Gary's Third Pottery Blog

When the going gets tough, dragons gonna get going....

Gary's third pottery blog

WRITE TO ME! garyrith@yahoo.com Come see me! Open studio HERE! November 25-26 (11-4 each day); Aurora Art and Design, daily until 12/24; Cooperstown Art Assoc. daily until 12/24; Ellis Hollow Community Fair, 12/10; December 10, Little Red Wagon at the Space at Greenstar. All material on this blog unless stated otherwise is copyright Gary Edward Rith 2016

Friday, December 11, 2015

oh man, getting to the busiest of the busiest, sort of....




You get to December 24th and you relax in a pile of exhaustion:  orders filled, bank acct (hopefully!) filled (so you can pay the New Year's property tax bill) and belly filled.  Saturday and Sunday I am at the final fair of the year for me, the last of 4 weekend events in a row (which is GOOD PLANNING, because I never had to unpack, but I am flippin' tired) BUT it is now too late for anybody to ask for a ________ made and fired and shipped by Christmas.  Do you know what a relief that is?  I LOVE getting orders all year long, but there is a special kind of ANXIETY attack that comes with special orders given after Thanksgiving:  you have to make what they want, glaze and fire it and ship before it is too late (and it is now too late).

The elephant bowl here was a special order from somebody who had seen one like it on my webpage last week and wanted one.  No probs, says I:  at dawn Saturday I threw the bowl, then went out to the craft fair.  Sunday morning I was firing a group of dry items (my last orders, etc) and so I trimmed the bowl and added the elephants then PUT THE TOTALLY WET pot in the kiln to be slow roasted all day, then up to 1800 degrees in the evening (do you know how insane it is to put a wet pot into a kiln? I had no choice but to try, it was the last chance to get a special order made, fired and shipped!).  WELL, the pot did not explode, was glazed and fired and is PERFECT (and perfectly cute) and on its way to its new owner.

NOW, aside from a few other orders of  items to ship, and tomorrow's HUGE craft fair (Little Red Wagon, 10-6 Sat-Sun, Space at Green Star, Ithaca!), I can concentrate on..........MAKING WHAT I WANT.

This seems to happen every year.  I get to the Christmas press and the ideas are pinging around in my head and then once the Christmas rush ends I can kick back and have fun and begin to explore what I want to make in the new year...last year, well, still this year, it was flowers and plants and far-eastern styles...this year will extend that. I also feel like this:

I turn 50 in 2016.  I am enormously healthy now but my 40s have had some weird health situations, (now managed) such as celiac and glaucoma.  I see what I need to see perfectly well and have not lost much vision, but I am feeling like I don't give a flying fart if somebody wants me to make a dozen widgets, life is too dang short to waste doing what other people think I should do....I need to follow the muse...

The cups below show that:  I have been fiddling with a new celadon glaze and holy CATS it looks great.


4 comments:

bartster said...

Your "inner directed" vision shows up in the way fun pots.

Busy Bee Suz said...

I can only imagine your relief at getting the last of your orders out!
I think with age comes the wisdom to think of ourselves more. Right? And not in a selfish way....in the way we should have always taken care of our needs. I hope your next year is lacking ANY health issues!!!
I do love the celadon with the simple pressed flowers; lovely!
Have a great weekend.

Barbara Rogers said...

Nice breaking glaze on the impressions~!

Claudia from Idiot's Kitchen said...

I've been so busy too so I understand your stress. (Thus the string of comments all at once on your blob...) I keep telling myself, "just get through Nutcracker" then "just get through Christmas eve..." I'm happy to have the work but would love some of it in May when I'm sitting around doing nothing.

I do love those elephant bowls and the stamped flowers are on my bowl wishlist. Hope you and the missus have a wonderful and RELAXING holiday!

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I am a full-time studio potter, sculptor, and dog walker, married to superhawt Missus Tastycake.