Poem for Monday

Watercolors from my new show at Crowell's Veckatimest Calm (West and East)

September feels like the autumnal version of June. The beginning of the lovely season shift gets us buzzed to do it all. See every friend and share every friend's specialness. This weekend we had a friday cocktail party, a saturday play, three sunday art openings, a brunch to make and my art show to make final preparations for. Sunday morning we decided to just stop instead. The joy of doing nothing. I wouldn't be sharing this poem with you now if I hadn't stolen that lovely nothing. But this Naomi Shihab Nye's poem says it better.

The Art of Disappearing

When they say Don’t I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say we should get together
say why?

It’s not that you don’t love them any more.
You’re trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven’t seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don’t start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time. 

Naomi Shihab Nye

The poet reading this poem here

8.3.10 Color Swatch

kraft paper brown

haven't i seen you before?

on the back of a cereal box, maybe?

you are humble as can be but

you have snuck up on us, haven't you.

slipped in the back door of our

never green enough guilty conscience.

i've seen the towering temples

you've masterminded for yourself

at holy foods,

lining the shelves and end caps

with the collected DNA

of every scrap of fiber

that's come before you.

but i like you anyway

you are as comfortable as a

molasses cookie

and as crafty

as they come.
-Alyn Carlson

photo from madame alyn's bin 
great news- RI Monthly magazine just gave my hats 
a "Best of RI"award in the shopping category.

Chalkboard Paints That Aren't Old School

My art installation for the restaurant, Trafford is taking a turn. A florescent turn. I discovered Hudson Paint Company's line of wonderful chalkboard paints and haven't been able to stop. Using chalk board paint and scraps of wood I've been collecting from a local factory that makes large plywood cable spools, the cost of materials has been very little. Here are the first look at some of the elements I'm working with and piling up. The palette I found around the docks- oranges, blues, reds combined with some greens I love, the project is starting to take shape. I've been combing some vintage books about sea creatures, paying attention to fish tanks and what's usually below the water surface around here. Not sure where it will end up. Won't be another seafood restaurant in white and navy.

Fun Friday Design Crush

I have a serious design crush on Doshi Levien. Jonathon Levien and Nipa Doshi are London based designers who seem to work in every industrial design category. Shoes!? They've even designed shoes? I think they have a lot of fun. They remind me a little of Charles and Ray Eames. To get to their site go here.

A Duck Named Teal

Apparently the color is named after a duck. The common teal, a duck who's eyes are rimmed with the color, would love my basement right now. As you've heard on the news, New England is a float. My basement at midnight last night had 14 inches as we began to set up the sump pump we'd scrambled for all day. The waterfall down the street, with the 15 foot drop, doesn't fall. It's one gigantic river. I'm skimping on the posts this week but find more of the beloved color squares of Josef Albers very soothing this am. Little windows of it's going to be ok. Some tea and teal will get me up and going again.  

"Abstraction is real, probably more real than nature." - Josef Albers

A Few More Beauties From Local Pottery

Lisa Howard's Lickable Pottery

I know, such an odd impulse to have with pottery, but the first time I held one of Lisa's Local Pottery bowls in my hand that's what I wanted to do. Maybe it's their frosted cookie-ness. But they are delicious looking and each one totally hand built, painted blimpy dab at a time and pure joy to hold. She stopped by the other day with armfuls of tea bowls and tiny serving pieces to show me the new green she's fallen in love with. Her face is still a little brown from her month camping on St. John and her blue green eyes sparkled as she described the color of the water that inspired this new line. A deeper shade of seafoam, higher up on the Pantone page, this green got me too. She is a (mostly self-taught) potter working out of studio and gallery, Local Pottery, that she opened in Pembroke, MA in 1996.  She makes pots, teaches classes and represents the work of 20 or so other fine craftspeople.  Lisa lives in the pretty little seaside town of Scituate, MA where she can garden fanatically and try to ride her mountain bike without crashing. 

Can you tell me about your latest body of work?
I make functional pottery.  Every piece is different.  I don't measure for consistent sizing or make multiples.  Making pots has to feel like exploring.  I like seeing all the different sizes and patterns piled together.  It feels abundant-like looking at all the goodies in a French bakery.  Right now, I'm really into this new green that I'm using and also some fairly dense patterning.
  
What inspires you the most lately?
Where I live is so beautiful, it would be hard not to be inspired.  Mornings, I watch the sunrise over the harbor.  The color and feel of any given morning can be familiar but never exactly the same as another.  I look at the marsh, plants, birds, boats, trees.  I think about the way things grow and change and then make patterns that are visual metaphors or reminders. 

What was your first memory?
Growing up, we had this big old orange long-haired cat named Brandy.  I loved that cat. 

Can you describe the best thing you saw on your last walk?
That Spring is here!  The trees are budding and from a distance look covered in reddish frizz.  The lichen looks electric against it.  It's my favorite time of year. 

What are five things that would happen in the perfect day of work for you?
It all starts with getting up early enough to watch the sun come up and read for an hour or so while I drink my coffee.  It gets me in the right place-relaxed but fully awake and not rushed.  Then once I am at the shop, I switch around public radio and music while I trim pots and start decorating.  I especially love the wet parts of ceramic process.  All my color is applied to surfaces that are what American potters call leather hard.  (The Brits call it "cheese-hard" which I actually think is a better description).  A really good, flowy work day has a lot of decorating in it.  It's pretty rhythmic and I can bounce between a number of pieces.   Sometimes I bring things outside to work on. I can tend my plants when I need to stand up and stretch.   Most days, customers and friends are around, too.  It would be no fun potting in a vacuum. 

Can you describe the best pair of shoes you've ever owned?
I'm wearing them!  Black cherry leather  Troentorp closed-back clogs.  The leather is hand-nailed to the wooden part your foot is on.  The very bottom is rubber-they sound great when I walk. 

What are you doing this weekend? (March 28, 29)
March 27-29:  My shop is open on Saturday, so my weekend is Sunday-Monday.  I'll plant the rest of my pansies (Delta Blue with Blotch, mostly), take out the mountain bike.  I have a lunch date with an old friend and my dad will be 79 on on Tuesday, so I'm sure we'll celebrate that, too. 

Some Little Bites of Pink for Friday

For those of us who struggle with proportion, some decadence for the weekend just the right size. Little cuties from hey cupcake, sprinkles, karascupcakes, and hellocupcakeonline.

Idea Boards for Trafford

Imperfect Present

I gave myself a nice gift this holiday. I got to sit and make pomanders any time I wanted with no guilt. Poking dried cloves into plump oranges was heaven. Then when I gave them to friends it was a gift all over again. Such a simple thing to connect me to my senses and bring joy to my peeps. These are so easy I just winged which is why the lovely imperfection of mold appears on one of mine. I'm going to make some with Levi this weekend, my 6 year old grandson. If you don't want the mold click here for real directions. Your fingertips will smell so nice for hours.

"Just perfect"
-Marth Stewart
The "P" word. It has followed me all my life and here's the big confession- I really thought into my late 20's, somewhere down deep, it should be sought after and could possibly be obtained. I'm a graphic designer and my work is about moving things tiny itty moves to left or right. So it's a hard one to let go of "being right" personally when professionally I spend so much time making things "look right" Then about 10 years ago I decide to take it out of my vocabulary completely. I found if I don't say it it is less likely I'll strive for it. But what replaces it? "Oh that looks so... complete on you?" "Wow that is the most whole color with your eyes". "I found the most incredibly beautiful on the planet art today on etsy?" Makes you stop and think doesn't it? Perfection is hard to replace isn't it? I love that Japan elevates the mending of broken ceramics to an art form called kintsugi. Cracks in broken pottery are carefully mended with lacquer and fine gold powder. The tea-ceremony embraces the beauty of imperfection. I picked up a book about Wabi Sabi 10 years ago and fell in love with the concept but when I went to describe it to friends it was hard to find the right words to give it justice. Got lost in Americano world. I'm getting better.  Barbara Bloom's show on being broken helped. Mary Oliver helps with her poem Wild Geese. Any poem that starts with- "You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees" makes me stop. So rather than resolutions for the year I like the idea of observing my relationship with a word. A word I can include in my daily conversations and thinking more often. The "I" word. Imperfection. "That looks just so... imperfect on you".

There's scraps of paper, twine and sparkly things piling up on my dining room table. Not a lot of time to chat but thought I'd share some pretty packaging I love to do. I stitch together ephemera scraps, tissue paper from last year, and what ever else is floating around. Just has to be recycled. Cleans out the paper bin too.

Some of the feathers I've collected through the years. I might try some quill making this winter.

“World peace through better color”

-Alyn Carlson

That’s one of the things I put on my business cards and most people seem to get it. I’ve watched so many of my clients and friends walk into my studio or home and break out in a grin. They lovingly run their fingertips over colored pencils, hold a paint tube in an achy palm, and with their eyes caress swatches of color aid paper. They usually give me a happy glazed look and say something like “You must be so happy working with all this color.” Actually I am.

It was a rumble in my stomach for years. I took a 20 year break from making personal work and craved color so much it just started bubbling up in all my design. I found when I started a project the first thing I did was open the pantone swatch book and listen for direction. When the damm broke and I started making personal work again about 8 years ago, I floated around with an expression on my face similar to the Dalai Lama’s. So why do we walk around starving ourselves? Pick the softest palest taupe and avoid the sexy tomatoe bisque? Afraid? Of what?

One of my favorite rants on that subject is by David Batchelor in his slim little hot pink book, Chromophobia. The more western our thinking is, the more urban we get, the farther away from intense color we find ourselves. Is color vulgar, dirty, primitive? Why should we bother to even consider this right now with all this economic malaise? Shouldn’t we lay low and keep our heads down, no changes, stay as beige as possible, and make ourselves as quiet and small as we can?

Because color = joy. What I love and am moved by every day, abstract expressionist Charles Seliger’s Ways of Nature, my little spring green Roseberry Winn vase, and even my carved bakelite bangles, feed me. I know responsible austerity is wise right now but so is smiling every day.

Hey my demi god, Milton Glaser puts it so well “If you like Mozart and I like Mozart we really have something in common. So the likelihood of us killing each other has been diminished.”

Don’t you just love the color yellow?

As an actor, I find it helpful to do a little color study of the character I'm working on to help articulate who they are. My dear friend, director, and mentor, Pat Hegnauer got me started on this practice 10 years ago. We've collaborated often with these images, paired with her poetry. Here are a few I've created through the years- Stephanie from Tom Kepinski's Duet for One, Flora from Tennessee Williams 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, Lady Ninjo from Caryl Churchill's Top Girls, Dull Gret from Caryl Churchill's Top Girls, Mrs. Malaprop from Sheridan's The Rivals, Pope Joan from Caryl Churchill's Top Girls, Constance from Shakespeare's King John, Sister Angelita from Ethan Phillips' Penguin Blues, and the fabulous Molly Bloom from James Joyce and Sheila Walshes' Molly and James.