Shows are mysterious things

 Hundred's of people, lots of smiles, even good sales and my last big show of the year is over. I am tired and it's taken three days to even start to get back into things in the studio. That's my friend Pauline's glass mosaic up there. She does these amazing, bright, and colourful pieces. Makes you happy just to walk into a room when you are greeted with one of these.

Let me give you a little tour of the studio tour. This is a major juried event here and something like 5,000 people attend. It's held in 10 studio locations and we had 5 artists represented in ours. I loved where I was. It was in Carol's home where both she and her husband have studios.

 Their home is this fantastic contemporary home that sets up like a gallery space when you move the furniture out and about. Love those polished concrete floors and that green wall. Carol's husband is an architect and he not only designed their home but most of the furniture for their home as well.

This is my space. I got the green wall!  I'm not sure whose backside I managed to get in my photo. And my doesn't that electrical cord look a bit untidy. Oh well.  But really, truly it was much more impressive in person :-)

This is Carol's studio. She's in a heated garage that probably no car has ever been in. Carol works with large format cyanotype collage (blue prints). Her work is quite amazing. She's collected all of these laundry tags and vintage images and had them made into enormous negatives.

This is one of the negatives being exposed out in the drive.

And now the mystery. I sold every bracelet I made. I sell very few bracelets. Why bracelets? Is there some sort of trend going on out there that I don't know about?

Thanks everyone for all of your good wishes and support over the last couple of weeks as I got ready for this show!

Finished, Done, Complete

Accomplished, used up.....all synonyms for finished, all words to describe today in the studio. I am done making things for the shows this weekend. I don't even set up until Friday. How did this happen? Of course, there is this overwhelming compulsion to make just one more thing. But I am resisting. I am all used up and really have no more creative juice left.

Did you see that plural up there? The shows part. Did I tell you this is the weekend that happens every year where I do my regular monthly art market and the studio tour? And what on earth is that daisy doing up there?

I just pulled that out of the inventory because I couldn't bear to part with it. It has it's little drippy flaws but what if somebody loved it and bought it and I could never make another one again. It also serves to soften the image of my studio. Like maybe it doesn't look like this:

Which isn't even my studio. It's my dining room. And it is much worse than it was the last time I showed you. But the good news is that the studio proper is no worse. Well, it couldn't really get any worse.

And about these studio tours. First thank goodness I won't be setting up in my studio. Because this mess isn't going away until at least Monday. But I do really think it should be a requirement to show some reality shots of working studios. By the time you all get round to one of these events, everything is all tidy and neat. But we all know that nothing ever really gets made in a state of tidyness. At least I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who lives in creative chaos. And if I am, I really, really would like to stay with the delusion that this is completely normal.

So Tired

I've just finished a week of 12 to 14 hour studio days, a day of set up, a night market, and 2 days of studio tour. And only one bad photo of one little part of it to show you. I am tired! I really had no idea what to expect of the studio tour. Or at least what I expected had very little to do with the reality of it. I've only ever attended the tour. I've never shown my work on the tour. It's very different from this side of the street.


Something like 5,000 people attend this local event. The way it works is that the Arts Alliance coordinates and publicizes the event and selects a juror for the show. This year 10 studios were selected as host locations and 56 artists were selected to show their work. Our location was in the home of a jeweler, and in addition to my ceramics, there was an oil painter, an acrylic painter, and two photographers. We used the entire house as our 'gallery' so there was a lot of art. I had no real understanding of just how many people mark their calenders and get out there bright and early on Saturday. You know 5,000 is just a number a multiple of 5, 5 x 1000. Numbers are an abstract concept to me. This is a pretty serious big event and I was completely unprepared for what perhaps 700 people coming through one home would be like. Overwhelming is probably an understatement. And these people are serious collectors and buyers. Which turned out a good thing for me but Mother Hubbard's cupboard was pretty bare by the end of Saturday , with another day of tour to go.

It was good though. I shared the dining room with my friend Liz and her beautiful photography, a piece of which came home with me. We laughed ( a lot). We learned together as it was her first studio tour as well. I learned to add numbers in my head (sort of). I learned that you really, really do need to bring a calculator. But lacking that, buyers will get out their mobile phones and add up numbers for you. I learned that it is good, really really good, to ocassionally step outside of your comfort zone and do something new.


I feel a little like a creation story today. And on the 10th day she rested.


Tomorrow, I will be back to my normal routine, thankful that I won't do another large show until April. Heaps of time to prepare, right?

BOC open studio tour!!!!

Just a little sampler of the things that came out of my kiln this morning. I'm busy getting ready for our Beads of Clay Open Studio. In fact I'm getting pretty darned excited about this event. So just in case you haven't marked your calendar, Sunday 1-4 EST right here on my blog and the blogs of a lot of talented Beads of Clay members. Just click that image up on the right and see who's going to be here. Give-aways, discounts, hooray! Hope to see you!!!!

Have a great weekend!

Mark your calender!

Come one, come all! Join us for the first ever Beads of Clay Bloggers Open Studio. This is a fantastic event with give-aways, insights into our creative processes, our studios. Get to know us and what we do.

I'll be giving you a little tour of my studio. And I'm pretty darned sure you'll get the unvarneshed truth of the chaos I create in. With 3 shows coming up in 3 weeks, I'm absolutely positive you will not get a pretty version. You'll get the down and dirty, the muddy reality of my creative process, totally uncensored, warts and all. Isn't that tempting?

If that's not enough I'll be doing some give aways and have in mind some things that you've never seen in the Etsy shop. Still not enough? Well last count I made, there are a whopping 16 artists participating in this blogtastic event, all with their own give-aways and exciting insights into the life of a ceramic bead maker. That's a whole lot a bead giving going on.

Curious who's going to be here? Just click that photo up there and head on over to the BOC blog and find out. While you are there just go ahead and click that follow button so you can get regular updates to what we're up to.