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August 2011 Newsletter

Archived Newsletters

Indigo Street Pottery Newsletter

In this Issue

1. Indigo Street Pottery Calendar

2. Jeff Reich: New Work Underway this Summer

3.Anderson Ranch 2011 Annual Art Auction

4. Solar Note: Our Clothesline

5.Indigo Street Pottery Garden Notes

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!

August 13, 2011: 2011 Annual Art Auction, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Snowmass, Colorado www.andersonranch.org

November 11 - Dec 31, 2011: The Artisan Gallery Cup and Mug Invitational: Consider the Cup 2011, The Artisan Gallery, Northampton, Massachusetts http://www.theartisangallery.com/

December 3, 4, & 10,11, 2011: Indigo Street Pottery 2011 Annual Holiday Studio Sale, Indigo Street Pottery, Mesa, Arizona

February 25 & 26, 2012: Arizona State University Art Museum Ceramic Research Center 11th Annual Ceramic Studio Tour

asuartmuseum.asu.edu/ceramicsresearchcenter

May 2012: Jeff Reich and Farraday Newsome, 2-person exhibition, Plinth Gallery, Denver, Colorado http://plinthgallery.com/

Here are some new glazed terra cotta cups Farraday made this summer. They are decorated with varying drift imagery of natural forms as well as manmade objects. The cups range in height from 4” to 5.5”. All are wheel-thrown with pulled handles, and glazed with a brush. Farraday bisques her work to cone 1 (2079˚ F), which is her hottest firing. She then sinter fires a base coat of cone 05 white maiolica glaze to cone 014 (1598˚ F) to set, but not melt, the glaze. Then, on top of the sintered white glaze, she brushes on the imagery using many layers of colored glazes and then outlining with black wash. Her third and final firing is the glaze firing, cone 05 (1888˚ F).

This summer Jeff and Farraday will be participants in the 31st Annual Art Auction at AndersonRanch, Snowmass, Colorado. The event will be held on Saturday, August 13. Each summer art lovers and community members support the Ranch by bidding on a wide range of artwork created by artists from throughout the valley and around the country. More than 200 artworks will be auctioned in live and silent auctions. Benefitting the educational programs of Anderson Ranch Arts Center. For more auction information visit http://www.andersonranch.org/events/index.php?page=auction

Anderson Ranch is a learning community dedicated to creativity and growth through the making and understanding of the visual arts located on five scenic acres in Snowmass Village, near Aspen, Colorado. It promotes personal and professional development of artists of all levels of expertise through year-round workshops in ceramics, sculpture, photography, new media, painting and drawing, printmaking, woodworking, furniture design and more. Their artists residencies for emerging and established artists, summer internships, visiting artists and critics, community outreach, and public events offer a full spectrum of opportunities to creative people of all levels. The facilities feature fully-equipped art studios and galleries. Anderson Ranch programs and activities including art auctions and artist slide lectures, attract thousands of artists, art-lovers, students, faculty and patrons annually to this historic Rocky Mountain ranch dedicated to the fine art. To learn more about this beautiful art center visit http://www.andersonranch.org/ .

Archived Newsletters

Indigo Street Pottery Newsletter

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

4 Solar Note: Our Clothesline

5 Garden Note

3 Anderson Ranch 2011 Annual Art Auction

Farraday Newsome, Green Moon Garden Teapot, glazed terra cotta, 8.5 x 8 x 14.5”, 2006

Jeff Reich, Yucca Fields, glazed stoneware sculpture, 9.5 x 9 x 13”, 2011

We love the solar panels we had installed a couple of years ago (photo below), but we really love our clothesline! It was our first “solar appliance” and one that has worked very hard for years!

Clotheslines are getting quite a bit of attention now, being one of the single most useful (and certainly cheapest!) steps one can take towards a greener household. Gas or electric dryers are among the most energy-hungry appliances in the house, using up to 10% of a household’s energy. Here’s an article from a few years ago on the subject from the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/garden/12clothesline.html

Above photos, Baker Nursery: We were intrigued when we visited Baker Nursery in Phoenix, Arizona, earlier this year and noticed that one of their demonstration vegetable, herb and fruit tree gardens was designed with ground level beds surrounded by raised dirt walls (berms). The berms, acting as earthen dams, retain water well. http://bakernurseryaz.com/

Below photos, Indigo Street Pottery’s garden: The result is similiar to the sunken beds we dug for our home garden at Indigo Street Pottery last summer. We used the dirt we dug out to build up the paths between beds, much like the berms at Baker Nursery, except our beds were below-grade and left room for adding alot of compost and still remain sunken.

Now, a year later, we are happy to report that irrigation and rainfall are much better retained this way than in raised garden beds, which Farraday has had in the past. We love our garden! It is a little wild this time of year and very productive even through the intense Sonoran Desert summer heat! The things we are currently abundantly harvesting are tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, basil, many other herbs (oregano, rosemary, thyme, mint, etc.), lima beans, and squash. Young melons are still developing, and the figs and pluots are still ripening. In late August it will be time to plant the fall crops already!

This new sculpture of Jeff’s is still drying. It is the newest in his Desert Erratic series of leaning joined sculptures, inspired by the glacially deposited boulder piles (glacial erratics) in his home state of Michigan. This piece has not been fired at all yet, so is called greenware. Jeff uses a cone 10 clay called Black Mountain Sculpture. It is the color of concrete when drying. Once the piece is bone dry, it will be slowly bisque fired. In the background are our extruder, wedging table, and the pugmill to the left.

This bisqued sculpture of Jeff’s is currently being glazed. You can see that the Black Mountain Sculpture clay has changed to a pinkish color in the bisque firing - it will mature to a deep brown-black in the final cone 10 firing. On the left side Jeff has applied a square-ish field of white glaze and then scratched into the glaze down to the clay to develop branching allthorn imagery. Jeff often draws from plants in our desert landscaping. The scratched (sgraffito) glazed area has then been coated with a greenish wax to protect it from upcoming glaze applications.