Pots and Lemonade

I just got back from a great road trip to Cincinnati, Ohio where I joined Louise Jenks and a few of her friends for her 5th annual pottery sale. Louise was a student of mine at the very first workshop I led at the Penland School of Crafts and I was flattered to be invited almost 10 years later to join her friends. We each set up a table in front of her lovely home and on a perfect summer day there was a line of enthusiastic buyers for most of the day! Louise has a lot of good friends who helped support the event and it couldn't have been better organized. It was probably a little too far to be driving in these days of $4.00 gasoline, but I met some great people and enjoyed learning about the pottery community in that part of the world.

week at the beach!

I just returned from a week on the beach at Avon, NC in the Outer Banks. I've grown to love my visits there as it's the only place that I am content to switch off and do nothing at all. I swam in the ocean every day, ate great food, played pool and read over 1,000 pages of various books.

Mark Twain—A Life

by RON POWERS. You can hardly have grow up in this country without knowing Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. I still have the copies that I read from my childhood and it was fascinating to read about the life and times that produced such a uniquely american writer. I'm sure his story could have been told in less than 700 pages! but I'm glad to have plowed through it.

Big Fish—A Novel of Epic Proportions

by DANIEL WALLACE. This is the book that Tim Burton adapted to film. I've never seen it, but he is an interesting filmmaker. I think it might have been a rare case of a movie that was better than the book!.

Dissolution

by C.J. SAMSON. I don't usually like fiction set in ye olden days, but this was a good story and made very clear the opposing tensions that tore the church apart in 16th Century England. Monks and hairshirts and some quality sinning are familiar territory for a 'lapsed catholic' such as myself.

I took a few of my little handbuilt sculptures to the beach and shot some pictures. I've got a new camera (and a new blog!) and I thought it might make for a good setting for these guys. I've been making things like this for almost 30 years and I'm still not sure what they are all about. Right now I'm saving them up until I get 100.