Exhibition and Workshop Schedule                                                                                    Updated   10/30/09  

Geez....

3 years since my last post in here??  Is anybody still checking in and reading these?   Well just in case...I will take a few moments to catch up  I'll start with yesterday and work my way backward to 2007:

• 2009:   S h o w t i m e !  "O n  T e n d e r  H o o k s"
  It has been a LONG year!  When I returned from my trip abroad, Claire Oliver called and let me know that my first solo show with her was scheduled for Fall 2009. Yikes!  A whole year earlier than I had thought when I had left for China.  With less than 9 months to prepare, I kicked the studio into full throttle and began working on the most challenging pieces I have ever tackled to date:  "A Rush of Blood to the Head."  
  

  Here I am on some sketchy scaffolding working on "Rush..."

           Seeing as my studio images of a work-in-progress were over 6 year out of date, I decided to document every stage of building this piece. I'll have those new images posted in my materials and techniques section soon!  The time frame for "Rush" (ie: the 'kissing goats') ended up spanning over 9.5 months as I struggled through learning new processes and a larger scale.
  
           Far from being daunted, I started another monumental piece "A Second Kind of Loneliness"- probably my largest scale piece to date.  It took up an entire wall of my studio.  If that wasn't enough of a challenge, I also  designed the piece to "breathe."  Working with an internal bellows, motor, and computer controller introduced a whole host of hair-pulling technical issues which I was only able to resolve the day before the opening in New York.  I am still trying to bring my anxiety and stress levels down from that experience.  Sorry, Claire!

  "A Second Kind of Loneliness"  - 1200 lbs Solid clay rough in on the wall.  She was 20% larger in this rough state.

           My third large piece started as an over ambitious demonstration piece, created at a workshop I was joint teaching with Tip Toland at the Archie Bray Foundation.  The workshop was a fantastic success, and I was able to bring the piece home in sections and continue working on it.  Originally intended as a small/medium scale work, this piece almost doubled from its original intended scale, and became one of the most striking pieces in the show- "Humiliation by Design."  My first moving sculpture!  Thanks to my awesome intern, Zaccaria Anny, for the design of the frame, my stepfather, Russ Jacobsohn, for the fantastic old cornhusker gears, and J&J Welding in Spokane for putting the whole contraption together for me!

  "Humiliation by Design" in the rough solid state  during my demonstration at the Archie Bray Foundation workshop with Tip Toland.

           Working on all three large scale projects at once, I had three interns throughout the summer working on the surfaces and misc. supporting elements for the work:  Sarah Teasley, Chasen Barry, and Zaccaria Anny.  Sarah kept the fire lit under me for the early part of the summer while we worked on the kissing goats, Zac followed late in the summer and was my technician for almost all of the supporting elements for the large work, and Chasen- dear lord.  I don't know how I could have pulled this show off without you- was absolutely key in finishing the surfaces on every piece in the show.  Overlapping with all these folks, Bryan Halsey flew up from Ohio for the entire spring and summer to help manage the studio and keep things rolling smoothly.  With this awesome team, I was not only able to work on these daunting large scale projects, but they also freed me up to work on 6 other medium and small scale works to flesh out the body of work for the exhibition.  
   
           You can see the results of all that blood, sweat, tears, and creative swearing here : "O n  T e n d e r  H o o k s" 
  The exhibition opened last week on October 22nd and seemed to be a great success.  The very next morning, I hopped back in the van and drove back across country (yes...that's right...I drove  all that work to New York)  to the state of Washington in order to quietly collapse for a while. (grin)  
   
          So.  ?  What's next?  Whew...I have some great workshops coming up at The Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, FL, The Baltimore Clayworks in MD, and a guest  lecture appearance at the Ceramics Research Center in Tempe, AZ.   My current exhibition, "O n  T e n d e r  H o o k s"  is also traveling to the Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia, where I will be giving a lecture and 'Master Workshop' in conjunction with the show.  I should have those dates soon!    For more information about dates and contact info, please visit my Upcoming Exhibitions and Workshops page.
   
         Right before leaving for my opening in New York, I was floored at the announcement of an Artist Trust Award for 2009 from the State of Washington! Yay!  Here is a link to the announcement:  2009 Artist Trust Fellowship Awards
    

• 2008: T r a n s i t i o n s 
   In a very compact little nutshell, 2008 was a year of changes.  My husband, Matt,  and I had just moved out to the state of Washington and bought our first house in the fall of 2007, and most of that half year and the next was spent being bewildered home owners and making all sorts of hilariously awful mistakes (okay..it wasn't at all funny at the time, but we can laugh now).  I built my FIRST STUDIO...YES!!!  The highlight of that whole period.  
  

  Snapshot of the house(left) and soon-to-be-studio building (right) in the early spring before we bought the property

          Since I was no longer showing with the Garth Clark Gallery in New York (see the 2007 entry below), I was at loose ends.  I traveled to New York for several visit, and Garth and I shopped around Chelsea to see if we could find a gallery that would be a good fit.  I immediately set my heart on the Claire Oliver Gallery on 26th St. and 10th Ave, but as usual, I was too scared and intimidated to approach the gallery at that time. 

  I began working on a small body of work back in Washington dealing with the enormity of my guilt for my absence  in 2007 and a whole host of personal and family issues which culminated in an exhibition titled "Apologia" at The Art Spirit Gallery in Coeur d'Alene, ID.  Steve Gibbs, the gallery owner, and all the people working with him at the gallery are some of my favorite people on the planet.  I can't tell you how supportive they have been of me and my work for the past 6 years, and they are, hands down, the best small gallery I have seen out here in the Northwest. The  work from  "Apologia"  really helped me to struggle through a bunch of stuff- namely my crippling self-doubt.  The day after opening "Apologia, I sent my portfolio and a note of introduction to the Claire Oliver Gallery in New York with my heart in my mouth.  When Claire called me 3 days later, one of the first things she had to say was, "What took you so long??"      I was so excited and nervous that I might have peed my pants a tiny bit.

          I drove out to New York with two of my pieces from Apologia, "i'm sorry...." and "Diminuendo"  and signed on with the Claire Oliver Gallery.  Claire and her gallery partner/husband, Ian, were awesome, and immediately set the challenge before me to try and push myself  into taking greater risks both conceptually and technically.  I was elated and ready to go, but first.... 
   
  C H I N A !   I received a wonderful invitation from the West Virginia University Ceramics department to spend 2 months as a visiting artist in Jingdezhen, China.   I was there from October through mid December.  It would be impossible to sum up the experience succinctly, so I will just mysteriously leave it at  'Whoa.'  There are a bazillion pictures on Facebook from all the friends I made while I was there..and the people I met during my stay there were definitely my favorite part. Jon, Alicia, Justin, Kurt, Andrea, Kerrie, Zac, Mike, Seth, Mandy...I'll never forget you guys.  Thanks for keeping me laughing.
  

  Study for a netted hare- a small piece I made while in China      Stoneware        ed. of 8   24 in.h x 20 in.w x 8 in.d

   

• 2007:  W i t h d r a w l  
  Bleh.  This was a bad year for me.  Following my solo show with the Garth Clark Galley (see the emotional mess I was below- I never posted this entry until now because I sounded like I needed to be locked away) I hit a major brick wall.  I have a hard time explain this to people, but something in me just snapped after creating that work, and I shunned my studio for almost 8 months.  What finally pulled me out of my cave was Garth Clark's announcement that they were retiring after 25 years of the gallery biz and closing their doors.  They asked if I would create a piece for the farewell exhibition, and so I reentered the studio and made a piece called "Such Great Heights"  In order to break my disabling fear of failure, I made a piece about it.

   I hope those of you who come in here to check in on me (all 3 of you) haven't given up.  The good news is that a lack of posting means that I have been busy in the studio. I certainly tried to pack it in as tightly as I could, and I think I have developed a complex about not wanting to post on my website unless I have new images.  

   So what have I been up to?  This whole past year has been devoted towards using the grant from the Virginia Groot Foundation to create a single body of work, called "A Modest Proposal"  I just finished installing the exhibition at the Garth Clark Gallery in New York two weeks ago, so you can finally see and read about the the new work:   here. 

  I won't sugar coat it....it was one of the most difficult struggles I have had since graduate school.  I fell on my face quite a bit, kept picking myself back up, and then while trying to regain my balance and flailing around, toppled backward and fell on my ass.  (I was speaking metaphorically there, but I am sure it was literally so just as often).  A lot of the subject matter was charged with emotional and psychological content that was extremely uncomfortable for me.  I spent a lot of nights staring off into the dark corners of my studio, carefully shredding myself into tiny pieces.  Although the discomfort was good for me, I worry about having buried it too far beneath the surface.  The figures I worked on this whole past year were intended to form a large group...a space that invoked a cognizance that every individual was attempting to undermine.  Given practical considerations, I had to make the pieces apart from one another as I delivered the work in stages.  I didn't get to see all the pieces together until the night before the show opened.  I definitely think some of the work is the best stuff I have managed to create.  I am still chewing over the installation as a whole and thinking of how to tackle the next body of work...I have learned a lot from all those falls.....mostly that I am not as afraid of it as I used to be.

For News Archives 2005, follow this link:  Old News
For News Archives 2004 and before, follow this link:  Even Older News

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