Breaking ground

Well, not quite yet. Studio plans have just begun. It seems a daunting task since we have never built anything before.  So getting started is the hard part, but hopefully once we get going it will feel like we're actually getting somewhere.  I'm not actually worried about the kilns since we know how to build kilns and we already have the bricks waiting in a big pile for us.  It's the actual studio building where there are so many unknowns. 

This is the field I'll one day get to look out into from my studio window! The quiet valley is a perfect place for making, and each day we hear wood thrushes, hawks and owls nearby.  I can't wait until I can walk across the yard after breakfast and go throw pots.  Having impermanent studios for the last 9 years, now it is time to have my own permanent studio and I'm so ready for this change.  Right now I'm working on my last making cycle up at the EnergyXChange, I'll probably fire the wood kiln a couple more times and then we'll move out the end of September.  Here's to a big year ahead!

Awareness

After throwing for the last 13 years sitting on a stool, now I have made the shift to throwing pots while standing up.  The past couple of years I have had increasing low back pain from my potter's life.  Leaning over the wheel, loading and unloading kilns, picking up heavy boxes of clay, scraping many a potter's kiln shelves plus my own, loading the car for shows, working long hours every day in the studio....well, let's just say these things have started to take their toll.  Not to mention I love to hike and garden.  I love hard work.  I love my potting life.  But what it does to your body is scary, so I have been really starting to pay attention.  I also have been striving for a sense of balance in my work to life ratio. I'm trying to force myself to slow down and do less.  That is a hard thing to do when you're a seriously focused worker-bee potter type like myself.

I have been actively doing yoga for the past two years, which I absolutely love and can't go a day without doing morning and evening.  It has brought me more than just physical well-being.  It grounds me, relaxes me, and I've even noticed that it gives me more self confidence in other things I encounter.  I recently have started a class on Feldenkrais, Awareness through Movement, which focuses on the relationship between movement and thought.  Simply put, breaking down movements very slowly, you can start to re-train your brain to move with ease and notice the bad habits you have established.  I'm trying to apply it to how I move through every situation throughout the day.  I've been really finding all of this I've learned about the structure of the body and muscles and moving very fascinating, and it's something that is always on my mind.  Maybe that's where some of these new skeletal - like carving patterns are coming from.  I just thought I'd share what's going on in the studio and in my head these days.  Making changes like these aren't easy, but I'm determined to work through them because I love being able to make pots and I want to continue to do so.

Artisphere Festival

This weekend Will and I are headed down to Artisphere art festival in downtown Greenville, SC. We don't do that many outdoor shows anymore, but we've done this show several years in a row and always enjoy going back.  Will even won an award last year which also allows him entry in the following year's show, and was asked to be one of the jurors for this year's show. 

You can find us side by side in Booth #63 and #64, exhibiting our finest of the wood and soda fired pots fresh from the wood kiln.  We hope to see you there!  A perfect show for Mother's Day, too, we'll be sure to have lots of nice gifts for giving, including vases and planters.

May 10 - 12, 2013

Friday 12-8
Saturday 10 - 8
Sunday 11 - 6 

http://www.artisphere.us/

Spring News

Read the latest spring enewsletter from Joy Tanner and William Baker Pottery here at this link.

And if you didn't get this in your email inbox, you haven't signed up for our mailing list, so you can do that here!

http://joytannerpottery.com/mailinglist

The photo was taken hidden down in the gorge where it feels great to be away from cell phones and internet in the Wilson Creek wilderness area below Grandfather Mountain near Linville, NC.  

Happy Spring!

Blue Ridge Potters Guild workshop

Will and I are headed up to Roanoke, Virginia to co-teach a workshop for the Blue Ridge Potters Guild next weekend. It's always fun doing these pottery workshops together; while many aspects of our career and approaches to clay have been similar, there are differences in how we work that are fun to discover and learn from.  We have a similar eye in regards to form so it's fun having a running dialog in the studio about what each of us is working on, with the result of this often sparking new ideas for each other.  When we get back, it's glazing time for a spring wood firing is in our midst!

HIDE'N'SEEKAH

For a chance to win a free Joy and Will pot, if you are at NCECA this year, follow along on Instagram to play! As you can see from the list above the potters participating are an amazing lineup of potters. Adam Field, a potter from Colorado has come up with this brilliant social networking event!  Follow each of the artists listed above on their Instagram feeds to participate.

Follow me @joytannerpottery

Follow Will @williambakerpottery

"HIDE'N'SEEKAH will be hiding 36 pieces of pottery in Houston, TX during this year's NCECA conference.  Clues to find each artist's work will be posted on their own personal Instagram feed (which is why you have to follow all 36 of them and not just HIDE'N'SEEKAH).  Not on Instagram?  No better time to start!  Finders keepers!  HIDE'N'SEEKAH is NOT an official NCECA event!!!"

The event takes place in Houston, Texas for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts, or aka, NCECA.2013, March 20-23. The pots will be hidden around the conference center and your job will be to find them!

Focus

The edges of spring are beginning to show around here if I take the time to notice.

I love to listen to podcasts and audio books while I am working in the studio. Some of my favorites include This American Life, Radio Lab, Freakanomics, The Splendid Table, Fresh Air, The Diane Rehm show and more.  Lately I have been thoroughly enjoying my friend and fellow potter Ben Carter's podcast, Tales of the Red Clay Rambler.  He interviews artists worldwide about their art and life.  I think you'll enjoy it as I do, even if you are not an artist.  I always find it interesting to listen to things in the studio that require such focused attention, when what I'm doing with my hands requires the same range of focus.  Now that my hands know what to do when throwing a pot at the wheel, my mind sometimes can wander off and get me uncentered, which doesn't help when throwing a pot!  I find keeping engaged with podcasts or audio books my focus heightens.  The muscle memory that I have gained through 13 years of making pots helps me consider other things about that form while throwing the pot.  It's so similar to playing a song at the piano.  When I first was learning how to play music when I was little, every note and hand position was painstakingly paid attention to.  Now I can play through a song without really paying attention to where my hands are on the keys, or where I am following along on the page.  Instead, I can refine the layers of the song through emotion, volume, and tone.  The same refinement comes at the potter's wheel. Now I don't have to tell myself to hold the tools a particular way.  My hands already do that.  That frees up my mind to think about what shape the pot needs to be, where I want the volume of the form, what areas are set up for the handle, or for the lid, etc.  Listening to stimulating, educational conversation with thought provoking ideas and stories also fuels this process of creativity.  I'm further stimulated and focused in my own world when working and listening.  I've talked with other fellow artists about this and have heard similar thoughts from them about their ability and love for listening to things while working in the studio.  If you don't already listen to some of these podcasts, I encourage you to do so and see where it takes you!  

And if you have some recommendations for great audio books, I'm all ears!

Chances

I'm settling back into home to my simple potting lifestyle in the quiet mountains after a great time in Florida for the firing symposium.  It was such an honor for Will and I to have been asked to present along such widely recognized ceramic artists such as Don Reitz, Chris Gustin, John Balistreri, Matt Long, Trevor Dunn, Adam Field and Steven Lee.  What was even better, was getting to know them after the workshop, spending time watching the sunset, enjoying good food, sharing stories and laughs, and realizing our common bonds through not only the medium of clay, but through our goals and passions for creating a lifestyle out of expressing ourselves.  What's always amazing to me is meeting such great people within our clay community and realizing how simple our quest really is.  While we each have led different paths in clay, our motivations are exactly the same.  Listening to the slide talks of Don, Chris, John and Matt, I kept thinking I needed to work on my slide talk!  But then I realized, theirs were so compelling because they had about 30-50 more years of experience on me, with lots of life packed in that influenced the choices they have made in their work.  So I left there feeling fully inspired, and excited for my chance at this life I have chosen as an artist and what it will continue to bring me for the rest of my life.  I'm truly blessed to have found what I love to do so early in life and am honored when such great opportunities keep unfolding for me. Thank you, St. Pete Clay and the Morean Arts Center for this great chance to share a bit of myself to the greater ceramic community.

Tea time, Show time

This teapot, and another one of mine is awaiting tea among other handmade teapots from a great lineup of North Carolina potters at the North Carolina Pottery Center, in Seagrove, NC.  The exhibit opens this Saturday, February 2, from 12 - 2 pm, with tea and light refreshments.

They made a cool postcard with a crop detail from all of the potters teapots that come together to make a whole teapot! Can you find mine in the collage?

February 2 – April 27, 2013, “Teapot Series II, The Functional and the Conceptual”, North Carolina Pottery Center, Seagrove, NC

Practice

After taking a break from throwing last fall because of moving, finally when I got back to the wheel my hands felt rusty throwing pots. It was similar to the feeling of playing the piano again after 15 years of being away from it. I took lessons for ten years when I was young. Now though, my piano is happily residing in our new home, and my fingers are getting used to playing again. After throwing at the wheel this last month I'm also feeling like the kinks are just now getting worked out. Just in time, too, for our trip down to St. Pete Clay for firings and demos. The problem though is there is just not enough time in each day to do all the things I love to do!!

2013 Events

Here's a list of what I'm going to be up to so far this year....

January 26, 6-8 pm, “Momentum, the work of William Baker and Joy Tanner”,Closing Reception, Mary Anderson Center for the Arts, Mt. St. Francis, IN

January 12- February 24, 2013, “Florida Heat Instructor Exhibition”, Morean Arts Center, St. Petersburg, FL

February 2 – April 27, 2013, “Teapot Series II, The Functional and the Conceptual”, North Carolina Pottery Center, Seagrove, NC

February 9 – 20, 2013, “Florida Heat Firing Symposium 2”, Will and I are both presenting and firing the train kiln here at St. Pete Clay, St.Petersburg, FL

March 20 – April 20, 2013: “Functional Ceramics 2013”, Wayne Center for the Arts, Wooster, Ohio

March 22-23, 2013, Pottery Workshop, Join Will and myself in our workshop for the Blue Ridge Potters Guild, Roanoke, VA

April 20, 2013, Madison County Potters Market,Will and I both will exhibit in this annual show of local potters, Marshall High Studios, Marshall, NC

May 10 – 12, 2013, Artisphere Festival, Will and I both will exhibithere at this great art festival we do every year in Greenville, SC

June 7-9, 2013, Toe River Arts Council Studio Tour, Come visit our studio atthe EnergyXChange on this self-guided tour of artist studios and galleries in Mitchell and Yancey Counties. www.toeriverarts.org

September 7, 2013, “Potters Market Invitational”,  Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC

October 5 – 6, 2013, Workshop Presenter at the Mid-Atlantic Clay Conference, Front Royal, VA

More TBA!

NC Pottery Center

I am shipping out these two shiny teapots I've saved for the Teapot Series II exhibit in February at the NC Pottery Center in Seagrove, NC. I'll be sad to see them go but they are going to a great place, after all.

For more info visit www.ncpotterycenter.com

Winter Solstice

Our mild weather is gone today as I walk through our neighboring tree farm in the cold, wind and snow! It's a great first day of winter here in North Carolina.

Holiday Online Sale!

Buy handmade this holiday season! Shop in my online Etsy store and you'll find a nice selection of pots each made with joy by Joy. I'm offering a Holiday Coupon of 10% off all online purchases now through January 1, 2013. Enter Holiday10 at checkout. Holiday Orders made before December 18 will be received by the 25th. As always, thank you to all of my supporters out there and I wish you the best this holiday season!

Tea time and Tour time

These beginning days of winter gives my teapots lots of purpose to warm me up with a nice cup of hot tea!  My favorite form to make, I always enjoy making small, intimately sized teapots, about one to two cups of tea, just right for you on a cold day.  I'm getting ready for our biannual local studio tour that's this coming weekend, put on by our local arts council, the Toe River Arts Council.  This self guided tour of Mitchell and Yancey county area artists, studios and galleries is one you do not want to miss! 

Studio Tour begins Friday, November 30, from 12-4 pm
December 1st and 2nd from 10-5 pm
Reception at the Toe River Arts Council Gallery, 269 Oak Avenue, Spruce Pine, NC, 5-7 pm

Will and I will both be exhibiting at our studio at the EnergyXchange, in Burnsville, NC.  We also have a nice selection of our work at our cooperative gallery we are a part of, Mica | Fine Contemporary Craft, in downtown Bakersville, NC. Hope to see you in our beautiful area soon!

Florida Heat Firing Symposium

Will and I have been invited to present at this kiln firing extravaganza at St. Pete Clay in St. Petersburg, FL next February 9-20.  Sign up now to participate!  It should make for an exciting winter getaway with lots of great potters.  Will and I will be wood firing in the train kiln two times during this 11 day firing workshop, as as well as giving demos and artist talks. The anagama, soda and salt kilns will also be fired.

For more information, visit www.stpeteclay.com.

House

Changes are under way for this potter! My hands have been out of the clay for a few weeks as we just bought our first house! So moving is under way as we get the house ready for us to move in! Eventually our permanent studio will be at this new house as well, when our EnergyXchange Residency ends next summer. Exciting times! My hands haven't been idle for long, though, as I've been painting and removing carpet and doing all the things one does when you are in the middle of a move and everything seems uprooted! I have a few gallery shows lined up from now through the holidays, but luckily the pots are already made so this transition time came at a good time so we can get settled before the winter hits the mountains. I just thought I should share the exciting news with you!

Table Manners at Odyssey

This Friday there is an opening reception back at my old stomping grounds, the Odyssey Center for the Ceramic Arts in Asheville, NC, where I was a Resident Artist back in 2004.  The exhibit is "Table Manners", a group show of past resident artists who are still in the WNC area working full time as potters making dinnerware, or other functional pieces related to the rituals of food.  My time at Odyssey was a pivotal point in my career to say the least; I loved my time there. After coming from a BFA in Ceramics and landing straight at Odyssey, I had no idea I had landed in the pottery mecca of the world.  Now, 8 years later, I'm proud to feel a part of this vibrant artistic community stretching from here in Bakersville to Asheville.

Hope you'll join us for the reception!  Artists in the show are myself, William Baker, Emily Reason, Becca Floyd and Joey Sheehan.

Show opens Friday, November 2, 2012, with reception from 5-7 pm, and continues through January 3, 2013.

Odyssey Center for the Ceramic Arts
236 Clingman Ave.
Asheville, NC 28801

Details

I recently took a batch of new photos of all my newest work, so I've been sorting through images and keep wanting to share the details of the carving.  This wide vase was a new form this last firing.  It's a very simple oval cylinder, but I think the active carving pattern on it helps bring it alive.  I keep thinking this would be great with not only flowers, but as a utensil holder on a kitchen counter. 

Textures

I love how this carved vase turned out. I tried carving the pattern a little different, dividing the four panels with a raised ridge. It has a skeletal feel, also reminding me of layers of pleated fabric, ripples of water, or striations of layered rock. All these thoughts make me want to get outdoors with my camera and find more sources of pattern inspiration.