Classic

This is a prototype that I tried last year. I love vintage tattoos. And I love the idea of a three dimensional piece that can be put on a wall. This piece is hollow and can be hung from a flat nail. As I mentioned, it's just a test piece. I haven't done anything with it yet. More than likely, if I do, I'll make a more refined version of it as part of a series of three dimensional ceramic tattoo sculptures.

Last Siren

I personally like these sirens. I love the round forms and the matte texture of the glazes and classical features. This piece has been on etsy for a while and no one seems to be at all interested in it. I wish I knew why.

Cat Walk

Cat Walk as in Gang Plank. Art is funny. Sometimes you are on top of the world, and sometimes you feel like you are out on a limb or a plank over shark infested waters.

This is a small piece that I donated to Blue Line Arts in Roseville, California, for a fundraiser called Lottery for the Arts. Apparently it sold right away, which is great. I wish it were so simple with Etsy!

Three-In-One

This is an example of a little ceramic painting experiment I've been trying. The image above is what it looks like if viewed from the front. A little more abstract. Below are both sides if viewed from either the right or the left. My intention is to, I hope, get a viewer to look more closely at the work, have them work a little to see what they are looking at. And, for someone who's interested in buying this piece, it's kind of a "three-fer": three paintings in one: abstract, dragon and pirate.

Don't think of an elephant

A very long time ago, when my son was toddling, he loved it when I made him little "balloons" out of play-doh. He loved to squish them to hear them pop. Back then they were little hollow play-doh blobs, and later, when I took my first clay class, I remembered those little balloons and used that technique to make my first kiln fired ceramic pieces.

When you're first starting out with anything you make little mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes turn out to be something fun. For instance, this little elephant I made early on rattled when it was shaken. Someone in the ceramics class suggested the noise meant it wasn't perfect because a piece had broken loose inside.

I decided I liked that noise and so purposely started making all of my work with a loose piece of clay inside to rattle around. It wasn't long before I started making tiny bisqued hearts to put inside each one of my sculptures and that's what you'll hear rattling around inside just about every artaed figure.

This post's etsy game is this: What is it an elephant never does? Convo me from the etsy site and I'll create a coupon for free shipping on your next artaed etsy purchase!

Old and New

I'm working on a couple of new ideas, once again. Sometimes it feels like my hands cannot keep up with all the detritus that floats through my mind. OK, not just sometimes, but usually. My old ideas at times seem to resent the new ones, as illustrated above.

Before (as opposed to after) and coupon!

A very quick blog post to show a few new items patiently waiting in the kiln to be bisqued fired. If you have made the journey from my etsy store (www.etsy.com/shop/artaed), these are some new ideas I've been percolating. If anyone wants to hazard a guess as to what they are, I will gift you a $10 coupon on etsy toward your next artaed purchase! Just convo me at my etsy store. See photo below...and happy wondering!

Some good news for me

I just found out today that two of my pieces were accepted into a Purposeful Pottery Show at a local gallery. Here they are:

Cat Bird Bath

Shell Siren

Irony or One of a Kind

I don't know about you, but I really like well done graffiti. I love the temporary-ness of it and the spontaneity, the subterfuge and the subversiveness. Anyway, walking through the next town over, in the last year or so, I came across this stenciled portrait and underneath were the words, One of a Kind. In appreciation of it, I made a little bookend homage, pictured below. Well, no sooner had the glaze on the piece cooled off when I found myself walking around town again and I noticed several more of these "One of a Kind"s stamped on sidewalks. On further inspection and subsequent research, they turned out to be advertising for someone's start up. Sadness. Not only was it not one of a kind, it was some kind of marketing campaign. Oh well. It caught my eye (original graffiti under my homage):

Sketch book

I wonder how many ceramic sculptors sketch things out before they start a new project. In theory, I wish I were more consistent. Here are a couple of examples of drawings that turned into actual three dimensional ceramic works.

Clays

When I took my first ceramics class, the instructor provided the clay. At that time, and for a long time afterward, it never occurred to me that there were different kinds of clay available. This ceramics class clay that I worked with was simply called, "Sculpture Mix". It sounded like the right stuff and I was able to work with it fairly well, as far as I knew. Later on I found out that it has a higher percentage of "grog" in its composition and you can see in the first photo below a rough surface results once you bisque fire a piece. Glaze goes on well, but detail is not as subtle if you're using underglazing. The fired color is very pale and cool. I don't remember not enjoying working with this clay, but I do remember it was difficult to get more delicate detail when working small. I attribute this to the high grog content. This wobble cat pictured below (based a little on the old Weeble toys) is made with Sculpture Mix:

Later on, I discovered there are many different clays available so I decided to experiment with a couple. So far I've tried a clay called Sandstone, and another called Stout. The wobble cats below are examples of each respectively.

Stout is a bit warmer than Sculpture Mix and its composition is much smoother, although it still fires very pale. The clay seems much more sensitive and alive when worked with wet. Also when carving into it, the level of detail possible is much greater and more delicate than Sculpture Mix. It's also very receptive to glaze and absorbs underglazes really well, allowing for greater watercolor effects. This cat is done with Stout:

This last cat is done with Sandstone. Prior to bisque firing, the clay is yellow and silky smooth. The best part about this clay is how waxy it seems. I found that if you wait until a piece is at the leather hard stage, carving into it can be very precise and rewarding. The color after firing is a warm pink tone.

And in case you're wondering, this is what the bottom of the Wobble Cats generally looks like:

after a long hiatus, artaed is back!

In full disclosure, artaed is back because I'm restarting the artaed etsy and if anyone from etsy would like to know what "artaed" is up to, this is the place to find that content. And, since I love to write, I get to fill up pages with all kinds of ceramics related stuff, stuff I don't get to write about anywhere else. So, without further adieu, here goes.

As you can see from the posts way, way below, I have been hitherto known to paint. I got my BA from UC Davis in the last millenium. Fast forward a decade or two when I took a ceramics class and began to make little totems for my beloved cat, Stinky. These early cats started in ceramic, but after the class was over, I didn't have access to a kiln, so started making air-dried clay figures. This is an example of a very early air dried clay cat:

This one is called "Cat of Five Poses" because it literally can be "posed" five ways. You can see another one of its possible poses below:

Ridiculous, right? They made me happy and other people seemed to like them, too. People liked them so much, I opened an etsy store and sold a few very quickly. One thing led to another and the cats began to evolve, into sirens, birds and a handful of other objects. Before I knew it, I had found a small kiln of my own. With that independence, I couldn't help but experiment with the clay, the glazes and because I am a painter at heart, the objects began to lean in that direction, too. Below is an example of a very early siren:

Things started to get busy for me, and I had to take a break from etsy and the blog. In the meantime, a friend had helped me to get my work into a local gallery and then later into the Crocker Art Museum's store. It was all very exciting for someone like me who had been working for years on art but not showing very much. Here are a few examples of the work I had in the gallery and the museum store. It's so interesting for me to see how much my work has changed from the earlier stuff above to this:

It seemed to happen without my even being aware of it. And, truth be told, those items are from last year. I have lots more up my sleeve even as I write this post. So if you are interested in reading more about the way I work and watching the evolution of artaed, stay tuned. I plan to post the new things I am working on and also test out new ideas here before I decide whether or not to put them on etsy. If you have any questions about my work, please send an email to: artaed*at*gmail*dot*com