Posted on Leave a comment

Three New Four-Inch Tiles

Seal2018
Four-Inch Seal
This is one of several new designs for this summer season.

Four-Inch Otter Tile
This is a four-inch otter tile. Alaska has river and sea otters.
I like the eyes of the otter, so the new seal and fox designs might be reworked to have similar eyes. The x-ray style, common among the Alaskan Coastal peoples, is hinted at with the inclusion of the red ribs

FoxPlate2018
Thick Paper Cut Out of a Fox
This is what the paper cut outs look like before the pieces are separated and glued onto a matte board plate. The plate is impressed into clay to make the tiles.

Posted on Leave a comment

Four of Fox Card Tile

12″ x 9.5″ Card Tile
This tile is one of three card tiles made for an upcoming May show at the Anchorage Humanities Forum. There will also be about twenty 12″ x 12″ tiles, every 12″ tile that I have designed and made, in the show. I’m about 3/4’s done.

It has been over a year since I last added a post to this tile blog/website. I blame Facebook. The Anchorage Native Heritage Center helped a group of us start Etsy stores connected to Facebook, and we all got caught up in the never ending connectedness of Facebook. Nothing is for sell in the Etsy store…yet.

I will be selling at the Denver March Powwow from March 25-26. Then I’m attending a ceramics event in London, the Ceramics Art of London, March 31-April 2. Since I’m there, I’ll throw in a extra few days to sight see.

Posted on Leave a comment

Tile Backing for Wood Stove

Close-up

This is the tile wall behind a wood stove that an acquaintance installed in his house. I also made the field tiles surrounding the art tiles. It will be featured in the next quarterly issue of Alaska Home magazine. The nice speckled brown field tiles are all the same glaze, so the difference in appearance is due to the placement in the kiln. An enlarged drawing of the entire area was provided so that plate/stencils could easily be made, especially for the odd shaped tiles, near the top. All the tiles are made from the local clay from the Anchorage mud flats, a part of the Boot Legger Clay formation, and they are stamped on the back with “Cook Inlet Glacial Clay”.

WoodStove
Wood Stove Tile Installation

The Fur Rondy sales begin tomorrow at the Dimond Mall (in Anchorage) and I will be heading to the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona for the Indian Art Market on Thursday.

Posted on 1 Comment

Two-Inch Pendants

2-inch Pendants
2-inch Pendants
These are recent tests for a two-inch size pendant. None sold at the Colorado Indian Market last month, but I’ll see how they do this summer. If they didn’t have holes, they could be tiles. To be installed with tiles, they would need to be slightly smaller, like 1-7/8″, so they could fit four to the same area as a four-inch tile, plus they would need to be just a tad thicker.

I’m working half time on tiles while I prepare taxes and work on the fish-skin coat that will have some of the buttons from the previous post.

Posted on Leave a comment

More Buttons and Pendants

Buttons
Buttons

These buttons are made out of clay from the Anchorage mud flats (Cook Inlet glacial clay), the same clay that is used in my tiles, and the images are from the stamps that I have created to decorate the back of the tiles. They are approximately one-inch in size and destined for a coat that I will make soon. Last year, I had bought wool and silk, and processed my own fish skins for the purpose of making a coat for the 2015 Anchorage Object Runway event, an art/fashion show, but it was cancelled. The coat will be patterned after a paper coat that I made a few years back that had won people’s choice award in the same Anchorage Object Runway event.

I’ve been busy since Christmas making tiles, inventory was down to three tiles. So everything I made last year sold! I hired a temporary part-time artist to help with waxing, while I did everything else.

I participated in the Colorado Indian Art Market, Jan 22-24, and did well. My favorite customers were the interesting couple that bought two twelve-inch tiles plus a few other tiles of various sizes.

My next two events will be the Anchorage Fur Rondy sale at the Dimond mall, March 2-6, and the Heard Museum Indian Arts & Crafts Show in Phoenix, Arizona March 5, 6. There is an overlap, so someone will cover for me at the Fur Rondy.

Posted on Leave a comment

Portugese Camino

End of the Camino
Santiago, Spain
Walked the Portuguese Camino with my 85 year old Father and two younger sisters, Dorothy in the middle and Karen on the right. Dorothy has a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford and Karen is a civil engineer with the US Forest Service. We’re all engineers, I just switched to art. The ten day hike from Porto, Portugal to Santiago, Spain took us fifteen days. Our pilgrimage was leisurely this time as we sent our backpacks ahead each day and stayed in nicer hotels each night. By nicer, I mean with private bathrooms and sheets on the bed. We usually got two rooms and the price would be about $30-40 per person. Me and my dad roughed it a few years back by staying in the hostels, walking the much longer French route, but this time we spent a little more, and felt totally pampered. Our Dad did have a scare, an ear infection that felt like a possible stroke had our taxi speeding down rural, cobble-stoned lanes to the nearest hospital. The emergency room visit and antibiotics cost around $100 and then the pharmacy store charged another $20 for medication drops.

The tile business is taking up all my time, and this will be the best year, sales-wise, since I started a dozen years ago. I’ve decided to not go to the lower-48 next summer, since customers are coming to me up here at that time. Those trips will have to be in the off season.

I still have three more shows before the end of the year, so I better get back to the studio! The three shows are the Thanksgiving Fare at the Anchorage Museum, November 27-29, The Holiday Bazaar at the Anchorage Native Heritage Center, December 5, and a small group event at the Blue Hollomon Gallery December 12.

Posted on 5 Comments

Plaster Mold Crab Tile

Crab Tile
6″ Plaster Mold Crab Tile
It’s been a busy 2015 so far! I went to two arts & crafts shows in Denver in January and March, and I recently went to Doylestown, Pennsylvania for the Moravian Tile Festival. I made a short trip up to Fairbanks and picked up two new customers, the University Museum gift shop and the Wells Street Gallery. So this year started out with a bang.

Today I start a four week gig teaching student interns how to make tiles and pendants at the Anchorage Native Heritage Center. The Anchorage weekend market has been open since Mother’s Day and I’m selling there on Saturdays. My schedule this summer will be Saturdays at the weekend market downtown, and Monday, Thursday, Friday at the Heritage Center. I will be out of town three times, for the Chicago Botanic Garden show July 4th weekend, The Bellevue Museum show the last weekend of July, and the Sante Fe Indian Market the last part of August.

Other than tile related stuff, my dad, two younger sisters, and myself will be hiking for ten days on the Porto, Portugal to Santiago de Compostella, Spain pilgrimage. What a mouthful, how’s about just Porto to Santiago. This will be in late October, early November, so we were able to use off-season airline miles. Can you believe it, American Airlines offers round trips to Europe for 40,000 miles in the off season. We are members of Alaska Airlines and luckily American is a partner airline.

Posted on Leave a comment

New Fisherman Plate

Fisherman Plate
Cutting the Fisherman Plate
The old plate is in the upper left above and overlapped by the new plate that is being cut out of 300-lb cotton rag etching paper. The cut pieces that will be glued to a matte board are visible in the upper and lower right, under wax-paper, to keep an unexpected sneeze from scattering them about. My preferred glue is actually gesso and over the gesso will be brushed acrylic medium. This design is popular and probably has the most cut pieces, maybe two hundred or so. The triangular shape of the netted salmon gives the composition a stable and pleasing aspect. I will post a finished, glazed tile next.

I will be selling tiles at the Colorado Indian Market, January 23-25 in Denver.

Posted on Leave a comment

Sailorboy Pilot Bread

Pilot Bread
Alaskan Hardtack
Six-inch Square, Sailorboy Pilot Bread Art Tile, $75
Originally made this design as one of the thirteen 12″ tiles for Nana Development Corporation, one of the many native alaskan owned businesses that are fairly common these days. I can’t tell you how cool it is that the indigineous population has taken an active part in the current world, and a large part of that is business related, for better or worse, though, each regional corporation pretty much has a non-profit equivalent representing the same population. Anyway, the powers that be wanted to try something different than the Indian reservation system common in the lower 48.

Pilot bread is known by everyone that has lived in a rural area. Its a modern day version of hard tack, and it is kind of hard and lasts for ever.

I’m done selling for the season. For December, did one large event at the Alaskan Native Heritage Center, and three smaller ones at the Native Hospital, Nana Development Corporation, and the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation. Did fairly well. Now time to build up inventory. I don’t think I’ve had more than a rare day or two off here and there in the last eight months. I need to hire someone so that I can keep up!

Posted on Leave a comment

Glaze Tests

Glaze Tests
Three Glaze Tests on Four 4″ Tiles
I Haven’t posted in over two months, and I thought the summer was too busy. This post will be on the technical side, and you can skip the first part if you like. Three of the tiles, with small white dots in the background glaze, had an undercoating of a strontium carbonate glaze. The undercoat glaze adds variation to the surface quality of the main glaze, kind of makes it look like the tile had been in a reduction, maybe salt firing. The three new glaze mixes are shell pink, mango, and robins egg blue. I add the mason stain colors to a base majolica glaze that doesn’t have its usual opacifier. The puffin tile on the top right shows what the shell pink looks like without the strontium carbonate undercoat, it has a slight purple tint with the pinkness.

It’s been a busy Fall, sold tiles at four shows since the summer market ended, The Bad Girls of the North, and I’m not even a bad girl, in Fairbanks, the Alaska Federation of Natives conference in Anchorage, the Artisan Tile of the NorthWest event in Seattle, followed by another Bad Girls of the North in Anchorage. Did really well in the Anchorage shows and pretty good in the shows away from Anchorage. Getting ready for the Anchorage Museum Thanksgiving show and the last show of the year at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

One of the more interesting things I did was to become certified as an instructor for the First Peoples Fund. I will talk to native americans about starting an arts business and all the things involved with that, like how to value your time. Many native craftspeople way under pay themselves for the time they put into their art.