Tokyo, America, Craft&Design, Winter

Last weekend was Art Fair Tokyo and I was very pleased to be represented at it by Gallery St Ives of Tokyo. Koichiro Isake who runs the gallery had asked for pots by myself and Doug Fitch and Clive Bowen - talk about being in good company! No pressure then.
As I say this was last weekend and this coming weekend Koichiro is having an exhibition of British slipware in his gallery, the plan was that the pots that I sent would be enough for both shows. They weren't! I had an email yesterday to see if I had any more and could I possibly get some to him as soon as possible. Very exciting news indeed.

It's a year this week since myself and Doug flew to America, it feels like a very strange and surreal dream, did we really get asked to come all that way to show how we do what we do? Did we actually spend virtually the whole of April travelling around the east coast being wined and dine and meeting wonderful people and seeing beautiful places and showing our pots and how we make them? Incredible. If it's true then blimey! Amazing. If it's a dream, what a fun dream to have had and maybe I'll actually come to America one day and travel around and show my pots...

Yesterday I got a great email from the folks at Craft&Design Magazine (do you remember I wrote the Craftmakers Diary piece for their magazine a couple of years ago). I had been pestering people to vote for me in the Craft&Design Selected Awards, voting closed on saturday and I am one of the six ceramics finalists. The public voting part is over and now there are specialist judges in each category who decide on the next part. There are some great crafts people in the mix there, it's worth going to have a look at the site. So I think it'll be May before we hear about the final part.
Last week I was stunned by the weather and how fast everything was drying and how hot I was shifting bricks and splitting pallets around in the blazing sunshine. Well at the moment it's about 1 degree C outside and yesterday it was snowing the whole day. The snow didn't stick at all where we are thankfully but there is a good bit on the hills. I have chilly fingers typing this morning.
Well I must head off to work, lots to do and time is marching on, or Apriling on I suppose.