Pots and Cameras

Several pieces of mine were in the last glaze fire.

Here are some close ups of some of them. 

I managed to not get a close up shot of the blue platter, but here is the green one.  Maple leaves from my yard.

Red bud leaf from my yard on a blue tray with textured handles.  

More maple leaf and green on a tray.

Butter dishes.  I'm learning that every time I do slab work (trays and some platters), I can make butter dishes out of the scraps.  

Textured tray in blue and green (two of my favorite glazes together).  This tray is smaller than the two pictured above.  

There were also 6 mugs that I made for Hannah at the coffee shop.  I delivered them this morning.  These are available for purchase at Hannah's Coffee House on Marion Street.  

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past couple of days, you know about the terrible shooting in Charleston, SC on Wednesday night and the subsequent man hunt for the suspect.  That search ended Thursday right before lunchtime just west of Shelby when the Shelby PD made the arrest after a woman from Kings Mountain recognized the guy as he was traveling west on highway 74.  (Having a bad bowl cut can seriously impede your get away.) She followed him while on the phone with her employer and police departments from Kings Mountain and Shelby.  It's a cool story I think and one that doesn't (I hope) make us all look like a bunch of backwards red necks like the last time we made the national news cycle.  

Allen's studio is right across the street from the police department on Lafayette Street and this truck was using our parking lot to get ready for the evening news.  The driver was really nice  and asked if it was OK to park there.  

I left a few minutes before 5.  I needed to be at the park by 5:15 to swim and figured that it would be best if I got out of there before they started broadcasting.  I was NOT dressed to be on TV.  

Understand that it was very close to 100 degrees yesterday afternoon in Shelby.  How was this man wearing long pants, long sleeves, and a tie and not dying?  I had on a bathing suit, shorts, and flip flops and I was melting.  Seriously.  What is his secret?

And Another Month Goes By...

My last post was just before Mother's Day.  Since then we wrapped up the semester and had graduation at school, I completed my first Olympic distance triathlon, and then I graded AP calculus exams for a week. This blog is supposed to be about pottery, so I'll spare you the details of the triathlon (embracing my inner athlete - 12th place overall and 3rd in my age group - Woo Hoo!) and the AP reading (imagine over 900 calculus teachers in one place working to grade over 400,000 AP calculus tests - embracing my inner geek).  

I was too busy the last two weeks of the semester, but once school was out, I managed to get back in the pottery studio for a couple of weeks before I left for Kansas City where the AP reading is held every year.  There were some pots that were finished up during that time, but I forgot to take pictures of them.  Here are the last few things that I worked on.  

Covered casserole - I really like making these.  

Mugs with texture - thinking about tan outside with red and blue on the insides of these.

Now that I'm back home for a few weeks before vacation, I hope to work on embracing my inner artist a little bit.  It sounds strange to me to refer to myself as an artist.  Two different times today (I'm working the gallery) people have asked what I do.  My answer is always, "I'm a teacher," but that wasn't what they were asking.  They wanted to know which work in the gallery is mine.  I guess I've got to work on considering my location when answering that question from now on. 

I hope to have more pictures of pottery to share with you soon.  I would really like to build up some inventory so that I do not have to work so hard this fall.