The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore is the kind of place that makes me feel good about the arts world. So much of the arts world is snooty and elitist, and takes itself way too seriously. But AVAM is filled with originality, humanity, and fun. And it's wildly successful. Every year they produce a holiday art show called BAZAART. It's pretty small with only 50 artists, and is held indoors in their gorgeous reception hall. I had a feeling it would draw a good crowd, and that folks would be eager to shop on Thanksgiving weekend. 

This is the fourth retail art festival that I've chronicled in The Hourly Earnings Project, and I am starting to draw some conclusions that I wasn't expecting. After the first two shows, the big art festival and the little art festival, it appeared that income from art festivals was widely variable and unpredictable. At BAZAART, I made $36.32 per hour. This is the best I've done all year, but still three of the four shows had an hourly earnings value within a pretty close range of each other. The fourth show, which was a stinker in terms of sales, now looks like an aberration. 

It's not as unpredictable as I thought. However, what's clear now is that predictability and success come with choosing the right shows. No longer will I rationalize like "well the booth fee is so cheap" or "the person in charge is so sweet." That's not enough substance for me to commit my time. Substance comes in the form of location, venue, expertise, longevity, reputation, time of year, and the quality of the art. I'm lucky to live in a region with lots of good events, but for every good show there are half-a-dozen wannabes. It's not always easy to see the difference, so I thoroughly expect to snore through some more duds along the way. But if I charge myself with making good decisions, I think I can make the outcomes predictable most of the time. 

This past weekend I was privileged to be a guest artist in Laura DeNardo's Fall Open House. Laura is a Baltimore photographer whose work I've been collecting for years. Her studio is really impressive. She rents a storefront in the Canton neighborhood with a showroom, an office, a darkroom, and a large basement for storage. It's the kind of space I dream of having someday. She puts a first-class effort into her open houses. Compared to her, I am relatively new to conducting open houses, now I plan to incorporate some of her ideas into mine. 

The show also featured the oil paintings of Charlene Clark. Coincidentally, all three of us will be in the same show this coming weekend at the American Visionary Arts Museum. Laura and I have never done this show, but Charlene has many times, therefore she gave us lots of insider tips about it. Charlene also told me about the vendor she uses to process her credit cards, now I think I will switch to her vendor starting next year.

Here's a tip for other artists ... don't try to be a professional artist in a vacuum. Sure, it is mostly a solitary pursuit. But make time to connect with other artists. The information exchange is invaluable. There's so much to learn. 

I taught a workshop this weekend called the Mug-Making Bootcamp. I had eight students and I worked them pretty hard, and they were ready for it! This workshop was about an indispensable aspect of pottery learning ... practice. I told them their arms would be sore, and that cursing was ok. These aren't even all of the mugs that were made, just the ones that were finished in time for the photo. Big thanks to Justin Cullen, Pam Emery, Jill Harbison, Patrick Mulvey, Aileen Redding, Vejune Svotelis, Kiley Wilfong, and Andrea Zukowski for enlisting!

From left to right: Amy Castner, Vejune Svotelis, Kori Rice, Karen Morgenstern, me, Carol Wisdom, Alan Dowdy. Missing from the photo are Bill Aley and Tom Baker. 

This is the gang of pyromaniacs from the Greenbelt Community Center at our recent wood-firing adventure in October. For most of these potters, these workshops have been their first exposure to wood-firing. We have now completed three of these firings in the last two years, and I can now brag that I have addicted them all. 

Wood-firing doesn't always go smoothly, potential monkey wrenches are always lurking. But the character of Greenbelters was on display, everyone kept a productive attitude as we worked late into the night. We were exhausted and starving but still cheering as the pyrometer crossed its milestones. And afterwards, we thoroughly dissected our experiences and these discussions became part of the education. In particular, we discussed the importance of fuel, and not just the wood and the air, but also the human fuel. Don't scream, we didn't throw any humans into the firebox, I'm referring to all the labor and brainpower it takes to make the process work. All things considered, I think we all (including me) learned a lot more about wood-firing this time compared to the last firing when everything went without a hitch. 

Here is Tom stoking the kiln, while Kori and Amy look on, and Karen captures an action photo herself. We eventually managed to reach cone 10 or above at 3 out of 4 of the peep holes. Then we had to wait an entire week before we could see our pots.

Here's a view inside the kiln before we started grabbing our pots! The bottom shelf got the most heat, the middle shelves got the most reduction. The entire load was light on reduction, ash, and salt, compared to the previous firings we had done. Believe it or not, we were not really surprised by that, because of the conversations we had between the firing and the unloading. But this is one of the lessons that wood-fire teaches you, that you can't always control what the kilns gives you. And there were still many beautiful pots to celebrate and marvel over as we shared a potluck picnic. 

Which brings me to an important undercard to the event ... the food! We have always joked that we could cook a meal on the hot coals from the kiln, and this time Bill made it happen! He brought a cast iron dutch oven and concocted a delicious chicken stew. Vejune brought sweet potatoes, which were wrapped in foil and roasted. This was our lunch on firing day. Amy put it well on her Flickr album from the workshop "Yeah, potters like to eat. And we're practical." 

I guess it makes sense that good potters are good cooks. Both involve a knowledge of materials, linear processes, and heat. Plus a great deal of pottery is functionally intended for food, so people who think about pots are probably thinking about food too. Like I mentioned, we all brought a potluck dish for unloading day, and it was a feast. In fact, after I had eaten a giant meal complete with two desserts, I went back for seconds just because it was all so delicious. 

But back to the pots ...

Bill had some crazy success with the Copper Red glaze! He enclosed the glazed inside of two tumble-stacked pots, creating his own mini-atmosphere. And I was very pleased with a new glaze I made for this firing called Rivulet. It is designed to bead up and run down a pot like a typical ash glaze, but does not contain any ash (i.e. shelf-stable). You can see this glaze on my Elephant Jar in the upper left of this photo, and also the pot that Bill fashioned to fire upside-down, so the Rivulet glaze ran up the pot. The unglazed mini elephants all came out very handsomely. 

Tom sculpted this beautiful hand, and fired it with no glaze. A marvelous choice. Because he had spent most of his time and clay on one piece, we placed it on the edge of a shelf with the fingers cantilevering over the firebox, where it got some nice salt effects and reduction tones.

Carol used porcelain slip to add texture and patterns to her stoneware plates, then fired them unglazed. Stunning! I'm glad that because her plates were flat, they were placed on the middle shelves where they were nicely reduced.

Vejune spent a lot of time with crushed glass, placing it carefully into the recesses of her beads. Her Temmoku glazed bowl came out in a rich amber color.

Alan was stocking his kitchen, with lots of Celadon glazed mugs, and a set of dinner plates. He also made four incredible bowls that I neglected to photograph up close ... he tumble stacked them with the Rivulet glaze running both up and down. 

Kori got some deep greens out of the Celadon inside these two nesting bowls, and also used the Rivulet glaze to nice effect inside her batter bowl.

Amy did nice work with glazes too, not to mention the intricate patterns of holes she punched into her berry bowls.

Karen brought some projects from our Advanced Wheel class ... these darted pitchers which she glazed in Temmoku. (Nice handles, Karen!)

I took some beauty shots of my pots when I got home. Here is the Rivulet glaze up close on an Elephant Jar. 
(I found the recipe for Rivulet in the January 2008 issue of Clay Times, in an article by Reed Asher.)

Here is another pot whose potential really excites me. This is my first attempt at hakeme-style brushwork using porcelain slip on stoneware. There is Celadon glaze on top of the slip. Although there are some things about this pot I don't like, I'm eager to try this approach again. 

And here are the chairs! A little Celadon glaze, and some glass shards on the seats for a bit of sparkle. 

In an earlier post I asked, why is wood-firing so much fun? I don't have it all figured out yet, but I'm starting to put it together. You can't get any closer to the transformation aspect of your pots, because you are converting them into stone with your own labor. It's that human fuel I mentioned before, this process brings it out. And it takes a lot, therefore you get to experience all this with good friends. It's amazing to see the fire that gets built. It makes me feel both big and small. Everyone is already asking me "When can we do it again? Does it have to be year away?" Addicts! Yay!