Beginning anew amidst a pandemic

Beginning anew amidst a pandemic

Beginning anew amidst a pandemic…honoring the past…embracing the future…

Creating a new digital face for Earthsongs…a new way to present the studio to the world…was an immense endeavor, one that has taken nearly half a year.  First, it required me to review and be thoughtful about what I had done through my ceramic art for the past nearly 30 years, and if I include the work created at an earlier studio Canticles in Clay, the forerunner of Earthsongs, then more than 30.

Then to realistically look ahead to what I hope to achieve going forward.

Collaborating with an insightful webmaster, a true ‘master,’ and one with whom I have partnered for nearly two decades, I was given tools and guidance to approach that task…while Kyra, of WhyKyra.com…possessed the digital skills as well as the innate creative ability to use word and image and color to create the spirit of what the studio is about and to design something that would clearly say all of that.

Now this moment is one when the entire world, all of living humanity, our fleshy beings, have been encouraged for over two months, for our own health and the good of our neighbors, to pause, to ‘hunker down,’ to draw in, to center, to quiet ourselves.  But today, even as we long for an end to the quarantine, “Claysongs 3.0” leaps into being, a sign of hope and newness, allowing the fresh public face of the studio to travel boldly through the ether and around the world, even as I continue to create in the cloister of Earthsongs,

My hope is that Claysongs becomes a place you visit often, beautiful and inviting, a digital destination to which you invite friends; a place you can peruse together with those you are now ‘sheltering.’  Do stay safe…do remain well.

Piece to Peace: A Song about Relationship

Piece to Peace: A Song about Relationship

I believe working with clay does put me uniquely in touch with the earth. It gives insight into many aspects of what it means to be human. It’s no wonder so many cultures, and religions have seen the first humans a “made from clay”. We have connections to the material that I find fascinating.

Currently, I have been working on a series of whimsical, sculptural signs for a local florist. The intent is to create Garden Elements that remind all that the area around the store is for ‘Flower Shop Parking Only’. Thus, the words are critical to the project, and those dimensional elements need to be not only clearly readable, but attached to the work with great care.

A dozen years ago, I approached my first studio sign, another outdoor project that included raised letters, much more casually. As a result, after ten years or so of braving the freeze-thaw of our environment, some letters popped off , and I was back to creating a new sign! Lesson learned!

If two pieces of clay are going to retain a strong relationship, really stick together, both need to be made aware of their need for each other. Scoring the area…in short, ‘messing it up’, roughing the surface OF BOTH PIECES is important. To create beauty, BOTH need to recognize their own incompleteness. The addition of lots of slip…clay that is water-softened to the consistency of thick cream…assures the bind. Allowing the slip to mush out between the letters and set up a bit is a healthy idea and secures the elements. Cleaning and firming the edges further tightens the letters.

Married for twenty years this June, those actions in the studio call me to reflect on the intimate ‘clay to clay’ relationship of married life. The need we each have had to recognize our own ‘messiness’ and areas of weakness, to the addition of great fun and times of lovely delight as the creamy slip that has helped assure our bind. If human relationships are to endure the extremes of our interpersonal environments, the clay softly sings to me about how to make that happen.