Danny Dozier at Mountain View

This is a great video of Danny Dozier playing at Mountain View, Arkansas. To purchase his CD "Guitar Instrumentals," click here.

(c) 2009 - Ruth Mitchell - all rights reserved

What is Raku?

Raku is a method of firing pottery that began in Japan, more than 350 years ago. The name Raku comes from the Japanese language, and means enjoyment, contentment, and happiness. Raku firing as practiced in America is the result of experiments begun by Paul Soldner in 1960.

The actual firing of Raku differs from traditional cone firing in that it is relatively fast, and the pot is removed from the kiln while still hot, and placed in a pit or can with combustible materials such as straw, leaves, paper, or sawdust. This is where most of the reduction takes place. The pots are then dunked in water or cooled with a strong fan. The process makes Raku pottery somewhat more fragile, but the results are quicker and the glazes used often provide dramatic results.--Ruth Mitchell


Raku pots by Jamie Cooper now on display at the Bottle Tree Gallery.

(c) 2009 - Ruth Mitchell - all rights reserved

Viola Frey - "Wow"

The work of Viola Frey is fascinating to me. From the mid-1950s to her passing in 2004, Viola Frey broke boundaries in ceramics. She is known for her larger-than-life monumental ceramic figures of men in power suits and women either clothed, inspired by the fashions of the ‘50s, or dressed in pink in their birthday suits.

Her innovative method to create these pieces, sometimes in excess of 10 feet tall and weighing thousands of pounds, included sculpting the clay figures in their entirety, then letting the clay figure to dry. She would then saw the figure into pieces, each of which were individually glazed and fired in a kiln. Once fired, the 100 pound (or more) pieces were painted by Frey and then reassembled into the final sculpture. In contrast to their larger-than-life scale, many of the colossal figures that Frey produced were inspired by the artist's collection of ceramic kitsch, which she reused many times. She was also influenced by her family, especially her grandmothers and mother, artists Mark Rothko, Henri Matisse and Andy Warhol.

Frey often sculpted women holding the world or gazing at it, placing them in a position of power. She created men standing, walking, seated or fallen, wearing their nature and vulnerabilities in their suits and their visages. Frey also made smaller ceramic sculptures--sometimes hand-built, at other times slip-cast.

Frey was a longtime resident of the Bay Area, and her influence is felt on multiple levels. Frey showed her work regularly and had several public artworks, including one at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center. Perhaps more significantly, Frey was a member of the faculty of the California College of the Arts from the mid-1960s until her death, teaching ceramics to several generations of artists. In the late 1960s and 1970s, Frey helped to redefine the place of her medium in the art world, along with fellow Bay Area ceramic artists Robert Arneson, Manuel Neri, Peter Volkous, and others. And, lastly, as a woman working in a field often dominated by men and in accomplishing work on a scale taken on by few, Frey distinguished herself as an exceptional artist.

Frey was born in Lodi, California in 1933. She received her B.F.A. from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and her M.F.A. from Tulane University, New Orleans. She twice received an Artist’s Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Arts Commission of San Francisco conferred on her an Award of Honor for Sculpture.

Frey, with the help of her assistant of 17 years, Sam Perry, worked until her death in 2004, even after having several strokes. Photo: Michael Tropea, Chicago, IL

009 - Ruth Mitchell - all rights reserved

A Blast of the Past

Recently I was reviewing site statistics in hopes of learning more about our readers. Interestingly enough this page came up as a very popular search. I checked it out to see what it was and had a great time rereading some of our most popular posts. They were written about this time two years ago. It's nice to know that our material has such wonderful longevity. Thought I would "reshare" these entries with you, our cherished readers. Hope you are having a wonderful day. Pictured is some new work by artist Pat Matthews that is hanging in our Bottle Tree Gallery.

(c) 2009 - Ruth Mitchell - all rights reserved

Mata Ortiz Exhibit is Inspiring

It is such a cool story. In the 1950s Juan Quezada, a native of Mata Ortíz, a small village in Chihuahua, Mexico that was impoverished when the timber industry died out, discovered ceramic fragments from the Casas Grandes culture that had flourished there eight hundred years before. The people of Casas Grandes dispersed shortly before the arrival of the first Spanish explorers in the 16th century, and their unique pottery-making tradition was lost until Quezada chanced upon potsherds while collecting firewood in the hills near his home. Inspired by these clues from the past, Quezada learned the techniques of this lost tradition and revived the pottery production in the region, which now produces some of the world’s finest contemporary ceramics. More than 400 community members are involved in pottery production, which has become an important source of income for the region.

The Field Museum in Chicago has organized a wonderful show, Transforming Tradition: Pottery from Mata Ortíz, featuring both contemporary and centuries-old ceramics. It is now on display at Crystal Bridges’ temporary gallery the Massey in downtown Bentonville, AR located at 125 W. Central Ave.

Sculpted, fired and then hand-painted in a labor-intensive process lovingly referred to as La Lucha, or “the Struggle,” the coiled pots, called ollas, feature a dazzling array of intricate geometric designs, fine decorative painting and incising, and beautifully rendered animal forms such as pigs and ducks. Twenty-seven black and red earthenware ollas, including two examples from the Casas Grandes culture that date to the 14th and 15th centuries, is currently on display at the Massey through August 29.--Ruth Mitchell

(c) 2009 - Ruth Mitchell - all rights reserved

Art Has Never Been a Better Investment

Art as an investment has never made better sense, and that's not just for the mega collector who has millions to invest. While economic woes continue to tumble the stock market, mega art continues to rocket out of the ball park the misconception art is a frivolous investment. While any investment is risky, art has an intrinsic value that gives dividends regardless of its resale value. You can enjoy it, possess it even use it if it is functional. Long after that new cocktail dress is out of style or that flat screen television is obsolete the art in your home will continue to give you pleasure as long as you purchase those pieces you like, and you don't buy to impress others or solely as an investment. Additionally at this time, artists like everyone else, are dealing with a sagging economy, and prices are very reasonable.

We recently received some new pieces by emerging glass artist Andrew Jackson Pollack. If you remember he was displaced by hurricane Katrina, but has since returned to New Orleans and is back better than ever. We see a continued dedication and growing skill level to his work and hope that you see something you like as well.

(c) 2009 - Ruth Mitchell - all rights reserved

Sensual Body Butter Bars Are Now Available at an Obscene Price

There is nothing, I mean nothing that I have ever put on my skin that is as moisturizing as Sue Poff's all natural Body Butter Bars. Your skin becomes sensually soft, lightly fragrant and there is no heavy residual. So your skin breathes, yet remains moisturized. Now in a super sweet deal with Sue, we have arranged for you, Creative Consumers™ a new, lower price only available on buyoutsidethebox.com, just $18. and that includes shipping.

You can now order her bars in six luscious scents: Grapefruit, Tahiti, Southern Belles, Vanilla Honey, and "The Beach." Grapefruit, one of my favorites leaves you feeling fresh, Tahiti has a coconut/pina colada flavor so rich you might want to taste it. Southern Belles is lightly floral, and "The Beach" has a suntan lotion fragrance.

Or, try the push up sticks that fit handily in your purse. These are now only $13 which also includes shipping. Buy for yourself or a friend, this product is simply luscious!

(c) 2009 - Ruth Mitchell - all rights reserved

New Technology Answers Questions of Creativity

Henri Matisse as he was painting “Bathers by a River” in 1913, which went through a seven-year evolution as the artist continued to make changes. These changes can now be traced using X-ray technology.

Photo courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, NY.


In an evolutionary exhibit first shown at the Art Institute of Chicago the exhibition’s organizers, John Elderfield, chief curator emeritus at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Stephanie d’Alessandro, the curator of modern art at the Art Institute of Chicago, have brought together 40 paintings, drawings and sculptures they examined with the latest digital imaging techniques, laser scanning, ultraviolet illumination and state-of-the-art computer software. The art curators also tested paint samples and studied fresh material unearthed from the artist’s family archives in Issy-les-Moulineaux, a Paris suburb.

Although art historians have traditionally been able to track the changes of an artists work by studying paintings in progression, without this high-tech approach they had no clear idea of exactly how those changes were developed: how much hands-on experimenting went into the new work and what formal processes of study, revision and rejection were involved. Now those mysteries have been largely solved, thanks to an extraordinary array of technologies deployed in putting together “Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917,” an exhibition that July 18th at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Ms. d’Alessandro and Mr. Elderfield got the idea for the show after they started examining “Bathers by a River,” which Matisse worked on from 1909 to 1916. “Matisse said it was one of the most pivotal works in his career,” Ms. D’Alessandro said in an interview. “By studying the painting in depth we began to see a new chronology that hadn’t been seen before, one which explained what he meant by that statement.”

Henri Matisse. Bathers by a River. 1909–10, 1913, 1916–17. Oil on canvas. 102 1/2 x 154 3/16" (260 x 392 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago, Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection. © 2010 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

With this technology, the curators could see changes in the outlines of figures beneath the painting’s surface, revealing a constantly shifting landscape of figures, with stronger lines and more intense tones over time. “We were never sure” of the degree to which “he transformed the canvas,” Mr. Elderfield said. “He kept going back. Yet he always stopped before a work looked finished.”

Before turning to high-tech analysis, the conservators removed the varnish and previous restorations from “Bathers, ”which had yellowed over the years, obscuring the artist’s palette; as a result, the colors came through more brightly. They were also able to unravel the steps in the making of a suite of four large-scale relief sculptures depicting the back of a woman inspired in part by “Three Bathers,” a Cézanne painting owned by Matisse. The sculptures, which he began around the time he was working on “Bathers” and developed over 23 years, also grew more and more radical over time.

By implementing laser scanning, the process that went into the sculptures’ evolution became evident. The first, depicting a classical, round female body, was made in clay and then he cut two casts in plaster, one to make in bronze, the other to use as a starting point for the next sculpture. The scanning showed exactly how he used a cast from the previous sculpture for each of the four works, changing the surface of each succeeding figure until the overall form had a flatter surface and was quite stark and architectural, strikingly similar to many of his paintings during the same period.

Ultimately the curators were able to chart the course of Matisse’s thinking as he added or subtracted details, and juggling several works at once, borrowing from one, experimenting with another, never quiet satisfied. The result is a far more complete portrait of the artist during one of the least understood, yet critical, periods in his life. Read more here...

(c) 2009 - Ruth Mitchell - all rights reserved

We Can Be More Green

While it's not practical to return to the horse and buggy era, it certainly makes sense in some applications. This shot of a beautiful carriage team in front of the local post office was taken on Mackinac Island, Michigan where motorized vehicles are not allowed excluding an occasional ambulance. The whole life system is set up for horses, including the composting of the waste. But it is the wonderful charm of having the animals there vs, noisy, polluting cars that drives the tourism engine here. Wouldn't it be neat if some historic city centers modeled areas after autoless Mackinac? Just a thought as we continue to destroy the Gulf of Mexico and millions upon millions of living organisms through the negligence of off shore drilling practices.--Ruth Mitchell

(c) 2009 - Ruth Mitchell - all rights reserved

Guess Who's Clic'n

I've shared the story before about how we found Clic glasses. Basically we were buying "readers" for Mitch by the gross. Still he was always searching for a pair of glasses that weren't scratched, and invariably he could never find them when he needed them. I suggested a tether, but that wouldn't do. We had noticed actor Robert Joy wearing some peculiar glasses on CSINY and then by chance we saw them at a store in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

Well, you guessed it, Mitch wasn't interested. "I'm buying them with the hopes that you will reconsider and try them," I told him. Which I did. He put them on and basically he's only on his second pair in almost three years. I can't tell you what a miracle that is.

Well, I'm writing today to let you know we have some new colors available, like luscious lavender, trendy light tortoise shell, rust and melon. And guess what? Helen Mirren wears Clic glasses. I've always liked that lady. Not only is she an incredible actress, but she's savvy too.--Ruth Mitchell

(c) 2009 - Ruth Mitchell - all rights reserved