Art sculptures - Gundi Dietz

 

Sharing with Thankful Thursday and Alchemy of Clay

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Tears are as natural to us as breathing and there is beauty in allowing yourself to be open to the pain of tears.

Sharing sculptural clay work

 Beautiful clay work, Rebecca Manson. 

Scaling upwards of seven feet, Manson’s sculptures comprise thousands of individual components that the artist and her team of assistants refer to as “smushes,” small bits of clay they flatten in their hands. The pieces are tedious to make, although the process can be meditative when there’s a rhythm that builds, particularly when constructing enormous numbers like the 200,000 required for her upcoming solo show at Josh Lilley in London.

There must be something about December

When you're overloaded with holiday stuff, and even say no to some of the practices, there is always more to overload you. Well, me I mean. And I keep saying yes to more things to do!

This was the final result of my granddaughter's clay project...I hope I can see it after it had been fired...not sure if she's going to put black slip into the grooves she carved. I hope she takes a pic of it  when it's finished.  Kind of Medusa, isn't it?

So the day I was leaving Ohio, I planned to get up early to beat the rush hour traffic. Didn't work like I planned at all. I kept waking up for hours, every 3-8 minutes, at least from 4-6 am. So when the alarm went off, my poor old body bravely got out of bed, drank a half of my coffee that daughter-in-law made for me, took my morning meds, and lay back down and went to sleep. I ached all over, and was nauseous.  Great! (I had taken a flu shot, better not be sick!)

 About 2 hours of good sleep (or was it 3) I was finally ready to hit the road.  Traffic was really good at 10 am! But I went on the wrong interstate out of the loop around the city, and had to backtrack and get on the right one.

 I had stopped for gas and saw this truck carrying a couple of pristine army ambulances...so later as I passed it I had time to catch a shot or two.

 However, after about 4 hours (including some stops for gas and you know...) I was getting tired again. That means I start coughing hard, and I didn't want to drive at the same time. I was aware that getting over-tired also leads me to lung infections. So I made it to Lexington KY, and found a motel pretty early.

There are mountains all through Kentucky and Tennessee, so it's a beautiful drive even on dreary cold days. At least all the snow had been the day before.

You can barely see the top of the distant ridge has some snow on it. I never saw any along the highway! Whoopee for that! Home by mid-afternoon, and mostly unpacked that night!

On Monday I'd been asked to help out at the office at church this week. And on Tues. another woman called and said she'd also volunteered to help. So Wed. there we were trying to get the computer to behave.  Something had jammed the email program, I kid you not!

We just kept getting error messages. Then we had our friend who does i.t. come look at it, and I finally found my note as to another way to get to the email which worked.  But none of us could fix the problem.  And let's just say every time I thought something I wrote on an update to the newsletter, (which had some major flaws originally) was going to work, it later gave problems.  My friend said "it's like Mercury retrograde again and again."

We didn't turn off the computer, but put it to sleep. And we'll both look at things again tomorrow!

The sad news was finding out my friend who had been working there up till Thanksgiving week is very ill and won't be working for a long while.

I napped each day, and then had good 9 hours of sleep each night, and right now (knock on wood) I'm feeling almost normal (for me.)  I've got a long pottery sale on Saturday coming up, and have to spend as much time as possible getting things tagged and packed into bins.

Teaching teachers

In my life I've taught pottery, watercolor, sketching, goddess history, and some computer uses.  I admire especially those who teach teachers how to teach.  I worked in prevention of substance abuse by teaching some teachers and school counselors how to teach a curriculum or two back in the 80s...and that's the extent of my efforts to teach how to teach.

So I'll just share some photos that were on line by my teacher in sculpting clay, Nan Smith of the University of Florida.  She didn't post these when I got my BFA in ceramics (I don't think there was FaceBook in 1983).  Thanks, Nan, for all the fun and mistakes and corrections and supportive critiques!

Sharing with Sepia Saturday this week!