January Event: Coffee & Conversation at DFAC

Thursday, January 14, I will be part of the Dunedin Fine Art Center's Coffee & Conversation series. Despite what the text below says, I don't know how much I will "thrill" people, but it should be fun.

Both of us will be there, actually. Anne has put together a presentation based on the idea that the medium shapes the artist as much or more than the artist shapes the medium, and I will share how I have explored different aspects of working with clay. It may not be thrilling, but I'm guessing we will have a good time.

Here's the write-up:

Coffee and Conversation with Lee Anderson 1-14-16 at DFAC

by DUNEDIN FINE ART CENTER

Coffee and Conversation with Lee Anderson at the Dunedin Fine Art Center.

 Hanging out, drinking delicious coffee, talking about art… ahhhh, that’s the life! Well, that IS the life at least for an hour or so each month at the Dunedin Fine Art Center’s Coffee and Conversation series. Enjoy coffee (Presented by the Sterling Society of DFAC) and  insights as each month’s invited guest holds forth on their own area of expertise.  Admission to these relaxed talks is $5 and is FREE to current DFAC members.

Thursday, January 14th, 2016 at 12 noon,the series hosts clay artist Lee Anderson. He is going to thrill you with live demonstrations of throwing on the wheel and burnishing. He’ll discuss different clay and methods of working them as well as different glazes and styles of firing.  All of this will be illustrated with photos and actual finished clay pieces.  Be ready to be inspired!

Lee V. Anderson began working with clay in a class a decade ago at the Dunedin Fine Art Center and quickly developed an intense avocation for pottery and the ceramic arts. He studies the physical and chemical properties of the clay and glazes so he can work with instead of against the material, which then frees him to play with form and structure. In particular, he has been drawn to interpreting Southwestern and Scandinavian forms, to hand-burnishing work with a polished stone or the back of a spoon, and to the smoke and fire of raku. He has learned that it’s not all about what he does in the throwing, shaping, glazing, or firing. The clay takes on a life of its own as it responds to each of the stages in the process, and he is often surprised by what he finds when he opens the kiln.

Lee V. Anderson teaches at the Dunedin Fine Art Center. He is grateful to the many instructors and artists in the area who have guided and mentored his growth as an artist, and to the many ceramicists and clay artists—some who have lived in other lands and in other times—who have transferred their knowledge to printed and digital media. More information about his work can be found at www.CreationsInClay.com

So stop by for some Coffee & Conversation. Or call ahead to the Palm Cafe’ (298.DFAC ext 237) and have lunch waiting for you!

Coffee and Conversation with Lee Anderson– Thursday, January 14, 2016 at 12 Noon.

for more info call 727-298-DFAC,

Dunedin Fine Art Center – 1143 Michigan Blvd. – Dunedin, FL 34698

Last 2 Days for All Decked Out at the Dunedin Fine Art Center

Tomorrow is the last day for All Decked Out, the 29th Annual Holiday Show and Sale, an Invitational of Fine Art, Craft + Design show at the Dunedin Fine Art Center.


I have been honored to have been invited to include my work in this show for the last several years.

Watch for information about my Coffee & Conversation Series presentation at DFAC on January 14.

The gift of art lasts forever!

Ira Burhans: Hard work and “happy accidents” fill Palm Harbor artist’s life

Palm Harbor artist Ira Burhans carves a design into the lid of a 

serving dish. Each piece Burhans makes reflects his love of the 

outdoors and his commitment to producing beautiful items people 

can use in their everyday lives. (Photo by Anne W. Anderson)

Second in a series by Anne W. Anderson (the other half of we), who visited with each of the studio owners hosting the 2014 Tampa Bay Tour de Clay, a self-directed series of stops stretching from Palm Harbor to San Antonio. 

As a boy, Palm Harbor potter Ira Burhans, canoed and fished Minnesota’s rivers and lakes. Today, he and his wife, Barbara, also an artist, windsurf, paddleboard, and paddle surf Florida’s coastal waters every chance they get.

But time on the water isn’t about escaping from the demands of making a living by producing thousands of casserole dishes and plates and pitchers each year.

For Burhans, whose Clay and Paper Studio is the second stop on the south-to-north 2014 Tampa Bay Tourde Clay route, time spent on the water becomes part of the work he shares with others. The wave-traced patterns in the sand, the dappling of reflected light on the water, and the shapes of leaves find their way into the pieces he makes.

Twenty years ago, the sharing was more obvious.

“This is one of the few pieces I have left from my work in the 1990s,” Burhans said, holding up a fish-shaped vase. Brightly glazed, dappled greens and blues surround the fish’s yellow-orange body. The fish’s fins, some sporting wavy textures, extend from the body of the vase.

Burhans places a lid onto a serving dish—both 

pieces in the leather-dry, unfired stage—to be 

sure of the fit. (Photo by Anne W. Anderson)

Today, Burhans’ work has evolved into something much more subtle, more evocative than actual.

“I’m not trying to duplicate anything,” Burhans said, as he carved graceful curves into the lid of a casserole dish. “It’s more of a being influenced by.”

Burhans wheel-throws his straight-walled casserole dishes, for instance, shapes them into an oval, then pinches the ends slightly, suggesting the bow of a canoe or simple boat. He lets the pieces dry, then uses a wooden stylus to carve wave-patterns into the sides of the vessel. Sometimes the handles take on the shape of a shell or wave.

After firing the vessels in one of his three kilns, Burhans glazes each piece, often with sand tones accented with greens and blues. Then he fires the pieces again at an even higher temperature until the glaze turns to glass and the clay becomes nonporous.

Burhans grew up in the Twin Cities area knowing he would be working with his hands. His mother had a craft business, making slip-cast ceramic figures using molds.

“Her kiln was in the basement,” Burhans said. “I used to help her when I was a kid.”

As a teen, Burhans worked with his father, who owned a sheet-metal manufacturing company.

“I’ve got the scars to prove it,” Burhans said with a rueful chuckle, holding out his hands.

But it was the fluidity of clay that beckoned Burhans, who studied both pottery and sculpture at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. After graduating in 1980, he discovered a group of artists in Pinellas County.

  

“The artists invited me to set up shop in old downtown Palm Harbor,” Burhans said. “In 1981, I became one of the first ceramics instructors at the Dunedin Fine Art Center. I worked with Bede Clark, who was recently featured on the cover of Ceramics Monthly.”

Lush foliage covers the lid and spills over the sides of this casserole dish 

created by Palm Harbor artist Ira Burhans. (Photo courtesy of Ira Burhans)

Burhans taught four classes a week while developing his own business, and the art center provided him studio space.

“Barbara gave me a five-year plan,” Burhans said. “We had to consider how to support a family and kids as artists.”

The business side of being an artist sometimes is overlooked. “The general public sometimes view artists as not doing serious work, even though we have college degrees and are professionals in our field.”

For Burhans, it has meant years of cultivating wholesale customers—his work is sold in a number of galleries around the country—as well as investing in the art community where he lives. Today, Burhans teaches one class a week at the DFAC and the Burhans own Clay& Paper Gallery of Art in downtown Dunedin that features the work of several area artists.

Most days, however, he slips on headphones, tunes in to some classic rock or blues, and settles in behind the wheel. Burhans works alone in his studio at his Indian Bluff Island home, making elegant but functional stoneware designed to be used, not just looked at.

Each piece must be very similar, although not exact, in size and thickness to the others he has made. Customers expect the pieces to bake food, for instance, at certain temperatures for particular lengths of time; a difference in thickness might affect how a recipe turns out. Within what some people might see as limiting parameters, Burhans plays with variations of form, design, and color.

“I draw from the Japanese understanding of art,” Burhans said. “The function determines the form of what I make. My work is not just about making pots with simple lines and organic forms; it is about committing to a particular consistency of lifestyle out of which the work flows.”

Every piece shaped by Burhans’ hands carries with it a bit of his life. And he never knows exactly how each piece will turn out until it emerges from the kiln.

“The Japanese have a term which translates ‘happy accident,’” Burhans explained. “There’s always an element of surprise when I open the kiln. Kind of like my life.”

Tour-goers following the south-to-north route will find Burhans’ studio listed as the second stop. Park in the cul-de-sac area near his home and follow the wavy molded-concrete walkway—inlaid with bits of broken ceramic tiles—to the left around back to find the kiln area.

Burhans opens his kiln around 10:30 a.m. and visitors are invited to join the chain and help pass the pottery hand-to-hand from kiln to table outside.

Visitors also can climb the stairs in the front—look for the colorful collection of ceramic starfish lining the overhang above the garage—and walk in to the Burhans’ living area where guest artists Alan Bennett and Brenda McMahon will display their work. This year, visitors can make a donation and play Spin-the-Wheel to win various prizes; proceeds go to support WMNF and the SafetyHarbor Art and Music Center.

The Pottery Boys: Palm Harbor artists pursuing second-career passions

Glenn Woods, Palm Harbor ceramic artist, works on a large 

plate. Woods and Keith Herbrand own the Pottery Boys Studio, 

one of the host studios on the 2014 Tampa Bay Tour de Clay.

All photos courtesy of Glenn Woods and Keith Herbrand

First in a series by Anne W. Anderson (the other half of we), who visited with each of the studio owners hosting the 2014 Tampa Bay Tour de Clay, a self-directed series of stops stretching from Palm Harbor to San Antonio. 

Fifteen or so years ago, Glenn Woods had won awards for crafting words and images into newspaper, radio, and television ads and was working as a marketing research analyst.

He hated it. What he loved was taking lumps of clay and crafting them into beautiful platters, vases, trays, and teapots, a passion he had been nurturing since high school.

Fifteen or so years ago, Keith Herbrand was in the retail grocery business. It paid the bills, but Herbrand and Woods, then living in the Midwest, were working up the courage to trade their traditional jobs for the riskier business of being full-time ceramic artists.

“We found a wholesale ceramics business, with a home and studio, for sale in Palm Harbor,” Woods said. The Pottery Boys, as Woods and Herbrand named their business, spent the first year filling orders contracted by the previous owner.

“Widgets,” Herbrand termed them. They soon realized widgets weren’t their passion.

“We always tell people to be careful when you take on someone else’s dream,” Woods said with a laugh. “It could become your worst nightmare.”

Today, Woods’ pieces seem rooted in the twilight world between reality and dreamland. Vases with rounded bowls grow upward, leading to hand-carved, petal-like openings—as though the vase, unwilling to wait for cut flowers, became one itself. Graceful teapots with curved handles and spouts feature sculpted vines and leaves sprouting from the lid. The gnarled, twisted stems of gourds and melons contrast with smooth-skinned, ribbed bodies.

  The shapes hearken back to Woods’ childhood, spent roaming the woods and exploring rural life surrounding the small northern Indiana town of Middlebury. But the glazes, especially on Woods’ more recent work, add an ethereal dimension of their own.

“We’ve been experimenting with crystalline glazes for the last eight years and matte crystalline glazes for the past two years,” Woods said.

One of Woods’ more recent pieces, this vase 

rises into a carved-petal blooming lily. Subtle 

matte crystalline glazing enhances the delicate 

beading around the neck and the gentle curved 

lines of the bowl. 

Crystalline glazes contain zinc and silica suspended in the mixture. When the glazed piece reaches melting temperature, the zinc and silica flow together, bond and form crystals during the cooling process. Artists raise and lower the kiln temperatures to control the rate at which the glaze flows, the rate at which the crystals grow, and to influence the color, texture, and size of the crystals.

When the pieces cool, the flower- or star-shaped crystals look as though they are floating in mid-burst over the colored surface, creating a sense of explosive exuberance.

“However, more recently we’ve gone from using the glossy glazes, which produce large, flashy crystals, to working with glazes with a matte finish,” Woods explained. “The matte glazes produce softer, more subtle crystals, which enhance the details of more complicated pieces incorporating carving, beading, and piercing.”

Woods doesn’t hesitate when asked who influenced his journey into pottery.

“My high school art teacher,” Woods responded. “She noticed I was working on an intricately beaded, crocheted necklace for my mom, whose severely arthritic hands kept her from doing craftwork.”

That art teacher did more than introduce Woods to clay and other materials.

“I had struggled with learning problems, which lead to placement in “special education” status from third to about sixth grade. The “slow learners” were basically placed off to the side and not really expected to participate in the learning process,” Woods said.

Despite his difficulties with the academic courses for so many years, Woods found art leading him back into and helping him to understand those other subjects. His high school art teacher helped him use math to learn how to mix glazes, how to use language to express his artistic ideas, and how to see the science in the art.

Eventually, with his teacher’s guidance and encouragement, Woods won a scholarship competition and entered the University of Indianapolis.

Courtly handled vases, hand built from slabs 

rather than being formed on the wheel, dance 

a stately minuet, their skirts flowing with soft 

green matte crystalline glazing and gilt-hemmed 

bases gracefully moving with the music. 

“But freshman weren’t allowed to take studio classes,” Woods said. “I remember pressing my nose up against the window of the clay studio, watching the older students working with clay. Finally the instructor invited me in and let me throw, too. There were seniors coming over, picking up my pots, and marveling at how light they were!”

Because Woods hadn’t taken a foreign language in high school, he was faced with taking up to three years of a foreign language in college to earn a fine arts degree.

“I wanted to take American Sign Language,” Woods said. “But at the time ASL wasn’t considered a foreign language.”

Instead, Woods earned a Bachelor of Science in Arts with a concentration in clay.  At his exit interview, though, Woods recommended allowing ASL as a foreign language to help students with no exposure to foreign languages earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree—the foreign language requirement being the only difference between the two degrees.

“I also suggested all art majors take an introduction to business course,” Woods said.

Not knowing how to turn his passion for clay into a business, Woods found himself working as first a graphic artist, later an art director, and eventually a television research analyst. He was very successful—but not very happy—at it.

Meanwhile, Herbrand was learning the art of running a business. Herbrand, who grew up on a dairy farm, earned a degree in business from the University of Wisconsin then became a branch manager for a major grocery chain.

“I had very little exposure to the arts through high school and even college,” Herbrand said. “But my background allows us to run an art business. For both of us, clay is a full-life endeavor.”

It’s also hard work. Most weekends, Woods and Herbrand pack up their show tent, display racks and dividers, and crates of ceramics. Spring and summer, they travel from their Illinois studio to art festivals across the Midwest. Fall and winter, they work the art festivals in Florida and Georgia.

The drives home become production meetings where they plan the coming week’s work. On Monday, Herbrand weighs out balls of clay, bags and marks them for Woods, then mixes glazes. They produce between 40 and 60 pieces of varying sizes each week.

Woods also teaches at the Dunedin Fine Art Center, offers workshops through a local potters’ guild, and has written how-to articles for PotteryMaking Illustrated magazine. Woods said he gets a lot of satisfaction from helping others learn how to create their own work.

“I guess I’m playing the part of my high school art teacher,” Woods said.

Tour-goers following the south-to-north route will find The Pottery Boys’ studio listed as the first stop. Park in the large field next to their home and enter through the front door. Walk past the grand piano, through the kitchen—help yourself to refreshments—and out to the pool area for the kiln opening, which happens around 9 a.m. Or, linger in the living room area with guest ceramic artists Chuck Solberg, Teresa Testa, Cory McCrory, and William Kidd.

This year’s media sponsor is radio station WMNF. The Pottery Boys also will be selling raffle tickets to support Suncoast Hospice.

Wheelin' on the road -- this Saturday at Westfield Countryside Mall!

An outdoor demo during the 2009 Studio Waltz.

Potters, painters, weavers, and more from the Dunedin Fine Art Center  are gathering at Westfield Countryside Mall on U.S. 19 in Clearwater this Saturday, August 27, from noon until 3 p.m. We'll be doing demos and spreading the word about all the good stuff the DFAC offers.

Look for us on the upper level somewhere between Dillard's and Sears.

Participants are:

Bonnie Bowman -- Innovative Appalachian Basketry
Markissia Touliatos -- Alla Prima Portrait Painting in Oils
Clara Ann Yarian -- Clay Handbuilding
Lee Anderson -- Clay Wheel Throwing
Concepcion Tharin -- Mayan Backstrap Weaving
Karen Baker -- Pastel
Toni Hutfilz -- Collage

First Annual Demo & Sale This Saturday: The Potters' Guild of Florida's Gulf Coast

Poster designed by Thom Gleason, Clearwater.

Almost as fascinating as watching a pot emerge from the clay is watching a new organization emerge from a group of disparate but like-minded people. In this case, it's The Potters' Guild of the Florida Gulf Coast that has been gathering and growing over the last several months, mostly at the invitation of clay artist Glenn Woods.

Woods' distinctive expanded pottery style has earned him a name here and in Illinois --as well as elsewhere, I'm sure -- and partner, Keith Herbrand, have opened their home/studio the first Wednesday evening of the last few months to "those who love and work with clay either as a profession or a hobby - all skill levels," as Glenn wrote in an email.

Expanded pottery by Glenn Woods, Palm Harbor

After the all-important snack-and-social time and a business meeting, someone demonstrates a skill or technique.

"So far," Glenn writes, "we have had demonstrations on carving in rubber blocks used to print patterns in slabs, measuring and calculating specific gravity for the purpose of mixing glazes that are consistent, and using sewer cloth with clay projects."

This Saturday the group presents their first showcase and sales event, also being held at Woods'/Herbrand's home. For some people, this will be their first attempt to market their work, and they can learn the art of displaying their work from the more experienced artists.

Poster designed by Glenn Woods, Palm Harbor  

"All kinds of clay works will be there at every skill level and at every price level," writes Woods. "It is my hope that all will do well and the Potters' Guild Annual Pottery Sale will become known for this very broad range of work, as inclusive as possible."

I'll be there, too.

I met Glenn through the Dunedin Fine Arts Center, where he is on the faculty as a clay instructor.

  

I've learned a lot --make that a LOT -- at DFAC, but the world of clay is bigger than any one teacher, studio, school, or location . The Potters' Guild isn't affiliated with any of the area studios, so it's a good place to meet other clay enthusiasts and to learn even more.

 Saturday's pottery market offers a lot of pottery styles and techniques in one place. Demos, too.

See you there!

Saggar-fired burnished ware by Lee Anderson, Safety Harbor

Note: Bogie Lane is on the north side of Curlew Rd. between Keene/County Road 1 and Bayshore Blvd.

Highwater Clays: Asheville NC

Not much to look at is it?

Just a sign directing trucks where to turn in off of a road in an industrial warehouse area of Asheville, North Carolina. Cross the railroad tracks, dodge a pothole or two, and pull around back. Drive past the loading dock and park facing the French Broad River or facing the two-story white metal building. No further signs indicate that this is a shrine on at least one potter's pilgrimage.

Namely mine.

The St. Petersburg Clay Company, in St. Petersburg, Florida, has an on-site Highwater Clays store where I buy all my clay. Plus, I often run down there on my lunch hour to pick up clay for the Dunedin Fine Art Center and haul it up in the evening.

But the clay I buy in St. Pete is already mixed, pugged, and bagged. I've read about the mixing process, but reading and seeing are two different things.

So when we drove to North Carolina for Thanksgiving last month, a side trip to the Highwater Clays plant in Asheville was high on my list of want-to-do's. And the nondescript warehouse building exterior didn't diminish my anticipation in the least when we drove up.

Inside, we browsed among many of the same books, tools, and glazes as in St. Petersburg. There was a larger selection, to be sure, and a small gallery type display of area potters' works. But what I really wanted to see was behind the closed swinging doors leading to the main part of the warehouse where pallets of bags of dry clay were stacked pretty much floor to ceiling.

Thanks to Jennifer Hoolihan, ceramic technician at Highwater Clays, I got to do just that. Jennifer escorted the four of us -- my wife, my brother, and his wife -- through the swinging doors and answered our questions about how they put out as many as 32,000 to 35,000 pounds of clay a day using a gigantic, retrofitted, computer-controlled cement mixer to transform raw materials mined from Ohio, Missouri, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia into clays ranging from fine porcelain to coarser raku.

It's always good to know where things come from--and to know that a plain, white warehouse can churn out a whole world of creative possibilities.

Back to the studio . . .

About the Pegasus Series

Pegasus, ‘spring,’ the winged horse of Greek mythology, stamped his hoof -- and up welled the springs of the Muses’ Mount Helicon. Some early Greek poets portray Pegasus carrying the thunderbolts of Zeus, reflecting another root word source: ‘lightning.’

From these stories and etymologies, comes our use of the word ‘pegasus’ today to speak of artistic inspiration.

For me, that means knowing that the Source of all creation places His creative springs within us that well up and overflow . . . and that He occasionally zaps us with a bolt of lightning, as well.

As I learned about raku firing -- the modern, Westernized version, that is -- I began experimenting with applying horsehair to burnished pots, bisque fired and then reheated to about 1100 degrees. I started scrounging for other items that would leave enough of a carbon trace design, and found that feathers worked well.

Horsehair, feathers -- Pegasus!

These three pots in my Pegasus series earned second place in the Student division of the Dunedin Fine Art Center's 2008 Summa and Magma: Student and Member Exhibition.

For a piece commissioned for a fly-fisherman friend, I used turkey feathers from my fly-tying days. But mostly I scan the ground for random feathers, fallen from some flying creature passing overhead.

Why shouldn't they be from an equine creature as easily as from an avian one?

DFAC & Studio Waltz Slide Show

Jennifer's Work

Two works by Jennifer Weaver, my teacher at the Dunedin Fine Art Center. Much of Jennifer's work is saggar-fired, in which the pottery is wrapped with all sorts of organic materials and placed inside a can or another pot or even loose tin foil before firing. The gases produced create different effects.

Credit Where Credit is Due

Lee with his teacher, Jennifer Weaver, at the Dunedin Fine Art Center's Student/Faculty/Members Show this past spring.

For a time, I had a Saturday morning appointment with a virtual friend.

I'd get up early, go for coffee, read the newspaper, and be home before 9. Then I'd settle into my spot on the couch, click the remote, and find our local PBS station. And there she'd be -- still is, for that matter.

Donna Dewberry, creator of One-Stroke Painting. I watched, mesmerized by the ease with which flowers and critters flowed from her brush. During one PBS share-a-thon, we sent enough of a donation to get her video set. I bought brushes and paints and played with mixing colors and practiced pushing and lifting to create leaves and petals.

Before long, I was watching Terry Madden, a watercolor artist whose show aired right after Donna's.

Finally, my wife gave me a gift certificate to the Dunedin Fine Art Center. Took me a while before I got around to using it. Tried a sumi-e class first (not through the center) and then a blacksmithing class at Pinellas County's Heritage Village.

Shortly after completing the blacksmithing class -- and setting up my own anvil and forge at home -- we did a lunch-and-library date where I checked out a few books on blacksmithing. Then we stopped by the Dunedin Fine Art Center where I planned to finally use my gift certificate and sign up for a watercolor or drawing class. The main exhibit hall, however, held a ceramics exhibit full of funky clay sculptures. Not exactly my style, but it looked interesting.

And the clay class was a better fit for my schedule.

Why not.

I filled out the papers, gave them my gift certificate, and we went home. I opened up one of the library books I had checked out . . . and read that serious metal workers should learn to work in clay first.

And then I went to my first clay class and touched the clay. And knew. I spent most of that first two-hour period just squeezing it and feeling how it responded.

Thankfully, my instructor, Jennifer S. Weaver, understands that each person in her class needs to find his or her own way into clay. Jennifer demonstrates pinch pots, coil work, slab work, throwing pots on the wheel, and different glaze applications.

Some students try a little bit of everything. Others try variations of just one technique.

Either way is OK with Jennifer. She'll offer just as much instruction and advice as a person can absorb at one time, and then she'll step back and let us try it for ourselves.

That's just the kind of teacher I needed. That one class I signed up for became two classes the next session, and for every session since then. And I've learned something new each time.

Want to come play with clay and learn from Jennifer Weaver? She teaches Wednesday and Thursday evenings from 6:30 to 9 p.m. at the Dunedin Fine Art Center.

Studio Waltz This Saturday

The 17th Annual Studio Waltz takes place this Saturday, October 10, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Download a map from the Web site and see representative works from the artists opening their studios to the public.

On Saturday, waltz your way from north Clearwater to Tarpon Springs as you visit fiber artists, photographers, painters, potters, and other artists. One group of plein air artists will set up their easels along the Pinellas Trail at Main Street in Dunedin. Artists' work will be for sale.

And, yes! Lee will be sharing his work at the home studio of Jennifer Weaver (#10 on the tour), Lee's instructor at the Dunedin Fine Art Center.
See you Saturday!