rock OUT

Stevo is like
"Curtis' new band is at The Haunt Friday, let's go"
and I am like
"the wife is gonna be out with her pals watching a musical, so YES, definately, let's go see the Blue and the Gray"
Curtis is a buddy of ours and a drummer in 3 or 4 bands. I love this one, 4 guitars, drums, and a woman singing who is FANTASTIC.
Stevo is like, official band photographer. This is him below left.
and below right....
our pall Bethie is Curtis' wife, and she came along too with their 2 little boys--here they are looking at daddy onstage....

Me, Steve's wife Judy and Bethie....
and with Stevo again....
we were out late and my head is still ringing, but DANG I was lucky to catch that. Come visit Ithaca and we will have FUN!



The wife is like messing with all these flowers I gave her. TWO vases full....
have a great Saturday!

last class, oh my!

I was at Cornell Thursday teaching my last class for the fall. Golly where did the time goooooo?

It was the teapot lesson. My advanced class always does teapots on the last day, or tries to!
My buddy Tommy below right is another instructor at Cornell and you have certainly seen plenty of us in the past with the beers..here is our other buddy Katie on the left.....student work all over the place...
My class was excellent. There were only 1-4 students each week. IDEAL! All so smart and capable too.
But I get really nervous with teaching. It dominates my week, thinking about just those couple of hours when I am on the spot. On the other hand, I have been teaching for 2 decades and know my stuff :)


Spike and Penny getting excited about their dinner.
Emily below, facebooking....happy FRIDAY!

people gettin' down, people gettin' crazee.....

The thing is, why so many pics of Penny rolling around and dancing and humping and wrestling? Sure, she is cute, but like, daily?
Yes. Penny does a little dance whenever you serve dinner or go for a walk, and that turns out to be a lot of dances every day! I would consider it unusual for a beagle, EXCEPT Snoopy did it in the cartoon, and my pals Kerry and Brett have a beagle that dances for dinner too.....
New mugs like these for sale at my excellent etsy gallery, have a look!


Awesome video below, with Kermit! Not exactly what you first think it is, but still excellent (explained here).

the wife goes with the red shoes and the purple fish nets....

So yesterday the wife is wearing a fairly square office-type outfit with a grey skirt, but she puts on the purple fishnets JUST BECAUSE. Good call, because before work we get a package from her mom, my MIL who is, as you know, the bestest, and a known party animal. Anyway, her mom's red chucks were in the box, a perfect fit for the wife and a NICE match with the purple fishnets. These chucks are so old they were made in the USA!
You see some doodles in my sketchbook from yesterday. The cat in the middle I have drawn for some time, but I have been working on the standing cat, over and over and over....and the howling dog I got in one shot. The bottom right shows what I am making today, spotted pony bowls.
And below that, well, you have Penny and Buster....

appalling and disgusting...

Nice bowls eh? I love these. I am trying to remember if I make more than the five types here...a giraffe type would be fun, wouldn't it? Oh, wait, i remember, I make ducks too.
OK, so Emily kitten is 16 + years old. She is super cute, but you know, not well behaved. Anyway, the older she gets the pickier she is about food. Like, she is tired of the crunchies. And she wants my noodles.
I know, now you will NEVER come over to our house....

holiday for SOME people but no rest for the wicked...

Penny is very athletic, but also a punk. She was in a wild mood, and likes to sneak up on poor old Buster.
Spike is the brains behind this operation, believe me....

I wanted to make a certain type of teapot, and was fiddling around here....and like I say about Spike.....

the demise of the open studio.....

Saturday was a GORGEOUS day with today looking even better.
I am going to be honest with you. Here at this blog you really only see the tip of the ice berg, but here is a little more iceberg.

I love having people over and it happens all the time. For four-five years people have asked to visit the studio, every WEEK. So many that I started open studio days. I figured it would be nice if people could count on open days, but what I get is this:
me: "I have open studio Saturday!"
they: "great, I am coming over Friday"

Which is fine. But on a nice day like yesterday I feel like a chump. I want to come and go and walk my dog and work then wander off, whatever, AND the kind of visitors I am getting on open studio days is like, well, tourists looking for snacks and a bathroom and high schoolers sent over to do a report on a working artist AND van loads, I kid you not, of juvenile delinquents taking a field trip. I don't think they have stolen anything much. I hope.
I also don't have insurance to run this studio as a store.
F##k it.
If you want to come over, give me an email :)

very little of consequence.....

So the wife is like "I gotta get photos of this tree with its leaves!" and she readies the camera and this slobby guy jumps into the middle of it and is like, leering back at her....
later, of course, I am like "I wanna get a photo of those noodles" and this gorgeous spokesmodel jumps into the picture and is like, talking up the dish like its the greatest restaurant but its just our kitchen...(I tried out a recipe from a few days ago in the paper---basically, fry up a load of tomatos and add basil and dump it onto pasta, yummo. And can you believe that people have so many tomatos in their gardens they just bring them to the PO and put FREE signs on them? Terrific tomatos this year)

open studio weekends times 2

There is the Greater Ithaca Art Trail, and I have been on it for a few years, but people are sometimes surprised to hear that it costs money to join. Over 400 dollars, and if you add the 2 extra exhibits, the price tag is over 500 dollars. That is a lot of mugs. People always ask "do you try to sell things on the art trail?" of course I do!!! I gotta pay that 500 bucks! Another question is "I thought the county and state paid you???" au contraire! And also "I thought it was just to be educational?" educational my ass! I gotta buy groceries, this is a sale!
YES, my little studio has even had small bus trips full of students or scouts and even juvenile delinquents. I don't mind them, but they don't put a dent in that 500 bucks.....
I DID NOT sign up for the art trail this year, officially, but you can come over anyway. The next 2 Saturdays and Sundays, 11-5, 540 Main, Etna, NY, rte. 366, the purple house! I am calling it Gary's Incredible Art Tour....