Reconnecting with things...

Some afternoons while I'm helping my children with their homework, I sit next to them and grade things for my online courses or try to keep up with what seems like the endless amount of paper work that goes along with owning your own business. Always multi-tasking, which lately I've heard studies have shown is not the best thing to do. Oh well....I think for some of us who's brains tend to move in various directions at once, being able to multi task is just something that comes naturally. But once again....I've gotten off what the subject was about here. Old idea's I come back to.

The other day, when I was helping Aydan with her homework she got tickled because I got out my sketchbook and started thumbing through it. I found these sketches I had done awhile back. They actually came off a screen saver and I thought I could modify some of these. I love to revisit old idea's or interesting thoughts I just haven't had the opportunity to use. I was working on some cupcake plates a few weeks back and decided that some owls would look good on them. I have two waiting to be glazed today.....perhapse some of these sketches will show up on those small plates or even some pillow tiles. Also in the last two weeks, some consignment galleries have called to say they are either closing shop or I have decided that my pots are just sitting collection dust. This doesn't bother me because some old friends have come home. Some of these pots below are pretty old but I really enjoy visiting with my old work because already I can see the progression in what I'm doing. The possibilities of bringing back some old surface decoration and incorporating that somehow in my new work may be a good thing.

Life and work seem to be one in the same. The longer you are around and doing something, the less you realize you know and the more you want to learn! I'm always re-inventing things. This year it is how I sell my work. I've been thinking alot about retail, wholesale and consignment and what works the best for me and the things I create.

Please check my show schedule and gallery list. I've added some things and some others have gone away. Each year brings new adventures!

...Ok, I'm off to glaze. Have a great week! Jen

Resolutions and happiness...

I've been pretty good about keeping my resolution this year about not going to out to work in my studio at night and staying off the computer during the day. Well..pretty good. I made that resolution because who wants to hear me complain about the cold anymore! My evil twin keeps saying in the back of my head " well then..keep your butt indoors in the evening Silly!" So, that what I told myself I would do. I would keep all my email from students and folks ( and silly facebook messages) until the evening. Boy..that is a hard thing to achieve let me tell you! And thought going on a diet in January was bad!

Well today, its almost 12:30 and I've been here all morning putting out fires with my new online students and answering emails. One in particular last night ( from someone who tends to keep me on my toes when it comes to working..he shell remain nameless..) mentioned that I didn't have any contact info. on my blog. You all know that my husband puts all that stuff together for me and he use to "police" things on it as well. Well my " Tech Guy" has sort of taken a leave of absence and I've just ...well let it all go for awhile I guess. Website, resume' and little things like that in my mind are ALWAYS shoved way back on my list of things to do. So, this morning a took the time to clean-up my resume', post my upcoming shows and at least put my email on my blog. Guess I still have cleaning to do on my website ( its sort of mess..I admit). That's for another evening and hopefully not day. The weather here isn't to cold so I'm heading out for the rest of the afternoon and yes, I'll be out there this evening but alt east I won't have to wear 12 shirts and 5 pairs of pants to stay warm!

A box and some mugs...does anyone need anything else?

You all have a great week! Jen

A little tour of our town

So we are on our third day of having no school. My mom was just telling me that Atlanta has no snow plows and here in Charlotte I'm not sure how many we have...but I know they do have some. DOT has been salting the roads but snow with ice on top of a bunch of folks who don't know how to drive in it, is not a good mix. Of course, out here in York, we have no salt or snow plows so basically everyone with a huge, mega truck is trying to drive on the roads. I think this part of the country has one of the largest amounts of folks with heavy duty trucks and SUV's so that's about all I've seen going up and down the road in front of our house. ( No way I'm getting in my Volvo station wagon even with the four wheel drive and going anywhere...)!



I told myself that this time when I started writing my blog I was going to stick to posts about pots but here I am with time on my hands and not much free time to work in my studio this week. Snow days involve kids running in and out and no concentration on my part. Ignoring all the excitement and activity just is hard to do when your have attention issues, like I do. My online classes this week also started and it seems with all the colleges closed that my students have nothing better to do than get a jump on my class so I've been inundated with questions that I normally get about a week after the class starts. So, I'm busy, just not with making pots. ( I do have mugs and tiles thrown....)

(Here is our home, in the snow)
The first day it snowed all the kids got invited to go sledding at various location near our home so I decided to enjoy the snow and take a little walk with my camera around the town. You never know if we'll get snow anymore and our big news is that we are going to try and sell our house this Spring and move over the border to NC for various reasons. This may be the last snow I see in york and boy is this a charming town with snow on it.
( Looking down our street)

I thought I'd take some photo's of places in town that I either love or interest me. I'm going to link the photo's to the Yorkville Historic Society's website so you can read about the history. What I thought I'd do is tell you what I've learned about about these houses through out the years we have been here. One great thing about living is a small town is all the gossip and funny stories that go along with the folks who live here. (I'm sure Joey and I are one of them....I can hear someone saying " You know, those hippies that live over on Wright avenue. He's always doing all the cooking, has long hair and use to push those babies all around town while that wife of his spent all her time back in that shed cookin' those pottery things!"

To start off with below, here is a photo of what's called The Meeting place for Sons of Confederate Soldiers. We have lived here for 10 years and I pass this building all the time wonder if "The Sons" really meet here or not? Its kind of cool looking building, sort of like an old jail....just for the record York County had the most KKK dens and we are mentioned alot in the book by D.W. Griffith "Birth of a Nation". York is so full of history, I love when anyone has an old story to tell. I belong to a bookclub in which many ladies who grew up in this little town love to tell tales! So many interesting conversation come up when we read book like "THE HELP" or "The Secret Life of Bee's".

This is the Latta House built in 1824. It was also the York Funeral Home for many years. Now its been converted into a little wedding place for folks. Joey and I attended a wedding here a few years back when they first opened and since she knew the folks who owned it, I got a private tour of the upstairs where the funeral home held all the bodies for years. That section had not been "restored" yet for the wedding facility so needless to say it was pretty creepy and neat at the same time. Rumor has it that back during the civil war the daughter of the man who built this house waited from her fiancee' to return from war and when he didn't, she never left the 2nd floor of this building until her death and only came out on the porch for fresh air.

This house has always interested me because someone does live here but I have never laid eyes on her and I pretty much walk or run everyday buy this home. This house is called the Herndon/Sutton home and I always wish someone would take care of it because it has all sorts of cool little buildings behind it. Like many old home in York, families fight over who's going to sell them or live in them and than the poor places end up falling apart.

This is the Marion/Goins house. If you click on the link to this house, you'll see that when the photo of it was taken just about 2 years ago, it was sort of in dis-repair. Just this year someone bought and restored it and it is now on the market for a 1/2million. I was peeking around it the day I went walking and boy did they do a great job. My dream home, if it had a studio and was in a better school district....oh and if we could afford it!This is Buz Smith's home. He's a nicest old man and works at Lowes..of all places. His wife taught my kids to swim at the local YMCA and they use to have this old dog "Oreo" that they'd walked around our block and my kids loved to see. This house is so big for only two people. Once again, Buz inherited this home from his folks and he drives around in a old ford that I think is from the 1950's. All these homes on this street are behind our house so in the summer time my kids like to be adventurous and wonder through the backyard of some of these places. They come back with all sorts of stories of what they have found. In Buz's backyard he has all these over grown boxwood paths that someone put in years ago for garden parties I guess. Boy if I could go back in time to see how some of these families lived...

This blue home is the McCorkle/Moore home. Its is directly behind our home and whoever lives here does NOT like my kids exploring her backyard. Very few folks are like this in our town but there is always one person....My kids ran home this summer saying out of the blue someone had put KEEP OUT in the way backyard so I said " Well, you better stay away from that yard than". The neat thing about this house is that our home was a wedding present to Mr. Moore's daughter back in 1902. Of course our house doesn't look at all like this one but we are only the 4th owner of our home and that's pretty neat considering its over 100 years old!

This isn't a very good shot of the downtown but I think its funny that they still have not taken down the Christmas decorations and its January 10th!

So, that's just a little history about York and some places I'm going to miss if we do ever sell our house.

Tomorrow the kids go back to school and I finally start my clay class at Winthrop. Today I got out to my studio for about an hour or so. Not much time but alittle. Hopefully my next post will be more pottery related!

Football and Plastic

Well, as most of your know the South East ( and most of the East Coast) is pretty cold. I thought last year was a cold winter but obviously I was wrong because this December was just how I like it. COLD! Of course I like it cold because its Christmas and I shut down my studio for most part, but now that we are in January and I need to get back working.....its to cold once again to make pots!

We put two layers of plastic up in November but with the cold snap and maybe my age ( haha) it was just not "Cutting the mustard" as the saying goes sooooooo.................. Yesterday I was like... " Honey, you need to help me put more plastic up in my studio"!

Now, I have a very patient husband who helps me ALOT but during football season I know that basically I'm on my own. Well yesterday was the NFL play-offs and putting up plastic once again for the second time this year was not something that was high on the list of fun things to do on a Saturday.

The process of doing this means the everything has to be pulled away from the walls, pots need to be taken off the shelves, its cold and it seems like the plastic roll, after pulling it out and measuring it, takes over the whole space. ( There is Joey above with no coat on in 30 degree weather measuring the outside wall.)

Basically in a nut shell, its a pain in the neck and many expletives are spoken during the process.

So the moral of this story is...don't interrupt your husband during the weekend of the NFL play-offs to put more plastic up in your studio. It could be detrimental to your marriage!