What an amazing night at Waterworks! Salisbury, NC residents and even the Mayor really know how to support the arts. More pics on Instagram! Many of these photos were taken the hour before the show opened. Trust me, there was a crowd but I put my camera down and enjoyed the show! Thanks again to my students, friends and family who captured the night in their photos. 

The Art Department is hosting a trip to Spain and Portugal in the summer of 2018. Each time I take my students abroad, I sell mugs to help pay my way. Most mugs are $30 plus shipping. All proceeds go directly to travel and future art expenses. Chaperoning the students to show them that world travel influences their life is so important to me. Not only do I want to take the students around the world, these trips also fuel the fire with new disk imagery. I love that with ceramics I can throw utilitarian items to be held and used every day and create clay drawings to be hung in exhibitions. My pottery pays the way for the ceramic sculptures. I hope my students mirror the work ethics involved. If you are interested in purchasing a mug, please message me on the MORE-CONTACT tab or follow me on Instagram: cfordart for the freshest postings. I have about two more firings to go to finish up my summer functional work. 

Mom and I delivered a minivan filled with 56 disks today to Waterworks! I can't believe I thought I could haul it all in a car. I have to give a major thank you to my mom for helping me hang the show. As a 5 foot tall person, I use my height for intuitive hanging: an arm's length high and wingspan wide. I'm great at eyeballing; however, for a show in a museum, you need to be precise. My mom is the queen of "anal retentive" and quite the "Rain Man" with numbers. At 70 years old, she can run circles around my athletic students. I know the museum director said they could hang my works but I find it rude to dump your works and go. I'd also like to give a major thank you to everyone at Waterworks. Anne Scott Clement and all of the teachers and workers were so kind and hospitable. They are going to finalize the lights. labels, and vinyl lettering before the opening reception September 15. I hope to see you at the show! Stay tuned for updated pictures once the lights are set. For more pictures and videos of the show, go to my Instagram page: cfordart. 

I've got piles and piles of research images from photos and old memories jotted down to work on a gob of Tennessee tiles. Below are the first three that will be shown at Waterworks. Tennessee is also the tri-state: west (Memphis/flat land), middle (Nashville/rolling hills), and east (Knoxville and beyond/mountains). You can't talk about Tennessee without mentioning its rich musical history. Below are the first three works I've done to represent my home state.

Now that the kilns are loaded for my Waterworks exhibit, the tiles are being compressed for the next round of carving. There will be no breaks this semester and very little sleep. I welcome the challenge. The next exhibit will be called Southern Sampler, a group show of southern artists brought to SUNY Brockport, New York. In order to prepare for this exhibit, a bunch of my summer southern travels were utilized for image-making research. Thanks to Emily Tuttle for taking me on an art historian's tour of plantations and important areas of Charleston and Pawleys Island. I've finished one Charleston and Pawleys Island disks but have plenty of imagery for more tiles. The more I travel the states, the more I realize that local travel is just as influential as global travel. 

I think I'm going to have an identity crisis! Diesella, my famous sticker bug, has been retired after over 253,000 miles of adventure. All of the amazing trips she has provided for myself and my students will never be forgotten. The back of my car was a passport filled with stickers from trips. I'm so glad I immortalized her in one of my tiles. 

"Why is the world in love again?
Why are we marching hand in hand?
Why are the ocean levels rising up?
It's brand new record for 1990.
They Might be Giants' brand new album:
Flood"---They Might Be Giants

 Why does it seem like before every big exhibit we have a flood? Before Circular at NGU, my basement flooded. I thought I lost the 200 plus bowls, tea bowls, and mugs I made for that show. On the bright side, I was able to wash everything and reconnect with TMBG's amazing album Flood. Tonight I've scurried around my basement studio making sure all drying disks for the last firing for  the Waterworks exhibit will be safe. Maybe I need to carve an ark for one of my Go By... disks. Cross your fingers the flood and tornado hype is just that. 
Below is one of the last Go By... disks I carved to include whitewater rafting and rappelling. Rappelling was part of an eco-adventure tour my twin and I did in the Yucatan. During that tour, we also got to bike, hike and kayak into the forest, rappel down a cliff, swim in a cenote cave, and zip line over the tree canopy. It also included a blessing from a local native shaman. Whitewater rafting was done in Peru down the Urumbamba river. For those of you who know me well and know the story about the critters I accidentally brought back in my stomach, I think that whitewater trip was the culprit. My twin and I have a hard time keeping our mouths shut during death-defying acts. We laugh and laugh and laugh. Things get in. If it floods tonight, I'll keep my mouth shut. 

It's been such a busy summer but I couldn't be any more thrilled. In the words of my student Tyler Hill's favorite song, I had to "work work work work work." Multitasking between throwing on the wheel and carving disks, I squeezed in a bit of travel time to Vermont, Pawley's Island and Charleston. All of the mugs I have been making will be sold to fund the Art Department's trip to Spain for summer 2018. All of the disks carved will go into my exhibit at Waterworks. 

Toy Museum in Vermont, Summer 2017.

Farmhouse stay at Top Acres Farm in Woodstock, Vermont. We enjoyed watching a huge groundhog (woodchuck) each morning and hearing stories about the local "dumpster bear." I need to carve another Vermont disk just for those two characters. I did talk to some of the farmers about the upstate New York Bigfoot! 

Farmers' Markets in Vermont are amazing!!!

How can you not love jackalope wallpaper!!! I could live in Vermont if I could get used to shoveling snow. 

After nine days of nonstop beer, cheese and kombucha tastings in Vermont, I came back home to detox and continue with my work. I started tinkering with some pint cup shapes and did a few disk/tiles inspired by my trip including "Champ" the Lochness-type creature in Lake Champlain. 

After finding out that I'd be in a group show this upcoming January in New York, I began researching images from past trips and carving works for Southern Sampler. This image was from a trip to Nashville last summer. Shortly after carving began, I drove home to Tennessee to research more southern inspirations. Below is a picture from the front porch of my family farm. 

 While home in Tennessee, we went to the Sutton Old Time Music Hour for some home cooking, picking' and grinning'!  ​http://www.granvilletn.com/attractions/sutton-ole-time-music-hour  . Summer ended with a trip to visit Emily Tuttle in Pawleys Island. While in the low country, she took me on an amazing image/idea hunting trip in Charleston so I could carve for the Southern Sampler show. Images to come.