A chilly start to the morning. Not a cloud in the sky… luckily there were some waves playing along the lakeshore to make my morning ride more interesting! I love it when sunrise & splashing waves join forces to make morning magic!

So we just got done with a ZOOM Meeting with several of the ceramics teachers at Lillstreet Art Center. Talking about the new changes, the new procedures, the new “normal” and how we’re all working together to make the Summer Session of classes come together safely as Lillstreet prepares to open to the public in early July. It was very informative, and great to see everyone again… even if only on my laptop for now!

But what did I learn from ZOOM?… that apparently it’s a LOT easier for everyone to share their cat at the end than it was for me to share my OREO’s?!!!

A cute little stamped & soda-fired mug for this week’s MUGSHOT MONDAY. Totally diggin’ the colored flashing slip at the top where the grooved lines are!

Pretty pinks & vivid red lilies in Peoria this weekend. Such wonderful colors in the garden,

Always love driving through central Illinois. There’s a certain serenity to the rural landscape, the newly planted fields, the vast open sky… and my favorite assortment of dilapidated old barns… like this one!

This weekend was a beautiful weekend… perfect for road-trippin’!!!
Helping to put things back into the right perspective.

See what I did there?

Yesterday was a beautiful day for a roadtrip… so I decided to head south for a pottery delivery from my last online Facebook sale! Sure, I could have shipped it… but if I did that I wouldn’t get MORE FUDGE!!! My friends Keith & Julie opened MAURIE’S CANDY in Eureka, Illinois so I thought it would be fun to surprise them with their new pottery! Surprise on me… they weren’t there!!!

But two of their employees Rob & Tracy were eager to accept the package, and sell me some more FUDGE!!! We had a great visit… but as I was leaving I thought I overheard them say something about “splitting it”??? Not sure what that means?!!!

So I spent part of the night “processing” my clay… taking bags of kinda-wet reclaim, kinda-dry stoneware, and some random scraps of clay left over in a few bags sitting around my studio. It’s always nice to work them all together to make a “new” clay that is all evenly blended… and to get rid of a bunch of random clay bags lying around my studio!

Instead of wedging them all together, I like to alternate thinly sliced layers of each clay. Then I take the stack and cut it in half vertically… stacking one half on top of the other half. A little slam on the table, and then I repeat the slicing, stacking & slamming. Time after time. Eventually the clay layers thin out enough that the clay appears to be blended.

You can see that every time you slice and stack, the layers are getting thinner & thinner…

Sure, it still needs a little bit of wedging… but this is so much easier than wedging all of the clays together from the start!

Dramatic sunset effects drifting above Lillstreet… sometimes it pays off to look away… and to see what’s behind you even when a stunning sunset is in front of you!

As seen from the third floor at Lillstreet Art Center tonight.
I’m more of a sunrise guy… partially because our Chicago sunsets always have “something” in the way!