11.19.09 On the road yet again...

Yes, you know by now what this sign means -- we've wandered off, then found our way home again.

We celebrated Barry's father's 79th birthday last week with an all too brief visit to the Valley of the Sun. I hesitate to post travel pictures, fearing I'll bore you to tears. Then I think of how much I enjoy seeing little glimpses of the world through others' travels. So, here are a few of the sights that slid past our windshield.

We traveled south to Phoenix via Las Vegas. The photo above is our first glimpse of that crazy, blinking, glittering city as we emerged from the dark of a desert night. However we were not taken by surprise by this dazzling sight -- a ruddy false dawn in the clouds revealed Las Vegas from some 86 miles away.

The construction of a new bridge downstream from Hoover Dam simply must be one of the most ambitious construction projects in America right now.

You know you're in southern Arizona when the ridge line is spiked with saguaro cacti.

To travel north of Phoenix is to climb up beyond the reach of wide armed saguaros, to the high desert that flanks Mount Humpherys. I would love to share a photo of the highest point in Arizona, but it was wreathed in clouds that day. Clouds, of course, offer their own miracles of light and shadow.

In it's length from Flagstaff, Arizona, north to the Utah border and up to the Salt Lake valley, Highway 89 traverses some of the most dramatic landscapes on the continent. The photo above was taken at the western edge of the Vermillion Cliffs, just as 89A starts to climb the grade towards the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

But let me back up a few miles to a brief stop at Navajo Bridge to share something really cool...


If you veer west at Bitter Springs, 89A crosses the Colorado River at Marble Canyon. The narrow, original Navajo Bridge is now a pedestrian bridge which offers dizzying views of the Colorado River. And, a lofty perch for a juvenile California Condor.


Barry bravely leaned over the bridge railing to take a picture of the top of this young fellow's head. We were alerted to its presence by a researcher carrying what looked like a small TV antenna.


This is the view north which we shared with the condor.
















With both Marble Canyon and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon behind us, we round a bend to see an ethereal panorama of crimson cliffs, golden buff escarpments and snow capped peaks behind them; the Grand Staircase-Escalante of southern Utah.


And people ask us why love love to drive...

More news from the studio soon! Be well ~ Lynn

10.29.09 Autumn Projects

Brrrr... we 're in for a chilly Holloween weekend here in the Intermountain West I fear. All those little ghosts and goblins had better bundle up to make their rounds :-)


My treat for the weekend will be to continue work on two new claybody custom versions of "Tynk".




The mold is getting pretty worn now, so it's really only good for claybody customs that by definition require a great deal of re-sculpting.

One of these has been spoken for already, the other will be up at auction once it's completed. Which one is which? I honestly don't know -- my patient patron will have her choice of the two once they are bisque fired.

Happy Halloween everyone!

~ Lynn

10.21.09 Recently Completed Projects

The claybody custom Clyde (#15 in the "Marshall" series) is finally done and happily home with his new owner!

You saw him in-process in this post in late August. He took a bit longer to finish than I had hoped, thankfully his owner was very patient with me! Though not dramatically different in the final look than previous work, he is the first piece in which I relied on overglaze enamels to layer colors over an underglaze base color. Many thanks to Karen Gerhardt for her inspiration and help in adding overglazes to my tool kit.

Here's another project in which underglazes and overglazes were used. This is #9 in the "Tuesday" series:


Just about every technique I've learned through the years came into play with this piece: airbrushed underglaze, hand painted underglaze, air eraser, typewriter eraser, hand etching hair-by-hair, overglaze... pretty crazy! This wild child already has a great new home. :-) I'm looking forward to pushing the limits of these techniques even more with new projects this winter!

~ Lynn

10.16.09 Update on New Mule Sculpt

Work continues on the new mule.

All four legs are now made of red wax over armature wire, hoof shapes are being refined and some lower leg details carved in. Using hard red wax for the "bony landmarks", like the point of the shoulders and elbows, allows me to smear and move soft brown clay around them without loosing track of them. Sculpture is a landscape; solid landmarks do help me find my way!

~ Lynn

10.16.09 A Muddy Lineage

An odd thing happened while I was boxing up the estate sale leftovers at my parents' house -- I discovered two small pots that didn't look familiar to me at all. At first I assumed that they were just little green pots that I had made and forgotten about, but that my mother had saved -- really, they're only pots that a mother could love. Then I turned them over...

"T" and "MRT".... hmmmmm... Then it dawned on me, M. R. T. are my mother's father's initials. These funny little pots were made by my grandfather, and saved by his mother. Indeed, pots only a mother could love! Most likely these little pots were pinched and thrown sometime before 1910. Probably a school project, maybe summer camp, who knows? But tangible evidence that before me, someone else in the family played in clay. I had no idea...

~ Lynn

10.14.09 Kudos to Coal Creek and Other Travel Tales

There are times when you do something really stupid, or careless, and your fellow beings look out for you... this is one of those stories.

Anchoring the end of Grand Avenue in downtown Laramie, Wyoming, is Coal Creek Coffee Company. Since first discovering this gem of a coffee house during a trip several years ago, Coal Creek has become a regular stop along the way to Illinois and back. I want to give them a special shout-out because their staff was exceptionally wonderful during our most recent road trip home from Illinois. Silly me. No actually, hungry me -- I was so focused on the Coal Creek take-out bag filled with aromatic smoked turkey pesto panini and roast beef sandwiches that I forgot my purse on the back of a chair in the shop. About 45 miles later (having devoured the sandwiches) I reached for my camera, and thus my purse -- nope, nowhere to be found in the car, aaarrghhh. Luckily, a Coal Creek brochure was tucked into the car door side pocket from a previous trip. I called the shop while Barry turned the car around at Elk Mountain. They assured me that my purse had been found and that they were holding it for me. Happily re-united with my purse in Laramie, I promptly bought dessert -- really, what else was there to do? Pumpkin spice cheesecake... yum! Hey Laramie, you're really lucky to have Coal Creek Coffee Company!!

Elk Mountain, west of Laramie, September 22, 2009

Wyoming, I've decided, has only two seasons -- snow and less-snow. Snow Season runs mid-September through mid-May, according to our 2009 driving experience. The only trip this year in which we did not actually drive through a snow flurry or blizzard was in August. Yet snow defined distant mountaintops even in August. The next two photos were taken within a few minutes of each other as we drove along I-84 on the way home. The first, a view of Elk Mountain south of the highway, shows the clouds gathering over the top of the mountains; in the second, a view to the north, the clouds break free of the mountain's hold.

Elk Mountain, west of Laramie, September 30, 2009

The Laramie Plain, west of Laramie, September 30, 2009

Vedauwoo Mountain, east of Laramie, September 30, 2009

I just love this formation of eroded sandstone trimmed with autumn colors and dusted with snow. It's the first chunk of mountain that you encounter as you drive west from Cheyenne to Laramie. The pass here is high, frequently windy, often slick with rain or snow, but always a welcome landmark on the road home.

Mount Ogden, east of Salt Lake City, September 30, 2009

The early autumn snowstorm in the Rockies extended to the Wasatch range east of Salt Lake City, and up into the central mountains of Idaho. Cities and farms of the Intermountain West depend upon snowfall, and eventual spring snow melt, to fill our reservoirs. A good snow year usually means a good water year. It's reassuring to have early snowfall.

Once again we crossed the state line with a happy sigh of relief. I've been away from the studio for more than eight weeks this year, back and forth to Illinois for the most part. It's really good to be home!
~ Lynn

10.11.09 Red Hot Pony

Glowing eerily, fresh from a 1850º raku kiln
this wall piece (first seen in the previous post)
begins to tink and clink as it's crackle glaze cools.

Yesterday, Saturday, I spent the day at a raku firing and kiln building workshop. What a fascinating day!

In the next series of photos, raku workshop instructor Jerry Hendershot places red hot ceramic ware into a reduction bin. Raku firing can be a dramatically visual process -- flame, smoke, ashes!


































I'll be heading back over to Jerry's later this afternoon to pick up my now cooled piece, stay tuned ~ Lynn

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10.12.09 Update -- Here's the cooled raku piece, rather ancient looking!
Click the photo for an enlargement.