From May 27 to May 30, Hawai'i Craftsmen celebrated its 40th annual Raku Ho'olaule'a at Mokule'ia in Waialua. Ken Kang, one of the original organizers of the event, served as both the guest artist and the juror for the exhibition. The exhibition was at Marks Garage and featured the pieces chosen by Ken. Below are images of every piece in the exhibition which closed on July 1. I've also included photos at the end of some of the pieces in the silent auction, Barbara Thompson's display of pots in the showcase, and some of the guys doing raku outside on First Friday.
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From May 23 to June 12, Cedar Street Galleries in Honolulu put on an exhibit entitled "Earth" with one painter, Hamilton Kobayashi, and two ceramicists, Kenny Kicklighter and Chris Edwards. Kenny and Chris are two of the best ceramic artists in the state and it was a delight to see their most recent work together in one exhibition. Kenny starts with thrown forms, usually cylinders, that he joins together and manipulates. He uses ash glazes on many of his forms and has learned to control them so their rivulets resemble trees and tree branches. Chris is a handbuilder who makes complex forms, often perforated, many of which appear to be based on the forms of diatoms. I've seen them at work several times and I can tell you their forms are not only difficult to design but even more difficult to execute. Many of their pieces sold at the exhibit, but you can contact them directly to inquire about any of the pieces that might not have sold or to ask about new work that might be in progress. Kenny's website is www.kennykicklighter.com and Chris's website is www.christopheredwards.net. Most of the pieces in the exhibit are included below. The first six images are of pieces by Kenny and Chris that are being offered in the main gallery.
This past Friday, April 1st, Pacific New Media at the University of Hawai'i held their eighth annual photography exhibition: Contemporary Photography in Hawai'i 2016. This year's juror was Jay Jensen, the curator of contemporary art at the Honolulu Museum of Art. Almost 500 images were submitted from more than 100 photographers and Jay picked 50 images to be part of the exhibit. I'm very interested in photography, as you can tell from my having a section on photography in my ceramics website, but I'd never tried to enter a photography exhibit until now. I submitted five images, the maximum amount, and waited for February 29th to arrive like I was waiting for the rapture. That's the day "accepted artists" would be notified by email. I remember going through the 29th as calmly as I could, trying not to think about the exhibit, trying not to check my emails too often. When I finally looked at my phone, my heart always sped up just a bit when I saw that I had 7 new emails or 5, but they always turned out to be another offer from Dell or Apple (how many computers or phones do they think I need?), another chance to fly the friendly skies with United, or somebody like Pandora telling me they "missed" me. By the end of the day it became clear that I hadn't made it into the show, that I'd been left behind. I tried not to be too down in the mouth, tried to think of excuses that I could share with family and friends who knew that I'd submitted photos. I went to bed thinking that I must not be a very good photographer, that I'd sent in the wrong photos and why had I sent in those photos when I had better ones that I knew I should have submitted? I started making excuses for myself. We could only submit photos from the last two years but my camera had died two years ago so most of my photos since then had been taken with my phone and the rest with my daughter Bethany's camera. If only I could have used my older photos; then they would have been dazzled by my skills! And then I began to think about what a small thing it was, really, a photography exhibition. Why did I even care if I got in or not? Besides, it's totally subjective who gets in and who doesn't, right? So don't take it so personally. But none of this self-talk made me feel any better and I fell asleep a little dejected. The next day I woke up trying not to think about it, but I was still a little down from not making it into the show. Sometime in the morning, I received an email from Susan at Pacific New Media saying not only that I'd gotten into the show, but that two of my photos had been accepted. Euphoria!! I was a great photographer after all! My photography skills had been vindicated, and I wouldn't have to make up excuses now for my family and friends. Now I could brag (humbly of course) that I had two photos in the exhibit: "By the way, you remember that exhibit I sent photos to, the one I told you was the most important photography exhibit in the state? Well, I found out they accepted two of my photos. Yeah, two! Of course, I'm a little surprised they didn't choose what I thought was my best photo..." and so on. Okay, it felt good to brag just a little, especially after feeling so depressed the day before.
It felt great for a few days telling family and friends "by the way, two of my photos are going to be in a photography exhibit..." but then I had to get my photos developed and framed, something I'd never done before. I sent my photos to Hawaii Pacific Photo and the results were pretty good, especially considering these images were taken with my phone, and the price was good for archival quality prints, a little over $20. Then I went to Art Source & Designs, one of the best places on O'ahu to have art framed. I found out quickly that framing costs a small fortune. What really blew me away was the cost for different types of glass. Regular glass is expensive, but art glass and especially museum glass (which have different levels of UV protection and are less reflective) cost way more than I expected. I went with the art glass and ended up paying more than $250 for framing both photos, even after getting a 25% discount. Such is the price of vanity, I suppose. This is not a knock on Art Source & Designs. They did a superb job. I've read more about this and I realize now that framing is a huge expense if you're doing art photography. This was a revelation to me. I asked someone more experienced than me what I might ask for my photos and they suggested a price uncomfortably close to what I'd paid for developing and framing. I comforted myself with the thought that if I sold both photos, I'd make enough to take my wife to McDonald's. The artists' reception at Marks Garage in Chinatown was a great experience, and hats off to Susan Horowitz of Pacific New Media and David Ulrich, the Exhibit Coordinator, for doing such a superb job of designing the layout for the exhibit and making all of us feel so welcome. I went with my wife and we enjoyed getting to see all of the photos and meeting many of the photographers. Some of the best photographers in the state were there, and I enjoyed finding out more about their approach to taking photos. I felt very lucky to be in the show at all and tried to stay as far away from my photos as possible. Hopefully they'll forgive me for that. Below are a few photos I took at the reception. How can you not take photos at a photography exhibit? When someone asked me what I was doing, I said, "I'm working on next year's submissions!" Last week I had the privilege of taking a ceramics workshop with John Gill at the University of Hawaii as part of the 'Aha Hana Lima programs of Hawaii Craftsmen (www.hawaiicraftsmen.org). John is Professor of Ceramic Art at Alfred University and one of the best handbuilders on the planet. He's won awards for his teaching and I can see why. I've taken some great workshops with some very good potters, but this was the best workshop I've taken so far. John is a highly skilled artist, but he's childlike in his fascination and enthusiasm about everything and I found that quite inspiring. He looks at things differently which helped me think about my own work from different angles. At one point he asked if I had any photos of my pots so I pulled up a few on my phone. He grabbed my phone and started holding it at different angles. He held up one pot, a vase, and turned it upside down. "Have you made one like this? This would make a really great bowl!" I had to agree. He had the softest hands I've seen working with slabs. Whenever I'd pick up a slab I'd stretch it out of shape and gouge it with deep fingermarks. John looked at what I was doing along with a few others and said (with a wry grin), "Some of you are molesting the clay. Please stop molesting the clay!" At random moments John would gather us together to watch a video of Portuguese craftsmen making clay ovens, or look at Krazy Kat cartoons, or look at Brice Marden's Suicide Notes. It was easy to be creative in such a rich environment. During the two and a half days we spent with him, he shared many things with us and some of them you can pick up while watching the videos below. There are a few other things that I observed during the workshop or that John shared with us that I thought were important to mention here: 1. When making slabs, he worked on a huge piece of light denim, not heavy canvas. He especially seemed to prefer the greater flexibility of the denim. I noticed too that the denim didn't get heavy creases in it that would make impressions in the clay when he rolled it out; 2. I closely watched his technique for making slabs with a rolling pin. First he started out with a large coil, then he flattened it out with the palm of his hand, and finally he rolled it out with a fairly heavy rolling pin. My main goal for the workshop was to learn how to roll out slabs like that so I was working on it almost the whole time. Everyone around me was making stuff but I kept rewedging my clay and rolling out another slab. They didn't comment on it, but I think they thought I was crazy. 3. He made forms like his ewers and cups when the slabs were still fairly soft. He made his boxes with slabs that were a bit more stiff. He didn't always score and slip the soft slabs, but he always scored and slipped the stiffer ones. 4. He showed us how he made paper cutouts to help him think through the forms of pots. 5. He introduced us to a French book called Formes de Vases by Alexandre Sandier. Trained as an architect and decorator at the Ecole des beaux-arts in the late 1800's, Sandier repudiated decorative schemes based on historical forms and traditions and proposed that designs be based on the contemporary people and objects around them. The book starts with seven basic forms like a cube and a cone and then adds one of the seven forms to each original form and then proceeds to add two and finally three additional forms to each original form until you have 2,800 possible forms. It's a great tool for studying form, especially the forms of vases, and was intended to inspire new forms of pots. John gave each of us a PDF of the book and I've included it just below.
I'm including a few photos and quite a few videos of the workshop. Most were taken with a Canon camera and a few were taken with my phone. I had to switch from one to the other one day when the battery in my camera ran out! You'll need to turn up the volume on these, but it's worth hearing what John has to say. On February 20, the Hawaii Craftsmen had their semi-annual fundraiser at the Pacific Club, a beautiful location in the heart of Honolulu. I love getting together with the rest of the artists and catching up on what's going on in their lives and seeing what new ideas they're exploring in their art. I especially enjoyed speaking at length with Francisco Clemente, a great woodworker (www.galeriaclemente.com). He's an insightful artist and shared some critiques of my pots that were helpful. The sales were brisk and quite a few major pieces sold throughout the night. I even sold four out of five pieces which was great for me.
From January 31 to February 29, Gallery 'Iolani at Windward Community College hosted an exhibit of David Kuraoka's recent work in clay and bronze. David is a native son of Hawaii, having grown up on Kauai. For decades he taught at San Francisco State University and became a professor of art and head of the ceramics department. He is now an emeritus professor and divides his time between his studios in San Francisco and Kauai. He's best known for his pit fired ceramics, often large bulbous forms perfectly shaped with random markings from the minerals in the fire. David continues to pit fire, but he's also begun working more with 2-D tiles and in bronze. In this exhibit, he's making pieces that are similar in shape but one will be in clay and the other in bronze. It's interesting seeing them side by side and comparing both their shapes and their surfaces. I've seen David's work many times before, but it especially struck me in this exhibit how surface decoration and color can have their own shape, and the way that 2-D decoration can effect our perception of 3-D form. He also had several pieces that seemed to move in the direction that's been blazed by Jun Kaneko, especially the large piece in the middle of the room. But even though the piece juts up like a pole, I felt its movement was circular, almost horizontal. The descriptions are ones the gallery provided.
I participated in three sales in November/December and all three were disappointing. I've been reflecting on what went wrong and have been discussing my ideas with several potters, interior decorators, and museum personnel. Before these discussions I would have said that we need more promotion, more marketing. The solution is to get the word out to more people by every means possible, right? I still believe that's an important component, but now I'm focusing more on what I think is a missing component in selling art: developing collectors. Here's a brief summary of my thinking at the moment.
The most important factor in successful ceramics sales is the ceramics. What's being offered for sale must be the highest quality available. A person or group of people have to vet what's going into a sale, or at least the artists must be vetted beforehand. Yes, someone with a good eye and broad tastes must exercise judgment and make choices. This presents challenges, but I don't see how to avoid it. The sale should include a broad range of artists, functional as well as sculptural, to appeal to a broad range of collectors. What's finally offered to the public, and how it's offered, functions in at least two ways. First, it functions as a lesson in aesthetics for collectors. We're teaching collectors what the possibilities are; we're teaching them what quality is. Collectors need to train their eye, and one of the best ways to do that is for them to come to shows where they can see a whole gallery full of high quality objects. Once they've seen dozens of high quality pieces, they can tell the difference between them and pieces of lesser quality. Second, a sale functions as a lesson in what a group of artists (a guild, for instance) is doing and what it aspires to do. I'm a member of the Hawaii Potters Guild which has had an annual sale every November for decades. From what I've been told, for many years it presented the finest work of HPG artists to the public but in the last decade it's become a sale of pots that have been donated to HPG over the previous year. These castoffs and seconds are offered for a few dollars and very few are offered for more than $5. Individual artists from HPG are also invited to put up a table and sell their stuff. I've tried this once but haven't done it again because I found myself competing with my own seconds that I'd donated to HPG. Who wants to buy one of my bowls for $125 or $250 when they can get one of my seconds for $5? HPG doesn't advertise this as a seconds sale, so people probably think this is the best the guild has to offer, not the best thing for the guild's reputation or for recruiting new members. A second factor in making a ceramics sale successful is adequate promotion. In my experience, the quality of work that's been offered in most sales has been quite good, but no one knew about the sale because promotion of the sale was almost non- existent. Every bit of energy had been put into making art and almost none was given to promotion. Let's be honest, it's hard to find anyone who likes to do promotion and is really good at it. In every organization I've been a part of, especially non-profits, promotion is the part that no one wants to touch. Who wants to email or (*gasp*) call a newspaper, radio station, or tv station and try to get them interested in what you're doing? I've found that artists are especially adept at not selling themselves and their work because they've bought into some form of the notion that "if you make it, they will come." Again, making good work is essential, but people won't find you or buy anything from you just because you're making good work. Businesses certainly don't assume that and we shouldn't assume it either. Just as businesses do everything they can to educate and inspire consumers, we should do the same thing too. Why do we want people to know about our work? So they can just admire it, or do we want to sell some of it? If we want to sell some of it, then let's make promoting and selling an important part of our creative process. Why isn't marketing and promotion enough? Let me use a recent conversation as an example. I was speaking with one of the leading interior decorators in the state and had a long conversation at the end of another disappointing sale that she had hosted. In the course of the conversation, she mentioned that many of the gallery owners in Chinatown were disappointed with First Fridays. For several years now the art galleries in Chinatown have hosted special exhibits and stayed open late at night the first Friday of the month. The event is always packed with hundreds, maybe even thousands of people visiting the galleries. The problem, she told me, is that everyone's treating it like a gallery walk. They come in for the wine and cheese, look at some paintings, talk to a few people and then move on to the next gallery. Lots of socializing but very little buying. I told her I wasn't surprised because buying art isn't an impulse purchase for most people. I've been to First Friday many times and I've never purchased anything. The least expensive paintings are $1,200 and the ones I really like are always $5,000+. These are out of my price range, or at least I'm not inclined to pay that much for one of them at first sight. You may have hundreds of people circulating past a painting, but how many are going to see it for the first time and immediately lay down $5,000 for it? Apparently not many because after several years the First Friday events aren't helping gallery owners (and artists) sell much art. Developing collectors is the missing component because it's collectors who will be willing to lay down larger amounts of money to secure works of art that they crave, not curious passersby. The passerby who comes to the studio for a sale isn't looking for art. They aren't looking for handbuilt statues or bowls that are non-functional. They're looking for cups, bowls, and plates, something they can use at home. That's what they already understand and are motivated to buy no matter how much discretionary income they might have. If you want to sell art, which generally is more complicated to make and carries a higher price tag, you have to develop collectors, people who are looking for artistic pieces. Here are a few thoughts, in no special order, on how artists, galleries, and studios can develop collectors. First, there are more potential collectors than we realize. All of us know people who have reputations as "top" collectors and we fantasize about them collecting our work. The pool of known collectors, those who've already shown a commitment to buying art, is usually vanishingly small in any community and they're already getting bombarded from all sides by artists vying for their attention. But why would we try to get the attention of such a small elite when ceramic pieces are so affordable that a huge number of people can afford them? Even the most expensive clay sculptures that I've seen don't come close to serious oil paintings, especially older paintings. At the recent Hawaii Craftsmen show, several pieces were purchased by the Honolulu Museum of Art and the Hawaii State Museum of Art. I don't think anything was over $2,000 and the most impressive ceramic piece in the show was bought by HMA for $1,400. Collectors can get very nice pieces for only a few hundred dollars which means that the number of people who could collect ceramics is enormous because many people can afford those prices. At one of the sales this fall, I invited several of my friends to come. Three were doctors and one was an architect. Their family incomes are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. They aren't billionaires or top collectors, but they don't need to be to buy pieces for hundreds, even thousands of dollars. I've been in their homes and they have plenty of original paintings and prints on their walls, but they don't have any serious ceramics. In fact, they don't have any serious 3-D art in their houses at all. The point is that ceramics has a much larger pool of potential collectors out there than almost any other form of art because right now its price point is comparatively low. Second, sell artists, not just art. Galleries and studios know that buyers are interested in meeting artists. That's why they have receptions at the beginning of an exhibit or ask potters to man their tables at a sale. Every artist hopes these brief encounters develop into a relationship with someone who's interested in collecting their work. I think these efforts are important but not intense enough to generate new collectors in any volume. I'm grateful for the person who comes in and buys one of my bowls to give to their mother, but I'm hoping to find more people who'd want to buy many of my pieces over time. Is meeting people at a sale the best way to do that? At one of the sales this fall, I met a woman who told me she's collected the work of a Montana potter for the last 25 years. When I met John Glick this past summer, he showed me a large piece he was sending to a collector in Taiwan who had purchased more than 500 of his pieces over the years. Third, collectors don't become collectors just at sales. We need to work outside of sales to promote artists. For instance, the Honolulu Museum of Art used to have what they called a "Collector's Club." My understanding of how it worked was that patrons of the museum were invited to hear presentations by artists who presented and discussed their work. This is important because the museum has access to many people who are already interested in art. They also have a reputation for being mediators between artists and the public, and people in general expect their art museums to put the best art in front of their faces and to help them understand it. Through means such as presentations, museums can help collectors develop their eye for art and find more things they might be interested in collecting. They also can help collectors or potential collectors to make knowledgeable buying decisions. There's a lot of hand holding that takes place in developing collectors since new collectors don't know what quality is yet and they don't want to waste a lot of money on pieces that aren't that great. I just received in the mail a letter from HMA asking me to renew my membership. I'm a "Supporting Member" which means I pay the museum $100 a year and I get certain benefits. I notice that the highest category is "Collector Member" which is $1,000. I noticed that only at this level will I be invited to "A Think + A Drink" collectors' talks with curators and artists. I suppose the assumption is that only people with a stratospheric net worth can become a collector but nothing could be farther from the truth. Bill Ismay became one of the most discerning collectors in all of Great Britain and compiled one of the best collections of ceramics in the world on a librarian's salary. Fourth, present artists and their work through publications. Self publishing is well developed and should be used to get the work of artists into the hands of potential collectors. Last year I contacted a ceramic artist from Belgium who was preparing for an exhibit of her latest pots. A catalog was also being printed, over 100 pages, in which every piece in the exhibit was included with a color image of high quality. It was self-published in hardcover from Snapfish if I remember correctly. These things can be presented in digital formats as well, but there's still something about a book in your hand that lends greater credibility to what's inside. It helps to focus people's attention in important ways. When I have a book in hand, the objects inside grab my attention; they force me to really look at them. Through repeated viewings, I see more and more and come to appreciate the art and desire to have some of it in my collection. By reading the words of the artist as well as art critics, I come to understand more about the pieces I'm seeing. So when an exhibit is coming up, say the Hawaii Craftsmen Show, a catalog could be made up quickly of all the pieces included in the show. After they're selected for inclusion, it wouldn't take long to take images that have been submitted for each piece, include a preface from the juror, a statement from the three visiting artists, and additional information about each artist. Fifth, museums, galleries, and studios are key to developing collectors of contemporary art, especially museums. Too often museums act like they're the Fort Knox of art. Art is pretty old and expensive, so expensive that most of us couldn't afford to buy even a single piece of it. Museums, especially museums with schools, should fight against the perception that they're the only place where art lives. Art is alive and well, being created all around us. I've seen alot of it getting created over at the museum's school. Museums should be more interested in developing collectors since the growth of their collections depend almost entirely on donations from collectors and not from direct purchases they make. How many museums have the money to buy serious art of any sort? Almost every category of art collecting has become so expensive that museums depend on developing collectors who will later gift their collections to the museum. HMA has some very nice pieces of primitive art from Papua New Guinea. One of them says that it was purchased about 40 years ago with funds from the security guards. That piece would probably bring $50,000 or more today which would be quite a stretch for the security guards or just about anyone else for that matter. If museums have become so dependent on donations, why don't they work harder at developing collectors? I just visited the retrospective for Harue McVay at the Iolani Gallery, Windward Community College, and it's one of the best retrospectives that I've seen. Harue graduated from the University of Hawaii in 1950 and went on to study ceramics at Ohio State University in Columbus, graduating with an MA in 1951. She returned to the University of Hawaii where she joined her first ceramics teacher, Claude Horan, in the Department of Art. She taught at UH for 43 years, retiring as an emeritus professor in 1993. Her work is included in many museum collections including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York, the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts (Hawaii), and the Honolulu Museum of Art.
What struck me the most about the exhibit was the enormous diversity of her work. Most artists develop distinctive styles but Harue seems to have resisted that tendency. Instead, she experimented with all sorts of forms and colors over the years. The quality of the pieces and the vision she showed in making them was inspiring and a little intimidating. Most of the pieces are made of clay, but some are made of bronze, some are clay with bronze additions, and she also used resins and concrete. I took photos of every piece in the exhibit and have included them below. There were no descriptions included, no names of pots or dates when they were made, just numbers so the gallery could keep track of who owned what. Some of the pieces are from local museums, some are from local collections, but most are from Harue's personal collection. While photographing the pieces, my camera began to run out of energy and the little red light began blinking on the screen. I still had a third of the exhibit to photograph, so I was moving as fast as I could to finish everything up, more than a little annoyed that I hadn't charged the battery up. When I got to the last set of pots, I was anxiously photographing each piece, sure that the camera would stop working on the next to last pot. I had been the only one in the gallery the whole time, except for the college student who sat at the front desk. Then when I was almost done, I heard a voice booming behind me: "Where did all these pots come from?" I turned around to see an old woman with a walker talking to the student at the front desk. "Look at all this stuff," she said. "Look at all this stuff," she said over and over as she started strolling through the gallery. "Great," I thought, "some old lady comes in off the street who doesn't know the first thing about ceramics and starts making ridiculous comments." A man came in behind her and asked the student at the front desk if he could look at the price list. "Sure," she said, and pulled out a yellow legal pad. I was feeling a little irritated at this point since I'd asked the student earlier if there was a price list and had been told "No." So there was a price list after all. The man caught up with the older woman just as she was going near the back. "You know," he said, "some of these pots should be in a study collection. Take the tea pots, for example. I bet students would really be inspired by them and could learn a lot by studying them." I walked over to them and said, "That's right. I think these would be a great resource for students. These pots are amazing!" The man looked at the woman and said, "Did you hear what he said?" "What?" she said. "He said these pots are amazing." "Humph," was all she said. I began looking more closely at a few pots I especially admired when I heard the man say, "I talked to Jay Jensen (Curator of Contemporary Art at the Honolulu Museum of Art) the other day and he said they were interested in some of the pieces but that they didn't have room for the entire collection." Then I realized who the "old woman" might be. "Is that the artist?" I asked the student at the front desk. "Yes. She's here to decide what will go home with her and what she'll need to let go of." I walked to the back again and asked her, "Are you the artist? Are you Harue?" She smiled and said, "I guess I'm the one responsible for all of this!" And then we began talking. We walked around the gallery for awhile and I was asking her about glazes and techniques she used to make certain pots. With some pots she could only say, "You know, I made that pot about 60 years ago. I don't remember making it, but I've always liked it." There was a section that had a collection of her cuttlefish and I asked her why she was so interested in them. "Well," she said, "we used to eat a lot of squid when I was growing up. I still eat it, so I know quite a bit about squid. The hardest part, though, is coming up with a good representation of their tentacles." We looked at one of her sculptural pieces and I asked her what was going through her mind when she was designing it and making it. "Oh, I don't know. I didn't really think about it. If I thought about everything I made I'd have gone crazy. Just one thing led to another, you know, one thing led to another." We didn't talk too long. I knew she was making important decisions about what few pots would go home with her and what would have to be dispersed in some way. As I was getting ready to leave the gallery, I snapped two more photos of Harue looking at her own work. Seeing them again reminds me of the poignancy of the moment. After working in clay for over 60 years, Harue was saying goodbye to some of her favorite creations. Hardcover and softcover catalogs of the exhibition are available by contacting Kurt McVay at www.haruemcvay.com. This year's Hawaii Craftsmen exhibition contains a lot of clay, an indication of how vibrant the local clay scene is. Joey Chiarello is one of the visiting artists this year which shows how far he's come as a clay artist. He's developed a distinctive style that's gained an international following. And how about Chris Edwards? He's been working in clay as a handbuilder for less then 4 years and yet he's already become one of the best clay artists in the state. One of his pieces in this exhibit (#55) was purchased by the Honolulu Museum of Art which is a rare honor. It's also my favorite piece in the exhibit. I decided not to submit anything since I didn't have any strong pieces to offer. Maybe next year!
I took photos of every piece in the show that was made of clay, at least in part. I also took close-ups to give you a better idea of how pieces were constructed. The descriptions are from the catalog of the exhibit. I'll be in three sales this month and I'd love to have you come to at least one of them. I've been making lots of pieces the last few months, so you should see quite a few new things.
The first sale will be next Saturday and Sunday, November 14th and 15th, at the Hawaii Potters Guild, 2480 Bingham St., Honolulu, HI 96826 (near UH). I'm one of ten potters who were invited to participate, and all of us will have our pieces for sale at one location. The studio at HPG will be open from 11am to 6pm on both days, and visitors will get a chance to meet the artists and see them do demonstrations. I'm doing demos for an hour at noon on the 15th. Plenty of parking is available on the street or in a nearby parking lot. Refreshments will be served throughout the day. This is part of the Oahu Open Studios event in which artists from all over the island are opening up their studios to visitors. For more information about Oahu Open Studios, go to their website at http://www.oahuopenstudios.com/. The second sale is the Art School Holiday Sale at the Honolulu Museum of Art School at Linekona. Thousands of pieces will be for sale from teachers and students like me in weaving, jewelry, fusion glass, and ceramics. The sale starts with an opening reception on Tuesday, November 24th, from 5:30 to 7:30pm. Refreshments will be served. The sale then runs from November 25th to December 1st (closed Thanksgiving Day) from 10:00am to 6:00pm daily. All artists will be able to replenish their stock on November 27th, so a whole new set of things will available on that date. This is the best craft sale of the year and comes just before Christmas. For more information about the sale, go to the following website: http://honolulumuseum.org/events/14101-art_school_holiday_sale The third sale will be on Saturday, November 28th, with the Windward Potters Guild. The sale takes place from 8:00am until 2:30pm at Kailua Elementary School on Kuulei Road. I'm the "Guest Artist" at this sale and if everything goes well I may be voted in as a member of the guild. Let me know if you have any questions about these sales. Hope to see you at one of them! |
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