The Owl Hives are in Chandler.

On Friday night, March 18, the All AZ Clay Invitational Exhibition opened at the Chandler Center for the Arts, displaying the work of more than 40 clay artists from all over the state of Arizona.  Among them is an installation of artefaux by me, entitled Assemblage: Owl Hives.

>> Assemblage: Owl Hives (photo and piece, A.Shock 2011)

The piece is composed of a variety of related, archeologically-themed elements, and is intended to be viewed on its own æsthetic merits.  But, if you read this blog regularly, parts of the installation will look familiar to you, since I’ve posted bits and pieces of it before, in progress.  Also, in the Assemblage, you may recognize a tie-in to the fictional posts that appear here irregularly: according to the signs, the piece is purported to be on loan from the august but mysterious Ganskopf Foundation.  In addition, the ubiquitous and insinuating Dr. Darius Danneru has graciously provided an excerpt from a recent article, supplying authoritative and scholarly, if prolix, context for the piece.  <<

I hope you can stop by the Chandler Center for the Arts’ Vision Gallery anytime before April 16, when the show closes, to see what the Arizona clay community is up to, including three pieces by Don Reitz, from the CCA’s collection.  More info below, or click on Three Star Owl events.  (Photo E.Shock>>)

Exhibition Dates, Hours, and Location:

March 18 – April 16, 2011
Vision Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday, 10 am – 5 pm, Saturdays, Noon – 4 pm
at: Chandler Center for the Arts
MAP/Directions
250 North Arizona Avenue
Chandler AZ 85225
For more information call 480-782-2695.

Talk about a bull in a china shop.  It could have been much worse, but still…

Just after the Three Star Owl Open Studio/Camelback Studio Tour came to an end, and I’d put all the remaining wares onto my studio worktables to await packing for the imminent San Diego Bird Festival trip, a big stupid dove — a Eurasian Collared Dove — blundered in on foot through the open door and into the small space, pecking the bricks for imaginary food.  It was not a good place for it to be; Eurasian Collared Doves belong in my studio as much as they belong in the Western Hemisphere, which is to say, not at all.

<< Eurasian Collared dove.  Their monotonous, moronic call is “Duhh, HUNHHH, What?…” (photo A.Shock)

The studio is an add-on plexiglass “lanai” type room, so there’s nothing but windows all around.  When the dopey bird realized it was inside, it panicked — even though no one was chasing it — flapping repeatedly against the windows, knocking stuff over, and not getting anywhere near the door, which was still wide open. Test-tiles and miscellaneous small art and found objects festoon the horizontal window-support where it was fluttering, and they rained down on the artwork below, crunchily.

Although several of the falling items were broken, I was lucky: there was only one serious casualty among the sales items, a nice little turquoise horned lizard box with a road-runner on top, smashed to unpleasantly surgical fragments: a horn here, a beak there, a tail, a foot.  Here’s the grisly carnage >>

The dove was luckier: it came to rest, and E was able to gently grab it in his hands and release it outside.  It flew away, a little bit alarmed at its unintentional incarceration, but probably mostly disappointed that there wasn’t any millet to be found in that scary clear box.  Sigh; one less piece to pack for San Diego.

…among other things.

Tomorrow, Friday, is the first day of Three Star Owl‘s Open Studio, part of the Camelback Studio Tour.  The weather is supposed to be beautiful, but the meteorologists have less lovely predictions for Saturday and Sunday.  We’ll see.  Rain or shine, wind or calm, I’ll be here from 10 – 5 waiting for you to come by and check out the owly and non-owly wares.  Lots of mugs, by the way, from corn to ravens, snakes to scorpions.  And bowls, lots of bowls.

Here is a detail of a small jar fresh out of the kiln: each owlmorph is considerably less than an inch tall. >>

The Beasties are coming!

Here is a close-up of the finished surfaces of the same Beastie Pitchers shown in raw clay a couple of posts ago.  They, and other functional and sculptural ware, will be offered for sale at the upcoming Three Star Owl Open Studio, coming toward the end of this month!  Stay tuned for more details.

It’s the Return of the Beastie Pitcher! For those of you familiar with Three Star Owl “Beastie Ware” — functional clayware that looks like it might nip your fingers, or wrestle the napkin holder to the ground — here’s a march of the beastie pitchers: three in-progress, highly textured pitchers in various stages of drying, destined (if they survive their ordeal of fire) for an Open Studio/sale coming up in just over a month. Stay tuned for more details!

…Halloween Greetings from Three Star Owl.

(Photo, Detail of “Mother of Owls”, Allison Shock, smoke-fired terracotta, 2001)

What if you had to raise large numbers of owls, herds of owls, swarms of tiny owls, all at once? What if that was your job? What would you need? You might need an Owl Hive. Or a cluster of Owl Hives. What would an owl hive be like? Each hive would have to have entrances, so that the owls could fly in and out. There would have to be an interior chamber, so the owls could build their elaborate, communal owlcomb. There would have to be access for you the Owl Keeper, to extract whatever product the owl colony produced and stored inside, like vole honey or rabbit suede. It would need a lower hole to expel pellets and admit fresh air. At the very least, there would need to be a roof for the owls to land on, and a lofty perch from which to Keep an Eye on Things.

Here are some detail photos of unfinished architectural-effigy-nest-vessel-box objects in progress, some only bisqued, some completely innocent of the kiln as yet — the most recent Three Star Owl clay project. They might be Owl Hives. They might be sculpture or effigy vessels. They might be small ovens or incense censors. Or, they might be actors, waiting to be cast as archæological artifacts in an upcoming fiction post on this blog. Of course, they might be all of the above. Stay tuned to this location to see how it goes. (All photos and objects A.Shock)

Here are a few images from last weekend’s event at the Verde Valley Birding and Nature Festival.  If you haven’t checked out the Verde Valley in north central Arizona, you should — it’s beautiful green country, with big trees and lots of year-round water like the Verde River, as well as surrounding mountains, good restaurants, hiking trails and birding areas, and amazing archeological sites like Montezuma Castle and Well, and Tuzigoot.  Sedona, Jerome, and Prescott and their amenities are all within striking distance, and it’s all only two hours north of Phoenix and even less from Flagstaff.

The weather last weekend straddled the turn of the seasons, with winter making one last stand in the form of a cold wet storm that left us shivering in the big event tent, and the peaks above Jerome dusted with snow (photo above; by A.Shock).  But warm weather arrived in time for the weekend, which brought out crowds and cottonwood wool alike.

<< Hoarfrost and frozen raindrops on the tent; it was 24F at night!  Brrrr…  (Photo A.Shock)

This is one of the few sales events I camp at, because it’s held in Dead Horse Ranch State Park, just outside of Cottonwood AZ.  Here’s the view from the campground, of Tuzigoot National Monument. The rangers from the Montezuma Castle/Well/Tuzigoot parks complex had their info booth next to mine, and I heard them calling this park “the Goot”.  Unlike in the low desert, where the mesquite are newly green, the bosque in the foreground was still quite bare and gray.  (Photo A.Shock) >>

This made it easy to spot the early-returning migrants, such as this Gray flycatcher.  If you despair identifying Empidonax flycatchers, rejoice in the easy-to-ID Gray, whose gentle downward tail wag is distinctive, along with other field marks such as gray back, bold eyering and wingbars, and yellow lower mandible. (Photo E.Shock) >>

Along with gila monsters, coatis, roadrunners, and lots more, the Three Star Owl booth was positively stuffed with owls, maybe even more than usual.  Below are some owl jars, effigy vessels, whistles, and salt and pepper shakers.

It was a good event for “The Owl”, and my thanks to everyone who came by for a visit, or to take a new treasure home with them.

See you at Southwest Wings in early August!

…but only one came back.

Thanks to everybody who came by Three Star Owl at Wings Over Willcox — the show was a very good one for “the owl”.  Cranes were seen, friends were met and re-met, many clay pieces found good new homes.  And thanks also to the organizers of the Festival, who have a lot of things on their plate: birders to marshall and haul, tables and chairs to account for, vendors to wrangle, and birds to find, just to mention a few of their duties.

And, thanks to Hoover, the African Collared Dove, who once again saw me off from Scottsdale.

An excellent start to the New Year!

(Above, the tails of smoke-fired coatis rising out of bubblepak in a box in the back of the truck, awaiting transport; below, Hoover in the garage, supervising the loading of the truck.  Photos A.Shock)