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gallery gig- thanks and replies

updated wed 12 dec 01

 

primalmommy@IVILLAGE.COM on tue 11 dec 01


Thanks to all who brought me up to speed on how the gallery thing works, both off and on list. More details:

Yes, it was due to a cancellation that I was asked. I am sufficiently humble to suspect that the "any-port-in-a-storm" effect was a factor in why I was selected. Which is part of the reason I hesitated to say "try me again later".

The gallery is in the downtown convention center. I guess I suspected that January is not peak shopping season -- I know my website pot sales drop off between christmas and tax time. But I kind of see it as a chance that might not come again if I pass it up. The gallery manager made it clear I would be doing him a favor to do this on such short notice.

The "nicest stuff" I sold at the holiday fair was mostly of the functional variety, and while the gallery made clear that functional would be welcome, I do have some odd, one-of-a-kind pieces that were a little too weird for the holiday fair.

Some are folkloric, like the "poppykettle" -- from a myth about a discarded poppyseed teakettle in Macchu Picchu that was used as a ship by seven hairy Peruvian dwarves in an epic adventure at sea... it is a black, shined terra-sig pit fired pot with a stirrup handle, sails and rigging and two brass keys as ballast, like in the story.

Then some are inspired by the warehouse districts in the rust belt towns in my region of the country; factories that were once noble architecture with detailed brickwork, gargoyles and rows of ornate windows have been changed, windows bricked up, corrugated metal, adjacent buildings torn down exposing stone foundations. I have a wall piece with a series of tiles demonstrating the strata of stone/brick/block in different colored clays. Also some textured pots that are part handbuilt and part thrown, or made with Dannon's pot-in-a-pot technique. A few really ornate double walled bowls with folkloric themes. Some faces with windows and fire escapes. Gargoyle whistles.

Also, once the last of the christmas stuff is shipped, I have ideas and plans, and can take advantage of my recent insomnia to get some work done while everyone's sleeping... make enough stuff to come up with a few "racers".

Anyway, I am really nervous about putting ANYTHING out there. I published some really bad poems before I got better at it, and while the obscure little literary magazines are not exactly "out there" in the public, there is still bad published writing with my name on it. Not to mention the ugly pots I proudly gave my in-laws the year I built my first wobbly kickwheel. Those pots will always be there to haunt me, too thick-walled to drop and break.

So what in the world can I put on a postcard? If my slides fail, I know where I can borrow a digital last minute. And what if some REAL potters (see previous thread) come to the gallery and see my stuff? (whimper)

(Note: these are rhetorical questions, based in my neurotic insecurity and require no response.)

Bacia, snail, richard, marcia, ann, snail, dannon, paul, thank you for a free education of the sort I could get nowhere else. Leave it to clayart to provide a panel discussion on a few hours notice. Life is good. Potters rule.

Yours gratefully,
Kelly Savino .. potter pup sniffing out the trail of the big dogs

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