We unloaded the kiln on Saturday, and it looks like a great firing. I’ve spent the last two days trying to clean up all of the work, and sort it as to where it will be going. Most of the beasts came off of their wads cleanly, meaning there wasn’t too much work to do as far as that. What was harder was deciding where each piece should go. I’ve set aside four to submit to jurried shows, another four or five to send to a show in Idaho, about 10 to take with me to Japan, and another 10 to 12 that will be for sale online. They’ll all be showing up online at around noon (PDT) on April 18th – so if you feel like buying a piece, check back near then!

I’m also finally all packed up for NCECA. I’ll be spending four days there, and then camping in the area with my dad, my brother, and my brother’s wife. It should be a lot of fun!

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.

It’s been a long week.  I finally have all the work photographed, sorted, titled and captioned.  I’ve even sent off the first boxes to galleries and costumers.  The photo is from Monday, when I’d been pushing really hard to get off an application to an emerging artist contest thing.  I was going to just keep working on stuff on my laptop, but between the soft pillow and the soft cat, I didn’t stand a chance. However, everything is now finally up! Enjoy!

Anyway, in order to celebrate all this new work, I’ll be hosting a slightly impromptu opening at my studio tonight.  It’s going to be pretty low key, but I will have all of the new work there and on display, along with food and drink of some type. If you’re in the Seattle area, I recommend coming on by! It’s at 218 Florentia st, just on the south end of the Fremont Bridge. We’re in the building with the crazy mural. I’ll be there from 6pm to 8, and maybe till 9.  Stop on by!

I’ve only had time to photograph a few of my favorite pieces, and looking through the results, I think I’ll be doing a few more tweaks to the lighting set up.  I’m pretty happy with it, but I feel like fussing with it a bit more.  Once I have all the information on the new critters up, I’m hoping to put together a howto on building the lighting softbox.

I’ll have my work cut out for me with documenting all of my beasts, though.  I’ll need to photograph them, record all the useful info for them, and price them.  I’ll also have to decide which to send off to galleries, which to sell myself, and which pieces will be not for sale, reserved to enter into shows.  Hopefully, I’ll have all of that worked out by the end of the week.  In the mean time, I’ve uploaded some of the photos I shot today.

These are the ones that I finished most recently.

Also, in my studio, I have a big white board.  I use it to make random notes to myself, sketch ideas, and just doodle stuff.  I really like the idea I have on there now, but I’ll have to wait and see as to how it comes together.  I’ve been big on antlers recently, but I don’t know how well they’ll survive the firing.  They might just droop.  To avoid that, I’ll have to make them very stocky.  Also, do you you recognize the guy in pink?

Anyway, here’s the point of this post.  My new work!