If these mugs are nice, you should see the blue one I just dreamt...

YES, making a lot of leafy pots lately but HOT DAMN! I was just dreaming that San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities on earth (it is, right?  except I have not been there...) and the last thing I dreamt before the wife sneezed loudly and the dog belched, thus awakening me, was of a blue mug with flowers on it, oh boy! Something else new to try :)
Have a great sunday!

(new mugs by Gary Rith)

those bunnies are bigger than my beagle....

Peter

Beatrix Potter with a bunny

You know how much I love bunnies.
You will recall that Angelika and her daughter visited a couple of days ago (how can you forget, I blogged it Monday?) and they glazed a few items they had made in this studio a month ago.

pillow copied from tapestry

They live on a small farm near my house with some huge chickens and HUGE angora bunnies!  Take a big bunny and cover it with six inches of fur, THAT is an angora bunny!



I am told that aside from the length and abundance of fur, angora bunny fur is also 6 times warmer than sheeps' wool!
Angelika's family raises the bunnies for this fur, which is woven into mittens and sweaters!


This dude has a certain MARX BROTHERS look going on....



I am not kidding, these rabbits are beagle sized...have a great weekend!

a tale of two teapots: first of twenty fifteen!

Look at that groovy item up there...and down there!  Nice start to the year, I think.
I am fiddling with leaf carving ideas and how to glaze them....there are a few possibilities I like and these turned out well....
you think, in theory, that January is gonna SUCK EGGS, what with the Halloweenthanksgivingchristmashannukahnewyear holidays over, and it is at most ten degrees outside and snowy...but DANG, you have all this relaxed freedom to MAKE and think and innovate, without the pressure to mail a mug to Michigan by noon (although I always LOVE to mail mugs there, or anywhere else, things are a little quieter these days).
These both happen to be on sale at my etsy shoppe, too, click HERE! (Valentine's = one month away!)

Have a great weekend!


(new teapots by Gary Rith)

visit ME!

You don't have to drive through snow and cold do it, just read this post!

I heard of an opportunity to get your studio and work showcased in an online pottery forum, and I submitted the pics and description here.  Whether or not my submission is accepted, YOU can check me out here, today!  I was not alone.  My own dog Penny, as sweet as she is, is chaos in the studio.  MY NEIGHBOR's dog Yogi, however, hangs out with me a lot, and he is a perfect studio companion...and happened to be around....

Thanks a million for your good work in connecting potters, I really appreciate it.

Please consider a tour of my studio, 3 pics attd. below and in a second email 1) door to studio 2) entry gallery 3) most of the studio, wheel and worktable, display cases and kiln and glazing area at the back. 

Photos taken and owned by Gary Rith

email and links can be shared with the public

My email: garyrith@yahoo.com

webpage: www.garyrith.com

daily blog: http://garysthirdpotteryblog.blogspot.com/

etsy gallery: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Rith

Studio description:

I began in pottery about 32 years ago, as a freshman art student at Bennington College. I worked as a special education teacher in Chicago and Massachusetts until 1997 when I set up as a full-time potter in New Hampshire, then moving to the Ithaca, NY area 9 years ago because it is groovy. EVERYBODY here is a potter!

I am pretty solitary.  I like to just work by myself then get the pots out the door.  It is not a store or open studio, but people invite themselves over ALL THE TIME and I hold open studios in the fall.  I will take on the occaisional student, but it has to be somebody I like a great deal and it is costly, as I take it very seriously and give private one on one instruction with my full attention.

We live in the hamlet of Etna outside of Ithaca, 300 people, a cemetery, bus stop and post office.  A small river runs outside the studio window at the back of our yard.  It is beautiful and we are very lucky.  The house had been a one room log and stone cabin in 1865, later expanded and enlarged to a duplex.  My wife and I live in the 2 apartment side, the studio side is attached by a door but seperate from the public.  I work everyday. I am not a production potter, but follow any new ideas for thrown forms and sculpture that cross my mind, using about 18 glazes I mix myself in the basement (7-8 of which are greens.....).  I get some sales from the open studio, more from wholesaling to shops, more than that from a few fairs within an hour of the house and the majority by the internet (like I said, hamlet of 300 with a POST OFFICE :)

Thanks for the opportunity! 

leafy....froggy......

OK, new year, new pots and ideas, right?  I told you as 2014 ended I was becoming interested in not only east Asian celadon pottery (lt. green/blue/grey), again, but also trying to do a little of the carving some of those pots had. In my limited way.  Leaves.  My GOSH they did a pretty job of it, right?  I can try, a little.... these little cuties also happen to be available at my etsy shoppe....

ROUGH BEHAVIOR: new year, new dishes

Yeah, life with an energetic 21 pound beagle and a mellow 21 pound cat....
these pictures of the 2 of them clowning around is their usual dance just prior to their dinner.  I post these pics and worry that the CAT POLICE or DOG BUREAU will stop me and say "what is this insanity?".  Tell that to them!  The 2 of them like to play like its the dog park, a little interspecies tussle to work up an appetite.
Well, there have been casualties.  I average a new food dish for Penny every year, and a new water dish for Spike also.  Penny's breaks from play. Spikes water dish is, well, um, on the side of the bathtub. But every now and then there is a loud thumping crash because he pushes it into the bathtub to play with it.  It does not always survive.... this probably all seems pretty weird, but YOU probably have developed strange customs with your pets too, right?
Potters, or at least this potter, takes it all in stride and makes more...these 2 straight from the kiln to their mouths...

the six year old apprentice....

You will recall Angelika and her daughter visiting my Thanksgiving open studio...and staying a few hours.  Clay was involved.  Angelika's daughter is VERY chatty and creative and intelligent and tried out the wheel.  The family speaks German and English equally, and when her mother asked what she was throwing there was a long string of German, the last word of which was a very clear "BLOB".  She had thrown a blob, which is clear in any language. One of her four blobs turns out to be a wolverine, which was good for dipping in red glaze....
I also have some underglaze chalk and paints and the 2 of them were over yesterday decorating...Angelika herself draws stunningly wonderful dragons, and did so on some tiles...hope they come out and maybe next time I should give her a bowl or something to decorate...

winner!

http://www.potterymakinginfo.com/news/top-pottery-blogs-2014/#comment-288044

Eight and half years blogging on 3 blogs, thousands of pictures, thousands of posts and WHOA! Someone noticed!
I am a winner of the 2014 Top Pottery blogs! Number 9, yesssssssssssss :) Gave me the impetus to clean up a little here and ACTUALLY SHOW SOME POTTERY... lately, as the judge mentions, there has been a LOT of my life beyond pottery...but really, do I have to tell you, if this thing was all pottery it would be DULL AS DIRT.
Nice to see this:  you toss off a post every day and wonder if anybody notices, but even if they don't, I have so much fun doing it TRY TO STOP ME :)

I wrote a haiku yesterday while I was working on these things....

The mood is leafy
Foliage, in green on green,
Curvy pottery....

start the new year in the RED

Point number ONE:  AGAIN my new year resolution (brush the dog's teeth daily) goes FORGOTTEN.  GAH!  I should get in the habit of brushing my teeth then hers.

Point 2: You hear that people in Alabama will live in mansions and pay like 200 a year in property taxes.
I am not moving to Alabama, and New York has great schools, great roads, great public transportation, great health care and great taxes.
I wrote a haiku to celebrate what happens every January 2:

Property tax bill.
Happy New Year to you, too,
Township and county....

New Year's resolution scorecard: ZERO

The good and the bad:  day one of my New Year's resolution to brush the dog's teeth daily?  FORGOT.  Ooopsie!

Thursday was the first day in weeks I ONLY need to care for my own pets and not anybody else's.  My pet sitting, dog walking business has amusingly taken over my life.  GOOD.  It is so dang fun, and makes it easy to turn down pottery orders I don't want to do (see post 2 days ago about funeral urns). I dreamt about it last night, though, where I was at one dog's house anxiously waiting for another dog to show up...juggling those appointments... and trying to keep a LOT of people and pets happy.....

I was wondering a couple of weeks ago, not being a diarist or journal keeper, if I could write a haiku-a-day that describes the day in 3 pithy lines, with a drawing.  I DID do that on day one, I am proud to say, but it is a lewd haiku NSFW or viewing by small children.  And the doodle is still in progress.

I also sorted out my filofax.  You know what that low-tech item is, actual paper in a tiny notebook with rings?  This year I am adding a world map and NY city subway map that were given to me, also a huge wad of post-it notes.  My filofax calendar is a big mess of daily lists, notes, running, etc, etc.  I have been using this thing for 22 years (can you doodle with a pencil on a smart phone?  I think not....) and keep them stuffed in the back of my drawer.  I never look BACK at them.  My biographer can pull them out to find out when I went to the dentist in 2014 and also to see what pots I drew and planned to make and days when I had 7 dogs and cats to care for other than my own.... I was surprised to see that I gained a pound in 2014: from 121 last Jan. 1 to 122 now.
THE BIG filofax change is that the wife and I got matching black books 22 years ago but I gave her a cute pink one last year, so her old black one was sitting in my inbox.  I have now crammed so much junk into my filofax I had to split the year in 2--each calendar page being a day--so there is book one up to July and book 2 with the rest....good thing I have a lot of big pockets....

I DID also do the yearly cleanup.  I have (or HAD!) a towering pile in my inbox.  I go through it once a year, filing and sorting.  What a pile of SH!T!
Most went into the recycling, isn't that satifying?  I did find some nuggets of gold, like the dog's rabies cert. and an article about...myself....that I had forgotten.

AND FINALLY, the whole black eye peas and greens thing on New Year's Day for a year's good luck:  I made an Indian black eye peas curry dish, simmered all day, OUTstanding, with curried potato and spinach.

2015: NEW YEAR RESOLUTION

I always think big with resolutions.
For 2015:  I resolve to brush the dog's teeth everyday, like the vet says, not just leave the brush out and wrestle her to the ground once in awhile.
This is not an activity either of us enjoys.
  I'll let you know how it goes ;)

this is the end....

You won't see ME up till midnight, nosireebob...
2014 has been a good year here, hope it has been good for you too.  I am excited to fill out my running calendar's last box today.  It folds out of my filofax.  I run 3-5 miles  every morning, except when I don't, like yesterday it was so snowy and slick and I used the home gym only.  At the start of year I had a pedometer and wrote miles run and the day's paces, but the pedometer broke, so I started just writing in the miles run plus number of times I walked dogs.  I seem to have averaged 6+ runs out of 7 a week and about 4.5 dog walks a day.  I know, how do I find time for anything else? And WHO CARES?  Well, to tell the truth, I know some people who move only with great difficulty.  Running makes me feel alive, walking is how I meditate and think and I don't wanna stop until my ashes are in the urn.

SPEAKING of which, I had a request yesterday for a custom funeral urn. About 12 inches wide and 18 inches tall (A HUGE POT, like twice the size of a big cookie jar).  I remember reading before I went into pottery full-time "never take custom orders" and I politely told the person I was sorry they needed the urn, but they should find another potter.
The wife tells me "that thing would be so big, are they gonna put a whole FAMILY in there?" and I am like "I could crawl in there myself!".

On a more serious note, I made my first Thai papaya salad (click here) and OMFG it was good--I wanna try its sauce with a mango, or any other salad.  YES, yes I am eating a lot of tropical foods lately, the weather is cold......
happy new year and have fun!





 

Cuba LIBRE! VIVA la plantains!

I had a job one winter...(30 years ago!) in Miami.  Anybody living in the northeast can understand why (that white sh!t on the ground this morning is NOT a sandy beach).

Forget politics, Cuban culture is COOL.  Music, art, FOOD.  Last time I had plantains with black beans was...30 years ago! By coincidence, I have wanted them badly since normalized relations were announced, and I got a cookbook with a recipe to make them, HA! ****  Who knew you could make something SO easy and tasty at home??? Just slice this big, tough banana, toss in batter, fry, meanwhile simmering beans in spice, YUM :)



****
black beans:  drain and rinse a 15 oz can of black beans, saute some chopped garlic, add beans, spice, 1/2 cup + of water, boil and simmer, mashing some of the beans as they soften--- add water if needed, as it should be something that is not quite as liquid as soup

plantain fritters: batter: (double, triple, etc as needed--plantains are big and one is good for us 2 to split, with beans) mix 1/4 cup chickpea flour with a teas of olive oil and a dash of salt and 1/2 teas of corn or potato starch, then add 1/4 cup water--it is like pancake batter---slice a plantain and toss the pieces in the batter, stir to coat them all, fry them up in a pan until each is golden, a few minutes---

serve:  top plantains with beans, and maybe other stuff too, like sour cream or guacamole or cheese or salsa or like us, simply hot sauce :)

mugshot Monday.....and MORE!

I am realizing I haven't made anything in a week! Just before Christmas this experiment came outta the kiln, a more direct way of doodling on pots than using a brush.  I am mighty pleased.  You can see I doodle a lot, trying over and over to get what I want in a figure, like the arrow pointing to the pig in the porkpie hat.
SO, perhaps a lot of this in 2015!




(pottery and drawings by Gary Rith)