This Friday May 23, from 5 to 7 pm, the invitational exhibit Bricks and Mortar:  Inspired by Architecture opens at Santa Fe Clay.  The show is up until May 22, giving you a whole month to make your way west if you aren’t already there.  

Its that time of year again when the American Craft Council Show makes a visit to Saint Paul.   And once again, I will be amongst some really good talent as I demonstrate some of my mad coil and slab building skills to the masses.  Come and see me at 1:00 p.m on Friday.  

If you can’t sneak out of work early, make your way to the University of Minnesota by 5.  Rob Forbes will certainly have some interesting things to say in his lecture Making, Meaning and the Marketplace.

Wherever you find yourself, have a great weekend.  

If the weather conspires, I’ll be planting seeds, getting the vegetable garden ready to go.

A couple of weeks ago at this opening I had great conversation with S.C. Rolf about life and work, ideas and time, inspirations and pleasures.  It was the highlight of my night.  We talked a bit about the work I made for the Jerome show, and he asked me what was next.

I made this maquette when I was pushing hard to make enough “Segments” for the installation at NCC.  

I couldn’t at that time indulge in exploring the idea.  It’s just a start, but at least for now, parts and pieces fitting together (and holding their own while apart) will be next.    

I don’t imagine that when a few artists decided to create an event and call it Fault Lines that they were planning on an earthquake happening just a few days before.  But such is life…always full of scary wonderful ironies.

So for more of the wonderful after the most recent scary, go to Rare Device and enjoy some very un-faulty lines in wood, metal and fiber by some really great makers.  

Meet the artists at the opening this Friday night from 7-9 pm (safe travels Martha).  And may the ground beneath you all stand firm!

While looking at some of Alexander Calder’s work I came across this gem…

It is the dressing table of his wife Louisa, and I wish it were mine.   

These too  

And if I wore this necklace today, it would be the only sun everyone around me would see.  

 It is thick grey, welly-wearing-weather in Minneapolis.  So please please, if it’s sunny where you are, do send some my way.  

All images come from the Calder Foundation

I have a bit of the winter blues, but this makes me happy.  

Hill Hut by visiondivision.

Thanks to designboom.

What if our hearts were this big? 

Magdalena Abakanowicz

courtesy of The Best Time of The Day. 

Alec Soth, Pauline, 2007

Robert Polidori, Wall detail and Surveillance Camera of Grand Cabinet de Madame Victoire, 2007.

at the Weinstein Gallery through Saturday.

And this is the last weekend to visit the Art Shanties.

Have a great weekend even if you don’t choose to look at pretty pictures or get some icy bright sun in your eyes! 

Upon opening up what I thought was going to being the last kiln before bringing my work to the gallery for the upcoming Jerome Exhibition (more on that later), I was initially quite pleased.  The top layer couldn’t have been better.  The second looked pretty good too.  But when I removed the shelves to see the bottom layer of the kiln, I did gasp.  And though my memories of the following moments are foggy, I probably did swear out loud when I found that one of my stilts bent and caused one piece to fall onto another.  Disaster!  Two beauties fused together.  

Of course the pieces were the only two of their scale in the kiln, and of course they both would have been quite stunning had they not become one.

I probably spent an hour staring at the piece(s), brainstorming how I might remedy the situation.  Would sacrificing one allow me to salvage the other?  Does Dremmel make a saw-like attachment?  Could a chisel do the job?  Many other questions raced through my mind before I realized that realistically, with the work due to the gallery in one day, I probably ought to save myself.  So I found a bit of grace, and a great deal of humility, and let it go. 

While I really wanted to include one or both of those pieces in the exhibition, I do have more than enough work to choose from, and that is a really great position to be in.  So I took a few deep breaths, had a last moment of, “oh how could this have happened now!??!” and set about editing the work and grouping the successful pieces together.

If I don’t think about the two-that-became-one, I’m quite pleased with how it has all come together.  The work is now out of the studio and in the dust-free gallery, and that feels great.  On Monday I will put up the installation piece, and then the only part left is to show up at Northern Clay Center for the Opening Reception on Friday January 15 at 6 pm. 

I will be  happy to see you there!