Today I am simply caught up in the glee of having nowhere pressing to be, a new place, a working oven cooperating with my cookies and focaccia and a brand new attic studio. I was worried about the cold but everybody has little heaters on sale and with that and the door closed I will have a toasty and productive place to paint and draw. I love looking out at my street from the attic windows and watching all the little men shovel the sidewalk.

Oh blessed be the domestic! I've got more putzing around to do but I just didn't want you to think I'd forgotten about you, it's lovely getting emails and wonderful things like Mark's teapot in my mail. I am excited to discover the Everson's online clay exhibit and to know that anytime i want I can grab some focaccia, a hot mug of bresh tea, and hop upstairs to draw little men shovling little sidewalks with little plastic shovels.

joy!
Rachael

After about 6 hours of attempts we are off to purchase store bought rolls for our Thanksgiving table contribution. My rolls are flaky, sticky, dry or just bland but I am richer for the experience I think. Both my man and I have a couple of days off (in a row), we are truly unpacking and storing stuff into drawers and cabinets, and the light dusting of snow is pretty. Got so much to be thankful for...
Food and health . I have good luck with both. Just hope I didn't jinx it...
Family. They know who they are (the painters and movers and wise women and men).
Shelter. We have this new old house. Feels so good to not worry if they can hear us in the downstairs apartment.
Friends. All over the country there are troublemakers who we love and who seem to like us back.
And then there's the lovely dirt .

I'm seriously thankful for all the clay and clay teachers and potshots and the freedom to play:
We're back to being t.v. free (our temporary living had cable) and I took a bunch of ceramics coffee table books out of the library (what my friend calls "clay porn" because they're so glossy and you just look through and ooohhh and ahhh). As the rolls burnt and dried out I was sitting there reading about Scripps College in the 1950s (now I know why they're called Soldner wheels!) and Peter Voulkos (who seems so Pollock-y) and I'm kind of embarrased that I thought ceramics was so boring because all I want to do now is play around in the dirt, learn more, and see what comes out of the next kiln firing.

But now I have to go buy some rolls...
take care and be good,
Rachael

 

Today they morphed from paper to clay and my friend Jody says she'll show me how to make paperclay so there could be big changes ahead for my paper dolls. I have a hunger for articulating these figures and I am very excited about what can happen when I have a whole village of the dang things. Below, is a more recent paperdoll. They're coming out paper still. They're simply coming out all sorts of ways.

Also today I had the amazing treat of this glaze accident...

 

It's on a pinch pot I'd made around a balloon mold and now it really looks like a glowing hematite brain. If I can manage with my old school technology I'll get a picture of the bowl but it's the glaze that is gleeful.

that's all the show and tell I have right now but it's a week to be thankful, show-offy, and hopeful,
I call.

I've been reading about radical pottery and been fascinated by the Brothers Kirkpatrick and their Anna pottery (pig flasks and snake jars and all with messages and meaning). I'm amazed by the pigs and the porkopolis and the passion with which clay and vessels and everyday things could be imbued with message.
that's all aside from more unpacking and painting and moving and settling and making run-ons and drawings that can't stop.
More soon, I suppose,
Rachael

Having a new old house means that we have a painting frenzy. We have amazing family and friends who asked if they could help and plenty of gallons of the good stuff. I'm pretty excited about washable paint and it's Ok that I'll be breathing fumes for a few days because today the paint smelled like chocolate.

Basically, I used to be a painter (see old studio view below) and now I'm a painter. Or rather today I was a taper (one who tapes).

And then, with all of this excitement of having our first house, we also have a new moving process. A process we've had about 10 times in the past 10 years. Each time we weed a bit more and this time I decided to toss out some old mail art correspondance, to re-use and re-imagine some old communication with people who've moved in different directions. I used to publish a zine, <a href="http://www.mindspring.com/~rachaelbuff/earlgrey.html">Trustworthy </a>, which I traded and sent out into the world to folks like the Street Librarian and Emily and Pete and I reviewed zines for a while for Zine World. To make a long story short, I lived for the moment I opened my po box and found packages in there. I spent all my money on paper and took jobs based solely on the amount of access I would have to the copier. I used little photocopied magazines as a way to meet people around the world, tell and read stories, drawn and written and collaged and often very very honest. I wasn't able to get rid of the whole box and I may still do the final issue of Trustworthy (on my deathbed maybe?) and solve the burning question of what Janet did, but I think mostly, I got what I needed from zines: new perspectives, new friends forged through the mail, new reasons to break through the mundane and monotonous and make art.
Another break in the monotony happened when I stumbled into a room full of bored college kids' drawings of endless marks, and women with big boobs, and all sorts of doodles.
The Doodle Show is quietly tucked away in a small gallery at the University of Rochester's art library. I wanted to hand those kids a couple of zines and tell them to drop out of school and draw. Draw. Draw.
But I had to go home and paint, paint, and paint.
Priorities...
goodnight troublemakers and take care,
Rachael

oh it is so good to have a permanent address and some postage and some time between painting to hopefully send some real mail again and hear some of those stories again.