The Plan

The Plan so far, for the Summer Art Sale: Friday, July 25 @ 12:00 noon PST- the first half of the sale will be posted. Saturday, July 26 @ 9:00 a.m. PST- the second half will be offered. There will be a mix of ceramic (mostly tiles, but some other things) and non-ceramic items in each half. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I finish it all on time! :)

Summer Art Sale

Howdy again! I've got more fun for you today! Seeing as it is taking me a bit of time to complete the OF Jitterbug run, I've been working overtime to make a few things to sell so I might have some sort of income while I'm busy producing my American Shetland pony. That said, next week, Velasquez Artistry is having a Summer Art Sale! It will be a cheery combo of ceramic and other media pieces; of horses and other animals (and plants!). I've posted a preview of some of the pieces in progress. The exact date of the start of the sale will be announced in my yahoo group, but I am aiming for no later than next Friday. I hope to keep the pieces moderately priced, and there will even be a give-away here on the blog, so stay tuned!

OF Jitterbug Teaser

Hi Folks!

Long time, no blog! It's been a month already... gotta work on that! Anyhow, I thought I would post a little teaser for the OF color, for the 20 piece Jitterbug run. Just a little something to hopefully get you excited... I've been working hard on these ponies- he's not the easiest piece to clean- but thankfully, I am not yet at the point where I am working on them in my dreams (that's when I know it's really getting to me!). Here's a picture of one of my shelves that I took a couple of weeks ago- you can see them all lined up, waiting for a final sanding & firing:

I plan on finishing all of the pieces of this run before I offer them for sale. I am thinking a good time to release the run will be either late August or early September. Since it is a small run, I may do a combo of first come, first serve & lottery format. I will let you know! In the meantime, enjoy this preview... I may post another bit of him in a couple of weeks!

Here he is...

A very dappled & spotty hunter pony- "Gatherer"! Colors sure look different after they are fired, and have glaze on, don't they? Yes, this is the same horse pictured below in my previous blog. Anyhow, this guy is a claybodied Jitterbug, and he's headed to My Auction Barn on Friday, with the auction ending Tuesday, the 24th. You can see more pictures of him here, and there will be a link to the auction there, after it goes up. Hope you like him!

Coming Soon...

Something dappled this way comes!!! And spotty goodness too... :)

Playing with Paper

From my website you will notice that I've been having fun playing with various papers and mixed media. I started doing this last year when I was in St. Louis, and away from most of my horse stuff. I couldn't not do art! I'm still experimenting largely with what I'm doing here... I don't even know quite what to call it... collage? Assemblage? (I vaguely recall that as an art term from college!) But whatever it is, it is a nice creative break from my purely ceramic stuff, and it is helping to keep me energized, to some degree. Lately I've been doing works that help to explore my more spiritual leanings- the piece above is an example of that. Squeezed it in last week in the evenings after my regular work day, it depicts St. Thomas More & his daughter. I did it as an auction donation to a church I used to belong to when I was living in the San Diego area. I felt drawn to show the beauty a father-daughter relationship can have... I guess because I am blessed to have a wonderful relationship with my dad. A larger image can be seen here. And I still have more canvas boards calling to me (yay Art Store!), and more ideas to explore, so I don't think this is going to stop any time soon. I'm feeling a bit avian for my next one, so I think the next one is going to have to feature a bird... perhaps a zebra finch...?

Bzzzt! Crack! Boom!

So last year when I was living in St. Louis, I experienced I don't know how many thunderstorms. They were as common as colds. Here in suburban So. Cal... not so common. That is why a sudden summer storm (which was forecasted for tomorrow, of course!), complete with pea-sized hail (hey- that's pretty big to us! Hail is also a rarity), and the requisite thunder and lightning... And it was some serious lightning. Midwestern lightning. You would think, all that time in the actual midwest, I would have seen lightning hit something. Nope; unless you count other clouds, and maybe the horizon. So I was absolutely shocked when I peeked out the bay window to see my neighbor's tree get directly zapped by a bolt! I must have looked at exactly the right time to see it shoot down the middle of the trunk and split the tree as it went. Took a good quarter of the large pine off- at least most of it landed in the street, though my neighbor's roof had some serious branches on it. Anyhow, that was my excitement for the day. Thought I'd share :)

Our "really big" hail: