full plate

What a great week it has been! I leave you with a little something for your weekend meanderings.
Clay doesn't just mean bowls and plates people, check out the poetic work of this talented woman.

I am off for a weekend of city adventures with my niece.

Thanks for making my plate full of joy this week friends!

EXTRA EXTRA...

read all about it! (article in today's Home Section of the San Francisco Chronicle)

I have to admit, of all the web blogs, articles and magazines that I have had the great honor of being featured in (and I really do appreciate them all!) Nothing feels quite as satisfying as being featured in my local home town newspaper. It is like a right of passage and maybe it hearkens back to another time when getting in the newspaper was big time. I was, after all, born in the last year of the baby boomers so I am a bit old fashioned that way.

A big thanks goes out to Meg Mateo Ilasco for writing the article. Meg is a fabulous designer and has written a couple of books as well so it is an extra honor to be recognized by someone who is recognized herself.

And last but definitely not least Verdigris Gallery is having their last hurrah tonight. Verdigris has been the place in San Francisco to check out the best of the best when it comes to local ceramic work in the Bay Area. Mary Mar, Rae and Christa who own and run the gallery are all great talents in their own right (and they are gorgeous gals too) are all moving on to bigger and better things (keep an eye on them). So if you want to come and get some amazing deals on some great ceramics (everything in the gallery will be 20% off) come on down to Verdigris Gallery tonight. You just might spot some other Pottery Art Stars while you are there!

:: thank you ::

A big stack of thanks to Victoria for her most generous post about me on Design*Sponge's guest blog this week. It brought so much good fortune my way...one of my vases will grace a page in a magazine (in July). This fabulous store made an order and tea bowls were ordered and sent. You made this San Francisco Artist a very happy girl.

And that is not all...

Another big thanks goes out to housemartin for your post as well. Like I said...I hope to see your fabulous flower arrangements in my vases some day.

Tomorrow I start my first day of teaching at Creative Growth in Oakland. It is a part time substitute position for the time being. For those of you interested click on this link to find out about this amazing place and the incredibly talented artists who make some of the most inspiring work I have ever laid my eyes on. It is an honor to get to be a part of this place.

Check back on Wednesday...I hopefully will have something very special to share with you...fingers crossed. Happy Monday friends!

tar & daisies

I have had a love hate relationship with my studio ever since I moved into it eight years ago. I once had a garage space studio in the lovely San Francisco neighbourhood of Potrero Hill complete with a backyard garden, a fig tree that had doves nesting in it and Java, the neighbors dog, to keep me company. Then the dot com boom hit and I (like so many other people) was forced out by a doubled rent that I could not afford. I put my studio in storage for about a year until my good friend Maggie offered to rent me a corner of her warehouse space in the Bayview District of San Francisco. I remember very well the first time I drove out to look at the space. It was a rainy gray day and as I drove closer to the warehouse I became increasingly depressed. It did not resemble my fig tree studio one bit. Push came to shove and I took Maggie up on her offer and moved in. I was spoiled by my Potrero Hill studio and now had to settle for the urban tangle of the Bayview.


Since I moved into the building I have occupied three different spaces. I moved with Maggie twice as her business grew and then she went out of business in 2002 and then Beni , a potter down the hall offered me a space in his studio. As the years have passed my distaste for my studio and the neighborhood has turned into affection and appriciation. The building mostly houses businesses, including everything from fortune cookie makers, harpsichord builders, motorcycle mechanics, popcorn poppers, cheese distributors, model makers, shippers, purse manufacturers, the odd painter, screen printers and the most interesting of all...a dildo maker. Oh yes, I have a piano builder on one side of me and a dildo maker on the other side. A girls dream indeed...music and well...eh hem, you get it... To top it off there is a French bakery downstairs so the smell of fresh bread baking greets me when I come into the building. Pleasure indeed! These things have succeeded in distracting me from the piles of garbage everywhere, the drug users and vagrants that hang out in the back of the building and the enormous field that stretches to the bay that is oh so beautiful and oh so toxic (it was once a navy shipyard and is contaminated with all kinds of toxic waste). There are even a couple of dogs named Ginger and Zed that greet me with barks and wagging tails when I drive into the parking lot.


There is beauty there too though sometimes I have to look for it through the muck. I was taking photographs today along the fence that divides the warehouse parking lot from the toxic field. I was admiring all the wild flowers in bloom, picking yellow daisies and then I stepped on something very strange only to realize it was an old glove stuck to an oozing blob of black tar. That is kind of how it is out there, tar and daisies... All mixed together. I like the fact that it a place where people work and are creative but it is not just artists. I like the mix of professional and eccentric. I like the guy who regularly walks through the parking lot and hollers out to me "Hey Girrrrl!" I holler back, How ya doin' ?! Then I head up to my studio betwixt the dildo maker and the piano builder and get to work.

piles

four large deep bowls 10.5"x10.5".5"

I am in pile purgatory...I am a little ashamed to admit it but I have three years of taxes to catch up with (think life changes, bi-coastal living and just a wee bit of avoidance). Even though I am relatively organized and do have all my receipts and what not gathered into envelopes I still have to sort through it all and get it organized...which leads me to wondering about the term having your taxes done...I feel like I do most of the work and then pay lots of money to have someone put my tallied figures into a computer program and then they get all the credit for doing my taxes. Okay, so I don't know all the ins and outs of the tax system and I do rely on my trusty tax preparer (who happens to my upstairs neighbor whom I LOVE!) to save me money and lead me down the straight and narrow. But hell, I want a little credit for doing some of the work.

I came upon this photo of my stacked bowls which felt to me like the state of my mind these days. Images, numbers, bowls, ideas, colors, lines all piled high in my brain. I was offered a show at the Candy Store in San Francisco for October and I am already gathering ideas and putting them down in my notebook because even though it is only April now it will be October before you know it. There are some other exciting things to come (hint, a newspaper article) but I can't say exactly when because I am not sure when it will come out, though I have been told it will be in the next couple of weeks. Don't worry... you will be the first to know...well maybe the second, my mom will be the first. Okay no more distractions...I have to get back to my piles.

seeing red

7" red dot plates with chicory flower

Each year I have different colors and color combinations that I gravitate towards. I have my old favorites in there too but this year it seems to be all about green, orange, and this new RED (see above) that I can't get enough of. Never mind that it is hideously expensive and defies my tight budget...Who needs drugs when you have this red!? I am thinking maybe a bit of navy blue (maybe towards the fall and one of my old favorites chocolate brown too) Of course the yellows are a sure hit and the canary yellow/light yellow combination is one of my first and I stay loyal to it. I do not spend a lot of time looking at trends and really I am holed up in my studio most days so I am not sure where I get the hankering for certain shades. I do think my forays into the outdoors influences me more than anything though where the navy blue is coming from is beyond me. I do it with my clothing too, I become attached to a color and wear it all year long. I have been doing this as long as I can remember wearing clothes. It seems I have a color chip embedded in my brain which reprograms itself automatically every year.

I am just finishing up a bunch of work and will be able to show you some of it by the weeks end. I have an exciting week ahead which includes a day spent at this amazing place and a visit to this letterpress studio. It is gorgeous out so I am off for my Sunday run in the park...and maybe to discover a new color.

new green

For those of you who don't know (which is probably most of you) I am a runner, errrrr I should modify that and say... a loper. I am not fast and I am not out to prove anything or beat anybody. I run for my mental health and to help keep my propensity for getting chubby in check. Now five years into my loping career I am a total convert and get depressed at the thought of the day when I will no longer be able to go for a good long jog. I thank whomever is in charge that at the age of 42 I can push out five or so miles with relative ease. I usually run in Golden Gate Park through the groves of cypress trees and past the buffalo that live in the park. Throughout the year I observe the changes in foliage, what is in bloom, dodge the pine cone detritus that is left behind from storms and leap over puddles in a single bound. All of this is one of the greatest joys in my life and makes me feel like one very sweaty super hero...even if it is in my own mind. It is on my runs that I have my most inspired moments. Of late I have been running on a path that has very large growths of nasturtium that flank its sides. Beautiful large roundish leaves with winding veins in lovely bright green topped with bright orange, creamy yellow and red flowers. I whiz by these patches of nasturtium, spotting drops of water glistening on the leaves and think, I have to make a nasturtium bowl. So that is what I am doing. The photo above is the piece in process. I have a new green (I always love a new color) that I am using on the interior and I am being especially adventurous in using it as I haven't made a test of it. Now that's faith...See what a good lope can do for you!

poppies & the tax man

Large deep bowl 10.5" x 10.5" x 5" Ivory with red poppy and straw interior $295


I was wondering today why the phone hasn't been ringing and why I haven't heard back from retailers and the such who were wanting to place orders with me and then the ah-hah light went off in my brain...it's tax time! When I worked in restaurants, April was always a painfully slow month, even in the very popular place I worked in. Coming back from my vacation, ready to go, I was not anticipating this lull but I am going to take the time to try and I am only saying "try' to get clip on things and get some pieces made that aren't earmarked for orders (Susan, I am working on your order too). My dream and goal is to have some back stock on my shelves so that I can accommodate those last minute, I need it now, orders. Now wouldn't that be nice!?

In these slow times, when it seems as if I have more time than I need (that is just a feeling not really a reality) my mind starts to go wild with all the I can do this and I can do that thoughts that really are just mind clutter and not very productive. I really have plenty to do or other things I could be getting done like, uhhh... doing my own taxes. Though I am feeling a growth spurt coming on and just may tackle some paintings again. I like doing them even if painting and drawing on a flat hard surface feels very foreign to me. I know it may seem strange, because of all the drawing and painting that I do on my ceramics, but I have a hard time drawing on a flat piece of paper. Don't know why but it often just stops me up. I feel hemmed in by the edges of the paper. Weird, I know.

On another note I do have some news. I am happy to announce that I will be teaching a one day workshop at Heath Ceramics on May 26th. You can find out all the information about the workshop by clicking here. The class size is limited so if you are interested in taking it I recommend registering for it soon. The name of the workshop is Printmakers Clay Tiles.

As for the bowl above it features one of my very favorite motifs...the ever enigmatic poppy. She is for sale though I know everyone is sending off their extra pennies to the tax man but just in case you are getting a fat return you just might want to treat yourself. It is a large bowl 10.5" x 10.5 "x 5" . The outside is ivory with a red poppy and the inside is lovely golden orange color. The cost is $295. Please email me at diana@dianafayt.com if you are interested in having her for your own.

One last thing... My friend and fellow potter Whitney wrote an excellent post on Artists (mainly potters) getting (or in this case not getting) credit for their work that is featured in publications. I urge you to read it and the comments. Thanks Whitney!

april showers bring...

hand pinched tea bowls approx 3 3/4" x 4 1/4" $48 each


...tea bowls? Well that is not really how the saying goes but in my little world (which I get to create) that is how it goes.

Today is a good day because...

1. My new intern starts working with me and I couldn't be more excited.

2. My shop page is being built and should be going up in the very near future thanks to my wonderful and amazing big sister.

3. I have use of a borrowed computer at home now (I have been frantically typing on bought minutes at Internet cafes for the past month and a half) The cherry on the top of the cake is that I will be getting a new computer of my very own at the end of the month (I am doing a happy dance, can you see?)

4.I am in love. (big smile)

5. I get to cook a sausage pasta dinner tonight (her favorite) for my dear friend, the ever amazing Lisa C.

6. and last but definitely not least I have 10 (8 left) of these tea bowls for sale. These little guys are very special items that I make every now and then and do not ever sell in stores so get em' while they last. They are all hand pinched, painted ivory (on the inside) and a bright white (on the outside), etched with a drawing of a sprig and glazed with the utmost loving care. They are something I have been making since the beginning of my ceramic making time and are kind of a signature item. They are $48 each which does not include shipping . Email me at diana@dianafayt.com if you would like one to be yours. Please note that they are all individual and no two are alike.

Happy Friday Friends. Spread the love!

dog :: wood

dogwood bowl 8.5" x 8.5" x 4"

I am back in San Francisco after a very long journey home which included one missed flight, four airports, three airplanes and one night sleeping in JFK airport in the Bon au Pan cafe, upright in a chair with my head laying on top of a table with my canvas carry on bag as a pillow. ( I hope no one saw me drooling, heh, heh). I woke up with creases on my face from my canvas bag , oh what a lovely sight I must of been... but now I am safe and sound in lovely breezy San Francisco, rejuvenated from my incredible holiday. Thank you for all your comments while I was away. I really wanted to share more with you about the island and other artists I met while I was there, but well you know, I was on vacation and having fun and relaxing was my priority.

So I am home and have this lovely dogwood bowl for sale (sold) which I finished before I left. It is a larger bowl 8.5" x 8.5" x 4" with ice blue and ivory on the outside and a gorgeous, spring inspired chartreuse interior. The cost is $140 which does not include shipping . If you are interested in it please email me at diana@dianafayt.com . I will be posting some tea bowls for sale as well as another surprise item which I can't wait to share with you.

As for inspiration my head is brimming with ideas and you just may be seeing some new boat imagery sometime soon and maybe some tropical flowers. For now though, it is all about the dogwood.

color::love::inspiration

on the beach in Mustique (the Grenadines)

I can't believe it is time to go home...but it is. My time here in Bequia been incredible. I am going home well rested, inspired and brown as a nut (and I have learned a bit about sailing too!) I do miss my studio and have lots of new ideas floating about in my head. I have a couple of things to show you that I have been saving until I return home (new pieces for sale!). The Xen Gallery Show has ended though there are still some pieces available for sale here. Thank you Dawn for all of your support and effort to make the show possible! I also have some exciting news to share with you about upcoming events for spring. If you are interested in seeing some of my vacation pictures please click here. I'll be back in a few days with more news and new work.