The Garden of Eva

May Flowers

2011-05-15T17:17:00.000-07:00

Mmmm, this wine has some lovely floral notes...

Happy Spring! Up here in western Montana we are having a real spring this year, as in, one that includes actual warmer, sunny weather, rain, greener hills and....flowers. Sometimes we're not so lucky, and winter sort of rolls on into late June without much fanfare. I'm so grateful for the plethora of blossoms, the warmer, fragrant breezes and especially not having to wear boots every day, especially since I'll be leaving for Alaska very soon and will miss the full bloom of a heavenly Missoulian summer. The season has even gotten into my studio, and I have found myself making bright floral designs on everything. This year I began working in red eathenware (I like to call it The EarthenWay....duh.) and am having a blast with it! These are a few cups I just got out of the kiln...Bring on the May flowers!

Flowery bottoms!

This coffee has a fine bouquet.

How to Make a Better

2011-05-02T07:48:00.000-07:00

"That which is made instructs how to make a better."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

From mid February to the start of April I lived and worked at Guldagergaard ("golden acres" in Danish) International Ceramic Research Center in Skaelskor, Denmark. I shared a house and studio with over a dozen other artists and worked toward a show that would open the last week of March. Since leaving Red Lodge Clay Center in August 2010 I hadn't made any sculpture at all; instead focusing solely on functional porcelain pots fired in the soda kiln. There are a couple reasons for that, which maybe would be a good subject for another time. I pointedly avoided making sculptures for several months knowing I would have this time at Guldagergaard to work intensively and in a new environment. I hoped the time in Denmark would kind of kick start me into a fresh direction, or interpretation of my concerns.

The way I start a new project is to dive right in and start making (yes, with some drawings), in a state of mind that is present yet also somewhat removed from the specifics of what I'm making. Does that make any sense? I can try and explain it like this: At night, with just enough light to see forms but not colors, and distinguishing forms from each other is hard, I find that to look just to the side of a thing, or to focus just past it or just before it, I can more clearly make it out. Look right at it, and it becomes indistinct, discerning it from the background becomes impossible. Does anyone else experience this kind of seeing? This is the type of careful yet light and somewhat indirect attention I give the beginning of a new set of works. Often, the first few forms are rather different from what emerge as the core pieces in a project. Sometimes I don't end up showing the first pieces with the main body of a project, but they are more than mere warm-ups.

This is how I started at Guldagergaard: I made a number of relatively quick, loose pieces that I later titled "Preparing with Eagerness," for the feelings I experienced in the pre-dawn studio sessions that became the norm for me while there. What began as jet lag became my daily practice: rise before the sun, between 4:30 and 5:30 in the morning, and work alone until almost lunchtime (ok, lunchtime for me was like 11:00 or 11:30!) in solitude. The rest of the day wasn't much different than anyone else's, except for my afternoon naps. But anyway, I was talking about work...

From "Preparing with Eagerness" I moved on to more substantial forms, always in series. A number of them harkened back to work I was making last year, though smaller, titled, "Fluid and Volatile." Then I made a series of spheres that were perforated, later called "Sempiternal Memory." This was a slight departure for me, as the sphere is about as simple a form as you can make, and usually I make things that can get kind of, well, far out. All of the works were to be added to: after wood-soda firing the stoneware "bodies," I would insert oxidation fired porcelain elements I call "little tinies" whose pure whiteness would contrast with the effects of ash, stoneware claybody and reduction. These little tinies were becoming more and more important to the work, I learned. (As an intuitive maker, I often learn as I go!)

The three groupings were in reference to the atmosphere of Skaelskor's environment as I viewed it through a specific lens.The first grouping represented earth, or the quiescent nature of the ground in the cold of late winter as we leaned into spring. The second represented an affinity with and proximity to the sea, its changeless motion to which I relate wherever I am. The third group was about air, the wind, and fleeting scents of spring as the weather just perceptibly shifted into a new season.

The thing I struggled with, and not for the first time, was what to do with the work when it was time to leave. I could not afford to ship, even though I'd worked a good bit smaller than usual, and anyway, there were a lot of delicate protrusions on many of the sculptures that made packing especially problematic. As I had done in the past, I left work behind: chalked it up to experience, and practiced non-attachment to the artifacts of a process that I sense is more important than the resulting objects. But I have to admit, as an object maker, I can't avoid a certain level of regret at parting with work too soon after it's made (and not sold)! Some smaller pieces I managed to get home in my baggage, including a couple plastic boxes filled with the most elaborate little tinies I'd done yet.

During the several intense (read: tedious) days of making little tinies, I had an "Aha" moment which is leading not only to new work, but to work that more authentically reflects my circumstances, the realities of the unsettled life I've embraced. Thus far, making relatively large work that's both heavy and delicate has felt faithful to everything except these circumstances, and I viewed my insistence on continuing to work this way as dedication to an idea. However, isn't it possible that a little adjustment or practical acknowledgement to mundane reality could help rather than compromise the work? This is my hope, even though a part of me (not stubborn, no) still wonders. If I insist on moving a lot and making work in far-flung locales, isn't it more honest to make objects that are a bit more...portable, or at least packable? And could this layer of practicality have the potential to enrich the work's import?

Besides the issue of portability was the reality that while I don't really want to paint paintings, I miss pictorial space, and the rich layering of colors, forms, lines, etc that bring so much to a surface. In Guldagergaard I intentionally left all surfaces unglazed, so that the ash and kiln atmosphere could have free reign. But now, I long to elaborate. When painting, I would be frustrated by the limited layers I could get on paper or canvas. But with clay and glazes, multiple firings and my good friend eutectics, I could have a field day! So, since returning home, I'm making a new series of wall pieces (yay, a picture plane!) in red earthenware exploring the possibilities of this new direction. It's too early to say if the new work will be "better," but it most certainly would not be in progress had the work in Denmark not instructed me to try something new, and that maybe it's all right to be a little bit practical in art as well as in life. Stay tuned.

Soon I'll write some about the artists I had the good fortune to work with and call friends at Guldagergaard. Being part of an interesting, inspiring, and often hilarious group of international artists was the finest and most educational aspect of my experience there.

Random things I learned in Denmark:

1) They have a compost pick-up service, so you can compost even if you don't have your own garden! Just collect all your compostables in a trash bin, and they will be picked up and processed. I don't know how the resulting compost is distributed after that, though.

2) My middle name, "Lys," means "light" in Danish.

3) Little kids wear snowsuits all the time in winter. Makes sense.

4) My work is "very, very different from the Scandinavian aesthetic."

5) Fur is still quite popular in Copenhagen.

6) Higher education is FREE in Denmark.

7) Musical chairs is still super fun to play!

8) The Danes make wonderful pastries and hearty, delicious breads, and use a lot of marzipan.

9) "Ain't no party like a kitchen dance party" is pretty much universal.

10)When pronouncing words in Danish, you should speak as though you have a mouth full of potatoes. So saith the Danes.


"Preparing with eagerness, I, II"


"Fluid and volatile, I, II, III"


"Sempiternal Memory I, II, III"

Detail: "Sempiternal Memory II" wood-soda fired stoneware and oxidation fired Royal Copenhagen porcelain.

A few of the less tiny "little tinies."

A Teaching Moment

2011-04-25T21:34:00.000-07:00

"The man [sic] may teach by doing, and not otherwise. If he can communicate himself, he can teach, but not by words. He teaches who gives, and he learns who receives." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the best things about being in Missoula this year is that I get to see the artwork of my former students at the University of Montana. Several of them just had their BFA exhibit, and oh my goodness, what a strong show! There were people from my Color and Design class, my Figure Drawing class, and Ceramics I in this exhibit, and seeing their thesis work after having been away for a while was quite moving. I remember each of them, their projects, where they bounded forward in enthusiasm and where they hung back in hesitation or (yes, it's true) faithlessness in their ability or initial dislike of an assignment. I remember knowing when they'd really put their heart into a project and when they were just going through the motions. I remember being a student myself, and also saving my energy for projects that more readily appealed to me than the ones that went against my artistic leanings of the time.

The point is, I feel a kinship with my former students. I can't be alone in this? I taught a good number of courses while I was in graduate school, and though at times I'd have liked a a bit more energy left over for my own work, I felt a sincere and weighty responsibility toward my students. Teaching felt important. Anyone who teaches can probably understand the fear of not getting through to someone; of framing problems or concepts in a way that made sense to some and not others, of coming up with the perfect response to a question in the middle of a restless night, after class. Fortunately for me, since my studio was on campus, I often bumped into students in and out of the studios, and it was common for us to stop and chat briefly about class, a work in progress, or a reading.

Getting to know these students over the course of my three years at UM enriched my experience immeasurably. Selfishly, I hope they'll remember me as a good teacher, but more importantly I hope they remember their class as a good class, and their learning as having lasting value even as they progress in their fields. Am I flattering myself to feel pride in their successes? Certainly I don't take credit for them; so how to explain the wonderful feeling of sharing in their journey, when I last had class with them two and a half years ago? It must simply be that I really did invest something of myself in each of them, personally and artistically. I cared about them, and I still care. Oh, there are all kinds of metaphors that fit here--tending a garden and watching it grow, etc, blah blah blah!

It's a common sentiment that teachers learn from their students, and that you reap what you sow. Maybe what's getting to me is simply that it's the end of the semester, students are graduating, and that makes all of us who were involved in their learning get a little weepy and reflective. It makes me feel grown-up, and also sentimental about where they are in life at the moment.

That's plenty for today. I do want to share some pictures of three former ceramics students of mine who are currently in the UM and MSU Student Faculty Exhibit at the Archie Bray Foundation. The juror for the UM entries was Richard Notkin. It was proud evening for all involved; look at these beaming faces! I can't help myself; I feel so happy for them!

Ellie Weber

Sean Clute

Rachael Jones

Shameless Self-Promotion

2011-04-22T19:05:00.000-07:00

Howdy! I feel honored that my friend and colleague asked to feature me on her blog. Pam Caughey and I both have Etsy shops, and we went to graduate school together at the University of Montana. She is helping me promote a little sale I'm having in my Etsy pot shop for the duration of the Taurus moon (meaning: it ends on May 21, when I'll close up the store for summer). I'm offering free shipping because 1) it's my birth month, 2) I love to give people presents, and 3) I also want to unload some pottery! So, on Pam's blog, it All About Eva Week! Whoopie! Have a gander:

http://roaringlionstudios.blogspot.com/2011/04/featured-artist-eva-champagne-is-in-cup.html

2011-04-08T12:04:00.000-07:00

On the road to Glasgow

From Glasgow, Montana.

Driving across Montana we were struck by all the flooding. East of Havre many parts of the highway were like driving on a long low bridge over an endless lake.This was a hard winter, and the snowmelt is flooding rivers, towns and homes. It's calving time too, and folks are scrambling to move the calves out of flooded pasture.

Arriving in Glasgow the other night, we were so warmly received by Cat and her husband Levi, who own the Glasgow Goodkind Gallery, our host for the iron pour workshop. They seem to know everybody in this town, and almost everybody seems to know about the iron pour. It has been great to experience the enthusiasm toward the gallery and Shane's workshop.

The gallery itself is a wonderful, open space with lots of light. We got to make sand molds out on the sidewalks while the weather was good, but today we're in the gallery and grateful for all the space in here. People have been using all kinds of things to make molds from: readymades, burl wood, handbuilt clay sculptures, hunting trophies and amalgamations of objects. They're getting a crash course in mold making from Shane, Jose and Mike, who in turn are showing great patience and creativity in figuring out how to make molds for some of the more unusual or complex patterns.

Tomorrow is the Walleye Banquet, held at the Valley Event Center here in Glasgow. The workshop folks and crew will be pouring outside the Center for an audience who will number in the hundreds. I'm thinking tonight will be a late one for Shane and crew, getting about 20 sand molds finished, strapped and ready to pour.

Also, I got a haircut yesterday. :)

Casey, local detective and workshop participant, pulling the pattern from his sand mold.

Jose helping Levi with his European mount, a complicated pattern for mold making.

POTSKETCH

2011-04-06T10:43:00.000-07:00

The Clay Studio of Missoula's annual fundraiser! Potsketch is online. Check it out, and if you're in Missoula on April 23, come to the event; it's always so much fun!

http://www.theclaystudioofmissoula.org/pages/potsketch.html

Travel Bug

2011-04-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

From Glasgow, Montana.
Since finishing graduate school in 2009, I have lived and worked in 5 locations at least. My storage unit feels like home in the sense that all my stuff is there, but the more I move around, the more my work is home. It's the constant that has delivered me to new locations and new friendships and new iterations of itself: the work.

When I first set up this blog in the fall of 2009 I was beginning a year long residency at the Red Lodge Clay Center in Montana. That year turned out to be kind of inward-facing for me and my work, however, so I never posted. OK, maybe I also got self-conscious about the idea of posting a blog anyway. But now, a year and a half later, I want to share some of the wonderful places, people and art that I have the good fortune to experience, as well as any other interesting things I might be doing, like shows, community projects, and travel.

So, to start with, a few steps back (haha, I'm used to that!): I'll post a few letters I wrote in the summer of 2009 from Europe and Alaska, as a means to catch up a little.

From Vallauris, France, June 2009.
Not sure if anyone reads these, and that's fine. It 6:15 am in Vallauris, and quiet in the house still. I got to Amsterdam last week and had a brief stay in the center of the city. I'd forgotten how jolly and charming it was! I jogged in the morning in Vondel Park, walked until my feet blistered all over town, saw the flower market, almost got run over by bikes and had a sweet time overall. Carissa got in from New York and we rode bikes all over the place, went to a sustainability fair, but spent most of the time inside a demo van talking and drinking beer. FINALLY got to meet Tony! Then, we rode to Casa di Michael and had dinner with an interesting group of her friends from...fascinating backgrounds. Carissa's home on a canal is perfectly beautiful, and I think she needs to have art exhibits in there, starting with one for me, of course! It's the ideal space and location for it! A leisurely stroll through the Red Light district to witness all that is noble and sage in man, and then I had to sleep before my flight in the morning to Nice.

Nice was like an old friend, it hasn't changed hardly at all since I was last there too many years ago to admit. Though I've disparaged the city a bit in the past, it is still a comfortable, easy place to relax for a few days, and great also for people watching! I jogged on the Promenade des Anglais along the beach, walked up the Colline to see the panoramic views and the ruins and the waterfalls. I walked all over the warren of streets in the Vielle Ville, and stayed in a fleabag, but friendly, hotel. I spoke no english, but that doesn't mean I didn't talk. I am happily surprised at how functional my remnants of french have been thus far, and how easy it has been to use it. The French I have encountered in my several times here have always been so gracious and willing to work with me when I'm trying to discuss something beyond my vocabulary. Each evening, returning to my hotel I would be made to recount the activities of my day, and it would become a pleasant language lesson. I even got quizzed a couple of times! I love this. I hope that being in a house and studio full of english speakers won't make me lazy to strike up conversations with folks in town.

So, now in Vallauris, we are five women in the program together, three Canadians, Kathy, Karen and Linda, a Lebonese woman from Beirut named May, and myself. Fortunately, we all have some level of french language. I am the only person fresh from grad school. Linda teaches at Rhode Island School of Design, Kathy, at Sheridan in Toronto, Karen, at New Brunswick College of Art and Design. And May is a math professor at the university in Beirut. We had a good day yesterday getting to know one another and exploring this tiny town. Dale set up a delicious lunch for us upon our arrival of cheeses, pate, shrimp, ham, mesclun salad, fruit, tapenade, baguettes, and of course rose wine. The town is smaller than I'd expected and this makes me happy! Also, the BEACH is closer than I'd expected (learn to read a map, Eva!) and I can jog downhill to it, and walk back up the mountain. I think. I'm told. Will try it.

Our studios are only a couple of blocks away, and in the same kind of old, old old building that makes up all of the old town. Stone, masonry, white wash. Thick walls and few windows should keep us pretty cool as it heats up here, except in the studio with the kiln. We have one two cubic foot electric kiln. Three of us will be doing low fire work and two will be going to cone 5 or 6, so firings shouldn't be too tough to schedule and share. Today we are going to go to the ceramic supply and buy clay and whatever other materials we need, and then it's GET TO WORK! Our show opens on the 4 of July so we've got a lot to do. I plan on using a local groggy red earthenware and maybe even some Limoges porcelain for the "little tinies" that will be added to the main bodies of pieces. I hope these clays cooperate with my ideas and methods! There's no time for cracking, collapsing or exploding, shivering, bloating or anything else for that matter.

Whoopie!

It's hard to really believe I'm finally here, and that this is REAL. I've been wanting to come here for years, and holy crap here I am, and with such an interesting group of artists! My stoke is palpable.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Vallauris, Part Deux, July 2009.
Well, I have to say that life is rather mellow here, and the days arrange themselves at a comfortable pace. I've been getting up very early to run the hills and down to Golfe Juan at around 5:30. If it's a clear morning (often there is a haze over the sea that burns off later) I can see the sun rise behind Antibes and the Alpes. Getting up at 4:30 isn't that hard because I barely sleep anyway: this is the noisiest place I have ever lived. All night long and into the morning music comes from people's apartments, men are hanging around the Place Lisnard outside my window chattering and arguing loudly, revving mopeds and generally carousing. The street lights stay on all night and the street cleaning trucks come by several times per week, though by that time I'm often already out of bed. What is the most fabulous are the groups of rowdy moped drivers who screech up and down the narrow lanes in a hurry to get who knows where at 3:30 am....All the buildings are stone, as well as the very narrow streets, so there is nowhere for sound to go. But I love it nonetheless. In the states one is often so much more isolated (or should I say "insulated") from one's neighbors and their habits, arguments and screaming children. Here, we all know what the heck is going on.

I've become very interested in the ways of pigeons. They are everywhere, and the young have been learning to fly in our first couple of weeks here. At least once a day I climb to the thrid floor where my room is to find a mother and her baby in the stairwell. When I approach they deftly fly out the open window. Once the baby was inside by itself and accidentally flew into my bedroom. Luckily the window was open and it made the distance to another windowsill across the square.

(Life in the big city!)

Sometimes in the afternoon I walk down to Golfe Juan and spend an hour or two at the beach. It's so good to be able to swim in the sea after so long! The hike back is a little hellish in the afternoon heat but I need the exercise.

Two days ago we visited with Jean Derval. He is in his mid-eighties now. He came to Vallauris from Paris right after the second world war, when property was cheap and he wanted to start a career somehow. He had studied drawing in Paris and upon arrival here he began work in the Madouras Pottery. Soon after is when Picasso began staying in Vallauris and messing around with clay as well. Derval was his assistant for two year I think. With his background in drawing, Derval was able to do a lot of architectural ceramics: murals, etc. In fact, in St Tropez there is a hotel called the Biblios in which he made the stoneware dance floor of the club, the decorative tiles on the walls and even the posts and bannisters of the staircase! It is all still there today. In addition, he did a lot of free standing sculptures, often about Greek mythology (especially the story of the abduction of Europe) and angels (He's Catholic).He showed us photos of the party life in St Tropez, that included a great number of hip artists of the time. They had many costume parties, and it looks as though it was a wonderful time. Besides Picasso, other artists were working here including Matisse and Chagall. Jean Cocteau makes appearances in the photo album as well. M. Derval showed us his studio, and also an album of the many public works he's done. I hope someone writes a book about him someday!

We are eating ridiculously well at home as well as if we go out. The fruit and vegetable market is one block away, and the boulangerie, a mere 30 paces. There is also an Italian man who makes and sells fresh pasta across from the boulangerie. Almost forgotten is my lame diet of the past several months (except for the fallout that is my figure!). There is an exquisite restaurant called Cafe Llorca in the same square as the market. The chef came from somewhere very fancy like maybe St Tropez (I think). It's a little bit snooty but the attitude is backed up by fantastic cuisine, and it's not too costly either. The five of us ate there together twice. The first time I had stuffed squid with a red pepper coulis. The other night it was a gaspacho de langoustine followed by morue (a fat, fluffy cut of cod) with vegetables and aioli. Llorca is especially known for the desserts.

I miss my dog like crazy.

But what about the work? That's getting done each day, trust me. I'm working on a series of twenty-eight small pieces, around 4" to 6" each. I also have three larger pieces in the works. All of us here make such different work. I vacillate between feeling like I must work every minute of every day, and remembering that I'm not in grad school anymore so maybe I should go to the beach! Linda Sormin has been a great keeper of perspective for me. Speaking of Linda, she and I are going to Venice on Tuesday!!! Finally I will see the Venice Biennale! This means I have to get back in the studio pronto so I can get away without falling behind. There are just two weeks until our exposition opens.

That's all I've got for now! As I said before, life is mellow for me here. I hope everyone is doing well and hopefully enjoying the solstice....

Views from the Train, and Postscript, July 2009.
I am on the TGV on my way to Paris to meet with the beautiful and exciting Carissa. A couple of you may recognize that this is a change of plans. Initially I was to fly to Amsterdam tomorrow and spend the weekend there with her. But Carissa has instigated a new adventure that begins at a place called “L’Hotel” on the Rue des Beaux Arts, on the left bank of the Seine. What is going to transpire over the next couple of days is half a mystery to me, and will have to wait for another letter (or not!).

Last time I wrote I was on the way to Venice. WOW! I had certainly heard about Venice from other travelers, and read about it in several historical novels, but I was unprepared for how it charmed me, decay, tourists and all. The weather was fantastic, and I guess this has a lot to do with one’s experience of the place, since it is a walking city. That’s another thing that hadn’t sunk in until I arrived: NO motorized vehicles! And, yes, that means No Mopeds with altered mufflers. Or any type of moped. Even the garbage was picked up on foot and tossed into handcarts. We slept so peacefully, despite the lumpy budget hostel beds. Anyway, I could really go on and on about my impressions of Venice, but the truth is they are necessarily superficial: I don’t speak Italian, nor do I have a deep understanding of Venetian history (novels aside). Also, I didn’t go inside a single historical museum. (Finger-wag of shame here.) I was only there for three days, two of which were spent at the Venice Bieannale viewing a life-altering amount and quality of art. But I will say this: people that we (Linda and I) encountered were invariably courteous, friendly, humorous and more than tolerant of our ridiculous butchering of the simplest phrases in their language. All right, except for maybe one or two individuals. The coffee, well the coffee was perfect. And I had the very best spaghetti with anchovies ever in my life. Ever. And I like me some anchovies. They were plump, tender and delicate; nothing like what I had found anywhere else (Naturally, this is what I brought back from Italy: the biggest jar of blond anchovies I could find). Also, the mosquitoes were not bad at all, the canals did not stink, it didn’t rain every single day. Yes there were throngs of tourists, but I noticed their numbers drastically increased on Thursday and Friday. So: if you plan to go to Venice, I highly recommend June, and make sure to include the earlier half of the week in your visit, though that part may have been a fluke. Also, because we weren’t there for the big Openings at the Biennale, it wasn’t too crowded either. But the Aresenale and the Giardini each took an entire day (with lunch break) to view. I won’t go into the art; that wouldn’t be fair to any of us or to the artists. Suffice it to say, I have a couple new Art Crushes, most notably the Italian painter Simone Berti, the Tibetan artist Gonkar Gyatso and the Australian, Sean Gladwell (it might be Shawn, if you’re looking him up. And if you find him tell him I think he’s neat).

Upon our exhausted shamble back home to Vallauris, it was time to push in the studio. We had one week and two firings to finish everything for the show. I had to come up with a new way of showing my work (I was planning on hanging the series on the wall), as it became clear there was going to be too much on the walls. Three days before the show I built three slab platter type things out of this awesome Spanish black clay, dried them overnight and fired them just in time for set up. They each have four holes through which I drew cords and simply hung them from a rafter. Once level, I placed arrangements of pieces onto little posts I’d built into the platters (for stability). Since there was only natural light in our gallery space, I really lucked out because the sun from skylights rested beautifully on the groupings from 11:15 to about 12:15, or the first hour of our opening. The work comprised of fourteen small sculptures (half of the completed 28), and was titled “Holding-Releasing Organomorph Series” (woo-woo!)

Meanwhile, the beach called to me about every other day, reminding me of the work and the chilly, grey weather I’ll be experiencing soon enough. We all began to wrap things up in the studio in the final days and some of the others took wonderful excursions around the region. I stayed close to home mostly.

One of the things I know all of us will remember are the delicious dinners we prepared together. We took turns, and not a single dinner was mediocre.

[Oh! We just passed Golfe Juan and my beach!]

Two days ago the wind picked up and blew all day long. This was the Mistral, coming down from the Alpes, bringing cooler air with it. But it was nothing at all like Le Mistral I remember from winter in the Vaucluse, an unceasing gale that screamed and spat through every tiny seam or crack in the walls and between windows and under doors. That Mistral could make you crazy, as in actually demented and it could last forever. This was more like a cool break in the weather, churning up the seas a little and making the water perfectly fresh the next day. I’d never heard of a one-day Mistral before. So the upshot is that yesterday the sky was so crystal clear you could almost hear it “ping.” After cleaning and packing, I walked down to Golfe Juan for one last afternoon at the beach. Floating and swimming, ah, heavenly! I loved watching so many people playing paddle ball or other games, and simply racing around having a blast. Kids are out of school now so les vacances have commenced, and the beaches are jam-packed with families, many of them three generations.

It’s bittersweet to be leaving, knowing there is so much more I’d like to have seen and done. And I really wished I’d had to use my French more, as I don’t feel it improved one little bit. But also, how fortunate to come back to one of my favorite regions in the world and get to make work! And, actually, how fortunate that I have any French left at all, so that I could communicate functionally, if not as articulately as I’d have liked. This sojourn has snapped me out of the end-of-grad-school malaise that I’d been suffering from, and satisfied a long-suppressed desire for travel. Well, maybe not satisfied, but it has fended off the creeping unease from being in the States for so long (nothing against the States, ok?).

So, for those who are somehow not apprised of the Next Thing, this is it: From Amsterdam I’ll go back to Missoula for a couple of days, dump stuff at the storage unit, get a minor repair done on my truck, hopefully float down the Bitterroot and take my dear friend Rebecca out to dinner (the ever helpful, oh so tolerant and always laughing at my lame jokes Saint Rebecca). On the 17th (a week from tomorrow I think) I fly to Kodiak Alaska. From there I hope (since I haven’t heard from him!!!) Shane will pick me up and we’ll boat to Raspberry Island where I’ll be cooking at the fishing lodge Port Vita for the next two months. There is no internet and no phone anywhere on the island, so I don’t think I’ll be doing this sort of thing too often, and anyway I’m not sure I’ll have too much to report. (“Today I cooked breakfast, lunch, hors-d’oeuvres and dinner. Everyone else went fishing. I saw some grizzlies. Again.”) After that, around the 18 of September, I’m moving to Red Lodge, Montana for the year to do another residency. By then it could have started snowing, of course, (ok, probably not quite yet) so this week is probably the last of what I call summer.

So, anyway, this is my final missive from the European Extravaganza (Budget Version) 2009. Thank you for reading, and especially thanks to those of you that kept in touch with me. Despite the new and busy environment I still obsessively checked my email daily and was comforted by notes from friends. Maybe I got a little homesick. But there’s no real home on the horizon, so I’m not quite sure what it was I was missing. I just think it was that particular stage of travel, when you either want to stay on for much longer and get settled, or you are ready for the next thing and want that next thing to hurry up and commence. Does that make sense? OK, point is, thank you for being a part of my little journey so far. I’ve never done these notes to a large list of people before, and it does feel a little awkward, however, I’m glad to have done it. The feedback I’ve received has been comforting, encouraging and gracious! Please stay in touch with me over the next while and let me know what you’re up to! To that end, since I’ll be offline but for a couple exceptions, I’ll give you my mailing address in Alaska. Mail will be picked up once a week or thereabouts.

OK! Happy summer and I’m wishing you all happy and healthy times, surrounded by good friends and family, good eats, and whenever possible, good art!

Bisous~
E.
A quick post script:
Paris was wonderful. We stayed less than a block from the Ecole des Beaux Arts, in the St Germaine area, filled with fantastic galleries and enough brasseries and creperies to keep the two of us happy. Our hotel, “L’Hotel” was where Oscar Wilde stayed and We Got His Room. We saw the Rodin Museum (where I was completely seduced by his handing of clay), we shopped in designer consignment shops, ate crepes (my favorite with raclette and potatoes), bicycled all over (not my favorite as I am terrified of Paris drivers), had an unforgettable dinner at Alcazar, a 5 minute walk from our hotel. Carissa bought paintings. Two nights in a row we stayed up til after 4 am in the tiny hotel bar with Carlos the bartender and Laurent the night concierge, drinking absinthe and concocting exotic champagne aperatifs that featured candied violets among other delicacies. We went to the dinner show at Moulin Rouge. When Kylie Minogue was checking in as we were getting ready to go out one day, Carissa busted some of Kylie’s moves right there in the tiny lobby. I got to know my dear friend Carissa so much better in those few days and I’m ever grateful for that, and to have had the glorious Paris as the backdrop. Well, so much more than a backdrop of course. Anyhow, that is a little smidgen of our time in Paris for you. Now, I’m back in Missoula and it’s chilly and rainy. Finishing up some online judging I am doing for a small art object exhibition Vallauris in conjunction with the Fete Picasso, and prepping for the Alaska leg of this adventure. Much love to all.

Port Vita, Kodiak, Alaska, August 2009.
Welcome to the last installment of “What I did this summer.” The last 2 months I’ve been cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day for the guests and staff at Port Vita on Raspberry Island. This means every morning getting up before the sparrows fart (my mom’s phrase), making the coffee and huge meals of eggs, bacon or sausage or ham, pancakes, or biscuits and gravy, or sticky buns or frittatas or hash browns or home fries, you get the picture. And I don’t even eat breakfast. It took me three tries to get the “sliders” (eggs, and apparently in Belgium this style egg is known as “whore’s eyes”) just the way Tom (boss and owner of Port Vita) liked them. As soon as everyone was eating breakfast I was fixing lunch to be brought onto the Lady Lize for everyone who was fishing. By the time everything from this was cleaned up I moved onto baking and dinner prep. It felt pretty much nonstop most days and even simple things like doing my laundry often got pushed to the last possible day. Part of this was because we were on a diesel generator for power, and we only used it for a few hours each day, enough to keep the freezers and refrigerators cold and to run the laundry occasionally. I timed my desserts that needed a standing mixer accordingly, and didn’t use any other electric appliances.

I love it at Port Vita. As remote as it is, it got quite hectic with all the guests at times, trying to accommodate everyone while maintaining the integrity of the place as a camp, not a hotel. This means that in general people are expected to follow the camp schedule and pitch in: help with cleaning fish, keeping the place neat, setting the table or doing some dishes, fetching one’s own firewood for the cabins, those sorts of things. You can imagine that people’s interpretations of what it meant to be a camper ran the whole gamut from “what are you waiting for, this ass ain’t gonna kiss itself” (the actual t-shirt of one particular camper) to a kind of masochistic servitude that the staff tried not to take advantage of. Every week the dynamic changed with each new group. We were ever on our toes!

There were several individuals who came to Port Vita as helpers, guests who had particular skills and could work on projects for the camp, and in exchange they got a cabin, all their meals, as much fishing as they could fit in and all the fish they could take home. Two such helpers, Jan and Gule, both from Belgium, had been coming up for years this way. They played a central role in getting our hydroelectricity system up and running this summer. This was an exciting development: power all the time, and no generator! For me this was especially welcome since I got done with work so late that I had to take my showers in the dark—no more! It also meant I could prepare desserts earlier in the day (standing mixer) and maybe get a half an hour of relaxing time, or get laundry done during the day. I guess by now it’s obvious this has not been a glamorous princess job.

But what about the fishing, and the nature, and the adventures? Frankly, for the most part, my experience was confined to the kitchen. I did, however, get out on occasion and was thrilled by the environment around me. Raspberry Island is in the Kodiak archipelago, sandwiched between the eastern end of Kodiak and Afognak island. There are only two or three other lodges on Raspberry, and Afognak belongs to a Native corporation. Port Vita faces Afognak across the Raspberry Strait, which, being so sheltered is often quite calm. One evening I saw two killer whales breach, right outside the kitchen window! I got to go kayaking a couple of times, with Shane and by myself. Both times I went to Afognak and saw mostly just the usual sea otters, laying on their backs eating or napping, and bald eagles and their eaglets. Once, during a negative tide we went octopus hunting. At a negative tide octopus will often stay in their hideaways even though they are beached. They can live for a good while out of the water. We would very quietly search under sheltering rocks in the low tide zone for signs of octopus. When we found one, we had to act swiftly and silently, and had to stay out of their line of sight. They’re supposedly extremely intelligent, have great eyesight and are fast. We forced them out of their hiding place, yanking them out (mostly Shane’s job) and threw them into a bucket. We got four that day, took them home, cleaned them, and I learned how to tenderize them (use a 2 by 4), and we ate octopus fritters with dinner that night.

On my first day fishing in the Shellikof Strait, a pod of dolphins came right along the Lady Lize and played along side and up under the bow. They were so incredibly agile and fast, swifter than I ever could have imagined. I took a short video of this and you’ll swear if you see it that it’s sped up. Not so. Unfortunately, there was too much spray for me to get a better view, but it was such an exhilarating few moments, and worth a look (I’ll be posting it). I enjoyed fishing (it got me out of the house!) and brought in a fair number of keepers. Halibut seemed easier to catch than salmon, and less challenging to reel in if they weren’t monsters. But of course even easier to catch were always the flounders, black bass, dogfish and cod, which most of the guests did not want to keep! Ling cod was a good one, too, but I never caught any.

A few skills I picked up at Port Vita: cleaning halibut! I am rather good at that now. I didn’t get to clean any salmon though. I can make gravlax, and caviar. I can make kick ass pizza dough and bake it in a wood burning pizza oven. I can bake bread, dinner rolls, cookies, cakes, and I have cracked the code on the perfect pie crust. I can have a complete dinner for 16 tipsy fishermen (and staff) ready at precisely 6:30 pm, and a complete breakfast for the same hung over fishermen ready at precisely 6:30 am. You know, it’s the little things!

Tom, the owner of Port Vita, has been guiding in Alaska for decades. He is a retired dentist and nuclear engineer from Tiberon, California. He and Shane have guided numerous bear hunts, deer hunts, elk (the elk here are Roosevelt elk, the largest elk in the world!), and judging by the pelts in the lodge (aka the bunkhouse) beaver, fox, some kind of antelope, and others I cannot identify. While I was there, the only hunt was a deer hunt, which meant for me that I learned about preparing venison.

This would be an incomplete report if I didn’t mention Buddy, the camp dog. Thank God for him. He wasn’t allowed in the bunkhouse, but I could spoil him with as many meaty treats as I wanted, and indulge his addiction to Milkbones. In the evening we would let him follow us up to our house and he could come indoors and get warm by the fire. We thought this was a secret, but I later realized that Tom was just ignoring it.

This trip has been such a rewarding and learning experience! I’m so grateful to Tom and to Shane for trusting me to be a good camper and to handle the particular pressures of my job with an even disposition (this will surprise some of you?). Both of them were awesome to work with; directing and correcting me with fairness and respect, and then letting me do my job as I saw fit. Being out of touch with the rest of the world was a balm (except those pesky bills that have to get paid no matter where you are or what you’re doing!). The break from my email-Facebook dependence was welcome, not because I don’t like to hear from friends and loved ones, but rather because it imposed upon me a relative kind of silence. It encouraged a clearer presence in the moment, if you will. Port Vita was hard work and a relentless schedule, but also wonderful camaraderie and the satisfaction of helping to make someone’s vacation especially enjoyable. It also presented me with many opportunities to learn new things, about fishing (duh), about cooking, work, other people and myself.

I hope all of you have thrived during my “sabbatical” at Port Vita, and I would love to hear from you now that I’m back and connected. Speaking of “back,” I’m actually in my new home in Red Lodge, Montana, preparing to begin work in the next day or so. Let the games begin again! Much love~E

Place Lisnard, Vallauris.


Paris!

Port Vita

This might be the longest blog post EVER.

Coming up in a minute:

A BRIEF recap of the past year's adventures, then some good stuff about Guldagergaard, and up-to-the-minute reporting on the iron pour workshop we are having here in northeastern Montana, with Glasgow Goodkind Gallery as our host!

2010-02-09T21:14:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Beautiful Red Lodge, Montana!

What the world really needs is More Blogs, right? Well, I'm doing my part. This is going to be mostly about making ceramic sculpture and pots: process, breakthroughs, inspiration and news.

Maybe just give me a minute, because I'm super busy and