SACRED SHARDS: Completely Glazed Over

Look what the kiln elves did overnight! Pretty colors!

Some sale-able items for this summer's craft shows. A few gifts. Lots of experimental stuff (mugs, etc.). And a couple of keepers.

Batter bowl (upper right), Peace Dove ornaments, Word Wise bowl with hearts (peeking from under shelf), ... and hiding on the bottom shelf where I can't see them, surprises!

Going now to unload the kiln and see what I've got!

SACRED SHARDS: Glazing Over

The little kiln that could. She's an L&L kiln. Needs a name. I'll call her Lana, as in Lana Lang. Powered by meteor rocks.

Finished glazing and loading this afternoon. Firing initiated at about 3:45 PM.

Here's what's inside. There's another layer below the one visible at on the lower right.

And here's what it looked like just a little while ago, glowing amiably in the darkness of the basement. Alien Power Source at work.

Temperature read-out on its way up, with the glow under the kiln lid showing through.

The glow under the lid and between the kiln's sections projects onto the basement walls in stripes of yellowish orange, but my camera's shutter speed doesn't go slow enough to capture this.

The picture above was taken over an hour ago. By now, it's probably reached Cone 5 and is on it's way back down.

I'll be able to open it tomorrow. It's always like opening a surprise package.

PREPARATION: Clearing Clutter

Clearing away clutter provides the physical and mental space to spark the next creative explosion.

SACRED SHARDS: Body Wisdom Displayed

My first ever torso sculpture, "Body Wisdom" above, was fired in the first load in my new kiln.

Last Saturday morning I put "Body Wisdom" into the Hygienic Art Gallery's thirtieth annual Salon des Independants Show. This is a sort of art free-for-all whose motto is "No Judge, No Jury, No Fees, No Censorship." What better place to break some rules and break new artistic ground for myself.

It was the first time I'd shown my work simply to make a statement, as opposed to displaying work with potential customers in mind.

I designed a display card using Photoshop to place with the sculpture.

The display card repeats the words encircling the top and bottom of the vessel. Between these it adds words taken from my song "El Dia de los Muertos" for a reflection on the relationship between body and spirit.

Beneath the title the card reads:

STRENGTH WISDOM PATIENCE

Doctors diagnose

with speculum and stethoscope

take blood in vials

make patient files

Look within!

I'm more than these.

BALANCE PASSION HEALING JOY

"El Dia de los Muertos" was written several years ago, but I feel the linking of its sentiments to an earthen vessel made by hand just a few months ago to be grounding, healing, hopeful. The words in bold type stand guard between my own physical vessel of Self and the practiced guesswork of MDs.

Other elements of the display are equally emblematic.

The pink scarf is wrapped around the display box as an expression of solidarity with women engaged in the fight against breast cancer. By extension, it is also symbolic of the power of a caring embrace to ease human physical suffering.

[Lest some worry about my health, let me say that I'm generally in good repair.]

The brown wooden box the sculpture rests upon represents the sturdy structure of medical knowledge, a structure left empty inside to reflect the medical community's traditional neglect of the things beyond the physical.

We are not simply body or spirit. We are both. We are an integrated whole.

Health and illness are equally mysterious.

I am more than these.

We each are.

Look within!

(c)2009 Kay Pere ~ Effusive Muse Publishing

Sharpie Luggage

2 hours to wait in an airport + 1 silver sharpie marker + 1 cheap carry on bag = TADA! Art on Wheels

Would have done more but the sharpie was already mostly used up and ran out of ink. Will pack a fresh one for next time.

As it was, I so focused on what I was doing that I nearly missed the boarding call for my plane.

While I worked (played), the public address system intoned repeatedly:

"Attention airline passengers. Increased security measures require that all passengers maintain close personal contact with their items at all times. Unattended items will be promptly removed by law enforcement personnel. Additionally, report all suspicious items or activities immediately to airport personnel. Your safety is our priority."

Close personal contact with my items? Hmmm.

Though I certainly was attentive to my carry-on bag, did this qualify as a suspicious activity?

Got some funny looks as I sat on the floor scribbling on my bag, but no one reported me.

(c)2009 Kay Pere ~ Effusive Muse Publishing

ECO ACTION: Sustainable Happiness

The pursuit of happiness has been transformed into the pursuit of consumer goods and energy hungry lifestyles that damage our planet.

Visit HERE to browse a large selection of articles about pursuing lasting happiness while consuming fewer resources and reducing your environmental impact.

It's a lot more fun than it sounds!

I hear the politicians talk a lot about "getting our economy moving again." Does a "healthy economy" automatically mean, by definition, that they expect us to resume our old habits of consumption? If so, we need to rewrite the definitions. We need a new vision.

We've grown used to a world bulked up on the steroids of excess consumption. Like a weight lifter who's steroid built muscles are damaging his liver and heart, we can't expect to keep this up over the long term.

Someone needs to rewrite the economics textbooks and redefine the tools by which we measure the health of our economy to take into account the long view of things.

I wonder: Can we find a way to shifting our world economy and our individual lives toward a more sustainable and equitable model?

What would that look like?

QUOTES: Done with Great Things

"I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride."

~ William James