Affordable Pottery

Last week I showed some examples of pottery I would collect if money were no object. This week I'd like to show some affordable examples of beautiful pottery. Mouse and credit cards ready? Enjoy.

Sprout Home II

Remember this cute vase at Casapinka? She has it on her wonderful turquoise table in her foyer. Pink says its Japanese and that she got from Ebay. Not my taste at all, but really cute nonetheless. I can sometimes appreciate a vase even if its not white, matte, blah, blah, you know the rest.

In any event, look at the vase below from Sprout Home. I think it would look absolutely smashing next to the the above vase in Pink's home. I don't know if its not serious enough for her taste, but I love the oxymoronic feel of it. It's made of porcelain, which we are acustomed to seeing in dainty, delicate shapes (which is oxymoronic actually too because porcelain is very durable material).

This vase has taken the notion of perfect porcelain and turned it on its ear, by crumpling it. I like to think the artist probably had a perfectly shaped vase, and then intentionally crumpled it, making a very powerful statement on the nature of perfection. That's one cute vase. What do you think, Pink?

Sprout Home

Sprout Home has really beautiful vases. Love the Kira vases at top, thinking of ordering. Ahh, so hard to be a minimalist on a thing diet. The vase at the bottom is a little pricey at about $80.00, but is matte white, simple shape, hard to find. Love all of these.

CB2

I love CB2. They have great lamps, pillows and wall art. So it's no surprise that they have cute vases and very affordable. These lovely panda vases are priced $4.95 - $9.95! One of each please!

Kenneth Wingard

Kenneth Wingard has very beautiful vases, reasonably priced.

Great lamps too.

Perch

I love Perch pottery, but I don't think it would be possible to buy it without buying a pod painting too. I would love to have several of their hanging pots over my dining room table. I think they'd fit in great in a 70s retro-mod environment or on a sci-fi set. Totally groovy.

Perch can be seen at Velocity Art and Design.


Perch's apron vases. I want them all!

Kim Westad

Kim Westad is a fine potter indeed. Collectors should snatch her works now before she gets any more popular (and expensive). If she hasn't already, I predict she's going to need to hire assistant potters soon. (Kim, can I have the job?) I love the simple elegance of her work as well as the textures. Her imprints are lovely too, I think Kim is probably inspired by Hella Jongerius' embroidered pieces which I mentioned in an earlier post.

This one is called Whirls and is one after my own heart. It would look great in my place.

I want them all! Kim's work was featured in this month's House Beautiful. Congratulations, Kim!

Kim's home page is here. Kim's Etsy shop is here.

Painting Schizophrenia

It seems I have two paintings styles. Or maybe it's just that I can't decide what genre I want to paint in. I love graphic minimal paintings, but I also love paintings with lots of swirls and colors. When I paint, I always have two or more canvases going.



One canvas is usually the swirly, free canvas. And the other precise and geometric.

Remember this painting from an earlier post?





Well, I painted this one on the same day. Two very different paintings. The swirly ones are much more free and fun. I get frustrated with the minimal paintings, because they are never as perfect and precise as I'd like.

Often, I do a painting like this and it sits for a while. If I like it, I leave it alone. Sometimes I decide to add more paint to it. As was the case today with this painting, which now looks like this:

I'm not sure what happened here. A friend said he thought it looked like a dragon. I don't see that. I thought maybe it looked like those barbed wire tattoos, or maybe a Chinese character.

I remember Picasso saying that the hardest part about painting is knowing when you are done and that sometimes he wished he had someone to pull him away from a canvas when he was done. I have thought the same thing. I sometimes have to literally drag myself away from a canvas, because I am not sure it is done and my inclination is to just keep layering paint on.

Is this painting done? I am not sure. What do you think?

A Quick Word About Flickr - or 15 Minutes of Fame

I spent a great deal of time below talking about O'Keeffe, Steigletz and Warhol's influence on flickr. I won't waste time telling bloggers what a miracle flickr is, they already know. Recently, when this vast new world opened up to me, well, it changed my life. No kidding. I'm not just trying to be dramatic.

Looking at flickr confirmed my belief that everyone is creative. There is an artistic soul inside every human being. I can literally spend hours with an intriguing set, and it never ceases to amaze me how generous the people are being with their lives. Flickr is much more fascinating than TV or tabloids. And the "ordinary" people who share their lives are infinitely more fascinating than celebrities.

The mundane becomes sublime in flickr. Through this miracle I experience someone's trip to Sri Lanka, or Tibet, or Peru. And I might even see what meals they ate and what they bought from a street vendor. Or I see the way they set a table, or a craft they are proud of.

Through flickr I learned that there are celebrities of the internet. I can't help wondering if this is the 15 minutes Andy Warhol spoke of.

I would like to present various flickr artists as a regular theme on this blog. And the first is Jeana Sohn.

The Artist as Art - Jeana Sohn

This is Jeana Sohn, who I "met" through the miracle of flickr one afternoon while goofing off at work. Jeana is a talented artist, and a great example of living as art. Jeana generously shares her life with flickr viewers, and I am grateful. The afternoon I spent peaking into her life made me happy.

Jeana is fearless with the camera, the way O'Keeffe was. And the camera loves her the way it did O'Keeffe. I love the above picture of Jeana, that she titled "uugh." I want to blow this picture up and apply paint to it in Warholian style. I believe Steigletz would be proud of this shot.
Jeana demonstrates artful living in the way she decorates her apartment, and in the way she sets a table. And she is a marvelous painter as well. I love the soft yearning in her paintings. If I were a talented writer, it would be great fun to write a novel around these paintings.








The table setting would make a great painting. And, you know, sometimes I feel like the girl in the last painting, wishing I could fly, or be carried away, from all the madness and rushing.


Great work, Jeana. And thanks for being an inspiration! Jeana's blog is here. See Jeana's paintings here. Jeana's flickr set is here.