I’ve been traveling south this week and have some photos to share.

Legitimacy: +3

Kewpee in downtown Lima, OH

Das Boot at the Schnitzel Shack in Rincon, GA

Sleepy time after the scorpion tea in Savannah, GA

Wild night in Savannah, GA (not mine)

Corn cob cork in Charlotte, NC

Face jug in Charlotte, NC

That’s all for the pictures. The East Lansing Art Fair last weekend was great! Thanks everyone who came out. Just four days and counting before the Kalamazoo fair this weekend. See ya’s!

Well, my running shoes are in Calli’s car, so instead of getting exercise, I’ve decided to do some business stuff by posting the schedule of art fairs at which I will be selling my precious work this summer. Here goes:

May 19th & 20th: East Lansing Art Fair (I’m in the “emerging artists” tent)

June 1st & 2nd: Art on the Mall in Kalamazoo, MI (My booth is north of W. Michigan right next to the Radisson)

June 9th & 10th: Royal Oak Clay, Glass, and Metal Show in Royal Oak, MI (not sure where my booth will be)

June 30th: Waterfront Art Festival in Saugatuck, MI (not sure where my booth will be)

July 1st: South Haven Art Fair in South Haven, MI (not sure where my booth will be)

So there you have it! More information about these show (like hours and more specific locations) are easy to find through Google.

We unloaded the KIA’s anagama this morning. Lots of great pots came out. I lost a few, but that’s part of wood-firing. Hopefully I will get some good quality studio shots of some of the winners this week. Here are some of the pictures I took of the process. I need a good camera.

My pots

My stuff is finally getting wood-fired after sitting around for months waiting patiently. These pieces are from the anagama firing that just happened at WMU last week. They’re my top 10 favorites in no real order.

I went to New York state with a group from WMU this weekend. The plan was to drive there on Friday, see some art on Saturday, and drive back on Sunday. Everything went fine. Those two solid days on the bus really made me wish we would have been there for a little longer. Kids have to go to class, though.

First, we went and saw the Polich art foundry. Pretty crazy. I didn’t know what I was looking at most of the time, but even I could tell it was really advanced and serious.

This is a tank outside of Frank Stella’s studio that had a really interesting patina. His studio is right next door to Polich.

Next we went to Storm King, which is a huge outdoor sculpture park. Saw some really nice stuff, and it was a great day to walk around outside looking at huge sculpture. One of my favorites was this piece by Andy Goldsworthy. The wall went all the way into the water and connects to a wall on the other side of the pond. I guess technically it’s the same wall.

After Storm King we went to the Dia Beacon. I didn’t take any pictures there because you weren’t supposed to, but I found out later that everyone did anyway. Serra’s Torqued Ellipses were definitely a highlight. The overall lesson I took away from the trip was that I should never ever become complacent and stop pushing myself. Everybody has taken things so far that it’s really discouraging, but also very motivating. I’d like to work with metal at some point, too.

I’m taking some pictures of current work later tonight, so I’ll post some of those asap.

I’m at WMU firing their anagama right now. I have the 8pm to 4am shift. It’s slow going at the moment, which suits me because I like being able to come back into the warmth between stokes. It really is too bad that the weather turned so cold just in time for this firing. Hopefully it won’t be as cold or windy when the time comes for people to be out there stoking continually. But I guess by then the kiln will be hot and they might be warm enough just from being close to it.

The NCECA conference was a couple of weeks ago. It was great, as usual. I saw lots and lots of top-notch work. One of the highlights was walking into a random gallery and being surprised by a bunch of Peter Voulkos work and a handful of the collaborative pots that Tom Coleman and Frank Boyden made. You just have to love that thick slip application.

Watching the demos at the convention center made me feel like I was at a sporting event or something what with all the lights and jumbo-trons.

Seattle was really great. I liked the city so much that I felt like I could overlook the rainy weather. Liz got the full effect, though.

There was a great street performer we kept seeing around. He sat on a djembe and just had a few wood blocks and cowbells on the ground around him along with a couple of hi-hat cymbals he muted with his feet. The result was a really convincing full-kit sound that blew all of us away. We never got his name, unfortunately. I kind of figured I’d be able to find information about him online, but no luck so far.

This pot is being fired in the anagama right now. Fingers crossed!

That’s all for now. I’ll be posting more pictures and whatnot once this firing is done. Hopefully some winners come out of it.

-Schyler

My birthday was yesterday. I’m 24 now. My parents came up for a visit and they brought some groceries and daffodils with them.

My mom sure knows how to grow ‘em! It was a great birthday. One of the best in recent years. Thanks is due to my beautiful girlfriend Calli, my wonderful parents, and of course all my friends.

In clay news, wet clay is over for the time being at the KIA. I spent the last couple days pumping out bowls and plates to fill orders.

And now I get to work at Western for a while because I worked out a deal with them to help them fire their anagama in exchange for space in the kiln and materials to make some work. I don’t know what it is about being back there, but I have made some work in the past couple days that I’m extremely proud of. I’m really looking forward to two anagama firings I get to take part in in April and the finished work that will come out of them. I’ll post pictures of works in progress eventually, probably. For now I’m just trying to tie up loose ends before I leave for NCECA next week.

Enjoy the weather everyone!

It’s starting to feel like spring most days. My favorite time of year. I can’t wait for the daffodils to start poking up. I’ve been pretty busy trying to cram as much throwing in as possible before the wet clay deadline. There is also a workshop happening this weekend featuring Bede Clark. Pretty excited about that.

I got my hand caught in the mixer. It ground off the corner of my nail and part of my knuckle in about half a second. As if my hands needed any more punishment.

A one-of piece I put together this week. Still thinking about the best way to finish it. It’s probably about three feet tall. It’s two thrown sections stacked even though I made it look like it was made with three slabs.

I’ve been dealing with a lot of rejection notices lately. Most of the shows and stuff that I’ve applied for recently want nothing to do with me. It gets difficult to persevere when people keep telling you you’re not good enough. But lots of artists have stacks of rejection letters that end up being comical when they succeed later on. Right now it’s hard to see that far. I just wish I could get the application fees back.

Also, one of my pots sold on etsy this week, and it got to the buyer all broken up into pieces. She said the box was crushed. I refunded their money, of course. That’s a lesson learned: buy the insurance. The postal service does not give a shit. I feel like marking the box as being “fragile” is just waving a red flag in front of a bull. It makes me mad that some kid in a back room somewhere probably had a good time throwing my hard work around Ace Ventura style.

I did get a job this week, though. So the whole rent situation is looking up.

Unloaded a kiln today that was loaded up with stuff for the Art Hop in March. here’s the link for the facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/events/228684367221590/

In other news, when I went into Campus Wok last week, I spotted this in their kitchen. That’s a whole lot of chicken. I’m sure it’s sanitary though.