In the Shop!

 

And more to come this week! Go to the ShellHawk's Creations Etsy store!

ShellHawk's Creations Shop is Open!

If you've been waiting for my shop to reopen after my annual Artist Open House, wait no more! It's open and expedited shipping is available!

I'll be adding more pieces over the next few days, so be sure to check back frequently to be sure you're not missing out!

Great to be Back!

After months of hard work and stressing out about having enough at the show to sell, Midsummer Scream finally arrived! 

Everything got loaded in and set up, and let me tell you, the work Dave Lowe did to make my new booth design happen really set the tone for the whole weekend! Everyone loved it! 

My pumpkin people were a hit, with five of seven finding new homes! 

The little guy at the top, above, was the first to go!

I made a few new things, too. Skeleton wind chimes, witch bells, and new designs for some nice coffee mugs!

As you know, I've been playing with new colors for my jack-o'-lanterns.

All the bowls sold, too! But one sale, in particular, made my day!

Me, Bob Gurr, and friend/booth goddess, Sherri Miranda

Original Imagineer and Doom Buggy Creator, Bob Gurr, came by my booth specifically to tell me he thought my work and my booth were the best at the convention! I swear, I could have died happy at that very moment. I gave him one of my haunted house mugs, and he came back a little later to buy one of the jack-o'-lanterns which had caught his eye earlier!

I am still just floating! (We all float around Bob!) What a great show and what a great time we had!

Now, onwards to make for my Open House!

WIPs

It's funny how things come to be, particularly these funny little Hallowe'en characters. Much of the time, I don't have their figures set in stone in my head, nor their gestures or facial expressions. The longer I do this, the more alright with that I am, because it gives them the opportunity to tell me who and what they are as my hands shape and carve the clay.

It's interesting to see them come into being, one little piece at a time. 

There's a potter whom I admire whose name is Gerit Grimm. (No relation to the more famous brothers Grimm). She teaches ceramics now over at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, but she continues to create her own body of work with a love for the craft I find inspiring. (Maybe one day I'll go out and see her.) It was from her I saw you could throw sculptural components and then alter them and attach them to make figurative sculpture. It seems like the easiest thing in the world when she does it, but then she's had years and years of practice, plus access to the kilns that only a University or college can afford to purchase, run, and keep running.

My goal is to one day to be practiced enough at these techniques to be able to make a larger variety of expressive critters, as well as larger critters, but meanwhile, I'm fairly content with my progress.

I remember a couple of guys I used to know who were sculptors here in L.A. for the studios. They told me that hands were the hardest things to pull off, but I'm not finding them terribly difficult. I don't have to make them anatomically perfect, true, but still, I'm not finding them to be the bane of my existence they seemed to have.

I'm changing things up a little this year by adding a witch or two to the mix. I don't know why I never make them, other than I love my jack-o'-lantern obsession and the fun of having fire inside their carved heads.

I haven't done a human face in a very long time, but I think this one is starting out well... 

I can't wait to see what kind of gossip this old gal has to tell me!

Pumpkin Sugar Skull Person in Progress

Step one: Throw the body!

I've gotten curious about how the pumpkin people will look with the Raku process vs. regular glazing and firing. Then my creative mind spun off into the key question all creatives ask: "What if?"

What if I do a sugar skull pumpkin person?

Step two: throw, attach, and carve the pumpkin skull head.

Step three: Throw the arms, wait for them to dry a bit and then attach them.

Step four: sculpt and attach the hands.

What if, instead of the white ghost robe I've been doing, I use color, instead?

What if I make it orange with some kind of black pattern or design along the hemline, and maybe elsewhere?

I found this orange just a little too bright, so I layered another orange over it (not pictured, yet). Part of me is considering starting bright from the head and neck area and gradually blending to a darker and darker orange as the color approaches the hem. We'll see how it goes!

A Couple Of Jacks...

For me, these little guys lend a little sense of normalcy, a little sense of rhythm of the year. I was always making new critters for my shows this time of year, and even though I can't fire them right now, it's comforting to have my hands in clay and to be able to make things which I know will make others happy.

It's humbling to know that some folks will bring these guys out yearly, like they do their Christmas decorations, and like Christmas decorations, be delighted when they come out of their box.

 And maybe, just maybe, the kids will grow up with fond memories of these faces. The faces they grew up with. The faces they associate with Hallowe'en, laughter, costumes and candy.

Knowing I made someone's Halloween memorable, makes me happy. I think that we need all the "happy" we can get, these days, don't you?

Fresh on the wheel. Shaping, trimming and carving, still to go!

I'm really grateful I had the time to develop these skills. That I had teachers who nurtured my talent. No one is truly a self-made person. Someone always invests in you, first, and brings you along. I am so very lucky I've had that in my life!

Progress!

Been keeping busy, throwing a new pumpkin army. Eventually, I'll get to the other, new ideas I've got bubbling, but for now, I'm feeling comforted by the repetition of throwing familiar forms. It's helping me to get back into the rhythm of making.

I showed my dad, who really hasn't seen me in a making cycle, and he made all the appropriately impressed dad noises. (Can I just mention how lucky I am to be spending this time with my dad?) I had to laugh when I looked at the jacks piling up, since I can't fire them until the studio I go to re-opens. Maybe I'll have enough to rent the whole kiln by that time!

New Jacks!

Although I no longer have my own space to make ceramics, I did manage to get a few (very few) jack-o'-lanterns made and fired in time for the season!

 You can still see the video of how I make them at my YouTube channel.

Click on each pic to be taken to the listing, or just head on over to ShellHawk's Creations Etsy store to see all the offerings, including 100% beeswax tea candles and votives!

You can also pick up my limited edition container candle, pictured above. 100% beeswax in an 8 oz. tin, from bees here in Los Angeles.

And thank you, as always, for the support!

New Doings in the New Nest

The hands of a working potter. Manicure? Me?

OK, it's not really new, anymore. It's coming up on two years, this June. Plus I grew up there, so it really technically isn't new...

Anyway, since I was able to bring a wheel into the place (amazing that fluttering my eyelashes at dad still works!), I started playing around with new ideas. New mediums. Anything to get the fun back into creativity again.

On a side note, I started meditating daily again. It's been well over a decade since I last had a daily practice of meditation, and it's made a big difference to my creativity and my state of mind. (Still a long way to go with that, as there are some serious and lingering anxiety issues after what I went through, but enough of that...)

Well, since the creative ideas started popping again, I thought that adding beeswax candles to my shop this year would be a logical next step. After all, if I sell jack-o'-lanterns, shouldn't I be a one-stop-shop and supply the flame for all those burning grins? 

My imagination went another step further and I thought it would be fun to make ceramic jack-o'-lantern votives! So after some mental calculations, I decided to go back to the jack design I used to do, way back before I knew how to make enclosed forms. Only now, I would make them smaller, the better to make the piece into a good receptacle for the wax.

Thrown "off the hump" and waiting to be trimmed.

Since the studio in which I work is a high-fire studio, my first tests are going to be with underglaze first, then be fired with a clear glaze. If they turn out well, I'll make candles out of them. That way, when the candle burns down, another tea candle can be thrown in! 

And if you look below, you'll see I'm already working on that angle!

Of course, my usual difficulty of having more creative ideas than time to execute them, is still in play.

How on earth do people have time to be bored?!