Spring with Flowers!

Where would Spring be without the flowers? For me it is flowers that are the first brave messengers of Spring. The very first of them will even push through snow, and arrive, nodding and blinking and tossing their tiny heads. In no time at all, the cheerful flowers make the world a better place!

Laura has been painting again, and her paintings reflect Spring, and new life and possibilities.
This painting is rather long and thin, so here are 3 photos of it!

Laura also entered some arrangements of flowers and vegetables in a recent local flower show, and..... she won 2 silver cups!

Photo kindly supplied by Rhonda

I have an exhibition scheduled for November this year in the Selwyn Gallery in Darfield near Christchurch. When the exhibition was first mooted, I was expecting to put together a show of new crystalline glazed work, and had ideas for sculptural pieces for mounting on the wall, as well as for vases, but what we have been through this year took me away from doing much in the studio for a considerable time, and when I returned to creative work I needed refreshing. The studio seemed rather empty and lifeless at first, and I had no real desire to make smallish things out of porcelain.

Instead, I found myself drawn towards some bags of earthenware clay. My first attempts were planters and fairly simple things, just to get some throwing skills and some stamina back. Then I made large jugs or pitchers. The warm, human form of a jug, what can be nicer! I hope to wood fire some of them soon.

Handles, fit for a hefty jug, are a challenge and a creative pleasure. I enjoyed adding some decorative lumps and bumps to this one!

Now that I have made a start, I am back to the porcelain again, and am experimenting with largish objects that are somewhere between a bowl and a vase. I am thinking of forms that will be an adventure playground for the extremely fluid crystalline glazes that I will put on them, so I am thinking of glazes running, pooling, and intermixing when I make these. 

The bowl/vases are made in two pieces, they are really a deep bowl with a thrown foot, I suppose they are like a chalice or goblet for a giant!

have had my first crystalline glaze firings for quite some months, and completed this shallow bowl recently. 

And.... Last, but not least.......
we were delighted to receive a post card from a friend who traveled to Paris. The post card was of a black cat, and this can be seen on the left of the photo.. In close proximity to the card, Nigella Stopit did her best to pose appropriately!