june.

Well, this month has certainly almost come and gone - We've been in two fairs already, and we've got one more to go, Fountain Square in Evanston next weekend (27+28). Quickie reviews of both 57th Street Art Fair & Wells Street Art Festival:

57th Street Art Fair

I am almost afraid to say that it was one of the easiest load ins we've ever had, you know, because it might jinx it for the next gig - But the easy load in could be because Andy & I woke up at 8-freaking-am. We were supposed to be there at 8am :) Our back-up alarm also malfunctioned (read: Nancy threw it into a laundry basket to quiet incessant beeping).

Chicago was still dealing with freakishly cool weather, so the weekend was cool at times, with rain. We saw a lot of customers we haven't seen in ages, and that was pretty awesome! Also, Andy had a really great chat with Paul Eshelman, our hero :)

Summing up: People came out, we sold some work, it was a great show! We do hope to jury in next year and be out of the Newbie Artists Corral - We didn't even know we were in it until customers started to point it out! Not a bad area to be in, to be honest, but still - There were pennants marking our area. Big red ones!


Wells Street Art Festival

Ah, Wells Street. We have a ton of friends who also jury into this show, and every year we cringe as we discuss how bad we think the load in is going to be.
The way it's set up, it actually makes sense: Artists are all given a time to arrive, check in, and drop off their booth and work in their assigned space. The organizers set it up so it starts off with 6am load in, from the center of the festival, then later times work out from there. See? It makes sense.

But unfortunately, it always goes horribly wrong, and even if you arrive at your assigned time, there are inevitably always 30 artists whose load in is at 7:30 that are there, at 6 arguing to be let in. And so begins the clusterf- Uh, congestion. I meant congestion :)

So here we are, 6:05am, already checked in, rolling through the gates, and we get stopped. Bottleneck due to food vendors, corporate sponsor trucks and the totally selfish inconsiderate artists that decide to not just unload their vehicle ONE PIECE AT A TIME, but to also proceed to set up their booth, their propanels, shelving, carpeting, register.

Did I mention it was raining? Oh yes, it rained.

While we sat there, waiting for the bottleneck to clear up, we had the pleasure of watching a gentleman in an apartment building's vestibule begin to unzip his pants and drop them, so as to relieve himself. We then watched as the doorman tried shooing him away, and then 5 minutes later a squad of 5 police officers showed up to ease his departure. By then it's 6:45.

In spite of this unfortunate beginning to a rather long weekend, the show was great - We got lucky and had a really sweet jeweler (Molly Bitters) & a very Zen painter (Ronnie, whose last name escapes me) as our neighbors, plus, most of our friends were really close as well!
Sunday was the better day in all ways (great sales, great customers, great weather). Hopefully we'll jury into this show again next year.

That's pretty much it - We've also been taking in wholesale & custom orders, and the only shop in Chicago that carries our work, Sacred Art, is going though our inventory at a good clip - Hooray! Thankfully, we hired back our studio assistant, Julia, and that has helped us keep up quite a bit.

Sooo...Next up, Fountain Square Art Festival (I hope to NOT write a report like I did last year) June 27th + 28th!

-Nancy

Claybody Alignment Chart.

Lawful Good

Cone 10 Porcelain

Neutral Good
Cone 6 Stoneware

Chaotic Good
Cone 6 Porcelain

Lawful Neutral
Cone 10 Stoneware

Neutral
Terra Cotta

Chaotic Neutral
Raku Clay

Lawful Evil
Any Buff Clay

Neutral Evil
White Earthenware

Chaotic Evil
Egyptian Paste

You're not the only one...

Andy & I are usually greatly amused whenever we hear stories about plagiarism, especially on NPR.

The latest reminded me of this commentary Andy made last year about an image we had wanted to do - The idea of the image, mind you, not that exact image. Anyway, read on (audio highly recommended as it's about what may or may not be musical plagiarism):
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103933616

-n.

The Day of the Donut returns April 23!

The Day of the Donut returns April 23!
Originally uploaded by jakerome

I just had to post this because this is kinda important. It's about donuts.

Friend Natalie aka Bake and Destroy started The Donut Database with her listing of places worthy of your dough. Then there's this group on Flickr called We Demand Donuts.

Please, go to the We Demand Donuts Flickr pool, and admire all that is within. Perhaps partake in some of the activities listed.

Then take a moment, go the database, and visit one of these places on April 23rd. Seriously. And if you know of a place where kick ass donuts are being created, please let Natalie know.

Because knowing is half the battle.

-Nancy

April is the cruelest month...

This time of year when the Midwestern air is constantly fluctuating between dry and damp, warm and cold producing work in the studio always presents a challenge. Tiles that only a month ago would dry nice and flat now curl and crack in only a few hours or they can sit for days without losing any moisture.

Back when we were making our ware out of earthenware clay drying wasn't so much of a problem, occasionally a plate would get that ugly hump rising up in the middle but for the most part it was make it and forget it. Even when we made the switch to a tighter cone 6 porcelaneous stoneware clay the pieces would pretty much dry well on their own. It wasn't until we started working with the really tight (under a percent absorbtion) porcelain clays that we had to start paying attention to our drying processes. What was once a nice round bowl would suddenly come out of the kiln transformed into a disheartening, unwelcome ovoid shape.

Finding a working solution to this problem was no easy undertaking and it took a painful amount of time. We would make a batch of work, analyze the drying process, and then wait until after 2 kiln firings to study the results.


To complicate matters, researching the problem revealed an amazing amount of misinformation that lead to many dead ends - the tried and true bag it and let it dry slowly for weeks and weeks just doesn't work in a production setting. Luckily there are easy to understand methods that have been developed by the ceramic industry. I was reminded of this by a recent article published over at the Ceramics Industry Website. The great thing about an article like this is that it provides enough information to help you find your own solution on a much smaller (and monetarily attainable) scale. Here are some links to other similar articles that helped us gain insight into the mechanisms of drying clay.

http://digitalfire.com/4sight/education/the_black_art_of_drying_ceramics_without_cracks_196.html

http://www.kilnman.com/tech/tech.html


-Andy

The Last Gocco Screen.

3.19.09 - The Last Gocco Screen
Originally uploaded by circaceramics

We flashed our last Gocco screen on March 19, and that marked for us the end of a 5 year era. We'll be going back to a more usual screenprinting method using the ol' Diazo kit available at Utrecht (or Pearl, or Dick Blick - Whoever has it in stock, really).

For those of you asking, "But why quit the Gocco?", it's all about the finances here, and the fact Gocco supplies have, ahem, gone up *quite* a lot since the announcement that the bulbs were no longer going to be manufactured, and then that supplies were going to cease being shipped to the US. Another reason is the hit or miss nature of flashing screens - For the past year we've been purchasing an extra box of bulbs just to cover all the dud bulbs we were getting! When you invest in a piece of equipment you expect a certain level of performance and sadly this kept going down.

Old screens? Maybe. Old bulbs? Maybe. The operator? Maybe. But after trying all tips-n-tricks (and coming up with a few of our own), you start to acknowledge that fact that you are ok, the tools are not.

So, we're getting our screenprinting setup ready (again), trying meshes out (it really IS like riding a bike) and getting ready to start up screening (again).

Nothing like switching methods right at the start of our production period, in preparation for fair & festival season - Keeps things lively!

And speaking of which, we have an idea of what part of our year is looking like:


Itinerary, part II (Updated 4.28.09)

may
nope - no open studio! we don't have the inventory, plus our super-secret new shape won't be ready - so we softly canceled it.

june
6+7 = 57th street art fair (we just heard on Sunday about this one so we're off the waitlist - Yippee!)
13+14 = wells street
27+28 = fountain square

july
TBD:
11+12 = art fair on the square
We're waitlisted for this one (WAH!) so we'll see.

august
1+2 = market days
29+30 = bucktown artsfest

september
12+13 = renegade craft fair (TBA - The apps don't go up till June for this one)
13 = starving artists' show (we just heard - Hooray!)


So there :)

-Nancy

Move over Gene Simmons

Two unrelated (?) stories I heard today:

(warning - if mouth sounds like slurping and gurgling disgust you then this story is not for you)

Coffee connoisseur (4:30) | PRI's The World

What does a news outlet do when they have access to a tongue insured for 14 million? Make it taste really bad coffee.

And the second interesting news bit; there's a third less billionaires in the world today.

Time for me to make my move...




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