Toooo much rain and cold and mud, the Boylan Heights Artwalk postponed so we try again next Sunday. We loaded early with the help of our amazing neighbor and her wonderful stationwagon, so when we got the notice we had to unload everything back into the house. It went well except for one fatality, The white rabbit lost his ear, totally my fault, poor packing. Rabbit ears are a problem, they do not pack well. It may end up that I only sell the rabbits out of the studio and do not cart them around, we will see how well the rest of the hares survive next Sunday. Oh well so it goes, this woman and her wagon however made it without breakage and will be there next Sunday.
The White Rabbit will be at 711 Mc Culloch on the porch for the Boylan Heights Art Walk starting at noon, he will be very sad if you don’t come.
Besides being delightful and a little wicked these garden harpies will send the bad bugs in your garden packing. I have had a lot of fun making them. Each one seems to come out with a unique personality that I am surprised by when they come out of the kiln. it sort of feels like ” who made these. how did they get here”. I have them in my garden and now in the winter when most things have gone to the frost I love seeing them among the dried up bean vines or lemon grass, peeking out of old zinnia blossoms, all the flotsum and jetsum I have yet to clean up. I find the worn winter parts of the garden romantic and beautiful in its own shades of brown and grey way. These winged creatures will be at the Boylan Height Art Walk, Sunday dec 8th noon to five. My location is 711 MC Culloch and I share the porch with an amazing photographer Tonya Delborne. Come and see us both and in the meantime please pray for blue skies and sunshine
Here come the chickens! I will be at the Boylan Heights Art Walk Dec 8th from noon to five pm. my location is 711 MC Culloch, on the porch. I am very excited as this is the first time many of the figures have been seen in Raleigh. there will be chickens, rabbits, birds, cats and many strange and wonderful garden sculptures. I have a flock of fourteen barred rock hens and they are a constant inspiration for my clay work, their carriage, stance, the way they cock their heads to check me out. I just think about one of them and start working, I have fourteen mueses.
I was listening to a radio show about empowering women and what the gander seems to easily be entitled to and the goose must struggle mightily for a small portion there of. I am so been there done that tired of it all that I thought about a no nonsense woman with a big ax to cut through all the red tape and this is what I came up with, THE EQUALIZER. I also felt she should keep the ax hidden until the red tape/crap was clearly apparent as not to be dubbed over reaching or possibly hysterical.
I love Halloween, the whole costume thing. Getting to be someone else, in any image I can pull together. It is the one holiday I really miss being in New York. Just ridding the subway on Halloween can be like joining the circus on a full moon. the parade in the village, the drum circles, the parties. Where I am now I do not know a single other adult that dresses up. I don’t care. I pull out my wigs and rags anyway. I refuse to let this holiday go by without at least a little madness .
Long ago and far away I lost my magical house due to a broken marriage/broken heart. Possibly I was a fool, should have fought harder but should haves are of absolutely no use to me now, they just cause me to trip and stumble and drop things. Now I am obsessed with making houses, big, tiny, paper, ceramic. I cannot remember how many box houses I have made for Pinkie and he seems to love them too. My chicken coop looks like a small house and I dream of building a studio that is of course a tiny house. Having lost that magical house I went on to many wonderful adventures that might not have happened without that lose. I am very happy where I live now and I am surrounded by people that love me but I persist in making houses, now mostly ceramic and putting them all in a row.
It is time to get plants settled into their winter pots.The bitter sweetness of fall, deciding what can survive snugged up against the south brick wall of the house and what must squeeze into the house and wow have they grown.For some reason this time of year makes me feel all soft and squishy inside. I sit and stare at the garden in it’s fall cloths and wonder at how fast the summer went by. It seems so recent I was struggling to get the tomatoes through the spring deluge thinking we would never have any fruit from them and now there are twenty-eight quarts of lovely red tomatoes in the freezer. How did that all happen?
This is what I call a flapjack plant although I do not think that is the correct name for it at all. This past summer when the plant was half this size I made this blackbird pot for it and now flapjack leaves overwhelm the birds. I should probably move it into a bigger pot but I love them together. During the short days the plant will get long leggy stems and by spring start to sprout little rosette plants all along the stems. I think I will wait and divide, move things around then. 
Don’t fence me in! Had not been in a wide open space in a while and it felt amazing, the sky felt different and close and cares started to fall away and then I was humming and then I was singing and yeah I was in God’s country. Photography used to pay the rent, then I retired, pretty much put the camera down and today was the first time in three years that I have felt like taking pictures again, felt that special kind of energy. Then I found the big yellow hay rake. Soooo much yellow with red.
I tried many times to photograph my thumb. It is now a very lovely shade of indigo blue and rather large. But that is the thumb on my right hand and I cannot seem to do anything without it. My left thumb is in training but this will be a process. I shut my right thumb in the car door and no I do not know how I managed that but the blueness proves I nailed it. I had no idea how desperately I need that thumb, no clay work goin on here, no lino cuts, no fun things, I could go on but will spare you the list and the risk of enlarging my pain body by moaning on. So instead I give you a lovely pic of Pinkie, one of my roommates. I cannot call him “my cat” because as you can tell by the photo he is clearly his own cat. We live together with louie, the brains of the operation.