New Year's Bread Bake

MIxed wheat and unbleached wheat flour in a ceramic bowl.  I've used metal bowls for years but decided this time to follow the path of the purist.

Sticky dough with the salt and oil added.

Much of the water called for in the recipe was not needed.

Big fat potter's hand working the dough.

The dough after chaffing.  My first time to do this.

The flying nun - ready for rising and punching down and rising.

Divide. Shape into loaves.

Time for the final proofing.

Debbie gave me these bread sheets years ago.  

Ready for the oven.

I've turned the bread to stone!
No surprise - as potters often turn things to stone.

Dining, santa fe to woodward, ok.

Evening sky coming into Woodward, Oklahoma. Ate like a pig at big Dan's steakhouse, where food happens fast.

Santa fe was white with snow and red with the best chili I've ever tasted. It took 33 years but I finally made it to the Shed (superb chili and tequila) and to the bistro at la casa sena (Broadway vocals and great piano man). Enjoyed the Huey gallery on Palace ave, speaking with Keith Huey and seeing early Scott Christianson plein air oils, as well as continuing my survey of pueblo pottery at the legitimate Andrea Fisher gallery. 

Left the Nedra Matteucci gallery through the side garden gate. Couldnt take the chance that my soaking wet 4  legged companion would shake off on a half million dollar painting or two. ( matter of a duck pond in the sculpture garden).

Then off to Taos via Chimayo and the high road for green chili stew and textile shopping. Pictured above: church in Chimayo.

Helped kick off a jazz fest in taos and hit the road for the oxygen rich okie atmosphere.

Gallup flea market - pinon to pig

Gallup flea market; big and dusty and bold. Hay for sale. Get your eats. Spend the day.

 Fresh crop of pinon nuts out of the Navajo Nation. Roasted. Salted. Eat em like sunflower seeds.

Pigs for sale. Also tools, clothes, shoes, music cd's, jewelry. Lots of tires.

Anywhere, west of Albuquerque. Lots of grass, but no cattle in sight.

Hotel view of cathedral: Snowy impression, Santa Fe november morning

Gallup lullaby

Route 66 lodging in Gallup, NM is located along the main line.  At 6900 ft above sea level, Gallup is the epicenter of native/pueblo art.  Earls restaurant is a good place to meet local artisans.  Richardson's has a wide selection dating back 103 years. Perry nulls is a good stop. South of town on the way to zia, Joe _______'s had good value. 

These rocks guard the entrance to acoma 's sky pueblo.

The pueblo sits 400 feet above the valley floor on a mesa. 

Frontier Woman - Requiem

I must have made about a million pots.  Some I don't remember.  Some I liked good enough to keep. From some I made images. Others left so quickly I didn't take the chance.  Others just hung around, becoming part of a great fragile, ever changing psyche (sigh key), becoming a part of my space and story.  Here, then is the story of three pots that just hung around until I couldn't bring myself one last time to bring them back to the storage shelves.

Frontier Woman - Requiem.

I sold a lot of stuff, but I couldn't sell that.  Saturday was a requiem for sculptures that hadn't found a home.  Pioneer Woman. Ice Skater.  "This Big" - The Orator.  I apologized; threw them on the shard pile.  Their failure was not one of process  but one of space.  Time to move on; to give up that hope. Time to feel the loss.  Sometimes, you have to let it go.   

I listened to a speaker yesterday at the University of Tulsa College of Law Symposium on Copyright Law.  J. Silbey presented on alternative intents for uses of copyright laws.

Parts of Silbey's research have resulted in a book based on needs of 'content creators' as they relate to copyright law. (hope this synopsis is at least partially accurate)  Her interviews with artists produced a short list of basic/integral needs. Space, privacy, integrity or control come easily to my mind in this regard.  When you run out of space . . . sometimes it has to go.

Thankfulness and a lucky Penny

in the studio today we are thankful for all that the year has wrought.  Already, hot weather is becoming a fond memory.  The sunny days of a younger summer.

Although I have been very busy potting, some paintings have made progress - even if its the backwards progress of a scrape job.

Pottery sales have been great; the Cherry Street Farmers Market had a bang up promoter named Penny; who of course is being promoted.  Her private name will be "She did a great job."

I've been playing nurse to a lower leg (not mine) impressed with the design of bicycle gear brackets. That's the leg without the turned ankle.  Whoo!

Here are some paintings, some of which have been redone yet again!

Sunset: State of Washington

picture credit Betty Dalsing

oil on board 8" x 10"

2015

Sunset: Bay of Fundy

St. John, New Brunswick

oil on board appr. 5" x 10"

2015

needs purples in the grass

Blue Ridge Mountains

Oil on Paper

wip

still needs some foreground work

"By the Silvery Sea"

available in print only

(ha ha)

Fall pottery follows summer vacation.

Ok - crow - HOMA mugs.

Next:  'buckle up' mugs featuringf a horse rampant over the state of Oklahoma.

Re-order of the popular Okie Rainbow mug.

New order of mugs going to the Atlas Gallery and Betty Dalsing. 

This is what you may get when mixing a painting regimen in with pottery.

"Next to Dead Man"s Pool"

Charlottetown, PEI. CA.

A rosy day in the northern summer.

Smoky Mountains on paper. I'm liking this.  

Go Pokes.

Good work by Jacob MIngs hanging at AHHA gallery till 11/22.

Best of Show 2d (according to me).

Price - way too low.