May 2013 Newsletter

October 2011 Newsletter

Indigo Street Pottery Newsletter

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!

August 13, 2011: 2011 Annual Art Auction, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Snowmass, Colorado www.andersonranch.org

May of 2012: Jeff Reich and Farraday Newsome, 2-person exhibition, Plinth Gallery, Denver, Colorado http://plinthgallery.com/

1 Indigo Street Pottery Calendar

email: indigostreetpottery@me.com

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email: indigostreetpottery@me.com

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May 2013 Newsletter

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Indigo Street Pottery Newsletter

In this Issue

1. Indigo Street Pottery Calendar

2. Jeff Reich: New Commission In-progress

3. Indigo Street Pottery Native Landscaping

4. Indigo Street Pottery Kitchen Garden

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!

1 Indigo Street Pottery Calendar

7 Indigo Street Pottery Kitchen Garden

email: indigostreetpottery@me.com

June and July 2013: Gallery Invitational, Five15 Arts, Phoenix, Arizona http://www.515arts.com/

August 10, 2013: Anderson Ranch 33rd Annual Art Auction, Snowmass Village, Colorado www.andersonranch.org

October 2013: SOFA Chicago, Katie Gingrass Gallery, Chicago, Illinois

http://www.sofaexpo.com/pages/future.htm

May 2014: Jeff Reich, one-person exhibition, Nancy Dryfoos Gallery, Kean University Galleries, Kean University, Union, New Jersey http://www.kean.edu/~gallery/

October 2014: Farraday Newsome, one-person exhibition, Clay Art Center, Port Chester, New York

http://www.clayartcenter.org/default.asp

2 Jeff Reich: New Commission In-progress

5 Indigo Street Pottery Native Landscaping

We had generous early spring rain, so it has been a very colorful time on our desert property lately! Here are some of our desert natives in bloom.

Top to bottom: Parry’s Penstemon (Penstemon parryi), Brittlebush (Encelia farinosa) and Chuparosa (Justicia californica) growing together, Pink Fairy Duster (Calliandra eriophylla), Cordia (Cordia parvifolia), Autumn Sage (Salvia greggii), Chilean Palo Verde (Geoffroea decorticans), and Ruellia (Ruellia californica).

An important local ceramics collector recently saw this large sculptural cube of Jeff’s in our sculpture garden. She commissioned Jeff to make a similar piece for her. Jeff has completed the wet clay portion of the project, which is documented in the photos below.

For this commission Jeff is using Aardvark Clay’s Cone 10 Black Mountain Sculpture Mix. He rolled out the large 1/2” slabs while Maurice the cat stood guard.

The internal support clay brackets are being attached to the first side.

The second side is being attached to the first side and to the brackets. The large, heavy slab was erected to a vertical position without any bending with the aid of drywall taped to it.

After removing the tape and drywall, three sides are now attached and reinforced with brackets.

Plastic helps keep everything from drying too quickly.

In these two photos Jeff is further reinforcing the interior. This piece will be fired to cone 10 (approximately 2,350 degrees F), so this reinforcement is needed to help reduce warping or splitting.

The white PVC pipe is only temporary and will be removed when construction is complete.

The internal structure is complete and a temporary piece of PVC holds the opening from slumping. Jeff is lifting over and attaching the sixth and final side, again using taped-on drywall to make the transfer safe and unbending for the slab.

One corner has been cut and finished to form the base of the piece. This is so the cube will sit at an interesting angle, as in the photo of the finished similar piece at the top of this story.

Just enough time for a quick photo with Jeff before the piece is wrapped up to dry slowly for the next few weeks. The larger and thicker the piece, the more slowly it must dry to prevent cracking as it shrinks.

Jeff is reaching in to thin the multitudinous small apples, making his way past trellised sweet peas planted for beauty, green cover, and to fix nitrogen in the soil.

We think our lushly blooming heirloom “Josefina” white pomegranate is loving it’s new 24” thick mulch layer. The mulch does not go up to the trunk, which might cause disease from trapped moisture. Instead, there is a central air shaft about 16” wide going down to the ground, like a deep doughnut hole.

This year we’ve been trying to plant in tiers to produce more, shade and cool the soil better, and to create beauty! Here the 8’ high Anna’s Apple has nasturtiums, strawberries and sweet peas growing below and sharing the irrigation.