Some Lost Time Explained

For those of you who have been patient and visited my website hoping to hear what is happening in my little world of enameling I have to confess I have started several lengthy blog posts that were never finished and therefore are languishing unattended somewhere.

This post will be brief and finished. The image I have included is from one of my foggy morning walks before teaching this past Sept. at John C Campbell Folk School in NC.

Since I stopped selling my work at retail crafts shows in 2015 and then put all my energy into the non-profit I started (the Center for Enamel Art), I gave myself very little time to actually  “be” with my work.  The Center has been in hiatus for over 4 years because of my burn out, but my teaching and administrative time at The Crucible has sucked a lot out of me as well. I just turned 79 and realized that time is running out to explore who I am as an enamelist.

I am starting to spend more time in my studio discovering my own work. I spent a lot of time reorganizing my space but then I stopped. I no longer rush to complete my vessels. I allow myself to be in the moment. No cell phone. No computer. No social media, which I’m not very good at anyway. I listen to my radio when I don’t want silence – NPR and baseball! Slowly I began seeing new things in my work.

‘Seeing’ is the key word here. Many of you know that I have had ongoing eye issues since my mid-30’s. This year I decided to have a second corneal transplant in one of my eyes.  The surgery was successful but my vision was not what I had hoped it would be. My doc stepped in and prescribed a very special prosthetic contact lens which I am now wearing in both eyes and, miraculously my vision is almost as good as it was when I was much younger.

 

A Year Without Shows

It’s been a while since my last post. I apologize to everyone wanting to know what I have been up to and whether I am still working now that I am no longer doing shows. Yes, I am still working.  I have come to value my time in my studio as a time of quite and nurturing. Here is an image of one of my more recent pieces.blog-image-cut-vessel

Baltimore ACC, the Smithsonian, the Pasadena Contemporary Crafts Market, all have come and gone and, for the first time in many years, I wasn’t there. This year without crafts shows is almost  like the year after I left my PhD program at Indiana University. My body has a certain rhythm that ties it to events, times of the year, schedules, places, colors, people. . . Without those anchors I sometimes feel lost.  Even though  I am not retired I seem to be experiencing some of the dis-associations that retirement brings with it. Continue reading →

Problem in the Craft Marketplace

I have made an important decision about how I market my work in the coming future. I have decided, now that I am turning 70 this year, that I will not travel to do crafts shows that are far from home. I will also reassess whether to gradually stop doing all shows. I realize this means less exposure for my work and perhaps even less income until I can find, or the crafts community can find, a better way of reaching the public and encouraging them to collect our work.  I am struggling with building an alternative to the craft shows I have loved and which have formed my “community” during my whole working life.  Selling directly to the public has nourished me in very special ways which I would never have gotten through gallery sales or other mediated forms of marketing. It is this community that has allowed me to develop my craft as an art form.

There are several factors entering into this decision:

Celebration of Craftswomen 2013

Celebration of Craftswomen 2013

Continue reading →

An Enamel Center: Dream, Folly, Necessity!

PIC It is time to go public. I am trying to make my dream of an enamel center a reality. This will be the first of many blogposts about the Center for Enamel Art. The posts will begin appearing in a new website next month. There will also be a Facebook page and a Twitter feed for the Center – although I am very bad at administering social media. There will also be a sign-up form on this site that you can submit in order to receive e-mail announcements about me, the Center project, and related events for the enameling community as a whole. Continue reading →

A Very Busy Year

So far the year has been very busy. So busy in fact, that I feel somewhat disoriented because I am not getting enough time in my studio. As I get older I have realized how much quiet time alone with my creative process centers me and lets me do all the other things in my professional life. Continue reading →