Eva Funderburgh

I had some very odd news this week.

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.

Not cool, random thief, not cool.

I’m back from NYC, which was an awesome time.

I got to spend a lot of quality time with my brother, which ranged from just catching up to discussing art.  It was a chance to go out and explore the galleries of Chelsea, and I also got to explore the Museum of Art and Design. All in all, it was a great chance to get out and see all sorts of art, ranging from innovative and crazy uses of materials, to astounding minimalistic installations consisting of nothing but  a couple taut strings in a room.  My brother has a write up of some of it on his blog.

While I as in NYC, I was lucky enough to be posted on two exciting blogs.  The Urban Outfitters Blog decided to highlight my work, as part of a continuing stream of cool and interesting things that they find.  Kitsune Noir, a blog of art and design, also decided to mention my work and the collaboration with my brother.  As a long follower of Kitsune Noir, I was completely flattered by this!  However, as a side effect of all of this attention, I’m about completely out of work that’s for sale online!  I’m going to have to recall a few pieces from galleries this weekend, so I can more available for sale. There will also be all new work coming up in April, after my next wood firing.

The collaboration piece with my brother isn’t finished yet, since we couldn’t find a kiln that was firing while I was there.  We’ll be seeing the results in the next few weeks. In the meantime, you can find some fun in-progress photos here.

There’s been a few things I found recently that seemed worthy of passing along.  First off is the mysterious myspace artist known as Milk / Logyu.  I found her work a little while ago due to random site called NotCot. She has no portfolio site, or really any information out there.  There’s pretty much only her myspace profile that tells you that she’s 32 and from Tuscon, and her mind blowing work.  What I love so much about it is her use of tiny continued themes, such as her skeleton birds, cards with hearts, and mp3 players. Have fun perusing her fascinating work.  I wonder if her work only exists in the digital world?

Next is an oddly equally fascinating medieval beastiary.  It’s truly fun to explore.  It has a huge list of creatures, with each one having examples of medieval art and an explanation of what it was, along with bibliographic sources for the earliest references.  Sure, it has all the standard creatures like hyenas and dragons, but it also has weird ones like … Barnacle geese??  And also, who knew that asps were originally lion- like creatures that guarded trees.  To avoid being lulled to sleep by music, the asp would keep one ear pressed to the ground, and the other plugged with its tail.

The one other thing worth passing along is that I’ve been working to clear out my flickr backlog.  I have unsorted and un-uploaded photos that go back to the last fourth of July.  So if you follow my flickr feed, please enjoy chronologically random stuff that should be showing up over the next bit or so.