Hello!

It’s nice to be back home after my long trip up the coast. The tomato plants are already taller than their cages, there are tiny perfect baby praying mantises hopping around on them, and I needed a short break from ceramic work.

After the somewhat chaotic sprint to get a show into a gallery (while still making smaller work for the shop), both my studio and my brain always need a reset. This time, I spent two days cleaning and organizing my space and about a week making Beastlies.

There was a time when I used to make between six and eight Beastlies every single day. After several years of that, making them was almost entirely drained of joy. This was one of the reasons I began experimenting with ceramic clay. Luckily, rediscovering a creative practice with more variety turned out to be a good antidote to burnout, and now when I return to Beastlies, I remember how it felt to make them before the daily quota made me feel like a factory instead of an artist.

And so, I have fifteen Beastlies for the shop. They’ll go live on Tuesday, 5/12 at 11am Pacific.

Meanwhile, the pieces from the BEASTS OF BURDEN show that are still available can be found on the Archimedes Gallery website, and signups for my Pocosin Arts workshop remain open.

I’m just about ready to jump back into ceramic work, so expect some in the next few weeks!