We were going to wash the duvet yesterday but got caught up at the river looking at mushrooms and picking off ticks and listening to the water run through rocks. Tim brought his laptop and said that most laundromats had wi-fi these days. As soon as he said that, we looked at each other and laughed because the true fact about Tim is that probably the last time he was at a laundromat was 15 years ago in Oklahoma. And he left the laundry there. Which landed us at the panhandle of Texas at 3am because we had to turn back and get it.

Even though I wore a white shirt and cream colored pants, I was all covered up in darkness today. It was all I could do to get in the truck and move on down the road and fake like I was checking things off my list. It rained a little bit and cooled things off on my way. For real I was going to Henryk’s. He cured me with hydrangeas, roses, tea, and dinner.

Petal Salve.

I was heading back from taking Marsha to Lunch after some more wood fun. We filled up Danny again:

Home sweet home

Actually we could have fit more wood in, but the reachable boards got too long- it’s like Amazon-pick-up-sticks. The ladies were up for the task, but Danny- not so much. Instead, I have grand plans that have to do with me and Marsha going back, setting up a quick trick board stack and then calling my magic man Timmy to come out there with the chain saw.

We tried to take a picture of us and the stack

Where’s the wood?

We couldn’t seem to get a picture of us plus wood so Marsha had the idea for us to lay on it which I thought was a good one since I ran out of the house this morn with out my breakfast.

Beauty stack.

Nice day’s work.

My little brother Pete came for a visit so I took him to my new studio. He liked to pretend that he was drinking from one of my mugs.

Mmmmmm black coffee with lots of sugar

Yesterday, Pete and I bought some potatoes and then wrestled ourselves through the back grass to get to the pond to catch dinner. We hadn’t been out there for a while and he was worried that there wouldn’t be any thing left because the last time we were there the muskrats had tore up the dam so bad that the water was leaking through. But pond there was, so he chucked out the spinner bait and I worked a purple worm.

I learned a long time ago that a rubber purple worm is my friend. Like when I was 7 and caught a 5# bass at Indian Princesses with my dad. I wasn’t to much into the princess business, too many fake crafts with coffee cans and plastic string. But I did like bumming around with my dad. And going camping. And drawing ferns on pieces of wood. And playing hand games with my best friend Melissa when it was completely safe to ride across the state in the back of the station wagon with tons of blankies and the seats put down flat.

And the time that Tim and Jolene and I were working some silvery purple worms at Merchants Mill Pond and yanking up all kinds of Bass. Tim thought it would be cute to let the worm sink way down to the bottom. And that’s when the monster bowfin rocked our canoe and suddenly water was every where and I went into hysterics with laughter.  And we didn’t have our boy child Jonas to rescue us from the jaws of death. Timmy managed to get the sucker back in the water and I saved the camera from getting dumped into the depths of the black water. We were all wet.

Fishing cures my brother of all kinds of things so he likes to make a regular habit of it. That’s mostly why he lives on the coast. Plus, I think those negative ions cure him too.

Pete likes to say “pitcher” when he’s talking about a picture. So I said: TAKE A PITCHER OF ME WITH THESE TWO NICE BASS THAT WE’RE FIXIN’ TO EAT! We each kept one since nobody else was eating.

Nice sunset.

On the way home, we talked about which was worse poison ivy or ticks. I said poison ivy. And Pete reminded me about the last time that he and Jonas went to the pond they found some cavernous hole at the bottom of a fallen tree and Pete stuck his head in to take a look and realized when his head was in there that that’s not a real clever thing to do. Sticking your head way in some dark hole in the ground. When it’s dark out. And Jonas watched him do it and thought the same thing. We also talked about how when you want to cross the street on foot in California you can get in big trouble if you try to wait for a car to go first. The old ladies get real mad if you wave them on. Like your breaking THE LAW.  When we got to the field I said: You’re not in California any more Buddy.

Timmy took a pitcher of us eating our dinner. Pete fillet the fish while I cooked the potatoes.

Mmmmmm Chowder in the night.

Time to recreate MOTHER.

It seems like she’s gone somewhere. Gone off to do her own thing while letting the rugrats destroy the joint until they figure out that, well, uh, where’s dinner? Isn’t it late? Where’s mom? Did you see her? I think she left.

But there’s lots of clues to where she may be.

I think the person who created this knew where Mother was.

Venus of Moravany

Berkeley who made my new pants knows where she is.

Fancy Tree Batik

And Tom who made this knows where she is.

Mmmmmm. Paul’s picture of Green things.

And Henryk knows where she is

“Blessing the Eno”- 20″ x 24″- Henryk Fantazos

And since I’m on the subject, I’ve been thinking about dirt a lot too.

Where’s the DIRT!?

This ultra clean stuff is driving me crazy. It’s time to bring back dirt. It’s the new black I’m sure. Yes please! Dirty feet. Specks of dirt on the car floor, in the kitchen, ON THE CLOTHES!

I can say DIRT! or BUG! and folks run screaming.

The ground is our friend Folks.

Someone told me recently that his wife can’t live in the country for all the sounds outside. She can’t sleep with the racket of the crickets and the birds chirping.

Is that real?

Apparently.

Where’s Mom?

Way down under the ground. It’s dark there. And quiet. Nice place for planning. And growing things. Like trees. And boys.

My boy child re-membered his roots in the dirt this weekend.

Grown up.

And he looked them in the eye. And danced with them. And fed them breakfast

French toast and fruit salad. Yum.

And kissed them. And said Thank you. A lot.

And speaking of trees that don’t fall far from the apple, Marsha and I got some tree parts today.

Break it Marsha!

Danny likes to be put to work

These are the boards that are fixin to recreate Mama in the wood kiln this summer.

It mostly had to do with cups. And my Old-Lady Fairy God Mother Aunt who refuses to age.

15 blessings

I tried to keep as many words as possible away from this meditation but a few crept in like:

“Susan, do you have to keep clenching your jaw like that when you pull the clay up!?” No.

I’ve been reading David Abram again. He and Merleau-Ponty suggest that words can contain an active sensuous presence with a life of their own instead of being representative of something. And that all this writing down of words phonetically has taken us away from the Presence of Words and Nature. And that indigenous cultures have words that are so close to the beings that they are the being of the words. I am all for being-ness. I am not so much for representing being.

I like to make things out of clay that are not representatives of thoughts or concepts but contain and be the essence .

Here we go: this mug is not simply beautiful as the light shines through it, but contains the essence of dolphin within. Dolphin is among the empty spaces between the fine molecules of porcelain. The dolphin vertebra print left it’s mark and presence within the piece.

Manna.

And then just before Noon my soul said:

“Time to get out of those muddy clothes Missy and get yr butt into town for some more real live livin’ and running errands.”

I went to west campus and gave Jerry back his bone and brought him the dolphin cup.

Next stop: I took Rochelle her Swadhisthana yantra.

Sexy.

More about words and the development of writing: Mr. Abrams asserts that anyone who walks in nature can “hear” trees speak, rocks gesture and corn stalks whisper. Why is it then, he asks, that this experience is a rarity for us?!  He suggests that phonetic writing has taken our thoughts away from our experience, (letters being only representative of experience) and that this is a mirror for our participation with nature ceasing.

Writing creates a connection with words on a page or in this case, a computer screen. Words that contain a static life of their own. Abrams suggests the distinction between the word river and the river itself. There are static definitions for river, however the river itself is swelling, and rippling and serving and feeding and being so many countless things. One minute it may say to me “Jump in! Its not too cold.” Another minute: “Hold on to that branch Young Lady or I’m taking you for a ride!”

I am seeing ways to get back to experiencing. Ways to communicate with others the pair of doves that came to my studio door when I was making pottery and contemplating who is dove. Ways to communicate this with out experiencing blank stares.

I’druther stares of knowing and the pleasure of eating strawberries and swinging and putting noisy machine sounds aside.

There aren’t any words on the Swadhisthana yantra and yet because of the forms, it vibrates second chakra: creativity, source of inspiration, the place of direct perception of reality. What’s your gut feeling about that? Ask your swadhisthana.

Yo mama asked her swadhisthana. Well, yo mama did too! It’s true but, I digress.

More true facts: Sadie passed inspection this afternoon!

Ready for a trip to the hills.

Christy at Bull City said “God wouldn’t want nobody singled out like that Amendment does. And that the law shouldn’t tell nobody how to love.” Her mom was mad at her for saying on face book that she had voted “Against.” It turns out she didn’t vote at all. That left me thinking that I am indeed experiencing life. I am experiencing Bizarreness.

It’s so dark now from the real live storm above that it could seem like night.

Some of this experiencing seems like it could be the darkest before dawn. Dawn’s getting close. Yes?

Babies waiting patiently

It turns out that I can make plenty of pots to fill the kiln.

Marsha, thankfully, was our wadding Goddess for the day. We learned what a blessing it is to have consistent, perfectly formed wads. Wadd a delight!

Wadd are you doing!!?

I thought it would be cute to try to load in 6 hours instead of the usual 7, because we were not having to deal with the intricacies of loading a sculpture this time. Well that was funny.

It took about 10 hours.

And then every one went home to sleep. Well except for Marsha who went to a party and ate smores!

And Sunday we’re all bright eyed and bushy tailed for a big day of cramming wood in the fire!

Load ‘em up!

Marsha split all the weirdo size wood into nice pieces to get the bed of coals nice.

Beautiful fire keeper

David used his madd dentist skills to extract a broken soft brick from the peep.

Careful hands.

And I checked the temperature.

Timmy took pictures:)

We wrote some things down.

Loggernecker.

It was peaceful in the morning.

Starting to load from the side ports.

And then boy did it start to get hot!

Somebody’s getting hungry. And it ain’t Susan

Jan came!

Look at her glow!

John came by and he and Tim sang songs.

All original. All the time.

And then Greg came by and helped me make the soda.

And played some fiddle tunes with Timbo. We missed Megan.

And then the sun went down and it started to get hot some more.

So I checked the cones.

I was being real cute and made extra soda in case we decided to put more in. We had draw rings inside so we could check it. Well. We added the soda entirely too early because my ancient 8,9,10 cones started to tip before the 5,6,7. What!? I was confused. The first soda did no thing. So I checked and we decided to wait for the new cones to do their business and they did so we soda-ed again and that was great. I learned some new things. Like that the pyrometer is so long it can knock the draw rings down. Weeeeeeee!

Beautiful evening.

And then schazam!

Best yet.

Marsha said it was kind of like a Grecian moment. I agreed.

Ελλενικα

Brand new ancient artifacts.

I put ferns on this plate.

Here’s a sneak peek of some pots with my fern etching decal.

I hope you like them!

The sale and exhibition is this weekend. I hope you can come. I made lots of pots. More than ever.

Under a cherry tree @ Warren Wilson College 1992

It seemed like 5 minutes later, I was pregnant with Jonas and then he was born on my great grampa’s bed two days after our first anniversary. And then, a few minutes after that, we moved and adopted Jolene.  Oh boy, then, a whole bunch of years happened where the kids went to school and I made things out of clay and Tim taught school and in the summers we swam in rivers and drove through so many states in our van.

Lost Cove on Wilson Creek, NC 2003

Jolene became a rock star

Jammin

And Jonas caught trout

Nice time in the Smokies

And cardboard creates free entertainment when Sadie broke down in Kansas.

It was hot.

And then Jonas got real tall

We fed him well

And caught Mackerel in Maine

Bare Island

And Jolene became an actress

The best Trinculo on the planet

and the van got snowed on

chilly.

And Jolene became a basketball star.

Going to Finals!

Tim and I made 65 bucks playing on the street on our Anniversary in 2008. You can see the video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJmpgHL4Mg

And now its party time.

Which song are we playing next?

The honeymoon has just begun. So happy to have my man.

Wild thing.

And then stuck my nose in the roses, and honey suckle, and marveled and the billions of blackberry blooms. My dog Buck disappeared in the tall grass.

A few days ago I watched a video about a potter in Denmark. And though I had been planning on making porcelain cups for days and weeks, I laughed when I looked at them all lined up all Danish-like.

Clean lines like a Dane.

But really what I want to with these is play with the dolphin vertebrae stamp I borrowed from my scientist friend Jerry and the Malcom Shino glaze that I just mixed up.

Mmmmmm. Its the dolphin.

There are lots of amazing unscientific things about dolphin. I decided to start thinking about those things by writing a poem:

Mwa ha!

Dolphin!

You are so kind not to brag

of the beauty you perform in the sea.

While I sit

Alone

And watch.

Blessed be your gift of play.

And thank you for teaching me

To breathe

Air of the gods

That keeps me pure and full.

The full I remembered on the Aegean

When I was called

Kalymnia.

It goes like this:

Good bye Desire. Hello Imagining! I have you fancy Imagining. You are so nice and are just how I like you. You have plenty of time for me, can go where I go, and so many colors too!

Albrecht Dürer- Self Portrait 1500

I Have it. Don’t Lack it. Imagining, you’re definitely mine!

While we’re on the subject, I made some man caves. Really, when I think of that term what mostly comes to mind is our legendary friend Gary Dean and his man cave complete at the bottom of the basement stairs with: card table, pool table, cinder block walls, musty smell, un-emptied ash trays, cement floor, and windows at the top for views of the underskirts of shrubbery. For real. Before Gary passed away he fixed buses. Mostly coach buses. He had a grave yard for the super tired ones and my friend Henryk went out there once and painted some. Here are two of his paintings:

"Time of No Letters"- Henryk Fantazos

"Dixie Bound" - Henryk Fantazos

But back to the man caves. The term as explained above doesn’t appeal to me so I decided to make some of my own. My friend Brian wants a big mug like one he got from me a long time ago and broke. I made some last year but he said they’re still not big enough. So here we go 1.5 # of clay each:

Man Caves-Susan Wells 5.5"x4.25"

I tried to render them like the buckets some of the guys at Cup a Joe’s in Hillsborough use for their morning coffee.

I like the looks of the insides of these man caves.

Yesterday I had nearly a full day in the studio and today, I watched the trailer for the documentary: The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom. An unknown man was quoted as saying that we forgot the terror of nature. These words remind me of when I lived in Greece and experienced that one can only laugh as hard as one has cried.

Does this mean if I have the joy and electricity coming out of iridescent glowing clover in evening light that I might too have a feeling around a boy child grown and gone away? Yeah. So easy to walk fast and think thoughts and stay busy and fuss over pieces of paper on the kitchen table. Not so much easy to have the boy leave.

It can be heaps to bear- wretchedness in our waters, gutters and hearts.  Apparently we are committed to experiencing the worst of it based on our steadfast forward lurching towards an impeccable and thorough trashing of our home. So to know who we are we must know who we are not? I’m sure some person wandering around in a saffron robe somewhere said that. Well, I’ve got a robe too ya know. But it’s white. And imaginary. And actually more like a cape.

So I’ll get back to transmogrifying dark energies into light because Mother loves circles and so do I.  I guess our rooster does too, he just crowed outside my window. Or he could be reminding me to get my arse off the bloody computer and back into the studio. Oh. Here’s some nice circles that made it in the bisque! Check out those curves Baby.

Beauty Queens

Today I’m get to play with porcelain. Last night I cleaned up my wheel real nice in preparation for it…

Wow. Sparkly!