I've been a bit busy, I'll be taking part in an exhibition soon.

I would like to make more of these for an exhibition in 10 days time!

Just finished a 12 hour day in the studio making and finishing small bowls. Today I threw 53 small bowls on my kick wheel and 10 goblets, turned the foot rings of 35 small bowls that I threw yesterday, tidied up the bottoms of some little bowls that one of my pupils made yesterday, and hand wedged about 35 kilograms of clay. I feel less tired after all that than I did this time yesterday, it may be to do with the coffee I had earlier on!

I am doing all this, because I had the daft idea yesterday morning that it would be really lovely to have some copper red bowls to go with all the shino glazed work that I will be having in an exhibition ten days from now at the Dunedin Community Gallery. I will be exhibiting in a 4 artist show at the gallery that will feature 2 painters, a sculptor, and myself (a potter!).

This copper red bowl sold on Sunday

I will need to get the bowls dry, bisque fired, then ready to glaze fire in the wood fired kiln by about Thursday or Friday of next week. Not quite sure if it is possible, but I am giving it my best shot! The exhibition opens on Monday 22 of June and runs until the 28th. I will also be demonstrating throwing on the wheel on the Thursday and Friday of the exhibition from 11am to 2pm both days. My plan B for if I can't get things ready for the wood fired kiln in time, is to put some of the bowls through the electric kiln and do some of my blue chun glazes.

Last weekend was one of mixed blessings and emotions. It was preceded in positive fashion on the Friday when someone popped out from town and bought a jug and a cup that had both been in the recent wood firing. It was our monthly open studio weekend, and after a big tidy up and a lot of work setting up a display of the new pots, we had only two small boys from down the road pop into the gallery on the Saturday, and I also gave an hour's tuition to someone that missed out on her lesson on Wednesday. It felt sad to have things looking so nice at our studio, but have so few people take an interest.

Late Saturday afternoon I got a phone call to tell me that, whilst sales of art at the Plunket fund raiser exhibition in Timaru had been really good, none of my pots had sold. I arranged to drive up on Sunday and pick up the pots when the exhibition was dismantled. It was an unfortunate end to the day, and I managed maybe 3.5 hours of broken sleep that night.

Sunday morning saw me too groggy from lack of sleep to safely manage the two hour drive to Timaru to collect my pots, and one of the exhibition organizers kindly agreed to uplift the pots from the exhibition for me to collect from her when I was more able to travel up.

This vase sold on Sunday

It was just as well that I stayed home on the Sunday, as we had half a dozen people through our studio in the afternoon and everyone bought something, eight items sold and the sales mounted up to a goodly total.

It was such a relief after the gloom of the day before.

This jug sold on Friday.

It is often a hard task to keep optimistic about things, there are so many setbacks and disappointments, but it is good to have a productive day like today, and to see a drying rack full of work that has resulted from honest labour, and it is a ray of sunshine on the occasional good day when the jolly things find homes to go to!

I would like to say a big thank you to those of you who follow this blog, and for your supportive comments and kindness, it has been a big help with things here.