Wednesday, May 22, 2013

New Works: Lions, Flamingos and Bears, Oh My!

Crunch time for the upcoming NIADA Conference; fly time in literally 30 days; So excited! Lots to share, but my To-Do List is still nerve-wrackingly long, so i'll just post a few pix for now and leave the storytelling for the weekend. Over the last few months of preparing my class notes for the NIADA Dollmaking School, i've been navigating the ticklish business of breaking down decades of largely intuitive aesthetic decisions and unquestioned fine-motor skills into meaningful information that i may share with my students. The result has yielded some unexpected epiphanies that border on something akin to, "Teacher, Study Thyself." [More on that in the next post, in which i discovered my Inner Student asking the question, "What do you do when you want to sculpt a Bear and your Muse won't stop singing in Lion-ese?]

Without further ado, a group photo of my latest kiln-bounty after MIXing the luscious black Cassius Basaltic Stoneware with its closest ceramic compatibility cousin, Arctic White Stoneware (both available through Mid-South Ceramic Supply) and then adding dry pigment stains INTO the clay bodies. Im getting a little giddy over the results. P.S.: there are a few new listings in my Etsy shop from this troup as i resist the temptation to keep them all and make them into finished dolls. But there are MORE coming, and kits to assemble, and my Gallery Night piece to decide on, etc.