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.