Creating Texture

 A few weeks ago my niece and her friends came by the studio for a little pottery party to celebrate her 15th birthday.  Before they all arrived I pulled out all my tools for some handbuilding that we were going to do- wooden stamps, rubber stamps, cookie cutters and cutting tools.  I liked how inspiring they all were and started thinking again about how I could bring 'stamped' patterns into my own work. 
It had me thinking back to the work I did in collaboration with my friend Disa MacKay last year.  I don't know that I've posted the final pieces  here, but here's a few of the hand-built with relief patterned vases we made, photographed professionally so that they look really lovely.  The patterns we used were all hand-cut, without using any commercially made stamps.  If I remember correctly, our 'paisley' inspired pieces took the longest and were the most complicated to make. 

In the meantime...

I've had a few artist who are planning to be parents ask me how many hours I'm at the studio a week, with kids and all, and while 'work' consists of more than just studio time, my studio time is rather limited.  My kids are 6 and 8 and I'm generally not at the studio for 40 hours a week.  Probably I'm consistently at the studio about 25 hours a week, if I'm perfectly honest with my time there.  It can be frustrating most days, when I have more to do than time to do it.  This past weekend, with Dean gone for 4 days, my studio time was non-existant.  This week, my boys are on Spring Break, and again, my studio-time is really limited.  We want to head up to the Island to see my sister and hopefully, new baby, and my making time gets pushed to the side. That's OK.  Time with my family is really important to me. 
That being said, I did feel like I accomplished a lot this past weekend.  With kids in tow, I dropped off work at the Gallery at the airport, picked up more shipping supplies, picked up 600 lbs of clay, and made these really cute tags with stamps I carved.  The boys crowded around me and drew designs on the soft-lino that I carved into stamps and we had a lot of fun.  It's amazing what you can get done with kids around you if you make it fun.  Good music, lots of snacks, and trips to the park in between meant that it didn't feel like they were getting dragged around all weekend too.