last day of the show! 30 percent off!!!!!!!!!!!!!

People of a certain age (my age, actually) tell you sometimes at fairs "lovely work, but I don't need anything, I am trying to REDUCE my stuff".
I understand that, but obviously I need a lot of people who buy my stuff anyway, as gifts for others, right?
I don't need anything either, really, but I DID need this elephant tee handprinted by Susan Rollings and she DID need that fine elephant mug.  We are across from each other at this show which she helped organize and I was staring with great attention at the little toddler tee with elephants on it and THANK GOODNESS there was one in my size :)

Final day and I am having a 30 percent off sale today:  all the pots you see here, 30 percent off today, c'mon down! Space at Greenstar, Ithaca, NY 10-6 :)

hohohohoho and then some....

Why YES, I doodle some....mostly for the sake of a comic for my wife's lunchbox everyday, but sometimes for YOU too, like these Santa candle holders! C'mon down and see us today and tomorrow 10-6, Space at Greenstar, Ithaca!

oh man, getting to the busiest of the busiest, sort of....

You get to December 24th and you relax in a pile of exhaustion:  orders filled, bank acct (hopefully!) filled (so you can pay the New Year's property tax bill) and belly filled.  Saturday and Sunday I am at the final fair of the year for me, the last of 4 weekend events in a row (which is GOOD PLANNING, because I never had to unpack, but I am flippin' tired) BUT it is now too late for anybody to ask for a ________ made and fired and shipped by Christmas.  Do you know what a relief that is?  I LOVE getting orders all year long, but there is a special kind of ANXIETY attack that comes with special orders given after Thanksgiving:  you have to make what they want, glaze and fire it and ship before it is too late (and it is now too late).

The elephant bowl here was a special order from somebody who had seen one like it on my webpage last week and wanted one.  No probs, says I:  at dawn Saturday I threw the bowl, then went out to the craft fair.  Sunday morning I was firing a group of dry items (my last orders, etc) and so I trimmed the bowl and added the elephants then PUT THE TOTALLY WET pot in the kiln to be slow roasted all day, then up to 1800 degrees in the evening (do you know how insane it is to put a wet pot into a kiln? I had no choice but to try, it was the last chance to get a special order made, fired and shipped!).  WELL, the pot did not explode, was glazed and fired and is PERFECT (and perfectly cute) and on its way to its new owner.

NOW, aside from a few other orders of  items to ship, and tomorrow's HUGE craft fair (Little Red Wagon, 10-6 Sat-Sun, Space at Green Star, Ithaca!), I can concentrate on..........MAKING WHAT I WANT.

This seems to happen every year.  I get to the Christmas press and the ideas are pinging around in my head and then once the Christmas rush ends I can kick back and have fun and begin to explore what I want to make in the new year...last year, well, still this year, it was flowers and plants and far-eastern styles...this year will extend that. I also feel like this:

I turn 50 in 2016.  I am enormously healthy now but my 40s have had some weird health situations, (now managed) such as celiac and glaucoma.  I see what I need to see perfectly well and have not lost much vision, but I am feeling like I don't give a flying fart if somebody wants me to make a dozen widgets, life is too dang short to waste doing what other people think I should do....I need to follow the muse...

The cups below show that:  I have been fiddling with a new celadon glaze and holy CATS it looks great.

the studio potter VS ANYTHING that is not handmade...

Can you tell me which of these pictures of pitchers is CRAP and which is entirely handmade by Gary, from clay to pitcher form to painted flowers?

(painting flowers Monday on those vases which were fired to 2200 degrees Tuesday and now you see it Thursday)

People really have no idea what we do.  Let me define a couple of things, according to my understanding:

studio potter or simply POTTER: we design and decorate and fire and sell the pot, in short, we do EVERYTHING from clay to finished piece (I am so PROUD to be a studio potter)

sculptor:  forms clay into figures or shapes by hand (I am so proud of being a sculptor, too!)

ceramist:  I don't know where the f!!k this word came from in recent years, but it is some kind of fancy new age term for somebody who works in clay (sculptor or potter)--it is a term for people who think it is embarrassing or lowbrow to be a POTTER

ceramic designer: draws a picture of a vase in NY city and has a factory in China produce it by workers making 2 dollars a day, a ceramic designer might just be a millionaire....

crap:  crap is the moldmade stuff that little kids paint glaze on at birthday parties, it is also the vast majority of stuff made by ceramic designers and factories

China: as in, fancy clay pieces designed by a ceramic designer and made in a factory--some of it may look nice, but it is still mostly crap

"pottery": my quotes--there is a lot of stuff out there that people call pottery, but it is, in fact, factory made and ceramic designer produced, and MOST PEOPLE can't seem to tell the difference between what I do and what is made in a factory, GAWDAMMIT!

It must be a failure of the school systems.
The questions I get at fairs "you made this yourself?" "do you use molds?" "do you paint on the decoration or just print the patterns?" COULD drive you nuts, but actually, it is a chance to politely explain what I do, which surprises people.  They have a lot of assumptions, and with a pleasant chat I can educate most people about what a potter does....

beagles and tigers and elephants and piggies OH MY

It is difficult to believe, but Penny and Spike, dog and cat, ARE this close.  They play together, cuddle together, gossip together, sleep together.

Speaking of pigs, Meesh was blogging the other day about firing up some last piggy bank orders.  I made my first piggy banks in 1989 and they sold like hot cakes then and now.... I am not bored with them, but I once wholesaled them by the dozens, and let's just say that I make a greater variety of pots these days.
ANYWAY, Monday I shipped off what I figured was the last piggy bank of 2015, yippee! Kinda nice to sell out.  BUT YESTERDAY I had a paid order for a piggy from etsy (I should really pay more attn. to what I am doing over at etsy, note to self:  New Year resolution, pay more attn. to etsy).  I went and poked around and behind some mugs, there was indeed, ONE FORGOTTEN, lonely piggy bank.
This truly last piggy of 2015 went to a woman whose story goes like this (and I hope she is not reading this!):  in September I got an order for 6 piggies.  The woman wanted them as gifts to her bridesmaids, what a sweetie!  There had been a pleasant exchange of emails at the time, I don't think my pigs have ever been bridesmaid gifts.  ANYWAY, yesterday's truly last pig was purchased by her husband (2 months!) for her birthday, which is next week "she really loves your work, but she gave all the pigs away and she doesn't have one, so I wanted to surprise her!" he tells me.  Awesome :)

The wagon?  First:  let us note that there is NO SNOW out there.  I heard that Buffalo, just down the road, has set a record for LACK of snow--weather records say this is the first time they have ever gone into December without snow.  I have to tell you, 40s-60s for 2 weeks in December is pretty darn rare here, we have flowering plants!

ANYWAY, this weekend is the Little Red Wagon Show downtown, a very big event.  The wagon thing is because some vendors wander around with wagons, selling whatever.  I have this tiny wagon, which brings me good luck when I use it as a display in my shows :)

how to commit a felony, or the craziest dogsitting day.....

This was going to be a post about decorating pots by hand....that will wait for another day.

You know Yogi is a dog I babysit, and he is my awesome studio companion  while his family is away.  Yesterday he helped me glaze a boatload of pots, make dinner, walk to the post office, play with my dog and cat, he is a big part of this family.  He was my FIRST dogsitting gig, starting in early December 3 years ago when he was a puppy and I love him like my own dog.

He was the first, and as you know, nice people keep asking me to care for their pets too.  Yesterday I walked one and got back to their house and it all turned into a nightmare.  But the best thing about this nightmare (and the next one!) is that even though I wanted to freak out, I took care of things and ended the day with a smile, feeling like a million bucks.

SO, I get back to their house and...no key.  Where did I put it?  I check my many pockets...no key...we REDO our walk, NO KEY on the sidewalk!  I figure I might have to take that dog home to my house...but you know how you hear you can pick a lock with a credit card.  YOU CAN.  It is ridiculously easy.  I got an old red cross card of mine out of the car and in less than 5 seconds popped the lock and was in the house with the dog (note to self:  USE THE DEADBOLT!).

On the way home, you know those tiny pockets jeans have, the watch pocket?  I have never put anything into one of those.  Yeah.  I had slipped the key in there by accident..... I was relieved, no harm done, and now I know how to burgle a house!

OK, so on to the next dog of the lunchtime hour....I go into the house and it is a little dark and I walk through a LAKE OF SH!T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Not a little pond, a GREAT lake of sh!t. I rid myself of socks, find the paper towels and windex and a bag and get the mess up...luckily on tile, not the carpet.

There are crumbs on the floor.

There is a savaged gingerbread house on the table.

The dog had gotten into the gingerbread and lived to tell the tale.... anyway, I called the family and said I would care for the dog as usual, but they MIGHT WANT TO COME HOME SOONER rather than later.....

the day of rest before the final push....

It is a little hard to believe, unless you are a retailer, how dang BUSY this time of year is...I have to get one last load of stuff glaze fired before next weekend's biggest fair of the year (for me), plus orders made and shipped, stock some more store shelves, and OF COURSE all my good friends need me to care for their dogs this week.

I got a pile of work done early Sunday then set the to-do list aside.  Lately I have been doing a lot of my week's baking Sunday afternoon, which does not FEEL like work.  (I bake and prepare all our food, I have too many food problems otherwise, as you know) So, I sat there with dog and cat, slothful in the sun coming in the window, reading and baking, baking and reading...I am back on the polar express train today.....

the day after....

SO, like I said, was at the Ellis Hollow fair yesterday which went very well....and I got a tee with a flying cow on it!  Ellis Hollow is this tiny village that lives large on the other side of Mt. Pleasant from us...very nearby, but what a place, so much community spirit.  EVERY person who walked in the door is a friend :)

SO, of the 4 weekends in a row I am tied up in events, next week is the last and biggest.  I have finished the soup, salad and appetizer, next week main course and dessert.

In other news, I am hoping to make some last minute candle holders featuring Santa and the test tile, as you see here, looks pretty good, so it is all systems GO.

doodling them.....

(new elephant mugs drying over the heater...I was realizing yesterday that as complicated as they are, I have made so many I was just sitting there listening to the radio and thinking of, oh, I dunno, lunch, shopping, whirled peas, just making elephant mugs on auto-pilot)

You will recall my mom and dad visited a week ago. When they left I was inspired to draw them and sought out the sketchpad and began drawing, also me, Santa, the dog, etc.  Just this sort of simple curvy style of drawing, and I really get a kick out of it.

You see them on the mug below left...NO, it is does not exactly look like them (they read this blog "morning mom and dad!") but the dude floating upside down with glasses, upper left, is me :)
I didn't know how this doodle would look on a mug (turned out flippin' AWESOME) so I only made one, and it was packed on top of a box going out to the Ellis Hollow Art Fair today.  WELL, as you can see below it was unpacked and filled and is at my side now....

oooooooooooh purple and green, oooooooh!

(new mugs by Gary Rith)
Pretty groovy, isn't it, how this green and purple combine?  Like outer SPACE!

purple and green and glaucoma again...

Thanks for your kind words yesterday, when I wrote about glaucoma and me.  Again, I am very lucky: under good treatment with little damage at this point.
But I just had an awful dream:  the treatments continue to fail and the damage gets very bad, my sight very limited, and the dream is about the realization that  I am not gonna get any vision back, my sight is fading away.  UGH.  What a flippin' nightmare. But then I had an interesting dream where I was learning how to graft branches on a cherry tree, to grow abundant cherries :)

OK then, back to the pottery blog:  I had a young visitor to my October open house who messed around on the wheel with great delight, making herself a bowl.  She returned last week to glaze:  "I want to make it purple and green!" she tells me (which happened to be the color or her curly hair--I told her grandfather, a friend of mine who was helping her out, "don't you just wish you could dye your hair purple and green like a ten year old girl?" and he replied "you could, what's stopping you????").

ANYWAY, so I needed to do some glazing too, and rather than just green went for purple and green too, I love that color combo! Like iris, or eggplant! And guess what?  I get a new bottle of eye medicine to try yesterday, and it too is purple and green...

the artist with glaucoma

I debated whether I wanted to write this or not.
Am I being whiny, wimpy, weak by sharing this or does it help me work out what is going on?
I am finding that talking it out helps a person calm down.  And its my blog.  About me and what I am doing. This is no plea for sympathy, just laying it out there....

Everybody has health issues of one kind or another. We are human, destined to fall apart and die one day.  Just look at your old car:  the worn out parts, the rust, that is us.

But still.  If you told me "colonoscopy with a side dish of root canal"  I wouldn't be too concerned, but my nightmare scenario is "going blind" or "surgery on your eyes".  SURGERY and EYES together makes me pretty damn anxious.

I mentioned here a few years ago the eye doctor had found that I was in the early stages of glaucoma.  It has  progressed, gotten worse, it has not responded to medication.  The medication dose was doubled:  absolutely no effect. I had a checkup yesterday thinking things must be under control, but the doctor wanted me to book surgery right away. I explained my reluctance to SURGERY ON MY EYES, saying I prefer at this stage to see what other medication options we could try.  So, he is trying another medication, doubling its dose, and if that doesn't work, he would double that, but if that doesn't work, it would be surgery. (glaucoma has no cure, medication and surgery attempt to slow the progress and damage)

I tell myself that the only thing worse than not having surgery is the vision loss and blindness that glaucoma brings.  That gets my attention.  And before the knives come out, there is a low-impact laser option they can try.  I just hate the idea of anybody poking sh!t at my eye, I mean hell, one slip of the surgeon's finger and SQUOOSH! there goes an eye....  such is my anxiety.

The upside of surgery is a break from medicine for a few years.  It is strong stuff.  It has been changing the color of my eyes from hazel to dark brown.  It gave me long eyelashes.  And a glaucoma side effect is night blindness and light sensitivity, and I think surgery can ease that.

Anyway.  I am lucky in a number of ways:  in America very few people go blind with glaucoma these days. I have access to excellent treatment.  And thanks to research, treatment options get better every decade, and as the doctor said cheerfully "you havn't lost much vision yet".  Because nothing is more precious to me than sight....


(mugs by Gary Rith)
 

desperately seeking celadon....

Well, maybe not desperate.
I have been noodling around with pretty celadon glaze recipes for months...years even!  (celadon is a pale green/blue/grey color---I like them in the pale green range)
Recently I was down to 2 that were OK.  I didn't think I had anything to lose, so I combined them 50/50 to see what would happen, and OH GOSH! A good example of 2 x 2 = 75!
Glaze chemistry can be magic....this one is a keeper, I think....

the roly poly Santa Christmas card

I am sending very few Christmas cards.  My mom and dad visited Saturday, as you saw, and in their aftermath I rooted around and came up with some blank cards and envelopes, and began doodling roly poly Santas and penguins.  The idea started as a paper cutout, then as a drawing with colored pencil until I had the VERY efficient idea of drawing it in marker, one stop shopping! That way each Christmas card is handmade in a few minutes, not hours.....

In other news, the wife is my taste tester and got the 13th devil's food cupcake and a cappucino for her work Sunday.  She liked it so much, she told me to get its photo....

beginning to look a lot like....

Quakers believe that no day is more sacred than another, as I have said before, BUT, c'mon, we are not totally without fun and we live entirely in the world.
But in this household, compared to some Americans, our decorating is pretty simple:  the Christmas Snoopies come out, the Christmas lights went up several years ago, and, well, never came down, and the hearts.....

It was the best November open studio weekend I have ever had. So many nice friends came over, including my mom and dad....Penny goes nuts for them, as you can see.....

homeless....

Was it the photo of a Syrian mother by traintracks in Greece sheltering her children with a plastic tarp that made me dream it?  I don't know  of many things more miserable than that image, people cold and wet, far from home, trying to have hope and find a better life.  Or a life free from danger, anyway. They must be fleeing something terrible (well, the war in Syria, obviously) to face such an uncertain fate in another country.

Anyway, my dream just now featured the wife and I living and working in NY city, and we were happy.  BUT we lived in a tent and kept our food in a cooler...the working poor who can't afford rent.  We were so happy together, but it was getting cold and winter was coming and a real feeling of worry and dread was settling in. I woke up pretty happy to be warm, dry, in my house, whew.

In other news, this is my blue hound double dish for condiments! Cute, eh?

little carved cat meets CAT

Thanksgiving day was busy....I only got a few new pieces done, with a little cleaning and some dog and cat babysitting.  Today is open studio here...a very small and quiet thing, really, as I only invite friends and customers, NOT the public as a whole.  THAT makes me nervous (vanloads of troubled kids from the reform school, for example...yes! really!) What  I like about a quiet open studio is getting to chat with the visitors, explaining and SHOWING what I am working on, and getting a LOT done.

YOU could visit my etsy shoppe and pretend you are at my open studio! Open up your wallet and spend freely!

Had wild dreams last night:  in one, we had a super intelligent rabbit for a pet named Jameson, or simply Jamie.  He could talk.  He looked like a bunny, but was really a person trapped in a bunny body, and we had discovered it.  In another dream, I had 2 girls asking me out to prom when REALLY  I wanted to go out with somebody else entirely and I was trying to be polite to all.....ah...to be a popular high school boy, who knew?

In other news, I got this little cat sculpture out of the kiln and showed it to the cat who tasted it and dumped it on the dog's head.....