I have taken a long break from working with clay. When I started working a full-time day job a few years ago, it was more challenging to make time to be in my pottery studio. I would still do a little bit of sculpture here and there, but nothing very consistently.

Being an artist who loves to dabble in all manner of arts and creative expressions, I’ve been focused more often lately on art journaling and painting rather than making with clay.

Since February this year I’ve been working through Whitney Freya’s Creatively Fit Coaching Certification program. I’m still in the learning process, and excited of the possibilities ahead for inspiring and helping others to explore their own creativity. I’ll be sharing more about this in the near future. I will likely be offering classes or workshops online.

In addition to going through my training, I’ve recently started watching online ceramics demonstrations/workshops offered by artist Deborah Schwartzkopf. She attended the same undergraduate school that I did in Anchorage, Alaska, although she was there a couple years after I graduated.

She lives and works in Seattle now and I have admired how she continued learning and working with clay continuously over the last 20 or so years. She has a studio and offers mentoring and workshops there during normal times. With the stay-at-home protocols around COVID-19, she had moved her workshops to online instead. While I’m sorry for the reason she needed to do so, I’m so glad she did that!

I’ve been enjoying watching her recent demonstrations, and they are inspiring me to spend a little more time in my clay studio. I’m aso excited about her new book (included below is an Amazon affiliate link) as the projects will be fun to explore.

Deb uses a lot of bisque molds, so this is a picture of my attempt to create a mold for making spoons. It felt good to get my hands in clay again.

Wet clay to be bisque fired and used to shape slabs of clay into spoons

Up until now, I’ve been an infrequent blogger. I hope to do more writing here. For the rest of June, I’m minimizing time spend on social media, so I thought instead I’d post a little bit here on my blog. I may cross-post to my other pages from here.

May all who read this be healthy, may a glimmer of peace shine on you, and may you find so much joy in your hearts.

Tammy

 

(The above link is an Amazon affiliate link, which means if you use this link to purchase the book, I’ll get a small financial kickback)