GOING ALL POTTY

Yesterday: Pipes and pipe stems. Red raw spots on fingers of left hand, where the bleach attacked the skin. Cigar smokers wandering in and out in a daze. Mobbed by young briar fiends, to whom I am some kind of god. Lunch delayed till after five. Actually, I was just high as a kite on caffeine.

Evening: Pissing-contest about cultural appropriation / expropriation on the internet. Once it became clear that I was talking to a rabid socialist lesbian veganist spiritual mystic of colour (purple, I think), who was more interested in talking about her genetic background and the inherited guilt from Caucasian genes -- but before she started wailing about beavers, whales, spotted owls, and the horrid, horrid! repression of which all white males are inescapably responsible -- I left the Facebook battlefield. Life is too short to check one's privilege, sorry. I shall now dance a happy dance from a tattooed tribe, while claiming MY people invented it.
And wear culturally inappropriate clothing.


Today: Off to Palo Alto to revel in glazes and textures, shapes and wall-thicknesses. The Association of Clay and Glass Artists (ACGA) does a grand open-air show every year. Over two hundred talented people displaying beautiful things for sale.


Palo Alto Clay & Glass Festival - 2014
1313 Newell Rd Palo Alto
Saturday, July 12 through Sunday, July 13


Particularly fond of various copper oxides.
Cobalt carbonates. Red iron.
Oh flux yeah.


The hues of celadon derive from iron oxide's ferric changes in a reduction firing. Finding a new artist experimenting with the process is always a cause for joy. Classic simplicity, carefully considered interpretation.
Good pieces can be heard late at night; little private pings in the darkness, as the glaze develops yet another microscopic crackle.
Sometimes it takes years before they quiet down.


Should be gloating soon.


Way too.



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