A quiet Sunday Morning

We are expecting the Winchester crew in tonight after the Uptown art fair is torn down. They will be bringing our daughter home for the week. She helped them set up and tear down the show, and wishes we were still doing art fairs. If things go as planned, we will be entering some that are closer to home. The Uptown is a real ball buster, and with the weather they had this year , I was glad not to be attending.

I know Paul feels he did enough shows for a lifetime during the nineties, and it's taken these five years to regroup and figure out how we wanted to do things. This hiatus would not have been possible without my online sales. I am finding that the quiet months on the internet usually occur late spring and early summer, so it's perfect timing to get out and sell in real life a little bit.

Well I am going to tidy up the house a little bit for the company tonight.

The new Morris Family member

This is "Goldie", the photo does not show how thin she was when she showed up at our door a couple of months ago. She is the second cat we have rescued from the wild, Barney our other cat is three years old, and is not so welcoming to the newcomer. Anyway, I took her in to be spayed today and get her shots.

Goldie, I think, was not always wild. After she got to know me as the food lady , she became very cuddly, and has a loud purr. I suspect there are cats out there that we never see in the woods. Most people shoot wild cats around here. They carry diseases and are devastating to the bird populations in the area. Anybody that thinks they can dump cats out in the "country" and that they will magically find a new home is deluding themselves. This cat was a bag of bones when she first showed up. Animals that are abandoned in the woods usually become food for predators, or they starve to death.

Since our animal shelter does not take cats, and no one claimed Goldie, we had a choice to either shoot her, or get her to the vet and get her checked for feline leukemia, and have her spayed. Paul and I are frugal people and live on the bare necessities ourselves, so and investment like this was no small matter for us. In these hard times it certainly would have made more sense to just put her down. But we decided to rescue this one little kitty , and I am glad we did. Yes times are hard, but it just made me feel good to give one helpless animal a chance.

Now little Goldie is recovering from her day in surgery in her carrier at my feet. Like I said, she is the minority when it comes to surviving in the wild. Please spay and neuter your pets.

Working as a team

This is the guy I work with. The photographer caught him after or maybe during a wood firing! Paul and I will mark 27 years of our marriage and partnership in clay this fall. We were twenty seven when we met at the pottery in Iowa, so we've pretty much spent half our lives together.

If anyone would have told those starry eyed 27 yr olds that it was impossible to move to the woods and make a career creating and selling their wares, they wouldn't have listened. Well I am sure We both ignored what everyone that knew better told us. We just believed it was possible and we forged on.

One of the things I was told before I even met Paul was that if I planned to be an artist I should marry someone that could "support me." But after College , as I began my hands on experience in the pottery world, I saw many examples of couples who were making it work. One team, was Bill Coffman and Cynthia Mosedale of Linden Hills Pottery . Paul and I both worked for them in their first incarnation , the Crockery and Jar Company. People like Bill and Cynthia were out there actually doing it, so why couldn't we!

One thing I have learned is that it takes a special kind of relationship to keep things rolling in a market like this. And a good sense of humor with a sprinkling of patience. Paul and I collaborate on many items, but we work on pieces we consider our own, too. I think it is important to keep new ideas coming when involved in production work of any kind.

So yeah I didn't find a rich guy to support my art , but I got a creative partner in a relationship/business that has survived some pretty huge odds, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Our new Band "Second Fiddle" played for the first time as an actual band last night. We played for Amy Sabrina's dance crew and were well received. Amy has been holding dances in various town halls over the years, with a dream of finishing off her barn to use as a community dance hall.

Our group has formed over the last three years from a regular jam session held at a coffee shop in Milaca. We were a little worried at first that maybe people couldn't dance to the tunes we have been playing, but all went well and they danced to every one. The ecclectic mix is fun, because each of us brings a different type of music to the group, and it makes for a great variety of dances people can do. I love being in a dance band, because of the audience ineraction. I love looking out at the crowd, and seeing happy smiles as people twirl around the dance floor. There is an exchange of energy that makes the whole thing a giant artwork, and all are participants.

The coolest thing about Amy's dances , for me though, is the age range of people that come. The participants range from child to adult, and there is nothing sweeter than to see a grandpa dancing with his little eight year old grandaughter.

You will see by the link to Amy's website that she is also a long time potter. One of my favorite payments for playing was a nice mug I got one year!

Well that is the cultural and arts report from the Green Swamp for today!