One of my pieces, Cuckoos #3: Unexpected Twist, just finished being displayed in the 3rd Biennial Concordia Continental Ceramics Competition in St. Paul, MN. I’d been stressing about the piece being shipped back, since it’s both large and delicate. When I got a call on Monday from the organizer, I immediately started worrying, only to be utterly surprised. The piece had been stolen.
While the gallery was open for local artists to pick up their work, someone had walked in and left with four piece that did not belong to them. The university didn’t realize the problem until they were preparing to pack up the out-of-town pieces. A vase by Leopold Foulem, a wonderful teapot-ish sculpture by Gerald Ferrari, and a piece by Kevin Snipes were also taken. (Gerald has a very insightful blog post about the theft.) The total listed value for the work was over $12,000, most of that was due to Foulem’s vase. All the same, a life of crime stealing ceramics sculptures is hardly a way to get rich quick. Heck, if there’s a way to get rich in ceramics, there’s lots of ceramics artists who’d love to know about it.
Overall, my response has mostly been confusion. I am a bit worried about my piece, as to whether or not its safe. My biggest fear if that some scofflaws just grabbed it on a whim, and it’s been trashed somewhere. That would break my heart. The university has said that they’ll deal with the insurance, so at least I’m not worrying about that. They could have handled the show taken down better, but no sense in being angry about that – they didn’t want this to happen either. I guess it’s a bit flattering that someone likes the piece so much, but really, it would have been better to for them to just buy it. It’s been so weird seeing pictures of it on the local news, and having my relatives emailing each other about it. Add to all that, it’s not a small piece! It’s large enough it needs to be carried in both arms, and the surface is delicate enough that it could be scratched by snaps or zippers. While I guess do feel strangely honored to be on a list that includes everyone from Miro and Van Gogh to the other 3 artists from this show, I would really rather people just didn’t do stuff like this. It’s so disrespectful to the artists, the work, and the institution that it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around it.
A while ago, my husband and I teamed up to collaborate on some sculptures. He’s a software developer by occupation, and we both appreciate the interesting world where tech and art overlap. We decided to work together, and have slowly been developing a series of glowing sculptures. While it’s been a while since we finished the last one, we decided it would be fun to talk about some process, and share some of the programing and tech behind them.
Ever since I saw some translucent porcelain lamps made by Terry Inokuma, I’ve wanted to make a glowing creature. The ultra white porcelain (Southern Ice) I use for teeth in my sculptures also has the property of being amazingly translucent, something I don’t normally pay attention to in a clay. However, a couple years ago I decided to see what I could do with it. The first creature I made to explore the idea of glowing creatures was Glowbelly, a little round fat beast, whose belly reminds me of a pale frog. I used a mix of southern ice and my typical clay to make its belly, making it both paler and theoretically translucent. However, we’ve never been able to find out for sure. As soon as got the beast out of the kiln, it became clear that there were some aspects of electronic beasts that I’d neglected to take into consideration. Namely, the ability to put wires into the beast, the ability to block excess light and direct the LEDS, and the all important on and off switch. While I had a loose idea of just sliding all the electronics in through the mouth, it became clear that much more planning would be required for glowing creatures.
The next step on our experimentation was the Industrial City Beast. By planning ahead, we were able to set up easy access to power switches and wiring. The wiring of the beast was very simple, just a battery, a few LEDs and a resistor or two. (We started playing with the more complex wiring and microcontrollers later). However, we discovered how important the quality of the light was. The beast was to have glowing red eyes, but with the LED just in there, it was as empathetic as a laser pointer. We experimented with a number of materials as diffusers, to give the beast a warmer glow. In the end, we discovered shapelock plastic. This semitranslucent plastic can be heated in boiling water and will become malleable, but hardens on cooling. The stuff is great! It’s designed for rapid prototyping, and it can be reused indefinitely and machine tooled as well as hand formed. It solved two problems at once by both securing and diffusing the red LEDs in the neck of the beast. The white LEDs for the city were reflected internally by covering all internal surfaces with tinfoil, which helped make the light less directional.
However, the present pinnacle of our collaboration together is the Glowback. We finished it up last year, but got distracted before writing about the process of making it. However, the process is still fascinating, and the result is one of our favorite pieces.
Like many of my woodfire pieces, the beast is a mix of different clays. I used a mix of porcelain and stoneware for its body, southern ice porcelain for its teeth, and a mix of southern ice porcelain and B-mix porcelainious stoneware for the pods on the back. This was so the body with have some grit and texture, the teeth would be white, and the pods would be pale and translucent from the southern ice, but still have some color and crystallization due to the B-mix. Since the beast isn’t very large, about 6″ long, the difference in shrink rates between the clays didn’t cause too many problems. (Porcelain shrinks about 14% from start to finish, while stoneware will only shrink 10%. If there’s long connected seams, the difference in shrink rate can cause the piece to crack.)
Each bulb on the back of the beast contains a super bright LED mounted in a styrofoam plug, which in turn is secured within the beast. Two of the bulbs were removable, which while seeming adequate during construction, turned the wiring process into a laparoscopic surgery. However after much swearing and and many minor burns from hot glue, all the LEDs were in place.
There’s 11 LEDs in all, and they’re controlled by an arduino microcontroller. (I can’t recommend arduino enough if you’re thinking about getting into this sort of thing.) We programed them to fade in and out in a vaguely hypnotizing pattern. Since the arduino only has enough pins to control 6 things independently, the five largest bulbs pulse independently on random timers, while the six small bulbs pulse all at once. Figuring out the correct rate of fade involved some very interesting math. Here’ssomevideos of the different patterns we tried. My husband Ben’s blog post goes into greater depth about the programing and wiring.
Eventually, once all LEDs were in place, the arduino (we used a smaller arduino clone called a boarduino), was wrestled into place inside of the beast. This ended up being the most difficult part of the process – I’d underestimated the amount of working room needed, and the amount of room the wires would take up. In fact, lack of internal space, and the access to it was in generally the most challenging aspect of the sculpture. Even the thickness of the wires factored into the difficulty – they keep popping off the dome that covers the power switch!
However, the end result is pretty awesome. We had a huge amount of fun constructing it, and I believe it’s lived up to our expectations. Since it’s a fairly experimental beast, it isn’t for sale. Here’s a final documentary video showing off the final completed beast.
This last woodfiring turned out great. Every single piece I got from it was a jewel – an outcome practically unheard of in woodfiring. I normally have at least few pieces I’m not happy with, and people having success rates under 50% is not unheard of. However, as I said, this firing was just amazing. I’ve put all the pieces up into a flickr set, for people browse and enjoy.
Here’s the gallery of all the new work. Most of the pieces are presently on display at the Island Gallery on Bainbridge Island, and they’re also for sale in their online store!
Also, it’s time again my studio’s annual holiday sale. We’ll have an opening party this Friday, December 11th from 6 to 9pm. On Saturday and Sunday from 10 to 4pm, we’ll be around the studio if you want to come in and browse through all the work for sale from myself and my studiomates! The address of the studio is 218 Florentia st, and here’s the facebook invite for more info! Also, during the opening, I’ll be having a silent action of “Relaxation”, with all proceeds going to charity!
I just finished up the timelapse video I made of the creation of one of my saggar fired pieces. I recorded the creation of “Cuckoos #2: Nest”. It tracks the piece from the start to the bisque firing. I particularity enjoy being able to see the process of burnishing the nest. The video is on vimeo since it was just a hair too long for Youtube.
As folks who have been following my twitter might have guessed, I’m about to head out for a woodfiring! I’ve just finished packing up several months worth of critters, who will loaded into the kiln this Saturday and Sunday. They’ll be unloaded in two weeks on Saturday, November 28th.
Most of these guys will then be going directly to the Island Gallery on Bainbridge Island, for their December show, “Beauty and the Beasts”. I’ll be featured along side their annual fashion show. Some will be coming to my studio’s annual holiday sale and party. Stay tuned to my twitter for updates on the firing!
I have a whole selection of shows coming up this holiday season. Hopefully, it should be fun for one and all. Here’s a quick run down of the line up. Further details will come for all of these as the dates get closer.
Eva Funderburgh at Snow Monkey’s House of Monsters!
1205 East Pike street, Suite 1A, Seattle WA
November 12th through December 3rd, opening reception November 12th
Snow Monkey’s is a new gallery that just opened in the Capital Hill neighborhood of Seattle. It’s an awesome little place, focusing on strange great art, handmade stuff, with a smattering of amusing things from Japan. I’ll be showing off a selection of fun work, focusing on saggar fired stuff I made over this summer.
The Island Gallery’s Holiday Good Times
100 Madison Avenue, Bainbridge Island WA
December 4th through 31st, Opening reception December 4th
The Island Gallery is a long time favorite of mine. They’re located across Puget Sound on Bainbridge Island, and focus on the finest woodfired ceramics, wearable textile art, and beautiful hand made furniture. This December they’ll be displaying off a selection of my newest woodfired work – so new they’re still in progress right now! I’ll be sharing the stage with their annual fashion show.
Florentia Clayworks 4th annual Holiday Sale!
218 Florentia st, Seattle WA
December 11th, 12th and 13th. Opening reception/ party on the 11th.
Florentia Clayworks is my shared studio space, where a total of 8 clay artists toil away making cool things. We’ll be showing off (and selling) of those cool things over that weekend, along with consuming mulled cider, hot cocoa, and delicious wine. Come by for a peak into the world of clay! I’ll also be holding a silent auction of one or two of my favorite pieces, and donating 50% to charity.
I’ve recently been putting together some timelapse videos of pieces from March 2009 firing. I have a couple more videos lined up, but they all still need to have the notes put in, the slowest step. I’m also planning on making a few new videos of my saggar fire pieces – I’m looking forward to seeing the burnishing process via timelapse.
Anyway, for now, here’s a timelapse of the creation of “Berry Eater”
This weekend, I have a two person show opening at the Northwinds Art Center and Gallery, in Port Townsend, WA. It’s a neat little gallery, in a neat little town. Port Townsend is the city that thought it was going to be Seattle, back in the 1880s, before railroads. Once it became clear that Seattle was to be the major port for the area, all development stopped in Port Townsend. In the late 1980s, everyone realized that there was a very cool perfectly preserved Victorian seaside resort two hours from Seattle, and it’s been hopping ever since.
The show will be with Don Tiller, and will be up for the whole month of August. There’s going to be a a variety of events going on during the month, with an art walk reception on the 1st of August, a Saturday, and a coffee talk on friday the 7th. I won’t be able to be there for the art walk reception, but the coffee talk should be fun. Don Tiller and I will both take some time to talk about our work and the process of creating it at 7pm at the gallery.
I just swung by the gallery dropping off work, and everything is looking great. My work is a selection of some of the best larger pieces from the past year or so, along with some new, saggar fired work. Saggar firing is a technique that is very reminiscent of the pit firings often seen in southwest native American pottery. It’s a technique that I’d long been curious about, and have finally been exploring. It serves as a good counterpoint for woodfiring, since it very similar in unpredictable nature. I’ll do a post about the whole process pretty soon, assuming I can stay out of the studio long enough to write it up!
I’m also trying something new this show. I’m making a flickr set of all the work, and making everything available for purchase online. Each piece will have its purchase information and the contact information of gallery manager listed in the description. If you see something you’re interested, just send the gallery an email, and they’ll take if from there!
I’ve been back from Japan for a week or two now, working on sorting through the 1200 photos I took over there, and starting to get back to work in the studio. Now that the the whole crazy japan trip has finally sunk in, and I’m no longer jet lagged, I figured I should try and compile my thoughts on Design Festa into a blog post.
Design Festa was great, but really, unlike anything I could ever imagine. I think for the most part, nothing in my experiences could have given me an idea of what I’d gotten myself into. (Think one part art fair, one part Japanese school festival, one part burning man.) It really boiled down into 16 hours of interacting and talking with people, across a culture and language barrier, about art. And when it comes down to it, that’s pretty cool.
Design Festa is made up of a maze of tiny little art cubicals. There’s about 1500 booths, many with different artists each day, so it’s practically impossible to see everything. It’s loosely divided by type, ranging from 2-D art to clothing to a darkened zone for lit sculptures and installations. Artists get a chunk of floor – either one or two tatami mat’s worth – and do anything that they might want with it. I get the feeling the more people get their both to show off their work then to make a profit from the show. Installation, performance art, and just hanging out were quite common. In fact, the booth walls (which you had to rent) were designed for you to attack with ink, acrylic, and almost anything you wanted.
There were also several stage areas where you could sign up for a time slot. There was a constant stream of really cool and different performances going on at all time, from 20 pieces bands to very happy girls playing taiko. There were a surprising number of different ninja gymnastics dance groups. (They did backflips to music while holding swords, in ninja garb)
While I’d seen photos of all the individual parts of the show online, there was nothing out there that could give me a feeling of what it would be like to actually have a booth there. In the end, while there were a number of things I might have changed, I would go back again in a second. It was just so cool to be able to interact and talk with artists and art fans from all over the world. (I speak a little Japanese, and folks generally spoke English). I got to talk about using a traditional Japanese kiln in America, about ceramics, and about Seattle. I got to watch the crowds streaming by, in everything from pink frilly dresses to Godzilla suits, to a troop of knights in armor (Europeain, not samurai). In short, it was an amazing chance to spend a weekend dedicated to art, in all of it’s strange, strange forms.
I recommend spending some time exploring the design festa flickr pool – there was so much more stuff out there than I could photograph.
I’ve been running around for the past few weeks, trying to get everything together for Design Festa vol. 29, one of Asia’s biggest art events. Design Festa is a twice yearly free for all of art, with 15,000 booths of art, 70,000 visitors, live music, and all sorts of art related things. Tomorrow, we leave to fly across the world and to set up our little booth in Tokyo Big Sight, the largest (and possibly strangest looking) expo site in Japan.
The fair will open at 11am on Saturday the 16th and should be a crazy non-stop art experience. We’ll be in booth D-001, the very first booth in the main Atrium. We’ll be pretty easy to spot. I’m bringing 15 critters, 1000 postcards, and 200 business cards (assuming the business cards get here in time). Should be an awesome weekend.
I’m not sure what the wireless internet set up will be like in the convention center. I’m going to be taking photos non-stop and will be trying to upload them as I go. I should also be posting to twitter when I can, so feel free to follow me. In addition to our time in Tokyo, we’ll also be spending a while in Kyushu and Shikoku. We’ll also be stopping by the studio of Mike Martino, an American working as a traditional potter in Karatsu, Japan. All in all, this should be an incredible trip!
