It’s Valentine’s Day week, and I’m feeling a little sentimental. So here’s a farewell to a piece that recently found a new home in Florida. It sold from the co-op gallery I’m involved with — On the Edge Gallery, a fairly new outlet for Three Star Owl — and I was there when the customer bought it. It’s a wall piece, not something I frequently make, an effigy vessel of a very much larger-than-life horned lizard. In the lizard’s scaly back is a window into its hollow innards, where a tiny pink and black gila monster hovers in the darkness: the horny toad’s imagination (why not an imagination in a gizzard? — they used to say stegosaurus had a second brain in its hip), where it’s considering what it would be like to be

armed not with defensive weapons like scales and spikes, excellent camouflage, and the ability to squirt blood from your eye, but to be aggressively, offensively venomous. I’d engraved the title, “Pondering Escalation” on a carved banner across the back of the piece, along with the copper hanging wire and my signature stamp.

As I cautiously swathed it in bubble-wrap to defend the clay details against the rigors of travel as carry-on, I realized I wasn’t quite ready to let the piece go. I wished I’d taken more photos, wondered if I’d gotten a photo of the back (I hadn’t, damn it), and hoped it made it safely to its new destination. Like a real horny toad, the clay piece is sturdy and spiky but a little bit tender, and I worried about a horn breaking off, or the tiny inner gila monster on its invisible pedestal being jarred loose on its journey.

We can’t know what a horned lizard would decide after pondering escalation, but I guess that innate tendencies — biology — will always win out: being resilient is a survivor’s most valuable trait. The glow of a vibrant gila monster may enchant a humble horned lizard for the duration of a dream, but after all, venom is expensive for an organism to produce and deliver, and the venomous find it hard to keep friends. Have a happy Valentine’s week.

No one said all artists are good business people!  Frinstance, I just noticed that I hadn’t updated the Three Star Owl events page in like, all year…

¡Fail!

But now it’s current.  So, if you’re wondering where to find Three Star Owl this holiday season, click here (or the Events tab across the top of the page).  And remember, Three Star Owl items can be found all day every day at On The Edge Gallery in Old Town Scottsdale.

…. where the hell everyone’s been since last september.

… it just seems like it sometimes.

This Friday Saturday and Sunday, from 10am – 5pm March 9, 10, 11, it’s time for the spring Camelback Studio Tour, and if you visit the Sherwood Heights neighborhood of south Scottsdale, you can find lots of things besides owls, even at Three Star Owl Studio (Studio #3 on this map).  Among the exciting Non-Owlular things available are the metal south-west themed garden sculptures of Tracy Paul of Pentimento Metalwork.  Here’s a tantalizing image of the shadow of one of Tracy’s agave-like creations. >> She’s brought a large selection of delectable items and strewn them artfully around our rambling garden, where you can wander around searching them out.

And, there are three other studios to visit filled with paintings, clay, jewelry, glass, and gourds handmade by local artists Lynn Gustafson, Vickie Morrow, Pam Harrison, Jan Campbell, Chris Demma, Reg McCormick, Bernie Nienebar, Lynn Strolin and Margaret Sullivan.

Of course, Three Star Owl Clay is stocked as usual with a motley assortment of owlishness (that’s motley said with pride), some new like the Boiled Owl Sake Sets (see previous post for photos) and Napping Owl Tumblers — which exude a quaint whiff of Victoriana, pushing Retro all the way back to the Martin Brothers.  But I’ll also have on hand some non-owl favorites like Horned Lizard Bowls, a Gila Monster Effigy bowl, Frog Skeleton Mugs, and also a bit of species-faithful Wazzo-ware for the birders among us, and more.  The photo above is my studio bench tonight, with new items waiting to be photographed and priced — note the Gilded Flicker in the Saguaro vessel: definitely Not An Owl, for a change.  Oh, and a couple of Writhing Rαt Dog planter/bowls.

<< And for the first time ever, I’ll have hand-knit hats for sale by Sylvia Schoenfeld (my mother), like these.  And yes, those are owl cables with button eyes — which makes them most definitely mostly about owls.

(All photos A.Shock)

Once again, and for the usual reason, my blog posts have dwindled to a sticky, paltry stream with occasional tart strands of zest, like marmalade that didn’t set.  It seems that when I really have to turn on the afterburners in the clay studio to meet a deadline, my brain shunts itself into non-writing mode.  This is acceptable because it results in Concentrated Clay Effort, but really making art doesn’t have to interfere with the amplitude or frequency of this space: after all, a picture’s worth a thousand words, and I can be fully entertained by one simple striking image.  Perhaps you are too, so here’s a double-duty photo for your perusal: self-promotional eye-candy, but still full of tasty chewy, glazy, custardy goodness, like a good doughnut.

You are looking into the woozy interior of a small repoussé sake cup: the swirly glaze is very sensitive to its own thickness which varies considerably because each tiny cup is owl-shaped, modeled by pushing out with the fingers and in, usually with tools, so that the inside reflects the outside.  The resulting curviness in the walls gives the glaze lots of moguls and dips to flow into and around.  (The opalescence of the rim is an artifact of light: it’s the reflection of the blue sky overhead, and if the cup were in your hand, you’d see the whole effect of the glaze was more like golden honey than sky-rimmed lava.)  The slick, glossy interior flows contrast with the hair-like scoring on the outside of the pieces like marmalade on toast.

Here’s the entire “Boiled Owl” sake set, two tiny cups and a small pitcher meant for sake but good for any potent liquid that needs judicious sipping.  >> This one and a small number of others will be debuting at the Three Star Owl open studio during the Camelback Studio Tour Friday Saturday and Sunday of this week (9,10,11 March 2012). I hope you can stop by and check them out.  More details later!

(Both photos A.Shock)