8 Weeks and Counting

The year is 2001, Sandy Brown was the OPA President and Sumi Wu and Margie Adams were the Co-Chairs of Ceramic Showcase and this was published in the June/July member newsletter:

An Ode to the Sales Tags Workshift

or Them Sticker Pickers

by Frank A. Gosar

How 'bout them sticker pickers, ain't they slick?

Pickin' them stickers off, that's the trick.

Picking off little stickers, pickin' off bigger

Pickin' them slower, pickin' them quicker.

Stickers on the boards and the books on the table

Stickers outa every kind of Avery label.

Nit pickin' sticker pickers, ain't they grand?

Pickin' off the stickers, addin' them twice by hand

Addin' them stickers, addin' them twice.

Squintin' and peerin' jes to read the price.

Stickers for a sawbuck, stickers for a dollar

Stickers that go home on Terry's collar.

Alla them stickers gettin' stuck in books

Potters pushin' shovin' jes to get a look

Hair trigger sticker pickers, off the rails

Tryin' to pick stickers outa under the nails.

And the Best of Show winner in 2001 was Natalie Warrens.  I asked Natalie to describe her process and this is what she wrote:

Best of Show 2001
Natalie Warrens

"I started making a body of work based on some low fire sculptures and decided to use cone 10 porcelain, Klieber from Clay Art, in preparation for a wood firing at Hiroshi's in 2001.  I struggled at first trying to manipulate the large slabs like I had done with my earthenware and while I stood the vessel upright, it totally slithered back to a horizontal position.  This was Porcelain 101 once again, since I had not used cone 10 porcelain for twenty years.  Once I got a handle on the short window of the leather-hard stage, I was then able to build geometric forms and stack them together.


This piece was fired in the Spring of 2001, only the second wood firing I had ever participated in.  Instead of making round forms that are more traditional in a wood firing, I chose to make the flat, angular pieces and chose not to glaze the work to see what kind of results I would get.  This particular piece was stacked in the third row back from the front of the kiln and was fired for about 100 hours.  It was placed next to a figurative sculpture of a Buddhist monk to the point of almost touching which resulted in the beautiful halo effect.  I was especially thrilled with this piece and several others because they all had flashing, carbon trap, crystals and veiny ash running down the sides.  We fired primarily with alder and with a mix of fir and oak."