Potfest

Home from Potfest. I'm pretty exhausted but of course my brain is in overdrive - again. Just had a hot soak in the bath and some food. It's been a weird weekend. Some great parts, sales wise it started off great but didn't manage to keep that momentum unfortunately. It's been a bit demoralising the last couple of shows. I've been working so hard and I felt that I had the best pots I've ever made. I was really excited about showing them and pleased with how they looked on my stand but now I feel very different. I know it'll all be better after a good night's sleep. I'm not entirely sure what to do next though - other than sleep.

The great bits though were meeting so many people that I know already, both potters and visitors. Saturday evening saw a few of us visit Castlerigg stone circle near Kendal. A lovely evening for it, then a pub meal before heading back to the camp fire fun which I bailed out of being my usual muppet self. Small groups are great, bigger groups are maybe just not my thing.

From the left: Rachel Wood, Paul Smith, Paul Young, Christine Smith, Kathryne Winfrey, me, Dylan Bowen.

Potfest time of Year

Well I'm home from Art in Action, I unpacked and did the washing and now it's packing up time for Potfest in the Park! This one is only an hour and a half or so down the road so much less traveling than last week. Great to meet lots of blog readers last weekend, thanks for saying hi.

I'm just wondering whether to take this plate to Potfest or whether to keep hold of it and get a proper picture taken of it before I risk letting it go anywhere. I'm really very pleased with it you see.
This is the back of it.

So Potfest in the Park, this friday to sunday, 29th to 31st at Hutton in the Forest, over 100 potters exhibiting their wares in this glorious setting. Come and see us all if you are around the Cumbria area, and if you're not around the area it really is well worth taking a trip out.

Off again

This time it's Art in Action time. Are you going to come and visit? Make sure you allow yourselves plenty of time it is a full full event, everything from music and dance to craft and fine art, demonstrations, classes and lectures. There absolutely has to be something for everyone.

www.artinaction.org.uk

See you there or else back here next week.

Slip Slop Slap

More slippy sloppy slabs in the pipeline. I think they'll make more sense when I show you were there are coming from and where they are heading but that will have to wait for the time being.

Some tall weird looking jug forms. I threw them yesterday and popped the necks on them this morning. They are very definitely inspired by some pots in the York collection. I hope they will look better with lips and handles on them though the lips and handles will be Hannah's lips and handles as I appear to be completely unable to make lips and handles in any other way than my way.
I slopped slip on some small plates and decorated them too this afternoon including a commemorative one for a friend who is getting married shortly.

Here they are with their tops and lips on, there are a half a dozen of them I think I made in 3lb, 5lb and 7lb sizes. Very disappointed that the 7lb one is only about a half inch taller than the 5lb one. Shame.
It's been an odd day weather wise. Rainy this morning when I popped into town then by the time I got back home it was sunny and warm and then I rode home tonight through a great thunder storm and got drenched to the skin. It was quite nice though after the clay filled slip spraying warm day that I had had. I do like a good storm.

Still Movement - progress

For the last year or so I have been working with Phil McMenemy who is a fine art photographer and a very good friend of mine on a collaborative exhibition to be held at Gracefield Arts Centre in Dumfries during August and September.

So this is the process of one of my pieces for the show. It's a series of dishes from 8oz in weight up to 5lb 8oz. All my pieces for the show are my interpretations of Phil's images. This is from his Ice Crack image.

Most of it is currently in the kiln, it would have been good to get it all in the one firing just in case but it just wasn't to be.

I lost some pieces the other weekend with the build up of heat in my workshop after I shut it up for the night. I've sussed that problem out now, I leave a window open.
This is just a wee sneak preview of the work I have. You'll have to wait to see it all.

Manchester to Blackpool done!

This card is not at all to do with the bike ride but it is lovely. I was given it on friday by Hazels' visiting grandchildren along with some wee presents too. What sweeties.

So here's me at about a quarter to 7 on sunday morning a bit flappy and not quite knowing what I was letting myself in for and a bit scared to say the least. Paul reckons I had gone up a level from general flap into high pitched making no sense mode.

Here's the route, all 65ish miles of it. It set off from Old Trafford in Manchester, out through Salford, Worsley and then through Westhaughton (I have family and friends live in Westhaughton but at 8am they were probably all still tucked in their beds). About ten minutes in it started raining and boy did it rain! It lasted twenty minutes or so during which time I was thinking oh heavens this is not going to be fun. I was also wondering at the pain of what would soon become 8000 pairs of chaffed buttocks if the rain were to continue. Thankfully it didn't. The sun came out and that was that for the rest of the ride. Not too hot fortunately until I arrived at the end when it got really warm but I'd finished by then.

Here's what I had when I got to the end. Damn tasty it was too. I'm not a fast cyclist as Paul will attest to so we worked out that it would take me around 6 hours going by my average of 12mph so that made it that I would get to the finish at about 1pm. Hence when I arrived at half past 11 neither Paul nor my mum's cousin Karen who both had planned to be there were anywhere even close to Blackpool. Oops! There was a big crowd of people at the end which was lovely and they were all cheering and clapping bless them, probably not for me at all but heck it was nice.

Anyway it was quite good fun and it felt good and I've ridden down to work again today so all's well. I am very aware of where my calf muscles are today but apart from that I feel pretty dandy. There were around 8000 cyclists taking part, it was mighty busy out and about, I am not used to riding with anymore than one other person so it was very odd.

And here's me at the end. When I rang Paul to see where he was he sounded most perturbed that I had finished bless him. I was stunned, I had no idea I'd be able to do it like that, and to still feel capable of walking at the end was great. I feel pretty pleased to be honest. Don't get me wrong there were speedy slinky types wizzing past me all the time and they were obviously putting in no effort whatsoever, they were just built for speed (both the bikes and the riders) and by heck they did it.
Thank you to everyone who has sponsored me, you are all very kind, it is all going to a very worthy cause.
Just to finish on, some lovely sloppy slaked down wild clay. This is the stuff Alan brought me out of the field up on the farm here. It had lots of stones in it. It feels good like this, I need to dry some out and give it a whirl, see what it's like.
Back to it today at work, loads to do, loads going on and more in the pipeline. Right tis past my bed time, I'll turn into a pumpkin if I'm not careful. Toodle pip.

Manchester to Blackpool

On sunday morning I am cycling (all being well) from Manchester to Blackpool. It's a charity ride and I am doing it for The Christie which is a specialist cancer hospital in Manchester. A friend of mine was treated there a few years back.
I am beginning to get a bit scared about it, as is my want with everything I do. It's around about 65 miles though they don't tell you the exact route till you get there, lets hope it's not via Exeter this year. My grandad used to cycle from Bolton to Blackpool regularly, on his day off so partly it's for him and partly it's just because this time last year I couldn't do very much at all and it was a bit scary for me. Now I'm feeling pretty grand (though I have no doubt my whole body will hurt by the time sunday is over with) and I feel like I should be making the most of it so I decided over the winter that I would sign up for this.
So if you feel like sponsoring me you can do it online here at the JustGiving site. To those who have already given money thank you very much, I hope I can do you proud. Otherwise just wish me puncture less tyres and not too much of a head wind and a soft cushion for the way home. Paul is on duty for collecting me in Blackpool and has strict instructions to be placing fish and chips in front of me fairly quickly.
See you after the trip!

Flowers and Stress and Tea

Somebody took some notice of one of my past blog posts bless them and came to visit this week armed with a posy of flowers from their garden. Thanks Zoe!

This week I have been mostly rolling slabs of clay. It's damn hard work isn't it. I'm getting myself in a tizzy most of the week after I lost a good bit of work to the heat at the weekend. Honestly we never usually have that problem here. Crazy huh! Anyway what it has meaned (along with the fact that I have realised once again that my electric kiln is not the huge monster that I think it is) is that I am having to have a major rethink for the collaboration exhibition with Phil McMenemy that is coming up. As it happens the rethink may actually be better than the original plan but it's been hard trying to leave the plan behind and accept that I can't do it and then to make the firm decision of what to do now. I think I'm on to it now so fingers crossed no more disasters.
Spot the second visitor. I get lots of birds coming in for a visit, they come in and flap about a bit and tweet at me and poo all over the pots and then generally find their own way out again. The one below managed to fly into the window and stunned himself a wee bit. I took him back outside and he sat on my hand for ages trying to get his head back together. Little sweetie.

So slabs and slip. Damn it I do love slip so much. It is delicious and no matter how many times I think that and no matter how many pots I coat in slip, when I take the lid off the bucket and stick my arm in to stir it up it always gives me a shiver of delight.

So I have done a bit of sitting drinking tea and thinking too this week and a lot of pacing up and down the workshop drinking tea and thinking too. I often have these grand plans but all too often find that I have neither the right skills nor the right tools nor mainly the right knowledge to get them done. One day I might get to be a bit cleverer and a bit more sensible. Fingers crossed.

USA Slipware Tour Volume IV

So how many years ago is this then? It feels like forever ago but today sitting here in Bonnie Scotland in the scorching sun I was reminded of the balmy days in Shelby in North Carolina back at the end of April. So here are the dream team, Ron, Doug and Ang sitting eating (we spent a lot of time eating I think) on Ron and Sarah's porch. Hazel I still think we should get a porch and rocking chairs, I know we probably only need them for three days a year but can't you be tempted?
We landed here, our final stop on the jet setting slipware American tour 2011 to spend just over a week with Ron and Sarah. Both Doug and me had met these two sweet and darling and hysterically funny people in Devon the summer before last and we felt like we were going home. Weird to be so comfortable with people when in reality you barely know them.

So we had a day off, a day of resting really and catching up on doing not very much, blimey it gets noticeably hotter the further south we traveled. After a couple of days Ron and Sarah took us up into the hills heading for Ashville. We popped into the clay suppliers and then up to eat a fab breakfast in the town, eating was a strong theme of that day, oh and judging by the next photo so was drinking. Talk about bad influences, these people I was traveling with were just terrible!

Ashville is full of cafes and galleries and shops and pubs and restaurants and was a great place, we had a fab day just wandering and enjoying ourselves.

Can you believe things like this actually happen? This poster had us utterly bemused and befuddled.

So we were here for the last of the demos, and this is the arts centre where it was to be held. Here we met bloggers Gay Judson, John Ferraris and Becky Storey who again it feels like we have known for an age but again have never met in person before. Yet again there wasn't enough time to be able to really enjoy all these people properly, another theme of the trip, pottery, time, food, drink, fun and friends.

I think we turned into a bunch of giddy kippers at the end of the demo day, here we are taking part in the how many potters and partners can you fit on a bench challenge.

There were many surreal moments on the trip and the following day, Easter sunday brought with it another one. We had been very kindly invited by friends of Ron and Doug (small world) to have lunch with them and their family. After a lovely meal and an Easter egg hunt around their immaculate garden we were taken out on the boat for a tour of the lake that they live on. Honestly it was like walking onto a film set. What a day! Thank you to Rod and Freda for your hospitality there.
Then up into the mountains to visit the area of Penland. First stop, Michael Hunt and Naomi Dalgleish. I can't really write much about this, it blew me away. I loved where they lived and the way they lived and the pots they made and the people they were. It left me reeling as a result.

Corr flipping blimey.
This dish just had to come home with me, there was no way I could leave it. Made for very heavy hand luggage though.

Then on to meet again after many years of communication, the marvelous Michael Kline. We found Michael in the middle of preparing for a joint exhibition with his wife and I'd have loved to have seen the place just after he has unpacked a kiln load. We saw the graves out the back, the clay pit, the kiln, the pots, and shared juice and popcorn on the steps out the front of his workshop looking out across the valley.

I'm not entirely sure what I was doing here, a small Sound of Music moment maybe, anyway it reminds me of a wonderful day.

Michael's plates that he was using to practice his beautiful brushwork. There's one in my bedroom now and a lovely wee bowl in the kitchen too and a jar on the mantle piece. The pots of the tour will be a whole other post at some point.

Ahhh lovely pots with lovely food. Just perfect.

And then as suddenly as it all began here we were at the end. We'd dropped Ang at the airport the previous day and then it was our turn. Here's the final three fighting back tears yet again as we set off on our journey to the airport.
All that, nearly a month away and there's so much I haven't told, so much that will mean nothing to anyone except the small bundle of us that were there when crazy things happened or we saw things that took our breath away or we laughed so much we thought our stomachs were going to split and couldn't even breath anymore. Or the quiet times when we just sat and watched, the cups of tea and stories we shared, the bees I tried to save from Ron's badminton racket, the snake we saw on our walk with Sarah, the bull frogs we heard croaking late at night in Virginia, the ospreys we watched in Cape Cod and the bird song we listened to all the way along that is so different from that in Britain. It feels like a dream, but oh what a dream. Thank you all.