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!
May 2010 Newsletter
Indigo Street Pottery Newsletter
1. Indigo Street Pottery Calendar
April 24 & 25, 9am-4pm: Unusual Pots for People Who Collect Plants, SEZ Studio, 4926 E. Weldon, Phoenix, AZ 85018
May 20 - October 3, 2010, Tohono Chul Park A- to-Z, Tohono Chul Park Gallery, Tucson, Arizona tohonochulpark.org
June 3 - August 14, 2010: A Midsummer Eve: an Exploration of Color and Surface, Meredith Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland www.meredithgallery.com
September-October 2010: Northern Clay Center’s 20th Anniversary Exhibition, with a collaborative piece by Jeff and Farraday, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota northernclaycenter.org
In this Issue
1. Indigo Street Pottery Calendar
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2.Unusual Pots for People Who Collect Plants, SEZ Studio, Phoenix, Arizona
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3.Jeff Reich and Farraday Newsome: Artists of the Month, Tohono Chul Park Gallery, April 2010, Tucson, Arizona
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4.Jon Read Accepted for a Summer Residency at Archie Bray Foundation, Montana
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5.Solar at Indigo Street Pottery
6. Indigo Street Pottery Garden Notes
Our front yard at Indigo Street Pottery this month!! What incredible lushness of color and texture after a very rainy winter here in the Sonoran Desert! We, along with the birds, lizards, insects, and ground-dwelling mammals are enjoying a fantastic spring. Foreground right: light pink Desert Mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua) Foreground center: hot pink Parry’s Penstemon (Penstemon parryi) . Center yellow: Brittlebush (Encelia farinosa). Rear right: a huge lighter pink Desert Mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua).
We are so pleased that our friend and colleague Jonathan Forrest Read has been selected for a prestigious 2010 Summer Residency at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana. After receiving his Master of Fine Art from Arizona State University in 2005, Jon joined the faculty at the Mesa Arts Center a Ceramics Instructor and as the Ceramics Artist-in-Residence. We are very fond of Jon and of our two pieces of his that grace the entrance to our garden at Indigo Street Pottery. Congratulations Jon!
For more information about Jon: http://jonreadstudio.com/splash.html
For more information about the Archie Bray Foundation: http://www.archiebray.org/
The Green Lantern, Jon Read, 55x20x15” , 2006
Girl with Rabbit Ears, Jon Read, 37x31x18”, 2006
4. Jon Read Accepted for a Summer Residency at Archie Bray Foundation
3. Jeff Reich and Farraday Newsome: Artists of the Month, Tohono Chul Park Gallery, April 2010, Tucson, Arizona
Tucson’s Tohono Chul Park has a wonderful gallery, the Tohono Chul Park Gallery, that we have enjoyed working with for many years. For the month of April, Jeff and Farraday’s work was featured in the Artist of the Month series. For more information about this beautiful botanical garden and art gallery click on tohonochulpark.org. By the way, there is a very nice Tearoom restaurant on the premises where we always have lunch when we visit the park. Below are two pieces that will be featured.
Farraday Newsome, Round White Box with Butterflies, 3x4x4”, 2010
2.Unusual Pots for People Who Collect Plants, SEZ Studio
The annual Unusual Pots for People Who Collect Plants is April 24 & 25, 9am-4 pm each day. This unique art and garden event is in the lovely Arcadia District backyard of artist and master gardener Sherrie Zeitlin and her husband Ron Landon, a landscape architect. She, Ron, and sixteen other Phoenix-area artists will be showing their work. Jeff Reich and Farraday Newsome are among the group. This weekend event coincides with the Annual Phoenix Pond Tour, which Ron and Sherrie are also part of with their splendid, lush pond. Event location: 4926 E. Weldon, Phoenix, Arizona 85018.
Jeff Reich, wall-hanging Agave Teapot, stoneware with glaze sgraffito and crawling shino glaze, 2007
6. Indigo Street Pottery Garden Notes
This month we are featuring two plants that are blooming and are somewhat harder to find, but worth the effort! The lovely Euphorbia xantii is a scrubby native of Mexico’s Baja California. It’s beautiful small white flowers delicately hover on tall, narrow stems. The Painteria elachistophylla, a native of the Chihuahuan desert, is reminiscent of our Sonoran Pink Fairy Duster (Calliandra eriophylla), but is in a different plant group. Its profuse cloud of pink puffs provides a stunning texture to the garden.
Our Euphorbia xantii is in bloom! In early morning light the flowers seem to hover, suspended without apparent branches. This perennial is a native of Baja California. To the right is a detail of the pretty red-centered white flowers, which turn vivid pink as they age.
More spring excitement! On the left is a yucca sending up a flowerstalk that we call “The Claw”!
To the right are the lovely, sweetly fragrant flowers of the Mexican Orchid Tree Bauhinia mexicana, a small thornless patio tree.
We’ve had our rooftop solar photovoltaic grid-tied array working its wonders for over a year now. Looking over the past year’s energy usage, we are delighted to report that our electricity bill is exactly half of what it used to be, not to mention all the carbon we are keeping out of the atmosphere: 24,400 lbs since we turned it on in January 2009! Yay for this amazing technology!
5. Solar at Indigo Street Pottery
Here is our Painteria elachistophylla, a native of the Chuihuahuan desert Nuevo Leon Mountains. It is in glorious full bloom, doing well on the east side of a large saguaro cactus and in the filtered light provided by the Blue Palo Verde Tree (Parkinsonia florida). To the right is a a detail of its lush, soft flower mass.
We will have plenty of our ever-popular birds-on-a-wire!
Here are some examples of our planters that we will have there. In addition to the garden oriented planters and birds-on-a-wire, we will also have a variety of our “year-around” studio work on display.
Progress on the vegetable garden structure! The initial phases of the project are underway: a perimeter trench has been dug to 20 “ and a concrete footer is being poured to both support the posts and to keep out burrowing rabbits and squirrels. We have three ground-dwelling squirrel species on our property and they are all expert diggers, climbers and eaters!! The walk-in structure will be made of recycled plastic lumber and completely covered with 1/2” chickenwire.
