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Wendi SOARensen

December 5, 2015
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Wendi SOARensen

Whirling on the potter’s wheel-pristine
Energy enfolds her–velveteen
Nor dare the negative oppress
Discernment; Artisan finesse
In crafting ware that’s singular & clean

Today Wendi Sorensen, one-time (and for all I know, still-is) international corporate attorney, put her wares on display for a holiday sale. She has worked steadily and hard to achieve that lighter-than-air feeling a master potter may impart to the ware. Several years ago her work showed that her heart was in the right place, and, with the right amount of effort and perseverance, could shine. Today it shone, and I was glad to congratulate her on her marvelous achievement.

She happily agreed to the “mug shot” below. The mug was still hot from its 18-hour incubation in her Skutt electric kiln; thus the protective gloves. The glaze is cone 5; the fine shape is pure elbow grease applied over years and years of wheel-wielding.

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She is a good soul, and though I see her only once in a blue moon (the time before today was at the now-long-defunct Unlimited Coffee), I always come away from our reconnectings filled with her good energy. Soar on, Ms. Sorensen!!

Threefer: Vase and Page and Poem

November 30, 2014
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Today there are two works in progress and one finished. First, a vase thrown in January of 2007 gets a substratic coat of acrylic paint mixed with matte medium:

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Second, a page begun last night got another slug of composition work put into it:

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Lastly, here is a poem in the form of a note originally posted to Facebook, written in its entirety today.

cold and fuzzy in the neverafter

randomness always increases
such is the provable implication of the second law of thermodynamics
which a lot of us have heard before
and many of those usses have heard of “the heat death of the universe”
and a few of those usses can do the math

but i and most of the usses can’t even state the laws of thermodynamics
but in our wonderful 21st century we can look it up
so here’s a quick education courtesy of wikipedia
between the asterisky borders:

*****

  • Zeroth law of thermodynamics: If two systems are in thermal equilibrium respectively with a third system, they must be in thermal equilibrium with each other. This law helps define the notion of temperature.
  • First law of thermodynamics: When energy passes, as work, as heat, or with matter, into or out from a system, its internal energy changes in accord with the law of conservation of energy. Equivalently, perpetual motion machines of the first kind are impossible.
  • Second law of thermodynamics: In a natural thermodynamic process, the sum of the entropies of the participating thermodynamic systems increases. Equivalently, perpetual motion machines of the second kind are impossible.
  • Third law of thermodynamics: The entropy of a system approaches a constant value as the temperature approaches absolute zero.[2] With the exception of glasses the entropy of a system at absolute zero is typically close to zero, and is equal to the log of the multiplicity of the quantum ground state.

*****

in my layman’s mind then i see a future a trillion years or so from now
where it is very cold and fuzzy
and scattered
and uninteresting
and there are no usses

but on the bright side (not that it’s bright)
there are no thems either

and on the brighter-yet side for some of us-and-now
what has happened so far is so miraculous
and surprises seem to be around every corner
that something else might be in store
even without divine intervention

but on the wet-blanket side
i for one-of-us doubt it
and wish i didn’t

ank is to ankh as let is to lett as acorn is to oak (part five of seven)

February 25, 2014
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Creation begets digression begets more creation. You want to know more about Latvia. You find a map of Latvia. It occurs to you that the curvature of a bisque-fired teapot might suit a drawing of the map of Latvia more than flat paper would. You draw Latvia and surrounds on your teapot. Lacking a good camera, but having a webcam that works if you record video, you do so. You do a print screen of a still from the video. It is none too good, but intriguing. You click “New Post” and copy and paste the title of the previous post. You tweak the title, which itself a tweak of the one before that one. Here we are. No guarantees that we’ll be stopping at “seven of seven.” There may well be an “eight of eight” or even an “eight of seven.” That’s Creation for you.

The Green Queen Hovers Over an Equally Implausible-But-True Story

February 2, 2014
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In my Phoenix visit yesterday (about which in a future post) I was happy to see my daughter had given my Green Queen, made, if memory serves, about ten years ago, and given to her thereafter, shelf space. She will preside over this true story:

At the prescription counter of the largest chain store you can imagine, I gave my name and birthdate to the counter person. “That’s just the one prescription, right?” “Yes.” “That’ll be two hundred and thirty-four dollars.”

Sure she was kidding, I asked her if I could have maybe a ninety-percent discount. But she wasn’t kidding.

After giving her my insurance credentials, which they’d had already for a different prescription, she reassessed: “That’ll be twenty dollars.” That still seemed steep so I said, “That still seems steep.”

A higher-up, who was literally higher up than her, drug counter stratification being what it is, ventured that a repackaging and rebilling would net some additional savings. “Come back in twenty minutes.” I did. “Sorry, it’s not ready yet. I’ll put it on CRITICAL.” I waited ten more minutes. “Bowers?” “Yes.” “That’ll be eighteen dollars.” Grumbling, I paid and left.

At home I discovered they’d given me six times my usual prescription amount. Long story short: Unit cost went from $234 to $3–far more of a discount, in the long run, than I’d imagined. Crazy world, ain’t it?

A Good Time Has Not Yet Been Had By All

December 14, 2013
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Here is a detail from an original clay sculpture of mine that I have offered as a raffle item for the 5th Anniversary Holiday Celebration of the Village Gallery in the Village of Oak Creek. A maniacal bird of no particular species doubles as a prison within which a crowned and hollow-headed Kirk Douglas languishes.

Here is the piece entire:

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This picture was taken in March of 2008, in the back yard of a house I once co-owned. I was still married, still living in Phoenix, still unpublished except in college literary magazines and the editorial pages of the local newspaper. So much has changed.

Here is the invitation to the Holiday Celebration, which takes place tomorrow, December 15, 2013, from 1 to 5 PM.

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I won’t be there the whole time, since I’ll have to get some shuteye prior to my 11PM-7AM shift at work and do a 40-plus mile to&from. But I hope to see my creation go to a good home, and I hope to hear some good music, and I hope to meet at least one person whom I’ve never met who follows this blog…

An Angel Shy of a Christmas Tree

December 12, 2013
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The tree looks great for the most part:

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But it lacks something at the top. “Why don’t I do a ceramic angel?” I asked my angelic girlfriend. She seemed skeptical that I could, especially since it would have to be done well before the 23rd, when her kin from all over will gather.

Today I’ve taken the first step, the “concept rough.” I want the angel to be friendly, accessible, celestial, and playful. I want the wings to look as if they will grab air and move it forcibly. I want her gesture to be beneficent and dynamic.

She’ll be either Sedona Red or Dave’s Porcelain or a marbled mix of both. She’ll have to be ready for bisque fire by the end of the weekend, and glaze-if-any (though she might look fine unglazed) by the 19th.

Will it happen? If it does, I’ll show and tell. If not, I’ll hang my head in shame.

Kit ‘n’ Ka-Blooie

October 28, 2013
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A fox pup is called a kit. A drawing of an explosion is sometimes sound-effected with the semi-onomatopoetic Ka-Blooie. In English colloquy the phrase kit and kaboodle means The Whole Thing. A charming discussion of Kaboodle may be found on Wikipedia, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaboodle

I was hoping the box lid which survived my kiln mishap would be usable as a polar-coordinated drawing substrate. I was at first nonplussed by the above result. Now I think the paper and the more 3d lid, floating in scannerspace as they do, look nicely mysterious together. This prosaic explanation may be doing you readers a disservice. Try forgetting I said anything, and look at it again. [smiles]

The Dismal Shards of…Defeat!

October 24, 2013
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Two days ago I eagerly put new greenware into my new-but-old kiln, closed the lid, flipped the switch to High, and went away for a few hours. Upon my return I switched the kiln off and pulled out the lower peephole-stopper. The glow was red-orange, the pyrometric cone was not in front of the peephole where I’d put it, and there was a shard of broken ware in view. Something terrible had happened.

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The next day, the kiln having cooled, I opened the lid to find the bowl, the mug and the box had all shattered at their bases. The lid to the box, though skewed atop the box itself, was intact. But what good is a lid without what it is lid to?

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My best guess as to what happened is I had not waited long enough for my ware to be completely bone dry. There is a valuable lesson here. The trouble is, I keep RElearning it–and then reverting.

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Friends, be patient with your ware, with your friends, with your issues. Do the right thing, and in its right time. Don’t let this happen to you! [sad face]

PS–bonus points and bragging rights to anyone who knows what title the title of this post is based on. [smiley face]