Hi S,
Do I remember correctly that you are Steve? Thanks for answering my request. I feel an urgency to come to the Mid-Atlantic Conference. It is a trip long deferred and an opportunity to meet you and many BD workers who have given my day-to-day existence a lot more meaning.
Allan has made the first offer--a scholarship for the registration fee for the conference. This is a big help to me and your interest is the next step.
I wish I could send you pictures of my animals. Long ago I snailmailed Allan a xerox page of four of my creatures. Maybe he will mail it to you or put it on the list. I do not have a scanner. Maybe I can get a neighbor to scan the page for me if Allan has lost it. I have kodachrome slides of my work that I send in to galleries or to be juried for shows and I had those four made into regular photos so I could xerox them.
I have only been doing this for about eight years. I had no idea I could work in three dimensions. I needed markers for the herbs I sell on the Farmer's Market. I had a friend, Kaaren, who was a 25 year potter and she offered to show me how to make some markers. This turned into a two-year apprenticeship. I never got past handbuilding! The first animal I made was a large rabbit. She thought it would collapse, then when it didn't, she thought it would explode in the kiln and it didn't. It sits in one of my iris beds. It snowed on it one year before I could take it in and I asked my husband to fetch it for me. He went about the task with a shovel and knocked an ear off. When I take this rabbit to shows, people always want to buy it, even with the apparent ear repair. I just have a feel for handbuilding and I know that all creatures are created equal.
How many pieces $250 would get you I don't know. The pieces are priced according to how good I think they are--the proportions of the piece, the glaze, everything. I sell the frogs to Mary Portera for $55 and she doubles the price to her customers. Some I sell for more. The turtles I usually sell her for $45-65 depending on the glaze and the size.
The work that I am doing on the road right-of-way takes most of my creative energy. I can't seem to pass up any opportunity to contribute to the whole body of spiritual-political work that needs to be done and this year I have hardly done any ceramics at all since the last Yuletide Show at the Spokane Art School. This year I couldn't even come up with slides of new pieces to send in for the jury for that show. I figured out that I could make two firings between now and the conference and that I would have to make three frogs a day this week. In the last two days, I have made one frog and it's sitting on the shelf on its newspaper in its plastic covering for the initial slow drying. If I try to fire it before it's completely dry, it will explode in the kiln.
I went to this week's planning meeting for the Quaker Quarterly Meeting in Ellensburg, Washington, September 27-9. The Sandpoint Meeting is in charge. I missed the last meeting because I wrecked our new little old '85 Toyota Tercel while trying to gently shake a spider off my arm at 35 mph on a curvy Rapid Lightning Road. The spider let itself off my arm with a thread and I was mesmerized for the instant that took and missed a curve and hit a couple of small trees! Three pickup trucks stopped and pulled me out of the deep ditch and one family who knew my husband took me home. The bumper luckily took most of the energy and was pushed in about a foot or so--enough to make a hole in the radiator. Even though I had on a seatbelt, I broke the windshield with my head. I was shaken up and only slightly injured and "Green," our friend, who lives in our extra cabin and tends our garden, took me to a rehearsal I had following the Quarterly Planning Meeting for the Human Rights benefit "Hausmusik." It's really exciting to live like this, but a little daunting at times. At this week's meeting, I learned that I had to prepare to give a 10 minute talk on Percy Schmeiser at the Plenary, lead the whole group in learning our theme song "Light One Candle," a song I do not know yet, work with my co-leader on the Worship Sharing Sub-committee to divide all the registrants into 12 groups of Worship Sharing, Worship Walking and Worship Discussion, and make the final decision on queries for Sunday. ("She Who Laughs, Lasts" is one of my ceramic plaques.)
What I'm trying to say to you, Steve, is that I don't know how many pieces I'm going to be able to make, dry, handpaint and fire before October 3. Whether I sell them to you or to Mary Portera is moot. I only have so much energy and time. I'll be 65 next Monday. I have been trying to dig up my iris beds for years and finally did the first one. It took four days of work to get it dug up, divided, all the grass, rose campion and sulphur cinqfoil out of it, compost and compost tea in, rhizomes replanted, and I was so tired I made a mess of an audition that I had in Spokane that night. My voice cracked. I'm getting energy from I know not where and I'm on track. Who knows how many frogs I can come up with? I have two good turtles already made--$65 and $45 each. I have a lovely rabbit with one ear up and one down on the wood stove now for its last drying, but it will be very hard to transport because of the ears. I have a mother coyote-golden retriever cross (my canines never quite look like what they are supposed to be) standing with nursing pups that I want $100 for. I have a sitting coyote male that is large for $75, two very small raw clay pieces, a little larger than fetishes--a bear mother and two cubs and a raccoon for $25 each.
Best wishes,
Merla
