NCECA Thursday

Left the hostel with my umbrella for the first time this trip, and the last time this trip, mind you I have NO umbrella experience... It only took 1/2 a block for the wind to whip up turn it inside out and poke all the spines all right out of the umbrella. The next 1/2 block had a trash can where I dispensed with the silly thing.
I missed my first lecture and walked around the trade show for a few minutes. My first lecture ended up being "Activism Through Ceramics". Roberto Lugo talked about how to make an impact in our communities by reaching out and sharing our clay experience in various ways. Empty Bowls was one, community art projects was another. Interesting and motivating for me in that I do want to make a difference in our community.
The second lecture was a panel that was called "A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place" Talked about the qualities? of artificial place in our digital age and how that is influencing how we make ceramics. A bit scary to me because it seems that the way we are headed because of our access to computers and our young peoples mastering of that media, we are designing on computers and taking the "hands on" away from some of the ways we deal with clay. On another view of "place" Casey Whittier was an excellent presenter on this panel. She talked more about the way that "place" influences who we are.. a sense of place has to be built it is not automatic. Her work was these beautiful porcelian daisies, that were slip covered and fired.
I popped into a few more lectures, ran into Donna and Demitri and Shirley! Very nice to see Tucson pottery buddies here.
At 11:30 I went to the lecture by my bunkmate from the first nite. Her name is Lauren Miller and her lecture was entitled "Finding Your Niche on the Edge of Ceramics".She also discussed how the digital age is affecting what some people consider a hands on media.
I wandered through some of the exhibits before the next lecture. There is some cutting edge work here. I will post some photos.
The glaze chemistry lecture was long, I fake yawned when Demitri told me he was going and here I was sitting and listening. I caught on to some of the things I remembered about glaze chemistry. I also found it interesting about how they microscopically viewed glazes to see how much they attach to the body of clay. They evaluated how some ancient glazes attached and how the glaze chemistry changed during firing because what ever was in the clay influenced the glaze after firing and how that glaze was nothing like it was prior to firing. Part of that I already see as soon as I open the kiln, the same glaze on two different clay bodies is visually very different. The cool thing that this research shows it that the longer (meaning days) a glaze is fired the more penetration there is into the clay body. My eyes did glaze over a few times during this lecture. I did start to think about how stale and moldy my mind is becoming and maybe going back to school would be a good thing.
My lunch break was fun!! I ran into Joni Pevarnik and her crew on the way down the escalator. They were going to the Cheesecake Factory. I was good and had a small salad, but used my free coupon for cheesecake to eat later.(eating that cheese cake was sooooo good, but made me miserable for the rest of the day) The conversation at lunch was awesome. Very political and opinionated. All six of us.. Lucy Yogerst from Minnisota and Paula Rice, Ellen Thibbits, Jan Suarez, and Joni all from various parts of AZ. We all had great opinions, and were very passionate about what we had to say. I headed back to yet another lecture.
Heidi McKenzie did a great job talking about how to promote yourself. She writes for several art magazines and makes clay art too. Very together lady. I need to work on promoting my work or myself as a teacher or both.
I wandered through a few more lectures and demonstrations and then went back down to the vendors hall.
I caught up with Catherine while she was stirring up trouble. Then ran back up to participate in "Topical Discussions" on "Switching to Cone 6". Way too many people showed up to make this a roundtable discussion, and there were a few way too grumpy people there so I split. One thing that happens here is that we all get overstimulated and in our effort not to miss a thing we change in to the tired, hungry , grumpy green monsters
The early evening was with Joni, Jan and Ellen as we tried to brave the rain and find art openings. Ellen faded after the first one we tried to find at Nordstroms, which ended up being at a totally different location. We picked another one from the list. It was a little gallery in a mall-ish place. There was some clay work on the walls but we were sent upstairs to an office lobby that had these humongous mariachis. (See photos in next post) We hooked up with some relatives of Jan's who live in Seattle and we went to a nice dinner near my hostel. I couldn't eat much cuz of that damn cheesecake. (Please help me remember that stomach ache next time I think of having a triple sized slice from the cheesecake factory)
A light rain was falling after dinner and I headed back to my room.
It was a wonderful day.. So much I don't have time to write about. I do wish I had my computer to write on, but it is nice to have some access to computers at the hostel. Most of my posts have been from finger texting on my phone.
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, from a very homesick JADA