A pair of ceramic looms for @frcarlsunnyside . They each have holes to hold the warp thread and are made to be wall mounted with the weaving in place.
1. Cloud loom, glazed ceramic, 7.5 in. x 6 in. x 2.5 in.
2. Valley loom, glazed ceramic, 10.5 in. x 7.5 in. x 1 in.
For the last four years I’ve been trying to balance freelancing, parenting, and art making. I spent a lot of 2025 struggling to get the balance right and feeling more frustrated than usual about the ways those parts of my life don’t fit together. At the end of this year, I’m feeling extra grateful for the few areas of overlap. A wonderful ceramics studio in my neighborhood. Sunday process art. A predictable, but flexible, freelance gig. All the journalists I know who are also artists. Growing things with Judy in the garden. I don’t think 2026 is going to be the year I find more time, but maybe it can be a year of looking for more small places of overlap.
Slip-cast pods, glazed and unglazed porcelain.
These are each about 3 x 5 x 3 in., and I use them as a foundational shape for other slip-cast shapes I’ve been working on. I make the molds from canvas, some are lined with featherwale corduroy. They’re all made from the same pattern pieces, but a lot depends on how much they’re filled, how they dry, and how they’re tied up and drained. They’re so light to hold. Seed pods or hearts, I see both. I’m looking forward to making more when I get into the studio again in September.
I started thinking about this big, round, cavity shape before becoming a parent, but it’s become interesting to me in new ways now that I’ve got a body that’s gone through pregnancy. I’ve made it in clay, fabric, and have been thinking about how to weave it with basket reed for a while now.
—> some process pics and earlier versions of the same shape
Basket reed makes a lot of sense as a material to me, and I like that I can kind of improvise and figure out the technical stuff as I go. Plus, there’s something about the tension of the reed that makes it look neat no matter what.
It took me a day or so to figure out how to use the basketball to get my bowl shape, and another day to figure out how to make the hat-brim-like turn. I got this basketball to shoot hoops, but so far I have only used it for art projects.
Should I keep going next time until I’ve enclosed the whole ball? 🏀
