FINISHING

I knew that Act of Balance wasn't finished!

ACT OF BALANCE

FALL

The last of the trees shedding its leaves

I sold this cup and took a picture before it left me. I like this African inspired style and have several lined up for next kiln. It's going to take some time though, because the kiln was fired today.

I hung the tree of life on my wall.

SOLD

The pottery sale was a big success in spite of the weather - or maybe the cool and cloudy day was inviting people to go Christmas shopping instead of tempting them to the beach. Between 2 and 3 it started to rain heavily and it became a bit lonely for those who were set up outside under canopies. My friends, Leela and Tom, both came after I had packed up my stuff. That's the kind of people I know, I joked, but they came in handy to help me carry stuff to the car.

BEFORE THE SALE

Clay Creation is having a pottery sale in the parking lot on Sunday December 5.

THE LAST ROSE

FOLI "RHYTHM" THERE IS NO MOVEMENT WITHOUT RHYTHM, ORIGINAL VERSION

THE MANDALA OF THE TREE OF LIFE

INFATUATION

THE VISUALIZER

One of the most amazing works of electronic art that I know is the original Visualizer on iTunes. Within the limited scope of its elements, it succeeds in constantly renewing itself. It seems there is never twice the exact same image, and the elements keep creating new patterns depending on the music that is played or maybe new elements are added, for every time I watch, something is coming up that I never have seen before.
The Visualizer responds to the music and, as I listen to my music, the Visualizer takes me on a trip out in space among the stars or inside flames of fireworks or to glittering surfaces of water - on and on through shapes and patterns or just colors melting into each other.
There are two kinds of elements: the creative and the receptive – yang and yin. The creative elements are lines of light that vibrate with the music, while the patterns of the receptive elements hold the results of the creative energy for a while, until they fade away, as must all that is created.
It is really a metaphor for the whole of creation and it has an addictive quality in its relentless shifts. It is a temptation to stay on and see what the next development will be – and the next! It gives one some of the benefits of listening to live music because it engages the vision with the music and thereby intensifies the experience.

MORE CERAMICS

When I bicycle home from the studio I pass a car on whose windshield is written:
MY GOD IS REAL.

May this god - if he is real - protect us from his followers!

OPENING THE KILN

On the upper shelf, number two from left, you can see my gray teapot. Unfortunately the lid was stuck and in the attempt to unstick it I smashed the pot.

DETAILS FROM INDRA'S NET

ARTICHOKE FLOWER (THE MOVIE)

RARE FLOWERS

The artichoke flower is the bee's delight.

This cactus I have had for many years but this is the first flower.

Pomegranate, not so rare but one of my favorite flowers.

MINI PAINTING

BUMPER STICKER

FORTUNE FAVORS THE BRAVE

My house mate Peter gave me some strips of expensive watercolor paper that he had cut up for a project that never got further. They work for writing runes!

click to enlarge!

THE FINISHED PAINTING 2

WORK IN PROGRESS 2

MORE POTS

These are three sides of the same pot









These are inside and outside of the same pot

I'm such an idiot - I made another teapot that doesn't work!

THE FINISHED PAINTING

FIRST STEP

This was painted Saturday night. I will try to post every phase of its creation.

A PASSIONATE INTERLUDE

In December 1956 I went to Majorca to paint with my friend Ole S. We worked every day for a month and lived a frugal life in a small rented room about 15 minutes on the bus out of Palma De Majorca.

When New Years came I was ready for an adventure and I went alone to town in the afternoon. In the street I met a gay boy, who did not really interest me, but he invited me to a party in the evening and that sounded good to me. So I accepted and he took me along to show me the house where the party was going to happen. I was introduced to Mimi, a Swiss lady past her best years, and her chubby younger lover who went under the name of El Gordo. Two young men were helping with the preparations for the party: Carlos and Lili. Carlos was a nice homely Spanish boy but Lili was striking. He was blond, a golden honey color streaked with sun bleached strands, and his eyes were a deeper golden brown. He was unmistakably male but his youth and his androgynous beauty softened his masculinity; he still had some puppy fat and was smooth as a seal.
They all welcomed me and I helped out a bit, but I had to tear myself away to go home and change.

At the party Lili took charge of me and I completely neglected the boy who had brought me and had only eyes for Lili. We danced and we made out, and we ended up in bed together.
Next day everything was out in the open: El Gordo and Lili lived in the house and Mimi paid the bills. They wanted me to move in and be part of the “family”, but when I told Lili that I was not rich he cried. It really touched me that this little hustler would cry because I was not rich enough to be his sugar daddy. Yet Ole S. was about to leave shortly and I was ready to follow up on my adventure, so we agreed on the arrangement and the day after I moved in.
I found out that Lily already had a sugar daddy when I met him, an English tourist, and I came to suspect that after moving in with me he still kept up with the Englishman. His disappearances were cause of bitter recriminations followed by sweet reconciliations. Carlos was a daily visitor in the house and he became my confident when Lili’s absences drove me crazy. Mimi said I should take him as my boyfriend, he was a sincere boy, he was in love with me and would make me happy, but I was in the throes of my passion and could not give up because there was some drama.

One time Lili had been gone for two days and when I came home and opened the door to our room, there was a single candle burning and Lili was lying naked on the bed with a pair of scissors fallen from his hand and a wound by his heart from which a trickle of blood had run down his flank. The tableau was so convincing that for a moment I was taken in. When I touched him he shivered and my shock turned into rage, but after having cussed him out it ended up as usual: in the bed. Even though the suicide was fake, his going to the extreme of drawing blood touched my heart.

We were asked to leave the house; I don’t remember why, but I think it had to do with our disreputable lifestyle. We found a big gloomy house in the countryside whose only redeeming trait was a big lemon tree. The house was cold too and we sometimes “found” some firewood on the path. This decided our fate: the firewood belonged to somebody else and we were again asked to leave.
I had been on Majorca for three months now and my money was running out. I decided that it was time to go home and when I told Lili he cried again, but what could I do? I had embraced this experience and followed the path of passion but after all it was not the only thing in my life. My feelings of responsibility had taken over, but the tender memory of a hustler’s tears stayed with me.

The house with the lemon tree

JUST FINISHED

QUOTE

All her life auntie was a staunch atheist, but everybody knows that it is precisely the atheists who, having passed the dialectical stage of rebelling against God, most often becomes devout believers or simply are infected with various forms of mysticism – that’s what happened to my aunt; in her declining years she joined some strange esoteric society. This was a kind of New Age group with a Russian twist, where everything went into the mix: the manuscripts of unrecognized messiahs, silver-maned unicorns, the poetry of ancient Russian spells, the horoscope of the druids, the ritual laments of southern Croatians and Australian didgeridoo…

(Dimitry Bushuev in ‘Echoes of Harlequin’)

That's pretty funny. I grew up atheist and now I'm infected with mysticism, albeit not specially of the New Age kind. More like this quote from Zen master Hui Neng:

There is nothing true anywhere, the true is nowhere to be found.
If you say you see the true,
This seeing is not the true one.
When the true is left to itself,
There is nothing false in it, for it is mind itself.
When mind in itself is not liberated from the false,
There is nothing true, nowhere is the true to be found.

A WORK IN PROGRESS

SIMULATED WRITINGS

UNFINISHED?