Preparing for First Friday and Thinking Big

I am taking an online course called Think Big! Think Big is an online branding series course for potters and is taught over six-weeks with interviews with successful clay artists and marketing agents. The course is taught by Ben Carter of Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast and artist-designer Molly Hatch. I highly recommend taking this course for any beginning or established potters. I am learning a lot and I think it helps me fine tune some of my approaches to getting the story about my pottery to the people who like my work.

Lately, I opened the kiln to see some nice results of my sgraffito work on stoneware. Below are some cups of local wildlife that are found in our scenic state. Oyster catchers, a bird I see usually in May along rocky beaches on islands across the bay. To me they are harbingers of spring. This year I took a couple of trips to Prince William Sound and saw a lot more of these birds. I love their call and the way they walk on the rocks. They earned a place my cups and platters.

 

I also put some arctic grayling my cups. Grayling are a beautiful fish that I enjoy fishing for in Alaska. They have great blue/grey/green and some red combinations. They readily go for a fly, so I added few on the cups, mayflies to be exact. Grayling is fish that I have been using in pottery for several months and it is progressing nicely on these cups. 

Because I travel and explore Alaska I am always captured by the people's adventurous life style and seasonal rhythms.  In this next tow pictures I carved in the quintessential Alaskan bush plane and a commercial fishing drift boat, that is often seen in Bristol Bay, Prince William Sound, or Cook Inlet.

Because I can not keep up with carving items as they dry I still enjoy my ash glazes and the LaLune turquoise glaze. I like how ash glazes create repetition and appear active.

 

Finally, while I was cleaning the garage this fall I found some old Douglas fur from an old barge that I recycled years ago fro rustic furniture. I used what was left and made re-purposed boxes for sets of tumbers, with my old stand by brittle star slip theme. The wood has a nice earthy look that goes well with the glaze combination on the tumblers.



In two weeks, I will selling my pots at a First Friday Show at Alice's Champagne Palace.  I am looking forward to this event, as it is my first First Friday. After that, it is the Nutcracker Arts and Craft Fair the first weekend in December at Homer High School Gymnasium. With all that I am busy in the studio making pots.