One of the best parts of being a ceramic artist is getting to break things.  Whenever a piece doesn't work out...it has to pay.  Society tends to frown on breaking pottery....unless you're at a really rockin' Greek party.  Otherwise, normal folks don't get to take part in the fun as much as they should.

Georgios Maridakis has an elegant (and non-sociopathic) solution.  His "Vase Clock" consists of a timing mechanism, a spring-loaded hammer and a porcelain Sèvres vase.  At the top of the hour, the hammer trips, producing the bell-like ringing sound that Sèvres is famous for. 

Life being what it is, that vase isn't going to last forever.  Over time, the vase is meant to chip, fracture, and eventually...shatter.  The hammer mechanism is supposedly adjustable, letting you use a variety of vases that all produce different sounds.   

LINK

Ahhhhhh.  Halloween.  'Tis the season to revisit my favorite piece of craft, Martha Stewart's BABY COSTUME EPISODE!  This clip is no "History of Dance" or "David After the Dentist", but it's nearing 100,000 views. 

Happy Halloween!

Ceramicists are such jokers....they even have a special word for toilets and urinals, which are technically called "sanitary ware".  Ceramic geeks love calling toilets "after-dinner ware". 

I was excited to wake up this morning to find this post on a gigantic toilet fountain wall that was created for a ceramic festival in China.  I don't really have more information that that, other than my amazement at this creative reuse.  Marcel Duchamp would be very, very proud.

Are those urinal cakes in the foreground?

LINK via BoingBoing

It's not a well-kept secret that I like to watch crappy TV while working on my work or putting my classes together.  The TIVO is stocked with all kinds of guilty pleasures, which now include Lifetime's diptych of Martha Stewart biopics, Martha Inc., and Martha Behind Bars (starring Cybil Shepherd). The wife and I were watching the first of the two, when we ran into the above clip, which is a little too close for comfort.

Claire just put together a great post on Keeping Up With the Johnsons about being an obsessed new homeowner who wants their house finished YESTERDAY....

During our wallpaper removal party, I overheard a friend’s boyfriend say to Garth, “There is so much work to do, I can’t wait to see you slowly change this place.  It is gonna take forever.”

Garth scoffed at him, “Have you met my wife?  The bulk of this will be done by Christmas.”

Check out Claire's full post on our Readymade blog, Keeping Up With the Johnsons

I just got back from Minneapolis, where I had the pleasure of attending the American Craft Council's "Creating a New Craft Culture" conference.  Three days of debating the ins and outs of craft with my fellow makers, writers and thinkers was pure bliss.  Outsiders would find it hard to believe that crafters could be as catty and contentious as they are.  The main thread running through the conference was the reconciling of the previous generations of studio crafters with the ultra-blurry new generation of DIY/Indie/conceptual crafters.  All in all, I'd say the Craft Council took a step in the right direction.

The Craft Council's magazine, American Craft has been taking steps in the right direction for a couple of years now.  Under previous editor Andrew Wagner, they redesigned the magazine under the watchful eye of design genius Jeanette Abbink.  After Andrew Wagner's departure for Readymade Magazine, Janet Koplos, who was previously an editor at Art in America, is the magazine's current editor.  She continues to hire interesting new writers and feature crafters who push the envelope.  

The new issue might be my favorite issue since the redesign.  The cover is devoted to Lauren Kalman, a jeweler/sculptor/performance artist who is devoted to exploring the idea of body ornament as affliction.  She first made a splash with her graduate thesis show at Ohio State University, "Hard Wear ", which has shown at multiple venues since she graduated.  That show contained a mix of objects, video, photographs and performance that feels engaged and appropriate, rather than strained. 

Kalman has opened up a rich vein (there's a pun in there somewhere) with her jewelry.  Beauty has always been a central theme in metals, as is the body.  Her work extends the concept of embellishment into the world of affliction.  What is a syphilitic sore but a badge of experience?  What is acne but evidence of the body's attempt at self-regulation?  Every jewelry lover (well...maybe just the self-aware ones) is locked into a struggle between taste, vanity and budget that mirrors the struggles we all have with health and body issues.

Gabriel Craig of Conceptual Metalsmithing wrote the article in the current issue of American Craft, and does a better job of delving into the specifics of Kalman's art than I can, so I'll leave you to explore his article.  Gabriel was featured in April/May issue of the magazine.  If you con't have a copy of the new issue, you can find a PDF of the entire article on Gabriel's site.

You should also delve into Lauren Kalman's website, which has plenty of examples of her various bodies of work.  In the coming days, I'm hoping to have some time to unpack my thoughts on the conference.

LINK to American Craft Magazine

LINK to Lauren Kalman's website.

So what if Project Runway is sucking this season.  So what if they threw out all of the weirdos in the first few episodes and pushed the designers to make safe clothing (while telling them not to).  So what if the corporate sponsorships have been put into overdrive?  We're all waiting for a Snuggie-sponsored challenge.  So what.  I'm still watching, like the dutiful sheep I am.

If you hadn't heard, The Weinstein company (PR's parent company) just announced they would develop a video game with Atari that will debut on Nintendo's Wii next spring.

"The game will largely follow of the format of the TV show, with players competing as aspiring fashion designers and presented with different challenges as they create designs and outfit models with hair, makeup and accessories. Players can then become the model and strut their creations down the runway using the Wii Balance Board or take on the role of a fashion photographer and document their designs."

I can't wait to see my fellow computer geeks outfitting their models in virtual sweatpants and three wolf shirts.

By the way...has anybody else noticed that Michael Kors and Spencer Pratt are basically the same guy separated by thirty years?  Kors has even been copying Spencer's flesh-colored beard lately. I'm just sayin'.

LINK via Blogging Project Runway