Blog Posts - the Rossmoor Ceramic arts club

CAC members' art & activities while sheltering in place - part 4

4/4/2020

Bella sent some pictures of her tulips and one of the masks she's been sewing. Beautiful!

Fred Chen says "No wheel to turn, no pot to throw, so I turn to bird watching. Keeping the feeder well stocked becomes my daily chore."

Look at those wings - what a great sense of motion!

And from Mel Bricker: "I'm enjoying the creativity of nature interfacing with the pots I created in the studio. It is wonderful to be greeted by both the plants and pots, although the pots are a little hard to see through the foliage. Here are photos of two of our favorite plants that are really blooming right now."

(They look great - but it's too bad we can't see the pots better. They looked really good before anything was planted in them!)

On the left, Terri Snyder with some more of her ceramic works-in-progress - looks like she's having fun! And on the right is a new sculpture that Gaby Miller has started at home. She said it's the first time she's tried making a head, which is quite impressive!

Below are two acrylic paintings by John Rose. On the left are the Hills of Rossmoor. The landscape on the right was done while watching a demo on YouTube - he said that he used a palette knife on the tree. Very nice work!

Chrissie & Hank Fabian each have made some lovely and unique garden ceramics - Hank's is the one on the left, while Chrissie's sculptural pot is on the right.

More Artwork During The Shutdown - Part 3

3/27/2020

Anyone who spends time in the Ceramic Studio has seen Janet Welch's work: colorful jewelry, quirky sculptures, portraits of dogs & other animals on small ceramic plates. Above on the left you can see another skill that Janet is a master at - custom needlework design. And it's another wonderful dog portrait!
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Anne Shulenberger has been doing some sgrafitto on unfired tiles she brought home when the studio closed. Above on the right is one called "Catitude," which is a work-in-progress. "It will look very different once it's fired - for one thing the clay that's so dark now (i.e., the color of the cat in the center) will become a light speckled tan. That's what makes ceramic work so exciting. You never know exactly how things will turn out; it can be like alchemy!" Anne says.

Terri Snyder not only brought some clay home and started to make a cylinder with it, but she's also been teaching her husband Ron how to do it. What a great way to shelter in place! Ron is a very talented painter (you can see some of his work on the walls behind them) who is not yet a CAC member - however I think we'll be seeing more of him in the future!

Above are images of John Terlip's work, and these are his words: "Here are a couple pieces of my recent clay work. The bottle is sagger fired, and the other pot was purposely broken and each piece fired with a different type Raku. I have also included a poem I wrote last week (shown below), with the view I see every morning from my desk. I'm currently the ceramic artist at Villa Con Cuore (an Art Retreat in Fallbrook, CA in the San Diego area). I'm living in my RV across from the art studios, and I have just extended my trip for another 3 months."

We look forward to seeing John (and his amazing work!) when he returns. For information about the place where he is staying right now, click on this link: www.villaconcuore.com

Additional Artwork Made During The Shutdown - Part 2

3/23/2020

During the current shutdown Ana Resnick has used some of her spare time to knit a scarf for a sculpture of a woman that she had created a while ago - see below. Presto - a mixed-media artwork is born!

Also below is Chrissie Fabian's acrylic painting "Cat......astrophe" - which she says is a picture of her daughter's cat. Some of us have seen sculptures of Chrissie's in our studio which seem to be of the same critter.. some cat!

Jim Anderson has been creating square vessels with bird features in our studio for some time now, and folks often ask what he does with them. Well now we know - there's a whole flock of birds on his desk, all put to good use!

Patty Taylor's composition below shows one of her beautiful sculptures (a work in progress) temporarily "muzzled" by COVID-19. However on the right is her new home clay studio. Which just goes to show - you can't keep a good woman down!

Working at home, Anne Shulenberger transformed an old leather checkbook cover into an accordion book with the title "Storm." She glued in colorfully collaged handmade paper as the pages, then made a latch for the little book using part of a wooden chopstick with a bead on top. The left side pages are about fires destroying wildlife in Australia; the right side is about the genesis of our current Pandemic.

Artwork by CAC members during the shutdown

3/21/2020

While the Ceramic Studio is shut down (along with almost everything here) due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of our members have been making art at home - and not necessarily out of clay!

The work above is from Josephine Wang (who is our current featured artist - you can check out her beautiful sculpture & pottery in the Ceramic Studio's display window if you happen to be down there). Here's what she has to say about it: "I did some Chinese Calligraphy for the first time in many years. These are two different styles. The one on the left was the style of calligraphy used during the reign of the emperor who ordered the construction of the tomb with the Terra-cotta Army (i.e., in the late 200's, BC). The one on the right matured in Tang Dynasty and is still the classic style today. A great exercise in centering oneself and whiling away time"
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Below is a fabric piece by Darryla Green, who said "This fabric with big black blob-shapes was purchased last year in Kyoto, on our Japan trip. I didn’t buy quite enough, being unfamiliar with meters - so I've added a strip of fabric that's sort of fringe-looking, to lengthen the bottom. I am only hand-sewing. In no hurry, since this period of our lives may last a while."

Below is a charming ceramic tile (still unfired) by Sue Wetzler. Sue says "This week with little to do, I did a sgrafitto design on a small tile I had made during the class, that had gotten bone dry. I had painted several of them with underglaze and brought them home. It’s no great work of art (I really can’t draw) but I like it. Hope you are doing well and staying healthy. I miss the studio!"

Check out the paintings by Sally Andersen. Sally's words about them: "I've been painting watercolors every day! These are in progress... Not finished yet." Well, you could have fooled us - they look beautiful!

Our first Artists' Soiree was a wonderful event!

3/2/2020

CAC's first-ever Artists' Soiree was held the evening of February 28, 2020 at the Rossmoor Event Center. It was a wonderful event, featuring two of our very creative members: Gaby Miller and Karen Hoyt. Each of them had a table devoted to displaying a wide selection of their ceramic pieces, and Mel Bricker, our CAC Rossmoor News correspondent, interviewed the artists about their lives and creative experiences.

There was a lot of animated discussion and mingling before the interviews, fueled by some wonderful live jazz, wine, and delicious "small bites" (provided by members of the CAC Board). It was a lovely celebration of ceramic art and our warm community!

The Ceramic Arts Cub's Holiday Party - 2019!

12/19/2019

We had a lovely Holiday Party at the Event Center on December 10 - many thanks are due to Susan Kline, Judy Russell, CAC President Mary Ann Stanley, and many many others who volunteered their time and energy to make it so much fun!

We dressed up, we ate (and drank) very well, we played a game (Bingo!), sang (and acted out) holiday songs, were treated to to a unique & marvelous folk concert (by CAC member Doc King & cohorts) and had a raffle (with lots of prizes, big & small).

Each CAC member received a special booklet as the CAC's gift, with 8 pages of wonderful essays about ceramics and life by Mel Bricker, our Club Correspondent to the Rossmoor News. (Note: the photos below, mostly taken by Patty Taylor, plus several taken by Barbara Wightman, are in no particular order.)

Pit Fire 2019 part 2 - the pieces that emerged from the flames

5/29/2019

The photos in this first slideshow were taken the day we unloaded our pieces - May 16. Lots of beautiful pots and sculptures came out of the fire! After unloading, sorting & cleaning up, we had a wonderful potluck lunch right there in the studio, among our new treasures.

Here are more photos of our new crop of pit-fired ceramic pieces, taken after the day they were unloaded. Some of these pieces have been featured in the display window that was installed on May 20, the Monday following the firing. They will be there through June 9 - come down and see them if you can!

PIT FIRE 2019 - it was a great one!

5/27/2019

The scheduled day was changed due to rain in the forecast - we loaded & fired a day early, on May 14. See the preparation of the pit and the loading of our pieces (many of them wrapped in newspaper) into it in the slideshow below.

Here's another slideshow of the Pit Fire Team (led by Patty and her assistants, John T. & Judy R.) as they are sprinkling it all with salt and copper carbonate, putting on cow patties and seaweed, adding crumpled newspaper & kindling wood, then stacking firewood logs on top of everything.

With everything loaded & ready, here they are placing metal pipes over the pit - and then we had our ceremonial blessing of the pit (led by Darryla).

Now comes the lighting of the pit, the fire blazing up & then subsiding into smoldering embers, and finally the whole pit is covered with metal sheets. Everything is left that way for 2 days. (See our next post for results of the Pit Fire.)

January Featured artist - Photos from our December 2018 Holiday party

1/11/2019

We have a wonderful new window display for January, including a new Featured Artist, Caralee Cowen - come down and see!

Here's a slideshow of photos from our party in December, which was a great success!

Sculpture class - new Featured Artist display in the window

9/27/2018

Here are a few photos from our recent Portrait Sculpture class, taught by Jia Jun Lu. It was a great experience, and quite a lot of good sculpture was the result! Most of them have not been fired and finished yet (ceramic art takes time and patience), so check back here for more images in a future post. To be continued...

The very talented Linda Mariano is currently our Featured Artist. Below is the Rossmoor News article about her. Linda's beautiful ceramic artwork will be in the window through October 7 - come on down and see it!