Life is what Happens...

"I wonder if I have been worrying so much that the worry muscles in my brain are now broken, permanently sharpened to a point of attention that is useless now, an ambulance siren for no one."

Jill Kolongowski from the article "Tart" in the March 2025 issue of the Sun magazine

The last few years have been challenging to say the least. Now, I realize that for several of them I had been going through a major, years long depressive espisode with its accompanying anxiety.  Sometime during the winter, my head finally poked out of the hole in the ground it had been in. Trouble is, I came up in the middle of a war zone. Between the crap the current administration is pulling that will directly affect my life and the lives of those I love and a lot of personal stuff, it is very tempting to crawl back in the hole. But, that isn't possible this time. Or, maybe like the above quote, the part of my brain that incessantly over thinks, is worn out and broken. Good.

My husband has had a stroke. He is doing pretty well all things considered. His vision being the biggest issue. He can see, but not well enough to drive or do the things he needs/wants to do. So, my life will change dramatically (already has) and so my art and the way I sell it will also. I ask for your patience as I figure this all out. It would help if the medical system in the US wasn't such a mess. Our first order of business is to get therapies for him to help with his sight. Due to a simple paperwork issue (by the hosptial and it took me a week just to figure out that it was an actual problem) this is taking much longer than it should, time being of the essence with his vision. Once that is scheduled the rest of life can be set up around that.

I see my life online expanding and am pondering what that will look like and the steps to get there. In the meantime, I could use your help. If you are in Spokane, please think of me and Pottery Place Plus when picking out gifts. We are at 203 N Washington in Downtown, next to Aunties books. If you are in Moscow Idaho, I have restocked Essential Art Gallery and Fine Gifts with my work and it should be available soon. My Etsy shop is filled with handmade buttons and pendants, as well as eco printed paper and fabric-with more to come. Oh, and a few scarves, if that is what you were after. Remember that you can click on the item and "send the seller a message" if what you see is close but no quite-I am happy to send pictures of things that are waiting their turn to be out in public, one way or the other.

I can still do classes and events here in town, I just can't be gone for days at this point so I have cancelled the Richland Art in the Park for this year. It makes me sad because I like that show a lot. If my class at the Spokane Art School on August 9th fills, it will go on. As far as scheduling other classes goes, until I get his therapy appointments in place I can't do much right now.

Thanks in advance for your support, it means the world to me.

I have been getting some paper done, along with a few other things as time permits. This is for the paper sets I sell on Etsy as well as my own work.

Spring is Almost Here

"The promise of spring's arrival is enough to get anyone through the bitter winter."

Jen Selinsky

I love to watch these form off the deck awning

I have been working away on a project for December, lots of sewing. One day I got distracted and made little piles of a lot of the cool stuff I have collected over the years.

Spring at last! The geese are flying over, the snow is melting, and spring shows will be coming soon. Frist up is 33 Artists Market at the the Woman's Club of Spokane. Come say hi.

 

The Studio in Winter

 " A vision without execution is hallucination."

Accredited to Thomas Edison or being an ancient Japanese proverb. It's a good thought either way.

So, at this time of year I am not only wrapping up the old year (inventory, taxes etc.) but planning what  this year will look like. With everything that is going on the vision is pretty cloudy to be honest. I am thinking about what art fairs I will do, classes I will teach, and what art I will make. The only thing set in stone at this point is a solo exhibit at Pottery Place Plus, of which I am a member. We can rent out the guest artist space for a body of work that differs from our normal work we show in the gallery. I am thinking smaller accessories that may drift into some jewelry items, but we will see. My method for deciding is to make piles of materials and see what ideas come of it. A great activity for cold, gray afternoons. I watch the goings-on at the bird feeder while I sort out the fabrics that remind me of the sunny days they were made. I have until October to be done with the work for the show; It seems far off, but will be here shortly. 

In the meantime, if I am going to be able to do fairs this spring and summer I do have to get work done, even though it is the dead of winter here and there isn't much fresh plant material to work with. I was asked for an interview with our local weekly paper, the Inlander, so that was another poke to get busy! They needed pictures to go with the article. I started with yellow onionskins on silk. This is a method with rusty nails as a co-effector that creates something that resembles an animal print. This was a way to have something colorful in the background of the photos as most of the prints with dried and pressed leaves give fainter color than when they were green leaves. They can be overdyed with other natural dyes, which is what will happen to the pieces I did as soon as we are just a tad warmer outside. Stomping around in the outdoor kitchen in 32 degrees Celsius is much better than the teens and twenties we are experiencing now.

 So, I am also spending sometime at the sewing machine making new ideas for what seems like a ton of eco printed fabric piling up around here. I guess in this case the execution mentioned above is coming before the vision and at some point it will all come together.

Bundles of yellow onion skins and rusted nails steaming in the outdoor kitchen, this can also be turned olive green with a post dip in an iron pot .

This one is on my Etsy shop. While I am taking a break from ceramics to create space both physically and mentally, I still have a lot of buttons and pendants to post, so keep checking!

Out and About

It is going to be another busy summer! Here is a list of where I know I will be so far:

May

5th-28th

Tea Show

Pottery Place Plus, 203 N Washington, Spokane, WA

The reception on May 5th includes a tea tasting! Click HERE for info. 

6th and 7th

Moscow Renaissance Fair

City Park, Moscow Idaho

Click here for more info. 

June

3rd and 4th

Troutdale Art Festival, Troutdale OR

Click here for more info.

10th

Manito Art Festival

Manito Park, Spokane WA

Click Here for more info.

More info about shows and classes coming soon!

"Spill the Tea" my piece for the Tea Show at Pottery Place Plus.

All the News that's Fit to Print

Hello! Just to catch up, here is what is going on in the next little while. I will be at Art in the Park in Richland Washington this weekend the 29th and 30th (yes, it is a Friday, Saturday show). It will be very warm, even for Tri-cities Washington, so I will be opening the booth up early, as are many of the makers in the show. This show is open until 8:00 PM on Friday and 7:00 PM on Saturday, so late shopping is also an option.

Next week I will be heading off to Anacortes Washington for the Anacortes Arts Festival, August 5th, 6th, 7th. I hope to see you there.

I am teaching two eco printing workshops this year at Urban Art Cooperative. One is Sunday August 21st and the other is Saturday September 10th. You can get all the details at www.urbanartcoop.org click on "sign up for classes" and scroll down to the workshops.

It is a busy summer and I hope to catch up with you in person!

I will have shirts in additon to scarves at both Art in the Park Richland and Anacortes Festival of the Arts

Happy Equinox

 "We must get back into relation: vivid and nourishing relation to the cosmos and the universe... We must once more practice the ritual of dawn and noon and sunset, the ritual of kindling fire and pouring water, the ritual of the first breath and the last."

D.H. Lawrence

Virginia Creeper 

If the pandemic has done anything for me it has made me slow down and appreciate the seasons. Eco printing does that anyway, you work with what nature is giving you at the moment. In the past, fall has always been a sort of rush before the first frost puts a stop to things, but this year it has been a relief. Although some plants I would normally work with at this time of year were toasted by the alarming summer heat, there are still plenty of survivors. Some may not give the same result as they do when not stressed, but they are still hanging on, just like a lot of us. 

I will be participating in the Little Spokane River Artist Studio Tour this weekend at Clay Fox Pottery Studio, click HERE to get a map, I hope to see you there!

New Year, New Day

 "Living in the past is depression, living in the future is anxiety."

Unknown

We have hit the gray and sometimes bleak part of winter here, so I decided to spend the week making a little sunshine. In the summer I pick Tansy flowers from along the river and hang them to dry for just such an occasion.

I put the dried flower heads in a pot of water to soak overnight, then simmered them for about 45 minutes to make the dye. The scent is lovely, like yarrow, sharp and calming at the same time.

This is right at the beginning, such a beautiful soft color! I simmered them for about an hour and then let them sit until evening before removing them from the dye bath.

The fabric in the background silk crepe de chine, the one swooshing across the middle is silk dupioni. These were scrappy type pieces of fabric that I had treated with alum last summer (I have no idea what I intended to do with them then) and they did have a bit of iron contamination as there are some spots here and there. No worries, I will either find something to do with them, or maybe, give them a bath in the iron pot and turn them olive green at a later date. Right now they are hanging in my studio so I can enjoy the color, which is about the color of the winter sun here when we get to see it.

At the moment, I am doing my best to live in the moment. Having too many expectations for the coming year could make it seem worse than it actually is. Looking back on the debacle of 2020, I can see where I did that to myself at times. I was just reading an article about people who are starting up whole new businesses during the pandemic, and I know several personally that started up businesses during the Great Recession that are still in business. While I have no interest in reinventing the wheel at this point, I am looking deeply (as I was right before the pandemic started) into the business side of my art, while still practicing art, no matter what type it is. I bought myself a little Christmas present, Shelley Rhodes book Sketchbook Explorations, and although I have never really kept sketchbooks decided it would be an interesting idea to mess around with while waiting for the snow to melt and spring to return. Only two days into it and I have had a bunch of thoughts about the art, that may or may not lead to other business ideas. But without the art, there is no business, so the thing to do is keep making more art and when the time is right (whenever in the world that might end up being) the business ideas tend to synthesize themselves.

If you can't seem to get into the "Happy New Year" mood, that may actually be a good thing for now. It may be your soul protecting you from either overthinking the past or the future; and thus causing you pain of one sort or another. About the only thing you have control over is today, so the things to do today are those that make tomorrow a better place, no matter what happens. 

Cheers, take care of yourself and stay safe.

Decision Made! Well...Maybe, I Don't Know, Let's See What Happens

"This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it."

Dorothy Parker

and/or

"What fresh hell is this?"

Also credited to Dorothy Parker

There is not much eco printing going on since it is still pretty cold and the plants are keeping their heads down, as are we all at this point. I have been spending so much stressful time on the computer, that by the time I get around to this blog I am worn out and haven't been keeping up with it. Here is an update of life in semi-isolation.

Adding things to my Etsy site, next week's task is to explore other selling options. If nothing else, by the time this is over I will have a much better online presence. With everyone at home, and finances uncertain, I don't expect tons of sales, but at least I will get a lot of things done I should have been doing all along. Thanks to all who have been buying, even small purchases help a lot.

These two images are of a series of works regarding the effect of textile production. The series is called "Unraveling: The Effect of Fabric on our Environment, our Culture, and our Health". Or some such thing. It is scheduled to show in September. I will be writing more about it over the spring and summer. The top image is for a piece called Worry Dolls, regarding child labor (yes, this is still, unfortunately, "a thing") and the bottom is about what happens to first world clothes when they are dumped on the third world. If you donated clothing labels, this is where the lion's share of them went. Still trying to decide on that screaming pink thing dead center in the middle-may have to de-emphasize that.

 Life around the house goes on as normal.

Lots of wandering around, both in the yard and over to the river and back. 

Mr. Man is getting ready for gardening season. His health is good, we are trying to keep it that way by staying home. I am learning all kinds of new digital web skills because of this! (imagine frowny face here)

Buddha excels at self isolation.

Anyway, needless to say, I don't know what will happen with the show season or my intended class schedule. With no crystal ball it is hard to tell. Galleries, like the Pottery Place Plus and Essential Art will eventually open again and classes can be put together at the last minute, while not ideal, it is possible. The art fairs are another matter. Are they being held, is it worth the expenditure during a year like this, are all questions with no answers at the moment. 

I want to thank my friends and local art community for all the help thus far, you guys are the best!

Surprises

"Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks."

Samuel Johnson

As it turns out, the gingko leaf actually does discharge, that is, bleach out color. I had 3 "bummer" scarves hanging around (as in, I opened up the roll and went "Bummer!") So I decided to give this technique a go. Although I would be the first to admit this is probably the worst example ever created, I am so jazzed that anything happened at all! Also beware of internet photos-this looks way better here than in real life; but it makes me want to run around dyeing fabric just to do it again and again-practice makes perfect! Or better than this anyway.

I will fiddle with it some more after The Little Spokane River Artist Studio Tour (do you like how I worked that in?). This Saturday September 28th, I will be at stop number 3, Jill Smith's studio, come see me! 10-5 rain or shine.

"Free" Shipping?

This is a bit of a rant, so I will counter that with some nice pictures, I promise. Recently Etsy announced that they will only let sellers rise in their search engine if they offer free shipping. They encourage sellers to "adjust" their pricing to cover the cost of the shipping. Meaning, the shipping is not free, but included in the price. 

New Work

This raises some questions and issues.

1. A brief explanation of how Etsy works. In addition to taking a percentage of the sale of the item, they also take a percentage of the shipping charge as well. Due to the increase in postage in the last few years the amount I charge is usually about on the nose for what the post office charges me and doesn't include the price of packing materials (in my case not that big a deal since I use recycled whenever possible) or the time it takes to pack it up and take it to the post office. I could go on some tirad about what my time is worth-but that aside, look at it this way. If I had to hire somebody to help in the studio I would be paying them, so their wage would be going toward packing up your order. I decided that I was better off to make the shipping charge look reasonable than to actually account for the all expenses involved, so I am not charging what it really costs to get an item to a customer as it is.

Taking pictures in the garden and fiddling around with the filters on the phone.

2. Let's say for the sake of argument that I just go ahead and raise the price of each item the amount I am charging for postage now which is about $3.95. So, a customer orders one button or pendant. No biggie, they are paying the same they would have anyway. But, if a customer buys several items they would be paying that added cost on each item, way more than they would have since up to this point I do a flat fee. The boxes I had to buy for the ceramics to ensure they reach you in one piece hold several pieces and the added weight is minor, so it is a way to encourage people to stuff that pup full! Why not keep the price of everything clear? To have "free shipping" all the time also doesn't allow me to use it as a marketing tool, instead my only options are to do some sort of discount on the already over priced item. Again, why not just be clear that there is a value for the item and a value for the shipping?

Here are some of the students of the eco printing on paper class I taught at Art Salvage.

3. Speaking of pricing. I started up this version of my shop in February and after a fair amount of research came up with a pricing plan that covered the cost of expenses and labor and was competitive. So when you search "ceramic buttons" or whatever you type into your browser you will see similar pricing for similar work not only on Etsy, but out on the web in general. Adding to the price only makes me look like I am charging too much or think a whole lot more of myself than I should! My inclination as a shopper is to not click on the Google listing for the higher priced item, meaning, I may never see that the shipping is included. Then there is the whole matter of refunds. It may seem like semantics but there are actual laws regarding what you call things in advertising. When something is called free, it is supposed to be free. If a customer wanted to return something in the past then the normal procedure is to refund the price of the item, not the shipping, as it was shipped after all. But if you call it free shipping than technically speaking you weren't charging them for it to begin with so they get the entire purchase price back regardless of the fact that the money was spent at the post office and the item delivered.

This studio helper gets paid in cat food and treats. That being said with non-opposable thumbs she isn't much help in the shipping department.

I tend to be an over thinker, so I will close this by saying a few things and be done. When I put scarves or other higher priced items in the shop it is truly, honestly, free shipping. You hate the thing when you open it up, you can send it back (following my return policy) and you get the price (all of it) back. It is just cost prohibitive for me to do that on $6-15 buttons. Etsy's new policy applies to things over $35.00 so it shouldn't make that much difference items priced under that amount, in theory. I guess my problem is that it is just another way that people don't understand the actual value of an item or person. People working in the small studios are not the same as Amazon. We don't have those resources. If somebody paid me a hundred bucks a year for no other reason than to pay me a hundred bucks a year, then yes I would give them free shipping. Hey-now there's idea! I will let you know where to mail that check. It is one thing to have the rest of the world devalue your education and skill, but then to have an organization that is supposed to be supporting the arts devalue you, it is very disheartening. Etsy should quit worrying about trying to compete with Amazon and go on education campaign about how things are made, along with the time and skill it takes to make them,  and why it is better for the economy and the environment to shop small.

Off To the Moscow Renaissance Fair

Moscow, Idaho that its. This Saturday and Sunday, May 4th and 5th, East City Park, Booth 34-pop by and say Hi!

In addition to art booths, there is music, a May Pole, food, and parade featuring this guy!

The Art of Digging a Ditch

A few years ago I saw a documentary about an artist named Wayne White. In one scene they showed him sitting before his easel and he said something to the effect that this was the ditch-digging part of art. You have a great idea, but then you actually have to sit down and make it.

I so wish that was the type of ditch-digging I have been doing. Part of an art business, is, well, the business. Without that side of it, making art is a hobby or avocation at best. There is absolutely nothing wrong with making things simply because you like to make them-I wish more people did, but I also get into some fairly strange conversations with people who don't think of what I do as "real". Let's look at some of things that have to get done.

First off there is the plain old boring office stuff like getting the taxes ready for the accountant. While you can just take that pile in the corner of your desk and dump it on an accountant, or sort it out in a rush madly feeding numbers into something like Turbotax, the best piece of advice I ever got is to know where you stand with the money at all times. Know what you make, how much you have, where it came from, what it is being spent on, and, if you owe money, to whom and for what. That last one is where a lot of people go horribly wrong.  I keep spreadsheets in Excel and usually catch up with them once a month, but there is always something that needs chasing down at the end of the year. I find getting all that stuff together for somebody else helps me understand my business and make plans for the coming year.

I'd put a picture of the top of my desk here-but I don't want to give you nightmares.

At the beginning of the year the Pottery Place Plus freshens up the shop by having some members trade spaces. This year was my turn. We also rotate jobs amongst ourselves and so there is a bit of a learning curve here in January. In my case I said I would help with the social media accounts and although I understand the nuts and bolts of how it works, now I have to get into the habit of making time for it. I did this to myself so I would also get more in the habit of doing it for myself as well and I would be forced to learn more about it than I know now. That is one of the happy things about belonging to a group like this, there is always something you can learn from other members. Artist co-ops sometimes get a bad rap, but really, how else do you get a year's worth of exposure for your work without having to work all those days yourself? If the group you are considering jurys the work and they have a good location with lots of potential customers, I would say give it a whirl. Co-ops are a fair amount of work, but I find the chronic income to be very helpful and worth the effort.

New space at Pottery Place, my old space was very wide with a low ceiling, this one is very tall. It will give me new things to think about 

This is the time of year that most of the show applications for the summer are due, so some analysis of last year is in order. Once that is decided then I have to come up with a class schedule-what to offer and where to offer it at. I am also working on reopening my Etsy shop, but I am getting tripped up on some of the details. I am getting a handle on it and in the meantime, making the stuff is really fun!

Making multiple buttons. I needed to keep track of what glaze and what firing temp in order to be able to repeat them-what did we ever do before phone cameras?

 I think I am coming to the end of the drudgery type of stuff and can start thinking about what new ideas I want to make this year. Due to my husband being laid up last fall I didn't get much made, nor did I get out and get enough materials to dry and use this winter so I am focusing on other things. Digging around in my supplies and pondering what else could go along with my regular offerings does a number of things. It stretches the imagination for one-dumping a big pile of unrelated items out onto the cutting table makes my head work differently. Some things go back in the closet and some go to my favorite new place Art Salvage for others to enjoy, but I always seem to get at least one new idea from this exercise.  

This is actually a personal project. I bought a down coat at a thrift store but it did have some damage so I am going to try my hand at the concept of visible mending. It kind of looks like the person who owned the coat previously was attacked by a bear-but only in the armpit. Anyway, it could lead to new work as well.

I hope to be back at eco printing next week, I have some ideas for the dried material I do have and some over-dyes, stay tuned!