November 2010 Newsletter

Indigo Street Pottery Newsletter

In this Issue

1. Indigo Street Pottery Calendar

2. Indigo Street Pottery Annual Holiday Sale

3. Artist Profile: Allison Newsome

4.Singh Farms Visit

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

September 25 - November 7, 2010: 20 Years in Retrospect: Northern Clay Center’s 20th Anniversary Exhibition, with a collaborative piece by Jeff Reich and Farraday Newsome, Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota http://www.northernclaycenter.org/see/exhibition_upcoming.php

October 7, 2010 - January 9, 2011: Night Moves - After Dark Images, Tohono Chul Park Gallery, Tucson, Arizona http://www.tohonochulpark.org/wordpress/art-exhibits/in-exhibit-hall/

October 8 - November 12, 2010: Narrative Animal Imagery, The San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, San Luis Obispo, California http://www.sloartcenter.org

November 12 - December 31, 2010: The Artisan Gallery Cup and Mug Invitational: Consider the Cup 2010, The Artisan Gallery, Northhampton, Massachusetts http://www.theartisangallery.com/

November 5 - December 23, 2010: Winter Show: Gifts from the Hand, Lux Center for the Arts, Lincoln, Nebraska www.luxcenter.org

December 10, 2010 - January 15, 2011: La Mesa in Santa Fe, Santa Fe Clay Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico www.santafeclay.com

4. Singh Farm Visit

3. Artist profile: Allison Newsome

These beautiful ceramic sculptures are the work of my amazing sister Allison Newsome, who lives and works in Warren, Rhode Island. Allison got her MFA in Ceramic Art from the Rhode Island School of Design. Much of Allison’s work speaks to men and women’s relationship to nature, both in agrarian and industrial environments. As you can see from these photos, sometimes Allison will go to a site and make what she calls “wet clay sketches”. She will work with clay and other natural elements such as branches, shells, and flowers to create ephemeral sculptures. The “sketches” are eventually claimed by the elements, but not before being documented with her camera to be used in the future as studies for fired, permanent work. Allison has had many shows in her career, including a solo show at the Newport Museum of Art that travelled to the Fuller Craft Museum in 2005/2006. Allison is also former director of Ceramics at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and been an artist-in-residence at various locations. Her 2008 artist residency at the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts in Ojai, California resulted in a strong body of work and a video http://www.beatricewood.com/allisonnewsome/newsome_video.html . Allison Newsome’s work is in the permanent collections of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum and the Newport Museum of Art.

2. Indigo Street Pottery 2010 Holiday Studio Sale

This year’s Annual Indigo Street Holiday Studio Sale will be on two consecutive weekends:

Saturday, December 4 and Sunday, December 5, 10am-4pm both days

Saturday, December 11 and Sunday, December 12, 10am-4pm both days

We will have beautiful work in a wide price range, with plenty under $50 and on up to collector range. We are delighted that you make time to visit and give us a chance to catch up with how you’ve been this past year.

We are also very pleased to once again have author Mary Irish, www.maryirish.com , renowned Southwest gardening expert and author, here for book signing, book and calendar sales, and conversation! She will be here Saturday December 4, 10am-2pm.

Mary Irish, Southwest gardening author and speaker, will be at our Indigo Street Pottery Holiday Studio Sale signing and selling books her books, and answering your questions: Saturday,12/4, 10am-2pm

There will be plenty of our Birds on a Wire that we both make! These are glazed terra cotta and stoneware birds epoxied to solid copper wire & meant for putting in the yard or a planter or whatever you dream up!

While you are here, we hope you have time to take a look at our new kitchen garden! This year we built a, walk-in garden enclosure that keeps out rabbits, squirrels and birds! After digging the sunken beds and doing major soil improvement, it is now planted with fruit trees, vegetables, berries, herbs and flowers. We love it!

What an interesting place Singh Farms is! We visited this 65-acre organic farm just off the 101 on E. Thomas Rd., east of Scottsdale, Arizona, where owner Ken Singh has created a beautiful showcase of agricultural sustainability. One of the highlights for us was his intense soil-building with composted landscape waste. This rich compost, created on site and available to the public by the bag or truckload, is slathered deeply everywhere on the farm.

The plantings are thriving. Ken has planted many shade-producing trees, with a preponderance of mesquites. This green deciduous canopy provides filtered sunlight, a valuable and welcoming relief from the intense desert sun. A lush understory of vegetables, flowers, and herbs thrives below this canopy. Local chefs and the public buy their herbs here, plants are sold here, and a farmer’s market is held every Saturday morning most of the year. We bought a bag of Ancho chiles roasted on site, plus a habanero pepper plant to bring back to our own kitchen garden. We were delighted by the scope of this immense project, which is obviously a labor of love.

Jeff Reich, Allthorn, glazed stoneware plate, 12.5 x 12.5 x 1.5”

Farraday Newsome, Lidded Box with Oranges and Yellow Bird, glazed terra cotta, 10 x 8 x 8”