Was I There?

Mom

Seventeen years ago today and yet it feels like you just left us...

"Give me time enough in this place, and I will surely make a beautiful thing."

I wish we could go to Lego Land.....

It's a beautiful dream, man.  The only kind of dream that a six-year-old boy can articulate as he works in a pottery studio trying to literally make lego bricks out of clay.  

He made the bricks.  He patterned them with real lego bricks.  And then he stuck them together to make a robot, which would have fallen apart had I not introduced the ceramic term "crosshatching."  He just looked at me with hooded eyes and gave a big sigh.

And yet....it was he, the dreamer of all things lego, who gave me the idea to not only print in the clay with the connecting side of the bricks, but to turn them the other way around so that they made hollow circle marks.  I was also thinking about my revelation when I took Denise Kester's workshop: that when you choose a medium-- say printing-- that you should explore what that medium can do and that no other medium can do.

So I was thinking about clay, how it takes the impress of the lego patterns.  How it can be carved.  How color can be forced into the indentations.  And I came up with this new magpie platter, which also has a kind of printed look, but also is very much a celebration of the stamping quality of clay.

And the title of it?  "I wish we could go to Lego Land...."

 

I Whip My Hair Back and Forth

This is what my Josephine looks like in the morning.  And, yes, the hair stays that way most of the day.  It brings to mind Jimmy Fallon as Neil Young singing Willow Smith's hip hop song.  (Watch here.)  This has slayed me for a few weeks now.

But here is our JBJ being interviewed by Diane.

Diane:  What do you like to eat?  

Josephine: Cilantro.

Diane: Is there anything you don't like to eat?  

Josephine:  Broccoli.  I'm not a meat eater.  I'm not a soup eater.

Diane:  What is your favorite kind of ice cream?  

Josephine: Vanilla.

Diane:  Where do you like to go on a trip?  

Josephine:  Portland.  Riding the trolley and riding the train.  You can have bagels there.  Once we went on a train and we went through a tunnel and then we were at the Zoo!  We got to see a sun bear there and we got to see a polar bear but he didn't want to be there.