For a Good Cause

Coming up here in Tampa on November 5th is the annual Zoofari at Lowry Park Zoo. It's a fundraising event for the Zoo. Lowry Park Zoo is a fun place to visit and has great activities for the kiddos. This year I'll be participating in their Artfari and will be selling my wares during the Zoofari event. It runs from 6:00 pm to 11:00 pm. As part of the deal to get a reduced price for the space, artists were asked to donate a piece of art for the silent auction. The piece had to be animal themed, best to relate to the zoo theme. So I went to work on a tic tac toe game using tiggers. Orange and white tigers to be exact. Hopefully someone attending will fall in love and bid high on this piece. Just so we're clear, I used no molds in the making of this piece, just my two little hands. I did roll out the clay for the board, but it was all from moist clay. Each tiger is slightly different from the next because they were human formed... I'm not a machine!!! Maybe a dancing machine, but not a ceramic machine.

Evolution

I know that man's evolution was slow to get us to where we are today, standing upright, able to type our thoughts on the computer and read the hundreds of e-mails that we receive on a daily basis. In artwork there's an evolution as well. I've realized that the evolution of my teapots has been a slow one, not quite as slow as the evolution of man, but slow none the less. I've been making some minor tweeks to my fishy teapots lately. The most recent tweek is to try to give the girls more movement. Almost a feeling that they're trying to jump out of the water. I'm making their base section taller so that I can get more clearance on the tails and making a more exagerated turn of the head. These changes, I think, give the girls more personality. I've been on a roll with teapot making and have one new one that I just finished, one that's drying post-construction, and components for two more under plastic. It helps to make the new teapots close in time so that my thought process continues it's momentum. These changes may be so minor that to the eye of the beholder that it may not be apparent, but to me I see these modifications as a step on the path to evolution.

Teapot Tuesday

Only time will tell if the alliterations take over and I come up with something for every day of the week. But it just seemed too perfect for Tuesday to be Teapot day. So I have a few new teapots on the shelf waiting for word on whether they made the cut for my favorite teapot show of the year, the Mad Hatter's Teaparty over in West Palm at the Armory Art Center. I've had teapots accepted in this annual event for several years now. The cool thing that's started to happen is that some of the attendees of the Teaparty have started to collect my teapots and look for them year after year, or at least that's what I've been told. Because of my New Year's resolution to shed my procrastinating ways, I was able to submit my CD well in advance of the deadline. This is a first for me! I entered the max, three teapots. And I really like these latest three. Today, on Teapot Tuesday, I'm going to share with you one of the three that was submitted.

I can't promise that I'll have another brainstorm and come up with something for Wednesday, but you just never know when the old brain synapses get to firing.

As I scroll through my recent posts I realize that my blog's name, Butterfly Farm Pottery, makes it look like the Fish have taken over the Farm. I have three major themes that I work with, Fish, (no major mental leap there) Cats and Butterflies. There are times when the mood strikes me to just make butterfly themed pieces and then there are times like now, when all I want to make are fish. I often feel like a person with multiple personality disorder. Just to give the butterflies some face time, I'm posting a photo of a recent Monarch Butterfly serving dish. It's an evolved piece and is one of my favorites.

How I Do What I Do

Today's post is a pictorial of some of the steps in making one of my Fishy Ring Teapots. These photos pick up after the two main components have been slowly drying under plastic for a couple of weeks. After trimming the ring and cleaning up the base I go to work. This teapot will be a Blingity teapot with rhinestone studded sunglasses, earrings and beaded tendrils off her dorsal fin. I'm not sure yet which fish her glazing will be based on just yet. Now she's under plastic for a slow drying. From lumps of clay to finished teapot, these usually take about 5-6 weeks to complete.

A Labor of Love

Sometimes I get requests to make special things for people and it's a challenge because it's something new to me and I have to figure out how to make it. Sometimes it's a little stressful to make special orders because the requestor has an idea in their head of what they want and my fear is that my vision isn't in line with theirs. There's always that moment when I hold my breath as the requestor takes that first look at the finished piece.

Well, recently I completed a special order. This was a teapot that my mother-in-law asked me to make. The teapot is a gift for a very special lady and the making of the teapot turned into a labor of love. This special lady loves pink so the main color had to be pink.

Sometimes during the making of teapots, there are mis-steps. There'll be a little cracking that I have to repair or, the glaze will creep or crawl a little so I'll have to re-fire. But, not with this piece. It was almost as if this teapot wanted to be born and wasn't going to give me any problems. As with every teapot that I make, my last one is always my favorite. True to course this is now my favorite teapot.