. "Others may see staying open to new experiences as less important for themselves, but have another trait they would like to change. For example, say you’re a naturally reticent person who doesn’t want to see introversion become more dominant as you age. Is that something you can change? The answer is probably yes." I miss that spontaneity of my younger years in the road trips and the side field trips I used to take from college throughout my 30s. And so when I read a newspaper article about Luna Luna, and because I'm ardent about art museums and art installations, I impulsively decided to go before it ends on January 14th. I researched a bit about the Arts District in Los Angeles and perused maps of neighborhoods next to the art amusement park exhibit and decided finally to stay overnight in Japantown. I spent the night at the Miyako Hotel which is conveniently across the street from the Japanese American Museum and smack dab next to the Japanese Village Plaza. I really liked the retro signage of this restaurant across the street from my hotel room.

One thing I don't have in my approaching dotage is the stamina. I didn't get out of my car at the Griffith Observatory and didn't venture into the museums across the street. I saved most of my energy fighting a cold and experiencing Luna Luna. I conveniently got a Lyft and was greeted by Andre Heller's Dream Station. There was no café inside the inflatable structure though there was a truck that served coffee and hot chocolate next to it.

I educated myself on 20th century art.

Inside you're greeted by the industrially fabricated tarps of Keith Haring's art.

I enjoyed even more his whimsical carousel.

I've always liked his dog drawings.

More images to draw inspiration from.

Orphism, Simultanism, Color-rhythms, graphic design, textiles, tableware, furniture,jewelry, Sonia Delaunay seemed to have dabbled in everything. Her geometric shapes and bold colors are somewhat giving me ideas about surface designs for my ceramics.

I need to play with this boldness and return to the quilt I had started with Carolyn Friedlander's designs.

 

In 1987, I was 22 and would have been not curious enough and too bewildered by Luna Luna and its contemporary art. The age of 58 is however not too late to explore art interests. I'd like to return to Los Angeles and go to LACMA and the Hammer Museum.

I especially would have been and maybe still am confounded by the intermixing of sacred and profane. 

Farting still does not amuse me. Manfred Deix was not a favorite.

Yep, Palace of the Winds, meh.

Sheesh. I definitely feel discomfort, but not really glee.

Ahh, here we go. Lichtenstein. Pop Art I do like.

I never knew that the Venus of Willendorf was only unearthed in the early 20th century, and okay it's not in the Vatican as portrayed in the Young Pope, but in the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna. And I bought my own souvenir of Luna Luna by buying a Moon locket pendant necklace from Anthropologie's clearance sale.

Yes to Cubism. Why isn't there just an art course on Pablo Picasso? I'm remembering my visit to the Dali Museum in Tampa Bay, Florida.

And it's imperative that I create my own lunar art in ceramics, perhaps a pendant in the mother of pearl luster glaze I have.

I'd read reviews of the necklace of wearers complaining that the pendant was not as pictured and did not contain the engravings, and so let me make this ceramic pendant with the text. I wonder why there is a period or dot before the number?  Here's what the internet revealed. It is complete, self-contained and perfect in and of itself. It represents the Primordial Point, the first mark laid down by the Pen of the Divine, who wrote the universe into being. It is a signal of intent, an act of creation, the beginning and origin of everything. And the XVIII or 18? The Hebrew word for "life" is חי (chai), which has a numerical value of 18. Consequently, the custom has arisen in Jewish circles to give donations and monetary gifts in multiples of 18 as an expression of blessing for long life. Well okay. The crescent moon has been considered a symbol of protection, transition and new beginnings due to its waxing and waning cycle, which represents both the time before something new begins (waxing) and after it ends (waning). This cycle can also be seen as representing life’s journey from darkness into light; it offers guidance to those who lost on their path and also reminds us there’s always hope in trying again.

The moon in any form is considered to be feminine, an empowering symbol that represents female influence, intuition and kindness as well as the power that women wield throughout the world. Crescent moons have been worn by lovers for centuries because they’re believed to signify love and fertility. In some cultures unmarried women wear them believing they’ll find their soulmate, and married couples use them to represent their lasting relationship.

Crescent moons are also worn to bring luck and wealth and in some cultures they are believed to be protection against negativity. Good to know and a lovely design.

If art is for everyone, is it democratic to charge an admission fee to view it? But I will reference other artists thank you very much.

I do like the iconography of Basquiat. And was enchanted by his ferry wheel.

Andre Heller had also constructed a marriage chapel, where fairgoers could participate in a marriage ceremony to marry anybody and anything.

I did not pay to upgrade my teacher to enter the hall of mirrors.

I watch the repeating short film about Luna Luna and its biographical sketches of its artists at work on their installations.

I did like the graffiti images of Kenny Scharf.

I ended buying nothing at the gift shop.

And took one last look at Heller's Dream Station, now an empty café.

And then home temporary home—the Miyako Hotel in Japantown. I captured this image from my hotel room before i had left for Luna Luna.           

And when I arrived at my temporary home, I searched for dessert and maybe more souvenirs.

 

I didn't find any pastries appealing.

 

I did like the graphic design of all the signage.

  

I almost broke down for ice cream, but alas no.

And then I was noticing patterns and color palettes everywhere. Like these Matisse-like paper cut-outs.

 

And the shapes and colors on my paper coffee cup.

I was a bit fatigued after my short trip. 

I committed to resting and rehydrating once home.