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 who bent over backwards to make these 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.