You can see why I decided to spend a day in Santa Fe. However, I was beginning to worry this trip was becoming a litany of unlucky coincidences when the woman at the front desk told me that the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum was going to be closed today in preparation for a new exhibition opening tomorrow.

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i got the coolest present from my parents this christmas, a wacom drawing tablet, but i haven’t had a chance to play with it until this afternoon because i was waiting for my new baby to arrive (see previous post).

using it for the first time (i’ve never played with a graphics tablet before) is exciting and eerie. unlike a mouse, where position/movement is relative to the location of the cursor on the screen (you can pick up the mouse and place it back down and the cursor is still in the same place), with the graphics tablet, the position is relative to the location of the pen on the tablet surface, which maps to the screen area, so if you pick up the pen and move it to another part of the tablet, the cursor mysteriously moves to that spot. it’s like learning how to mouse all over again.

another neat thing is that the tablet senses the location of the pen when it’s hovering over the surface. it only draws (or clicks) when you’re actually dragging along the surface. so you can move the pen and see the location of the cursor without drawing. in other words it acts uncannily like a real pen.

so after writing my signature like 10 times and scribbling in ms paint (the only graphics software i had installed at this point), i thought “well, might as well just draw (er, sketch) what’s right in front of me.” which happened to be a chair.

suffice it to say i’m pretty much blown away at how much fun it was to draw “into” my computer and have it look as good or better than using pen on paper. click on the image above to see the full original version.

mark hewitt’s winter kiln opening was this morning. traveled with jane, chloe, and christy in two cars down to pittsboro, which made for very spacious in-car dozing when we arrived just after 6am–the fifth and sixth cars in line. and it was cold. layers included long underwear, thick socks, long sleeve shirt, heavy sweatshirt, leather jacket, and gloves.

three openings in a row so far, we’re getting to be pros. christy even brought a campfire stove and made hot chocolate. i suggested bacon and eggs. actually sausage and eggs. maple and brown sugar breakfast sausage. mmm. maybe next time.

i tend to be interested in shapes first, glazes and finishes second. i couldn’t get enough of the canisters at the last two openings, discovered a beautiful little teapot in august, this time i was looking for a pitcher. and found one:

turns out there’s a decent number of mark hewitt’s pots up on ebay if you don’t envision yourself in pittsboro any time soon, but would like some traditional north carolina salt glazed pottery.

jean mentioned it on her blog. sarah falls invited jane to go. so i got to tag along.

we drove towards pittsboro, ending up at the old “woven label” factory on 15-501, a sight which i had tucked away in my mind after mark hewitt’s spring preview.

to be honest, i’m not a fan of installation art. i enjoyed viewing some of the displays, but nothing was as engaging as the space itself. in fact more often than not i felt the pieces were mocking the soul of the factory, in the way they put these artifacts on display, deliberately out of context.

i’ve thought about it in contrast to another art “exhibit”, photographs of the japanese island gukanjima, deserted since 1974, but once “the world’s most densely populated island.” in this case the island itself becomes a deteriorating installation, the photographs an interpretive lens, and the world wide web a medium for interaction, dissemination, and accessibility.

i did appreciate one collection of photographs. they were empty walls with outlines of furniture intricately and precisely “stitched” onto them. the single strand of thread was so perfect that my immediate thought was “hair”. conveniently they had exposed the backs of several photos on display, stray ends sticking out and all. *gag*

at the preview for mark hewitt’s thrice yearly spring kiln opening, nearly two thousand pieces of pottery are on display. large planters sit along a walk leading up to a rustic barn which houses the rest. but nothing is yet for sale. the preview is just for looking, chatting with the potter (a charismatic briton), and sampling hors d’oeuvres.

the fun happens the morning after, when the aficionados line up in cars outside the pottery as early as 4am. jane and i arrive around 6, the sixth car in line, on 4 hours of sleep. we’re dozing when they open the parking lot (a field next to a pond) at 8am, and people of all ages, mostly older, start lining up. at 9am the sale officially begins. there is one rule. the line must walk toward the barn in the same order without running or cutting. strategy is simple. know what you want and grab it before someone else does. the closer you are to the front, the greater your chances of getting it.

we set everything we’ve collected outside the barn, and for two hours we alternate between guarding our “take” and perusing the pottery that remains. after some consternation, we set aside pots we don’t “need” so we can decide which we definitely want and which we plan to give as gifts (if we can bear to part with them).

salt-glazed north carolina pottery gets its look from the combination of ash blowing through the kiln and salt pored into the top of the kiln during the firing. the ash interacts chemically with the clay creating a range of speckled browns, tans, and khakis, while the salt gives the pieces a shiny veneer. small squares of blue glass pressed into the clay when it’s soft melt and drip down the sides leaving a blue streak that contrasts with the orangy browns. a few traditional glazes are used sparingly, such as a black manganese, but much of the final look depends on the unpredictable reaction of ash, salt, and clay inside the kiln.