"Wait...what!?"

Alternative Post Title:

How I found out I was awarded 2010 Oregon Higher

Education Art Teacher of the Year.....

I was actually washing up breakfast dishes when the phone rang a few minutes after 8:00 (am). Used to providing answering service for my daughters, I thought, "Who the heck would be calling THIS early? It being graduation day, all of Erin's friends didn't have to get up for school and were sure to be sleeping-in. The caller was Shannon McBride, from LakeRidge High School. When I told her what a pleasant surprise it was to hear from her, she said, "Well, I'm about to make it even better," and proceeded to tell me about the award. I was stumbling-over-my-tongue speechless. 'Didn't know what to say. I had no idea.

(You can read more in the George Fox News Releases.)

March firing at Noble Hill with LakeRidge High School students

Caught in the act of the final front 'superstoke'.

A look in the firebox right after the door came down.

Plate from a small stack, featuring wadding prints from shells gathered at Tom & Michele Johnson's new home in Puget Sound.

Latest in the 'sacred vessel' series.

Teaching With Clay | George Fox University

For all of you who couldn't make it to George Fox last Wednesday for chapel, my 'preaching' from the wheel has been recorded as a video podcast. You can access it via iTunes:

- Go to the Chapel Podcast page on the George Fox website.

- Click on a link for "Chapel page on iTunesU" (or click here)

- That, in turn opens up a page in iTunes with a directory. 

- Find "Chapel 03-18-09"  

Enjoy!

Noble Hill Anagama

George Fox University produced a great video on Anagama firing.

View it here.

Image courtesy of www.georgefox.edu.

Noble Hill Anagama | February Firing

View from the front, minutes after unblocking the door.

Born of fire!

Think this is what Dante had in mind?

Mid-kiln

Back shelf

Artist Statment | ALCHEMY

al . che . my [al-kuh-mee] noun 2. a magical power of transmuting a common substance, usually of little value, into a substance of great value.

Alchemy is about my quest for increasingly intimate and immediate relationships between the vessels I shape and the phenomenon of fire. I am captivated by the inextricably symbiotic relationship between artisan and fire, and the uncontrolled and organic beauty of forms glazed by wood ash and fire.

This body of work considers the similarity between the corporeal body and the record etched into it by the act of living, with surfaces on figural forms created entirely by organic firing cycles. I believe it speaks with apt metaphor of the communal dance between bodily experience and the marks – both visible and invisible – that remain behind as journal of our bodies’ journeys.

Along with the grace and beauty inherent in the human form, the idea of the body as a sacred vessel for the spirit, and as the vessel in which the seed of life is nurtured and born resonates with the powerful labor and childbirth imagery attendant in the cycles of primitive firing techniques I employ in my work.

With each firing I rediscover the inexplicable relationship between the artist and fire, and the corresponding magic in the uncontrolled and organic beauty of figural forms glazed by wood ash and fire.