hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to camp we go!

Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, that is. Hannah spent the last 12 days at camp with her best buddy, Madeline.
The kids must choose a 'major' at Blue Lake; Hannah chose to major in art (same as last year) but this year Madeline chose band (she plays flute) over art. Hannah minored in piano and Madeline minored in art. They shared a cabin, about 20X20, with 10 other girls and a counselor. Crowded space, hence the mess.
More mess means more fun, right?
Twelve days is a long time for Pebbles. You can see her here cuddling on Hannah's bed with Kiwi, Hannah's little stuffed kiwi. Poor Pebbles! She misses her human!
Hannah made a few things out of clay:
Her paintings:

And her fibers project that won the 'all-around' award in the fibers medium. She calls it 'Robot.' The award certificate is underneath it.



We listened to Madeline and the concert band play some very wonderful pieces. My favorite was the locomotive piece. Here she is on flute, center blonde.


Since Madeline minored in art, she produced one piece and it was a doll she calls 'My Sister's Doll."
She gave it to her sister, Julia, who was oh-so-happy!

in the beginning there was clay...

Here is a series of pictures of the slab rolling process to flatten clay. Keep in mind that before I had this slab roller I rolled the clay out with a rolling pin. Do you know how LONG it would take to get a piece the size below rolled out by hand and how much wear-and-tear it presented to my already-compromised right wrist??!! I'm so happy now :)))

The slab roller...
Readying the canvas in the slab roller...
Punching the clay a bit to ready it for it's destination on the other side...
Rolling the clay through...
The last of it goes in...

Peeling back the canvas...
Viola! A nicely flattened slab of clay...
And a very happy potter!

Pottery59 is back in business!

Check back here soon for pictures of what I've got in the works. I'm experimenting with a square bowl pressed into a textured form and I've got more garden-art mushrooms in the works. If you have ANY IDEAS AT ALL of what you would like to see me try to create, let me know. You may even be the recipient of such work!
Thank you to Jonah and Richard for assembling my new slab roller. It was just the kick-in-the-butt that I needed to get my hands dirty again. I'll be designing roof tiles for the brick oven and post pictures of the progress. If you would like to see some previous work, check on my 'pottery' label at the left side of my homepage.