One thing leads to another

Teaching has the wonderful reciprocity factor, where your students give back as much as they get.

My students inspire and challenge me through their own wish to learn. My goal is to keep them daring to create their visual fantasies, by giving them my support to find ways to realize them.

The very small wedding dress collection started when I was demonstrating how to make clay look like folded fabric. I made a sample and the other wedding dresses followed .

Balls continued - The Abacus

This abacus is a pretty, non-functional one. I never learned to use them. Only once did I see it being used: a restaurant owner ( in Greece perhaps?) adding up the day's takings, using an abacus and not a calculator. Their order and dependability are engaging.
Like the abacus, so many things from our past have become irrelevant and non functional. We look back with nostalgia and smile and shrug. Most of them have been replaced by faster/more efficient/better items. .
What concerns me is that soon democracy, the idea of equal rights ( some have never had it anyhow) and freedom of speech - will be as irrelevant and as useless as my ceramic abacus.
Broken.
Unlike the abacus, we will not be looking back with a smile of nostalgia. We are already weeping at the loss.
What is replacing these is not only broken and non functional at the outset, but unbearable to those of us who found equality, freedom of speech and well, some form of democracy - irreplaceable basic necessities.What is replacing these is arbitrary,totalitarian and racist and it is happening as we silently watch or chatter among ourselves at how horrible it is .
I wonder how many out there would like to stop this downhill (legislation and government ) undermining of hope for peace and equality and how we can find a way to do so before its really too late?

At last. My studio.

I would
love to say it's over. But I have to advise anyone who is thinking of putting up a pergola, an awning, an enclosure - DO NOT use the company I used. Their service was bad, the information they gave was incorrect, the client is wrong never mind what and they do not discuss what they plan nor are they clear about what you are paying for.
Sochechei Hasharon. A large company, who have overcharged for bad work.

That being said, I am delighted to be able to set up classes and start working in the studio.
Classes will be Sunday and Wednesday evenings and Tuesday mornings.
Anyone interested- do call me.

Thank you Matt Nolen (Aida and Givat Haviva)

The two day workshop with Matt Nolen opened a new terrain of ceramic thinking for me. It ain't over till it's over is the bottom line; the possibility of adding and subtracting saving the best parts of a piece and taking it to the final potential, is possible now with all the tricks in his bag which he shares so generously.
Matt Nolen is a wonderful,warm and exciting artist, who manges to enthuse others with the joy of the possibilities of ceramic art, taking a fresh look at rules and regulations - breaking them to create more exciting and surprising results.
I am now in the process of redefining my finished pieces, some which I had thought done are going back into work, others in the process, have changed direction completely. With newly learned techniques and processes, the richness of layered pieces is tempting . It is a process of learning and will take a while before I find my way here, following my own style, while opening up and adding new dimensions. The process of learning, as always, the way to the goal, is the most exciting.
Thank you Matt, and Aida for bringing him, for the new horizons and renewed creative excitement that the workshop has brought.

And well, its also time to reveal that starting this month I will also be working full time - and I really hope that evenings and weekends will be exploited to the maximum for my art.

I feel blessed to have these options open up and the ability to follow more than one path at once. I shall miss being a full time artist, but my relationship with the bank will surely improve.

Visiting the Past

Time did not stop in the present while I went back into the early 60's in Israel, scooping up memories of bare minimalism for the exhibition in May, called "Israeli Made". I revisited those moments of discovering that everything we had known about clothes and utensils up until our arrival in Israel, was foreign and alien and just did not fit in here. Plain and simple was the new order.
As I remembered in clay, nostalgia took over and brought back all newly sculpted garments, shoes and accessories, souvenirs of the simplicity of Israel in the days we now remember as charming. But they were so difficult then.
I remembered the days at Alonei Yitzchak, as new arrivals, visiting the laundry to pick up clothes for the week, and finding it hilarious that we were not allowed to wear a white shirt except for the Sabath. Ata, Maskit, Dafna, Nimrod, these were the brands of the day. That word didnt exist in our vocabulary, but the uniformity and strange rules did. At the time I would never have believed that the strangeness would one day inspire me. A month ago, I had no idea that working with these memories would connect me strongly to such deep roots.

Back to Blogger, back to sculpting

Back to sculpture after some weeks of trying out new combinations of paper and clay, ( not having given up on finding ways to make molds and castings but taking a break from that).
All of a sudden I realized that my restlessness and general feeling of discontent stem directly from NOT having sat down quietly to sculpt per se in a week or two. I obviously need the chemical exuded by my brain at the touch of my fingers to clean, soft, pliable, fresh clay and a couple of hours of following my heart to where it wants to go.
I have to say that the time spent was not wasted at all. Using paper clay in combination with my clay sculptures, offers possibilities unworkable before. I am soaring on the wings of ideas and working happily again. I will soon see how connecting between the regular clay and the paper mix works in firing but for the duration of the process of creating it, I will go blindly into the joy it brings.