Looking back

Reposted from offcenter.biz.

It seems like only yesterday.

We'd started the new year with me being laid off. I still had my very part-time teaching salary from the UO Craft Center, but the extra income I got throwing pots for another studio had dried up. The back room at Slippery Bank was full of bisque. Unless I could come out to Cheshire to throw plates, they'd call me in six months. Maybe.

Denise had picked up some money--along with a case of bronchitis--working the holiday rush answering phones for Harry and David, but though that might get us through spring, it wouldn't stretch much farther. So it was that I took a huge chance: I mailed off my membership to the Eugene Saturday Market, and started making pots to sell.

It was rough, at the start. We shared a booth with fellow potter Kathy Lee, who already had priority points from selling the previous year, so usually got a space. But we moved a lot, a different space every week. Eventually we collected enough points to start getting the same space consistently, but the sales were never consistent, nor predictable. There were weekends when both we and she got skunked.

But we were learning. What sold, what didn't. How to grow a customer base, manage a business. We went at it completely bass-ackward, no business plan, no marketing strategy, no nothing. Just made pots. Tried to sell pots. Made different pots. Gave out a zillion business cards.

Rinse, repeat.

Our first Holiday Market was a revelation; people were buying things. They'd been looking all summer, now they came back with their wallets open. I was playing catch-up making pots all that December. But Denise didn't have to risk life and lung working for Harry and David, and we were able to save enough money to last until April, when the Market opened again.

Eventually, I started applying to out-of-town shows. Started a website. Got some galleries, that promptly went out of business. Got some other galleries, some of which didn't. Even did a wedding registry, a couple of times. Took some interesting commissions.

This April marks our 25th anniversary selling pottery as Off Center Ceramics. (Pulp Romances got started a year or two later.) Twenty-five years of making pots, selling pots, meeting people and sharing their stories. We've been at this long enough to have produced family heirlooms. Been lost in the divorce (our pots, that is. Denise and I are looking at our 27th anniversary in June). Showed up in the Goodwill, more than once. It's been a heck of a ride.

And it's not ending anytime soon. I've already applied for this year's shows, started getting my notifications back. Fired the kiln already this year, and am working to fill it again. I just ordered another ton of clay.

Thanks to all of you for staying with us for all these years. We're looking forward to the next twenty-five...

 

Well, that was unexpected

You'd have thought a month of drying time for a sculpture would have been enough.

You'd have been wrong.

When I unloaded the kiln Friday, this is what I found. Despite over a month in the studio, despite a slow warmup and a hold at 180° F. for two extra hours, there was still moisture in Mumfrey the battle quail's left flank. Moisture that turned to steam in the kiln, blowing off chunks of skin and breaking his tail in two.

Oh, crap.

So as I see it, I have three choices:

1. Fire it as is and try and put the pieces together later. With lots of Bondo and paint to hide the fractures.

2. Try to rebuild from scratch, possibly fitting over the existing legs and base structure. Difficult, as clay shrinks as it dries, about 6.25% from wet to bisque. 

3. Ditch the piece entirely, possibly making something different for the Ceramic Showcase gallery.

Or, I suppose:

4. Not have a gallery piece at all.

Think I need to sleep on this. Right now I'm just too depressed.