Our booth at Ketchum Art Festival July 14-15.  We enjoy this show because we are surrounded by mountains, and the people are very friendly.  We have made some good customer/friends here over the years. My art is Garden sculptures, that are ceramic beads that stack on a conduit.

 I was having a problem with little kids coming to my booth and wanting to build with the beads.  I know they look like toys, but when the kids handled my beads roughly, they got broken.  Then the parents left feeling badly because they paid for broken merchandise.  My solution was to make beads to be handled only by the children.  The beads are all the same color which helps to keep them apart from the beads that I sell.  Did some get broken? you bet! Did I care? Not that much!

 These are the tall sculptures that I make which are thematic in design. An interested art lover would buy the entire stack.  These are my designs which feature textures, shapes, and colors. 

Art lovers may also design their own sculpture.  I supply beads of many colors and shapes and a person may pick a few or a lot.  This has been a very fun interactive way for the people to buy my art.
  The weekend threatened rain which we did get late Saturday afternoon.  But all in all a very successful weekend.  By the way, Square makes transactions very very easy!!

Hommies

These are some of my small sculptures that I made for an indoor installation.
It is another way to display the pieces that my customers use for garden spaces.

New Year, New Photos

I am working
with a new camera. Here are some images of my pitchers.


This is a tea set. It measures 6" (not the handle) tall by 4" by 3" wide.
Tea pots that follow the Asian tradition are small. This one has a capacity
of 16 oz.


The back side of a gravy boat. This expressive design measures
8" X 8" X 4" wide.

This gravy boat holds 24 oz.

This whimsical pitcher has a thumb rest at the top of the handle.
The capacity is 58 oz.

Front view of thumb pitcher.


The back side of the blue four footed pitcher.
The bowl is
6" tall X 6" width X 5" deep capacity is 40 oz.

Ready for Christmas

This summer I decided that I wanted to get my daughter a set of kitchen chairs. Hers belonged to her husband before marriage, and they were in awful shape. I thought if I found a few odd chairs that I would paint each one a different color and present them to the couple. I saw these at an estate sale 2 weeks ago.

The chairs were grimey and I cleaned them up. That is when I realized that these chairs must have fallen off a pick up truck, at a high rate of speed, like on the freeway. We took them apart and added missing spindles and glued them back together.

We sanded all the varnish off of them and applied a new coat of color and shine. Here they are waiting for their beauty treatment.

When they were dry, we put foam in the holes for the seat and covered them with faux leather (vinyl).


They were pretty different looking when we started, but we tried to add enough detail to make them look like a set. We think they turned out pretty nice!

Mantel piece

If you remember in the previous post, these are the unglazed pieces for the mantel pieces. The bottoms where in the kiln, so I used other pieces that I had on hand, to get an idea of the arrangement.

The colors that I used are taken from the fabric that is part of the decor in the room with the mantel.

Finished product! Some of the glazes are glossy and some are not, which is interesting. Gives the pieces a less predictable look. It has taken me a while to be comfortable mixing the matte and glossy finishes. Sizes 21" height, 28" height, with a base that is 7" diameter.

Mantel Design

This is a new design for a fireplace mantel. The request was for two pieces to set on the mantel. They are to differ in height. Glazes are already chosen. Pink, gold, dark blue, berry wine, and speckled white.

The colors are chosen from decorative fabric used in the draperies. Next post will show finished pieces.

Getting ready for Thousand Springs this weekend at Hagerman Idaho. I thought it would be fun to make pieces that denote the address number of a house. Of course, it would be customized!
This is a free form sculpture of flowers.