We had a wonderful turnout for the First Friday Art Walk. The CSA was packed wall to wall the entire night! We had a plethora of delicious food inside and out, samba drums and live bands out front, and a lot of great artwork on display. It was great fun to tell people about the CSA and raise awareness of this wonderful local resource.

I am especially grateful to the folks who stopped by my table and talked ceramics with me. Thank you for admiring my work, asking questions, and telling me about your favorite mugs. Thank you for restoring my self-confidence and reminding me of how much I love to watch a person pick up a pot, feel its weight and the texture of the glaze, examine the colors. Thank you for the reminder that we all have unique tastes in size, style, and color. And, thank you for loving the new fish pieces! I hope those of you who took them home will enjoy them for years to come.

I will be showing a few pieces at this week’s First Friday Art Walk, at the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) storefront, 116 W Cottage, Flagstaff, located in the southwest corner of the Beaver St Brewery Parking lot.

The CSA is a fantastic program! I have been a member for years and look forward to my farm share each week, all winter long. We’re going to have food, music and entertainment for the Art Walk - plus, CSA volunteers will be serving homemade goodies at several downtown galleries. Try them all and let us know what you liked best!

From the CSA website:

Flagstaff Community Supported Agriculture’s Housewarming feast of food, art, music and more will be celebrating at 116 W Cottage Ave. for First Friday Art Walk May 7 from 6-9pm. Fill your souls and your bellies as we share a collage of art and yummy recipes from our own CSA shareholders, Flying M Ranch, Cottage Place, Satchmo’s and Local Alternative Inc. Sample locally brewed Kolsch Bier, Doña Ella Stout and Ginger ale by Matt Oldham and homemade lemonade made with fresh ingredients from Arizona. Come south of the tracks where Anna Ramsey will be painting faces with her creative and unique style. Sambatuque, Acoustic Soup and Eli and Scott Katz will be entertaining our ears.

Another semester has flown by and I haven’t updated my blog. Where did the time go!? I’m afraid it was lost in technology and global conflict, religion, technical writing and ethics.

The good news is that I have had some time to work in the studio this semester. I’ve been playing with surface decoration using bisque and wooden stamps, entirely on recycled clay. I filled the kiln for a bisque firing a couple of weeks ago, and am glazing pots now with the goal of firing before the end of April.

I am scheduled to show some work for the May First Friday Art Walk. I’ll post some pictures soon!

My Mom is the jeweler, and friends of mine are providing the music.

It’s going to be a fun evening!!

I would like to thank everybody who stopped by my booth at the NAU Holiday Arts & Crafts Fair. It was a great couple of days! I really enjoyed seeing old friends and meeting new people, getting great feedback on my ceramics and all of the new ideas for next year. I am really excited to get back into the studio!

Here are some pictures of my booth setup. I think the setup worked well. It was a large space (10×10). I kept the floor plan open and had pieces spread out throughout the space on the tables and the two wire racks. I also hung up a white background on the trellis behind the table after these pictures were taken, to reduce the visual busy-ness. (is that a word?)

The show was held in a gymnasium with a rubberized floor, so there wasn’t much I could do about the blue and yellow floor. I thought about putting backs on the wire racks but noticed that a lot of people came over to my booth after eyeballing the backs of the pots that were on the racks. So I’m glad I left the backs open. I borrowed the racks from a friend of mine who owns a garden center. They fold flat and are lightweight; I need to get some of those! They worked out perfectly for displaying pots.

If you stopped by and have any feedback on my booth setup, I would love to hear from you. I am new at arranging my work in this type of setting and am always open to suggestions!