–from a child’s mind…
(Soozee here…) Earlier this Spring, I had the opportunity to teach a variety of clay projects with my friend, Cathy, to several grade levels from the local elementary school.
How inspiring to make art with a bunch of bright kids! Each child brought with them a different set of life experiences and approaches to manipulating the clay–so very fascinating.
It reinvigorated the idea of creativity and expression without the need for a perfect end result. I was able to say…Let’s immerse our hands in the materials and see what happens! I had a marvelous time and the kids made some great pieces…here are a few…
–a peek inside the kiln
We invite you to have a look inside a recent kiln opening…shelf by shelf.
[slideshow]
I know, I know, the tiles face all different directions but think of it as a little bit of exercise for your neck as you turn your head this way and that to have a proper look. Who knew you could do calisthenics while looking at art?
Actually, the seeming randomness is a function of squeezing the tiles into position without anybody touching anyone else. We often reflect on that game “Operation” that we played as kids while we load the kiln…we don’t want to hear that buzzer and definitely don’t want to see that red nose light up!
See you at The Wheelhouse Spring Ceramics Sale in Monrovia on April 27 and 28!
–Wheelhouse Ceramics Spring Sale
The Wheelhouse Pottery Studio presents its annual Spring Ceramic Art Show.
This Saturday, April 28 from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, we will join the Wheelhouse Studio in Monrovia as they place large table cloths over potting-wheels, glaze buckets and roller tables in order to display the latest ceramic work of 20 – 25 local artisans.
I may have mentioned this before, but Tracy and I were big fans of this ceramics show long before we joined the studio. We have always appreciated the variety of artistic styles, good pricing and have especially enjoyed meeting the people that worked the sale…and fortunately we now know them as friends!
In case you are unable to read the small print above…The Wheelhouse Pottery Studio is located at 1831 Santa Fe Place in Monrovia (near the corner of Duarte Road and Myrtle, behind AAMCO and Troy’s Donuts & Burgers).
The studio is taking cash and checks only and is on Facebook under WheelhouseCeramics.
For you, our Friends and Family, there will be a preview sale on Friday evening April 27, from 6:00 – 9:00pm. Tracy and I may not be there to greet you this year as we have been called away on a top-secret mission…well, not likely, but duty calls in other ways and will pull us away from this festive event.
Hopefully our tile work will represent us with a smile.
–Garden Tour Art
This beautiful Spring weather truly inspires a cheerful walk in a luscious garden…such favorable conditions for a Garden Tour! 
This Sunday, April 22, we will be showing our tile as part of the 18th Annual Garden Tour, “Art of the Garden”, hosted by the Creative Arts Group of Sierra Madre.
Tracy and I, along with 8 other artists, will display our work in a lovely setting of greenery at the Nash garden, located at 1014 Hampton Road in Arcadia between Baldwin Avenue and Michillinda, 10:30 – 4:30.
Come by to say hello. You may visit the art show without purchasing a ticket for the entire Garden Tour. However, after reading the garden descriptions above, I feel the tour would be wonderfully rewarding.
This self-guided garden tour allows each visitor to set their own pace and see the gardens in any order of their choosing.
For more information about the tour itself, please click on <http://creativeartsgroup.org/Gardens.htm>, or call626/355-8350.
*****
More information will be forthcoming about the Wheelhouse Ceramics Spring Sale taking place on Saturday April 28, 2012 (with a sneak peek for ‘Friends and Family’, showing the night before on Friday, April 27).
–Wistaria Festival, 2012
We are looking forward to the 2012 Wistaria Festival in Sierra Madre on Sunday, March 25! The downtown festival will go from 9am-5pm.
There will be more than 150 craft and food vendors, live entertainment, and kids’ attractions, plus local merchants will be open for business too.
The festival will be spread across the downtown area of Sierra Madre, radiating west and north from the intersection of Baldwin Avenue and Sierra Madre Boulevard.
For those interested in seeing the vine, the viewing times are from 9am – 4pm with tickets available for purchase at WistariaTickets.com.
Tracy and I will be showing our handmade ceramic tile with a group of local artists sponsored by “The Friends of the Arts” in Sierra Madre. We will be a festival within a festival…sort of. Our group will be on the main boulevard in the tree-covered parking lot of the old City Hall building located between 55 and 71 West Sierra Madre Boulevard.
You may have to peek your head over a street vendor’s awning to see us along the sidewalk, but we will be there (with bells on, as they say).
If you happen to remember last year’s Wistaria Festival. you’ll recall that we had torrential downpours with rains so heavy that the local authorities were concerned about flooding endangering the bus-trips, tootling up and down the hill to see the vine. We remember it well, because we set up our “shop-in-a-tent” with the “Friends” on Montecito Avenue and hoped for cheerful visitors to drop by to see our tile. With water-logged socks, we passed the time under our shelter for several hours, chatted and cavorted with the other artists braving the weather, then finally packed it all up when the police informed us that the festival had been cancelled.
All in all, we had fun. We met lots of lovely people, shared a few laughs under leaky awnings, and discovered some wonderful local artwork. It truly was a memorable adventure.
I have to admit it though, we’re hoping for dryer weather this year.
***
Stay tuned for more info about our next Spring event as part of The Creative Arts Group, Garden Tour to be held on Sunday, April 22.
–face what?
Facebook? for our tile? So, you really think we should?
Recently, it was firmly suggested that we immerse ourselves with more enthusiasm into the modern world…and get on Facebook. Our friends and family members are luxuriating in the mediums of social networking, and wonder why we haven’t jumped in. I guess Tracy and I have been busy making tile so we had not previously investigated Facebook as an option. But you know, we like to think that we’re open to change. We love new adventures and this one can be done from the comfort of the living room. So why not?
So, for all you fans of Facebook, please pop-in for a visit to our little page. It is still a baby, but I’m sure with a little love, attention and the proper amounts of water, it will grow up to be a big page soon. Perhaps your comments on our Facebook page could be the vitamins that make it flourish!
Friday morning, Tracy and I will be unloading our first full kiln of glazeware for 2012. This represents many weeks of work and should result in about 60-70 new pieces. We haven’t had a full load go through since the first of December, so tomorrow will be a festive day for us. We hope to get some good photographs of this new work and…you guessed it…put them on Facebook.
And on a side, but very important note…a big Thank you to the friends of Ramona Paloma Tile that subscribe to this blog. Knowing that you’re out there is a wonderful feeling for us…and inspiring. On February 2nd, we quietly celebrated our 2nd birthday which wouldn’t have existed without the support of friends like you. Cheers!
–Zinnia Valentine’s show
We have found some new friends in a lovely and lyrical shop–Zinnia, in South Pasadena.
Just before Christmas, we made a sojourn to South Pasadena with some of our tiles and we discovered that Zinnia was a great match-up for us. (matchmaker, matchmaker lend me your ear…)
This shop is brimming with artfulness–some is finished art–colorful, handmade, and full of cacophonous vibrancy while other items are actually pieces and parts available to create your own riotous expression.
Either way… it’s a lot of fun!
Zinnia will be participating in the South Pas Arts Crawl, Saturday February 11th from 5pm-9pm, being held throughout South Pasadena. Zinnia’s contribution to the “crawl” will be a Valentine’s show featuring many local artists presenting their malleable impression of Valentine’s Day.
The opening reception will be 6:00 – 9:00pm at Zinnia located at 1024 Mission Street in South Pasadena. They can be reached at 626/441-2181 and at <www.zinnia.biz>
Tracy and I have a few pieces that will be included in the Valentine’s show along with some other tile artwork mixed in with their main collection “in and amongst”
If you haven’t been to Mission Street in South Pasadena in a while, don’t forget a pop-in to Buster’s coffee shop–a favorite!
Happy February to all! Happy Valentine’s Day too!
(stay tuned…we are firing up the glaze kiln next week–first run of 2012. So, we’ll have some new work to show)
–Hearts and Flowers
We pleased to let you know that a few pieces from Ramona Paloma Studios have been included in the wildly artistic “Hearts and Flowers” show at The Folk Tree in Pasadena. This show has enjoyed it’s Valentine’s Day-inspired tradition for 25 years.
The Folk Tree gallery is located 217 South Fair Oaks with further information available at www.folktree.com
Along with highlighting a wonderfully wide variety of art work, there will also be a photographer there (Jessica Torres Camacho) offering you the opportunity to pose for a Vintage Valentine portrait. Reservations are suggested. Call for more information at 626/795-8733.
The opening reception in on Saturday, January 21 from 2 – 6 pm with the show running through February 18, 2012.
Let me just mention that when Tracy and I dropped off our tiles at the gallery, we got the chance to look at some of the work that had already been dropped off. What a diverse group of artists and interpretation on the theme! Drop by the show and enjoy the color, drama and whimsy of this collection. It ranges from tiny to huge, and functional to totally impractical except for the fact that it is incredible art that makes you abundantly happy–actually, pretty useful, I’d say.
If you miss the opening, their regular hours are M-W: 11-6pm, Th-Sat: 10-6pm and on Sundays from 12-5pm.
Please see the “Hearts & Flowers XXV” postcard…
–An art show in a storm
What a windstorm we had just over a week ago! Wednesday, November 30th, 2011 will be remembered by a lot of people in the Pasadena area…for a long time.
On the Tuesday evening prior, Tracy and I were getting ready for the ceramics showing at the Wheelhouse in Monrovia as we loaded our final glaze-firing for the year. We loaded a full kiln (est. 85-90 pieces), knowing that we wouldn’t be creating at quite this elevated level until the new year. So, that full kiln represented many hopes for a positive response to our newest work (and many hours).
Normally when we fire, we set the kiln to begin it’s slow heat-up process around 6pm (better energy costs in the evening). The temperature builds and builds , hits a peak and holds. Then it allows sufficient time for a slow heat reduction and finally shuts off and is left to cool for many hours.
That week, our start-time was 6pm on Tuesday, November 29 which gave us an unload time of Thursday morning. On Wednesday night when the winds began their fury, we weren’t quite sure if the kiln had finished before we lost power–and we didn’t know what the situation would be if the process hadn’t quite finished…had it possibly cooled down too quickly?…and would we open the kiln to a pile of rubble for our last firing of 2011? (Ceramics crack and/or break when asked to do anything too quickly.)
So, upon waking-up to the destruction and still windy conditions of Thursday morning, we dealt with our personal and neighborhood damage and postponed the unload until that afternoon. When we finally had the opportunity to open the kiln, we found that everything had proceeded normally–what a relief! We were also happy to see that the kiln and surrounding shed were undamaged in the storm.
However, in the big scheme of things, a successful tile firing seemed less important once we ventured out of our own neighborhoods to witness the broad spectrum of destruction everywhere we looked…just everywhere.
Finally, after removing and boxing-up the contents of the kiln, we ran into a friend who suggested our power outage would not be a mere 24 hours as originally thought, but possibly up to 5 days. So, at around 3:30pm on December 1st, Tracy and I decided to go on an ice and battery mission–apparently everyone else had the same idea!
What an odd experience. As we entered the first store (of many), we were met by exiting people with empty hands…relaying the fact that the store was out of both of these items. We drove on…no parking was available anywhere and a sense of frenzy was beginning to pull us in. People around us were frantic, distracted, and apparently under the spell of their primal brains that engage “survival mode”.
As we left yet another parking lot with nothing to show for it, we noticed the sun getting lower in the sky and a sense of urgency crept in. We both thought of a scary film where you had to be indoors and locked down before sunset because the creatures were coming out to rule the night. Okay–a bit overdramatic, but if we had let ourselves, we could’ve fallen steadfastly into that mindset and lost a bit of our humanity.
Eventually, we found a store where we could at least get ice, so ditched the idea of battery power in order to get home before dark. Tracy dropped me back at my place with ice in hand, ready to load into my fridge just about 30 minutes before complete darkness would descend on our little Mayberry village of Sierra Madre.
And I’m mostly sure there were no goblins ruling the streets that night…
Anyway…amazingly enough, The Wheelhouse got it’s power back before the Friday night pre-show so we joined the other artists and went about the task of setting up our display. Many stories were shared amongst us and we all remarked on how miraculous it was that nobody was reported as seriously hurt.
In retrospect, Tracy and I experienced that palpable taste of mass urgency when responding to a calamity, entangled with our own tumultuous push into a creative deadline.
Wow! What a mixed bag!
…One of these things is not like the others…
–Wheelhouse Pottery Studio Holiday Sale
Hurray!…We can’t wait!
This Saturday, December 3, we will be showing our recent tile work at The Wheelhouse Pottery Studio in Monrovia, located at 1831 Santa Fe Place.
Look for some new images that just went into the kiln today!
The studio is just south of the Myrtle/Duarte Rd intersection behind Troy’s Donuts and Aamco.
On Friday night (Dec 2), there will be a secret pre-show for Friends and Family–that’s you!… 6:00pm – 9pm. (Apparently I’m not so good at keeping secrets). I’m pretty sure Tracy and I will be there on Friday evening. This is the sort of show where the work shows itself so we may not be around on Saturday…I’m pretty sure I’ll be attending several soccer games.
This event is one of our favorite shows to shop for gifts–we always find a cool or unique piece, perfect for a special present. We love being part of this community of mud-slingers and feel privileged to be participating in this Holiday ceramics show.
Please notice the show’s postcard below, you may see something familiar…
Yay! We made the postcard!
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