Text
April 2011 Newsletter
Indigo Street Pottery Newsletter
In this Issue
1. Indigo Street Pottery Calendar
2. Jesse Armstrong, Mesa Arts Center Ceramics Artist-in-Residence
-
3.Sharing the Stage: The Contemporary Vase 2011, The Artisan Gallery, Massachusetts
4. NCECA 2011, Tampa, Florida
-
5.Indigo Street Pottery Garden Notes
6. Our New Studio Cat, Maurice
Welcome to our monthly newsletter! It is part of our website indigostreetpottery.com , which you can browse from this page if you click on the subjects in the header. We write here about our studio, arts events, projects, studios of our friends, garden musings, and whatever else strikes our fancy. Hope you enjoy it!
March 11 - May 8, 2011: Sharing the Stage: The Contemporary Vase 2011, The Artisan Gallery, Northampton, Massachusetts http://www.theartisangallery.com/exhibitions/sharingthestage_contemporary_vase.html
March 30 - April 1, 2011: NCECA 2011, La Mesa, Santa Fe Clay santafeclay.com
March 30- April 2, 2011: NCECA 2011 Potters for Peace, pottersforpeace.org
April 16 & 17, 9am-4pm: Unusual Pots for People Who Collect Plants, SEZ Studio, 4926 E. Weldon, Phoenix, AZ 85018
August 13, 2011: 2011 Annual Art Auction, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Snowmass, Colorado
http://www.andersonranch.org/events/index.php?page=auction
May of 2012: Jeff Reich and Farraday Newsome, 2-person exhibition, Plinth Gallery, Denver, Colorado
1 Indigo Street Pottery Calendar
2 Jesse Armstrong
Mesa Arts Center Ceramics Artist-in-Residence
3 Sharing the Stage: The Contemporary Vase 2011
The Artisan Gallery, Massachusetts
Jeff Reich, Desert Erratic, glazed stoneware, 12.5 x 11 x 9”, 2011
Farraday Newsome, Full Night Garden, glazed terra cotta lidded box,13.5 x 9 x 9”, 2010
Farraday Newsome is an invited artist participating in Sharing the Stage: The Contemporary Vase 2011, a national exhibition at The Artisan Gallery of Northampton, Massachusetts. The exhibition dates are March 11 - May 8, 2011. For more information: http://www.theartisangallery.com/exhibitions/sharingthestage_contemporary_vase.html
Clockwise from top left:
Budding Acquisition, 40”w x 20‘h x 8”d, porcelain, basswood, rubber, bleach, wax, wire, foam, aluminum, 2009-2010; detail Budding Acquisition; Untitled Divide, porcelain, glaze,basswood, bleach, wax; Untitled Divide series, 9.5”w x 7.5”h x 2.5”d, porcelain, glaze, basswood, bleach, wax, 2010
5 Indigo Street Pottery Garden Notes
6 Our New Studio Cat, Maurice
We are fortunate to have Jesse Armstrong as our current Ceramics Artist-in-Residence at the Mesa Arts Center in Mesa, Arizona, where Jeff Reich directs the Ceramics Program. Jesse received his MFA from Arizona State University in 2010. His work incorporates exquisite woodwork with curious, organic-appearing ceramic forms.
Jesse grew up on nine acres of beautiful rural land in Oklahoma, enjoying close contact with the dichotomies and perplexities of nature. He writes:
“As it is in life anything that attracts can also repulse, the end result being dependent solely upon our understanding and our perspective. My interests lie in blurring this line between perceptual opposites by welcoming those into the work through seductive use of craftsmanship, color and materials, only to reward their curiosity with subtle yet unnerving imagery and content.”
Spring is such a wonderful time for the desert garden! Our new apple and stone fruit trees are flowering and setting fruit. Many of the winter vegetables are still producing, like the “Cheddar” cauliflower (above left), but we’ve also been needing to find room to plant summer garden plants like tomatoes, eggplants, beans, cucumbers, and squash before it gets too hot!
This winter was unusually cold, with frosts and freezes on and off from November through February. We often had nights in the 20’s and a few even down in the teens: 16 degrees F was the lowest. So, our poor new citrus orchard that we planted last fall in the lower, colder area of our property was mostly killed, even with doubled up frost cloth. This has led us to replant a new “orangerie” up higher and close to the house and pool where it is somewhat warmer and where there is power so we can string up warming lights if needed next winter.
Below left: Josh (Jeff’s son) digging new beds for citrus trees. Jeff is over to the left. Piled up in the middle are chunks of concrete (“urbanite”) from taking out the walkway that used to be here. We’ll use that to make a patio enclosed by the citrus trees.
Below right: A view from the other side, and a day later: the new citrus trees have been planted in sunken, composted, mulched beds. We put in six trees: A cold-tolerant Owari mandarin, a cold-tolerant calamondin, a Nagami kumquat, a seedless Tango mandarin, a mandarinquat and a Ruby Red grapefruit. Here’s hoping!
Farraday’s pieces in this show include
left: Dark Green Vase with Oranges, Pinecones and Moonsnails, glazed terra cotta,14.5 x 12 x 12”, 2010
right: Generous Sea, glazed terra cotta, 10.25 x 10.5 x 19”, 2010
4 NCECA 2011, Tampa, Florida
Last month we were adopted by a beautiful, abandoned cat we named Maurice, in honor of Jeff’s University of Arizona professor, the late Professor Emeritus Maurice Grossman. Our Maurice is an ocicat, a spotted domestic cat breed bred from brown point Siamese, golden Abyssinian and American domestic shorthair. Maurice (the Cat) has totally and happily taken to the good life here at Indigo Street Pottery and we to him!
Jeff and Farraday will both be participating in exhibitions at this year’s 45th Annual NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) in Tampa, Florida. http://www.nceca.net/static/conference_home.php
We are both participating in the annual Potters for Peace Exhibition, a fundraiser for the Potters for Peace organization with an international array of participating artists. pottersforpeace.org
Farraday is also participating in Santa Fe Clay’s annual invitational La Mesa show, this year held in the Gallery Expo portion of the convention center. La Mesa highlights place settings and table centerpieces by a wide variety of nationally known ceramic artists. santafeclay.com
Left: Jeff Reich, Pathways, lidded stoneware jar, 15.5 x 9.5 x 10.5”, 2005, at NCECA Potters for Peace Exhibition
Right: Farraday Newsome, Green Vase with Oranges, glazed terra cotta vase, 10.5 x 12 x 12”, 2011, at NCECA Santa Fe Clay La Mesa exhibition
