
Jane Crow Forced Ultrasound 4 1/2" x 11" x 9 1/2" I was about to give up on my Jane Crow series, but with the push of another artist, I entered the national juried unitewomen.org exhibition at the Pam Foss Gallery in St. Michaels, MD. Not only did Jane Crow make it to the short list of 35 works to be exhibited in the Pam Foss Gallery along with such notables as Michele Pred, Jane Crow Forced Ultrasound made it into the top 12 featured artworks. She will be traveling this fall.

The End, Earth, Water, Fire 9" x 11" x 11" This is the end as I will no longer do any work in clay that will be reduction fired (gas fired) to cone 10. I can't be an activist against fracking and fossil fuels and continue to do artwork in clay that requires reduction firing. I learned from a neighbor who is a potter with a home and studio completely powered by solar energy that it is possible to successfully produce work fired to cone 5 with solar energy. This information is probably meaningful only to artists who work in clay. To me this means that I can continue to blend my activism and my art. In other ways the construction is typical of my earlier work - hand building on a platform. The blue inside and drizzled blue outside represents the rising water, the white the melting glaciers and the copper red the heating of the earth. This is the end, my last cone 10 reduction fired piece and the end of the earth as we know it if we don't stop burning fossil fuels.
I'm not sure just what I am avoiding most: cleaning, posting calls or writing the letter to the artist who in her first exhibition the piece she didn't intend to sell sold or maybe it is just that I needed a few hours to relax, read and reflect. Eve Ensler's new book In the Body of the World" is raw, wrenching, emotional and uplifting. I read it start to finish at Gaumenkitzel on San Pablo in Berkeley the perfect place to savor special treats like streusel with strawberries and rhubarb.