The dates for the Handmade For Japan eBay auction have been set for next Thursday, March 24th, 8pm- Sunday, March 27th, 8 pm and will take place on eBay. Ai, Kathryn and I have been working non-stop for the past  six days fielding emails, inviting artists and galleries, and getting press releases out to the media. Yesterday, we were thrilled to have an article in the New York Times! Our Facebook likes are up past 3,000 and hopefully will keep growing so that we have plenty of bidders to raise plenty of money for Global Giving’s Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund. Watching the news has been so emotional with so much family in Japan, including my parents, and so working on this helps focus my energy. I want to send out a special thanks out to my partner, Robin, and to Tai and Vic, my co-organizers spouses for all their support and hard work at keeping the rest of our lives going.

The two porcelain plates above are part of a five plate set in the auction and feature gold and silver luster decals that Bob Washburn at Graphic Synthesis in CT bent over backwards to make for me in my time frame. I’ll also have a pair of rabbit cups and a bat yunomi. So far I’m grateful and excited that we have 72 incredible artists participating, including some major artists such as Betty Woodman, Jun Kaneko, Toshiko Takaezu, Lisa Congdon, Akio Takamori, Takashi Hinoda, Nancy Blum, Jeffry Mitchell and Warren McKenzie. You can preview the work on our public Facebook page, because the eBay page won’t have work visible until it goes live on the 24th.

Posted by on Friday Mar 18, 2011

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In Ceramics Monthly’s newly revamped March issue, there’s a spread on Pots in Action, garnished with five nice shots that I particularly like. One of the main reasons I started this crowd sourcing project was to try and broaden the outreach for handmade pots. Yet what’s nice about this article is that the message of Pots in Action is returning home to an audience that loves ceramics, though may not necessarily think about photographing them in use. Linda Christianson, one of my great pottery heroes, talks about pots creating a kind of stage set in the home. As people live their lives cooking, reading, talking, leaving and coming into the room, pots are always there appearing and disappearing as she says. Pots in Action captures this kind of theater that is constantly in flux and happening all over the world. It’s a little window into what is candid and what is staged; it’s where permanence and impermanence intersect in the world of handmade pots. Thanks to Ceramics Monthly for publishing this piece.

Posted by on Wednesday Feb 16, 2011

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