Recommended Reading

After much anticipation, the great American novel, Karmic Relief, has been released online. I am excited to finally have it in a format that I can share with everyone. Please check it out at authonomy.com. However, if you find it tiresome having to log onto the internet to read it, just comment below for me to email you the text document.

I would love your feedback. The best way is for you to leave comments on the site where it's posted. You can also post comments here, or follow the "Complete Profile" link to send an email.

Thanks, and happy reading!
-Piers

TV Interview

The day we hung the show in January, Brad from Channel 10 came by to interview Marshall, since he was the resident artist at the Tin Shop in the Arts District. I happened to be there when they set up the shots, and asked me if I'd want to be interviewed as well. I definitely winged it, but I had a good time too (although I was completely nervous)! Here is the video - I hope my part is amusing and also informative!
Click here to play the video

Collaboration

I really enjoy Valentine's Day - not so much for the romantic aspect, but for a chance to appreciate and love my family and friends. This year, Piers has been building shelves for my studio, and I am very grateful! We also continue to collaborate on pieces; I had a show in January at the Breckenridge Theatre Gallery, and was very excited to show two Piers-Iris pieces. "Servitude" was completed in 2009, and "Gratitude" in 2010. Here they are in the window of the gallery:

1. Gratitude 2. Servitude - both pit-fired by Iris and then Piers uses found wood and objects to complete the pieces. Gratitude is attached by leather laced through the back of the clay and hangs off two nails on the vertical piece of wood. The handle for Servitude is secured with nails. The clay piece has a round bottom (as does Gratitude) so Piers cut a circle out of the wood to hold it. Beneath the wood are three rocks, secured with nails.

Here are more pieces. Thanks to everyone for coming; it was a fun show. Marshall Elliott had work on the walls - he works with burnt fabric. Most of my pieces have buttons, and Jenn (who organizes these events) recognized that our art would work nicely together.


Last year around Valentine's Day, Piers made me a small storage cabinet in our room, so that what he considers my "clutter" can be hidden away, yet still organized. He calls it "Sunrise."
As with his other pieces, and those we do together, he often finds objects and wood while walking in our backyard. The front of the cabinet swings forward and down; I like how Piers secured it with rusted metal and nails.

Body Language

Here is the piece I dropped off at Teal Gallery for the show "Body Language," which opened August 29 and runs through September 27. The base is 13 x 13, and he sits 21" tall. Glazed ceramics/mixed media. It's hard to see in this small photo, but the figure's right shoulder has 15-20 post-surgical-like stitches. Here is my statement that accompanies it:

"Transcendence"

This piece addresses the aftermath of an injury from a long fall. The awkward intrusion of science that effectively and pragmatically fixes the injury are in violent contrast to the unaddressed emotional pain. The two-dimensional shells of hands are ineffectual to help. The
body seems put together like “normal” but something is askew.

Transcendence has a peaceful face and a relaxed stance, and the fissured base marks the emergence of a hopeful future pushing through.

The opening was really fun (and delicious!) and I saw a lot of friendly faces. Stephanie, the owner of Teal, says there were 120 guests. Syma flew in from New York to represent her work, and after the show we enjoyed drinks and munchies with Lisa Rivard and other friends.

www.tealartgallery.com
It's a lovely space and I'm happy it's here in Breckenridge. Stephanie will celebrate her gallery's one-year anniversary in December.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

What a jam-packed week of excitement and adventure! I have neglected my studio work, instead focusing on cleaning house, venturing outside (which is good, because summer is fading quickly), and trying to organize.

At the end of last week, I visited my good friend Lisa Kohlhepp in a whirlwind visit to Anderson Ranch - I miss her already! I need to go back! On Saturday, Piers and I dressed up for a lovely show at the Breck Theater Gallery for work by another of my wonderful friends, Jenn Cram, who runs the Breckenridge Arts District, and also Michelle Woods, who teaches at Colorado Mountain College.

Sometime on Sunday, the junko eggs hatched, and we welcomed three tiny, hungry aliens into the world. They're awkward and hilarious, fuzz shooting from their heads like strange dinosaurs. They cheep their heads off until the moment Flip opens her beak slightly - and they fall silent. Such well-behaved children! What parent can enjoy that kind of result with a child in mid-tantrum at the grocery store?!?

Piers changed the lens on his Nikon and captured some amazing family moments. I was shocked he was allowed to approach. Remember, their nest is on the ground, right against the house. It's impossible to creep up inconspicuously; inevitably, you only loom monstrously over the fragile nest.

The little ones are like miniature vases with their wide open yellow beaks and their necks craned upward, pink throats gulping sunlight, bodies gracefully... Yikes, this isn't graceful! A tasty insect: Down the hatch, mama!

Such a tender moment between mama and baby reminds me of even more exciting news: my sister is pregnant! Soon I'll get to change my name to Auntie Iris.

On Tuesday, I drove to a noborigama kiln located between Alma and Fairplay, built in the '70s by Mark Zamantakis. Fellow potter Chris Hosbach and I were to patch the kiln and investigate whether or not there were enough shelves and furniture available so that we (and many others) can do a firing next June. Yes, there were plenty of each, so we mixed up some adobe, and filled in the many cracks. The kiln has not been fired for 10 years, but is in great shape!

I'm standing a the very back, by the chimney, at the highest point of the kiln. There are three chambers for pots, plus a firebox in the front where we stoke the fire. Each chamber is higher than the one before, so the fire climbs up through the kiln and out the chimney. This baby will hold a lot of pots! In college, our wood kiln held about 100 pots, I'm guessing. This noborigama will hold many, many more. Anyone have wood they'd like to donate? We'll need to dry out and chop 5 cords of wood.

Maybe you're wondering about a photo I posted a couple of weeks ago, with my car filled with straw and a wheelbarrow strapped to the top of the car. Yes, that was in preparation for this very excursion - except sometimes plans change unexpectedly... This was the "third time's the charm" attempt, and fortunately, all went well. We were prepared with bug spray, saw nary a mosquito, and the weather was impeccable! Let's just hope the adobe doesn't flake off.

Yesterday, I participated in a life drawing class with Lisa Rivard. I've never sketched a live model before! We started with several 30-second poses, moved to 1-minute poses, then 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and finally 30 minutes. I really enjoyed the brevity of the beginning poses because it shook me out of my usual take-a-long-time-to-draw-that mode. Truly, I've never worked so quickly!

Here are two sketches I'm pleased with: the first was a 10-minute pose, and the second, a 30-minute. It was interesting which poses were harder to complete in the time given; the 15 minute pose flew by before I finished sketching her entire body, but I finished the 30 minute pose in 20 or so. I have a lot of fun ahead of me and I can't wait for the next class!

I hope to have more clay pieces to show soon. Back to work!

1-2-3, Pitcher!

I haven't done a lot of coiling recently, and I want to do another piece with Piers, so this weekend I built a large pitcher form and decorated it with leaf images. The model plant I used is featured in my July 11th post, sweetly creeping around Syma's bottomless vessel. I love plants with such rich, luminous foliage. So far, I have not decided how I want to glaze this piece. That can wait for a while...

On the left, I'm finishing the last major coil. This piece has 12 or 13 coils - I add a moderate amount of clay each time and pinch it upward, adding 1 1/2"-2" in height. Then I make small alterations to the profile. I don't use a potter's wheel or banding wheel to create the shape, as you see in the picture. The piece sits on a bat and I eyeball the evenness of the sides as I walk around the piece or reposition the bat. What I like about a large, symmetrical piece - balance and calm, significant but gentle interaction with its environment, and quiet containment of a large space - I try to translate into softly asymmetrical shapes. Since I keep the rough texture my fingers create while I pinch, the shape will never be "exact" (as it could be if the walls were smooth). Working on a stationary bat, I am less quick to "correct" every wayward angle and the shape becomes more suggested than precise.


Here I am defiantly pajama'd (because I can, if you ask why) working in the living room, finishing the leaves on the pitcher. I pretended this was a plein air excursion - visiting a plant in its "native" environment (ie, sunny windowsill). I'm usually not supposed to cart my clay around the house because I leave little shavings everywhere!

The vases in the corner are pit fired from earlier this year. (Click here to see them unfired.) The philodendron behind my head is a gift from Lisa Kohlhepp, who clipped it from a plant at the Breckenridge Brewery and rooted it for me a few years ago. The image of his first set of leaves is on another large pot I made, and it sits outside year-round, soaking up sunshine and moisture, just like the plant. These are the mature leaves - last year, I accidentally left him in my windowless kiln shed for a week and I thought I'd killed him! Piers chopped off all the leaves (the brown sadness that was left), and two weeks later these three giants emerged. This is also the plant with 3' aerial roots exploring our living room, inspiring me to make the wall piece Aerial Roots.

Here is a close-up of the leaves. Click it for a bigger picture, and you can see the leaves more easily. Now that I've finished forming and carving, I'll let the piece dry. Next is the firing and glazing stage, and then I'll turn it over to Piers to carve and attach a handle. Easy as 1-2-3!