clay + cook: whirlwind weeks

Last weekend did not feel restful, but I got some social and family obligations done. I went to the de Young Museum to view a fashion exhibit and discovered some other installations I hadn't noticed before. The day started out clear from all the atmospheric river and sunny. Kind of shame to be inside a museum when the weather looked so glorious.

I was really entranced by this ceramic sculpture.

I thought Mesa Verde magical when I visited in my early adulthood, and this piece makes me want to return. 

And, of course, I was loving this discovery of a Mark Rothko painting in all the colors I'm in love with these days.

There was an exhibit by Ling Mingwei called Rituals of Care. There was a letter reading and writing station, which if I'd had a membership would return to ruminate and write, but I moved on to his invitation to other artists to render their own paintings of Peaceable Kingdom. There were many renditions, but I took pictures of just two. I liked the linework of the interpretation below.

 

I loved the painting of the wildlife below though I thought the cartoon figures juxtaposed next to them bizarre and jarring.

I think I'd like to create a ceramic diorama of my own version of Peaceable Kingdom. 

The ceramic form below kind of feels like what my own sculptural human forms are evolving into. Mine are still more abstract, but I'm tempted to get more naturalistic with my sculpting.

 

After our museum visit, Lisa and Jill and I lunched at Pacific Catch. Returning to the parking lot, drizzly cloudy weather resumed. 

I was happy to get home and cocoon after a morning at the museum. 

And for now I’m done with making ceramic pins. This is my last batch of green ware until the urge for more 2-D strikes again. And of course, I'm gonna start sketching ideas for my diorama of a Peaceable Kingdom.                           

I finally ordered epoxy and pin backs and can start to finish a bunch of pins for gifting and selling. However, I'm not liking a lot of the glazes on some of them.

But I am liking the mermaid and seascape disks for earrings. 

I got a couple of ceramic mates to extrude coils and brought the silicone flower molds for clay play this past Saturday. I'd like to make a coil and slab vase like the one pictured in the Schoolhouse merchandise on the right.

And I also want to make some pottery to house the driftwood below with preserved moss and succulents below.

My Saturday mornings are now devoted to outrigger canoe paddling. 

I was lucky to be in seat 5, where I could just concentrate on having the same strokes as the rower 2 seats ahead of me as he counted, knowing that "hut" is the stroke before changing my paddling to the other side at "ho" and "lawa" (pronounced lava) is stop while "huki" means to pull or begin paddling.

I managed to paddle the whole hour and a half unlike the rower in front of me, who had to rest instead of paddle, but maybe she was confused because the stroker or #1, who was paddling on the same side as the person directly behind her. That night I treated myself to dessert, a dragon fruit to eat with my usual banana.

And the rest of the holiday weekend were meals of leftovers like tacos or mezze of hummus, baba ghanoush, ezme, and Greek salad.

And I've added pan fried crispy-skin salmon as well as roast chicken into my meal rotation. I've still a binder full of recipes that need to be tried out.

cross country + clay: planning a tour of washington, d.c. and jewelry dishes

I've come to hate flying, and maybe some day I will embark on an ocean cruise, where your hotel room comes with you, but for now, I'll deal with airports, waiting and walking in them, and sitting uncomfortably at very high altitudes for a change of scene. I'm going to Washington, D.C., where I haven't been since I was a child. However, instead of the Smithsonian Natural History, Smithsonian National Air and Space, and Smithsonian Zoo, I want to go to the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Hirshhorn Museum. Though I may deviate to the American Indian Museum or the African American History and Culture Museum. Oh and the Library of Congress. And cherry blossom trees. I really liked staying at the Pod in Brooklyn some years ago, and it is now Motto by Hilton in D.C. Capsule or micro-hotels are perfect if you're touring as opposed to vacationing, and I'm looking forward to the rooftop café & diner and whiskey bar that serves southern comfort food. Oh yah, Bo & Ivy bourbon Old Fashioned with my seared salmon and cheese grits one night and Borough bourbon Manhattan with smoked pork ribs with coleslaw and Patsy's mac 'n cheese. Maybe a noodle dinner in Chinatown. A fried chicken sandwich for lunch at least once. 

I love too that it's right next to Chinatown. Hence, my mission for the best Chinese food in D.C.

Yesterday afternoon, I spent a couple hours just glazing all the ceramic pins I've been hand building these few weeks. And dagnabit, I broke two of my favorite pins. It's okay. I'll re-make them. This afternoon, I'm off to my usual community clay place. I was thinking I need to make some ring or trinket dishes for all the little pins and earrings and pendants I've been making. I kind of also want them more organic looking...maybe just circles I roughly cut out of the slab, of which I then refine the rims and then press into a giant sponge to form a bowl and then adhere a rice paper decal. I would love too to make an indentation in which to melt some colored glass.

I should make some pins for the nieces and little dishes to hold them. I made some a few years ago, but I think my skills at making them have improved.

So many cute ideas on the internet.

I should just break out my largest round circle cutter and go from there.

clay + cook: atmospheric river weekend

I'd spent Friday painting underglaze on more greenware, and I think they'll be going into the kiln on Monday. And so I anticipate filling in the text areas with black underglaze and then applying clear glaze on the bisque for another firing on Wednesday. And we got the kids started on making their pins too.

While picking up a bottle of wine and rose hand lotion and rose misting spray at Trader Joe's for Valentine's Day self-gifting, I picked up 4 bouquets of flowers which were all $4.99 except for the roses which were $9.99 and attempted to make my own floral arrangement. I've been impressed by the bouquets of a Trader Joe's flower shopper and wanted to copy her. I wanted to go for a monochromatic palette, but just couldn't. Hence the dark pink tipped white carnations and the pale pink stock. 

The vase of flowers is less monotonous than I feared, and I'm appreciating the textures and different heights. 

I did have to switch to a narrower and taller vase, but I'm liking it. Next time, I'll remember greenery like eucalyptus or belles of Ireland. And to open up the roses to look like fully lush blooms. 

After painting and trying to make a name stamp at the community studio, I brought home my creations to paint even more underglaze. I started a pin for Michaela to resemble her dog Ziggy and ended up making another, specifically for her for Valentine's Day.

Maybe it's easier to paint underglaze on bisque ware. Next time.

And no cooking this weekend, just leftovers, like these green noodles with Chinese sausage and my Sichuan Dan Dan Mian sauce, which is perfect for my lazy ass.

I still have probably 4 more days of leftovers, but have ground beef in the fridge for patty melts and then??? I guess calamari amandine. Or somewhere in my freezer is also smoked turkey legs for red beans and rice. And so today I'll be assessing what's in the freezer to figure out something new to cook in the next couple weeks.

I never did assess my freezer and fridge Sunday morning as I was in bed until noon with my dog. No bueno as she is not sleeping through the night and we were confined to home because of stormy and windy weather. At least we didn't lose power. I cooked falafel for one for brunch and to eat with the eggplant I roasted and the garbanzo beans I boiled and the cucumber I grated on Friday night.                  

 

While waiting for the falafel mix to set after adding chopped dill, cilantro, mint, and parsley to it, I made a Greek salad with the rest of the cucumber and what was left of a jar of roasted red bell peppers. And assessed the Valentine gifts I gave to myself. Both will go into my backpack.

 

Finally after 30 minutes, my falafel patties were ready to fry. I poured grapeseed oil into my smallest pot to heat. I suppose my tiny cast iron pan would have worked too. The patties did not crumble, and I was pleased how crispy they turned out.

 

What a lunch! I've enough falafel mix to eat this same meal for dinner again this week.

 

And then I spent the rest of the afternoon filling up a tray with more ceramics to add to the kiln. There's still more slab to carve out more pins. And so the plan at work is to find more cute animals or figure out Valentine's Day pins.

I also looked more closely at the glaze combos I tried out on soap dishes. I didn't note in the bisque this Warm Green and Celadon, but I like it. Interestingly, the Celadon made both glazes run off or craze on the rim, but it pooled in a lovely way on the sawtooth interiors.        

I wish I had done a better glaze job on the  rim with the Binger. At least, I didn't get any dunting or cracks in the glaze, nor any shivering or flakes of glaze coming off. However, nothing like the test piece I was hoping for as I couldn't exactly dip the whole dish into the small bucket of Binger because there wasn't enough glaze for dipping.

I do like what the Strontium did for Bloopsie. I did a little reading, and Strontium is a flux which is added to glaze "to lower the melting temperature of glass formers" or to make for a smoother glaze to improve the color. I normally don't care for Bloopsie by itself, but the Strontium toned down what I didn't like about the glaze. 

Below are the fired Bmix earrings I admired, which inspired me to also make some too. Donna thought my greenware disks would be too heavy for earrings, and so I hope I can loop a leather string to make my ocean waves disks into necklace pendants instead. I know that a colleague, Julie admired them and is hoping for one.

I like the half rounds with the khaki finish and black wavy lines painted on. Maybe I'll try to make multi-pendants for a statement necklace.