Lost River Artisans’ Co-op: Fundraiser for Potomac Highlands Animal Rescue.

Saturday, August 30^th from 10 AM until 2 PM

Lost River Artisans’ Co-op (7151 Route 259 in Lost City, West Virginia) will sponsor a fundraiser for Potomac Highlands Animal Rescue.

PHAR is an all-volunteer 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in 1997. It serves Hardy and Grant Counties by providing temporary shelter and foster homes, food, medical attention, spay and neuter assistance, and comfort to neglected, homeless, and injured animals. It also works to reunite lost animals with their human partners. My wonderful dog, Xander, came from PHAR after being rescued from a house fire. Please come out and support the cause. There will be some great Kahoka dog and cat pots to win!

Greetings from Algonquin Provincial Park

There are touches of red in the maples up here in northern Ontario, and the goldenrod is starting to bloom; it all foretells things to come for which I am not ready. It is rainy but great to rendezvous with long-time Canadian friends. On the other hand, since we live at the back of beyond in the peace and quiet of wonderful woods, even the most rustic campground seems contrived and crowded. 

I miss my clay and pots and their regular multi-phased progression by which the former becomes the latter. I expect I will meet a potter or two before getting back to Lost Hollow; I will need to get my hands around a nice stoneware shape. On the other hand, there is a 50-pound box of clay with us in the trailer, along with a tray and a straw. Do you know how many Kahoka beads that combination can produce? But first I’m looking for moose and if I am very lucky, maybe a wolf. Bears we have at home, for which I am grateful. Along the way I notice leaves I am not familiar with and imagine how they would look on clay. H’mmm.

Class act

My kiln is full of pots I did not make. Last Saturday was the final session of my class through Lost River Artisans’ Cooperative. We hold it at my studio, since moving wet pots bodes doom. Six students met two weeks earlier to make their coil and slab works of art. After those were cleaned, dried, and bisque fired, the students returned to glaze them. Most find glazing a trickier task than the building, since it is hard to imagine what the opaque glaze will look like after it is fired. There will be some grand surprises when they pick up their pots!

Some students had previous experience throwing on potters’ wheels, but few studios offer handbuilding classes. Perhaps we are a society too dependent on complex machines to think of rolling out clay and pressing leaves into it as creative. To handbuild, you need only your hands, some clay, and a sense of what you and the clay might do together. It is quiet and peaceful. Even my slab roller is a simple mechanical contraption. No learning curve there: turn the wheel and the roller squeezes the clay flat between two pieces of canvas. The potential is endless!