Blue Jay Nest Vase

Finally I made a new version of the Blue Jay Nest, last one I did was around this time of year last year and as you can read it in my previous post ( Blue Jay Nest) I was not happy about it. There are some important changes in the new version, first of all is a bigger vase (yes!!!), second I had no intention to use any latex ever again and third I did not use as much glaze as last time.

The theme is as you can see the same, the difference is the glaze, wow! Glaze does make a huge difference.
I am debating myself weather I should leave the background always empty or if I just keep trying to find a glaze that works for me.



Blue Jay Nest 20014

 

Blue Jay Nest 2013

 

Bowl #3

Here is a photo of Bowl#3. This was a very big bowl, the biggest I have ever made. 5.5 pounds of clay!! and I did it all by myself, centering, making it and then decorate it. I choose to carved because I do like carving a lot and the walls of the bowl were not to thin.

The theme was birds, of course, a bird from Lima, it is red and black, its name is turtupilin, well, that is how we Peruvians call this pretty bird. His real name is Pyrocephalus rubinus, here in the US is called Vermilion Flycatcher. This pretty bird is called in many different way around Latin America  some examples are  mosquero sangretoro,  atrapamoscas, mosquero cardenal, mosquero bermellón, saca tu real, atrapamoscas pechirrojo. 

Tomorrow I have to pick it up from the studio, hopefully the glazes worked well together. I will take some photos on Tuesday in the meantime  here are some photos I took in Instagram, there is also a video there if you feel curious, quality is not the best but gives you and idea.

That's all for today, is a gorgeous day outside and I am out of here :). See you on Tuesday!

 

Massimo's Jewelry Box

The little Scarlet Tanager Bird (Piranga olivacea) lives in the Northeast forest of  the US during the summer. When winter comes it flees to south American countries like Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Bolivia. It makes a short stop before crossing the Gulf of Mexico, which give us, Floridians, the opportunity to see it.

It is a medium size bird that sings wonderful  tunes. I have chosen to decorate one of my boxes with this bird because, this little bird can be seen in Lima, Tampa and Dallas among other cities. These cities became special when I found out about Massimo.

Massimo is a two year old boy who has Eosinophilic Esophagitis, he lives in Dallas, Texas. His mother and I were high school classmates back in Lima, some years ago. I got back in touch with her during the days of the American Made contest. (Remember the contest? who could ever forget, right? Voting everyday for weeks. Well, during those days I got in touch with many of my former classmates. They were wonderful voting for me everyday, and you know how FB is, you get in touch with friends and friends of friends. When the contest ended, my friend Marissa invited me to "Like" her page Support for Massimo. On this page she talks about Massimo and his disease:

"Massimo is 2 years old and has been recently diagnosed with Eosinophic Esophagitis, he also has dysphagia, food aversion, asthma, chronic ear infections, GERD, developmental delays, celiac disease and failure to thrive. He also has a feeding tube. It has been hard to even reach the correct diagnosis, he has suffered since birth and we had to push, fight and plead to get where we are. If you want to know more about these diseases and our journey, you are welcome to follow this page"

The recent news about Massimo is that he no longer needs to have or to use the feeding tube and that his disease is in remission. Hurray for Massimo!! However, he still needs to be super careful about what he eats which I can only imagine must be really hard for his mother. Children usually don't ask permission to eat, if they see something they like, they just grab it and eat it. 

On November 16th will be an Craft Fair in Arlington, a city close to  Dallas, TX.  Massimo's  10 year old sister will be there selling  hand-made bracelets and the money she raises will be donate to CURED. Her mother wanted to buy one of my pieces so she can do a silent auction or something: she is very determined to make this disease well-known and to find a cure for her little boy. 

With all these things on my mind, I thought how I might contribute. What can I do that will be small and not too expensive to mail to TX; what can I do that would  make people want to contribute? Perhaps I could make something someone might buy as a present, perhaps something for their personal use . . . Who are the ones usually buying my pieces, that I know? My pieces are often purchased by women. What do women like, jewelry, so what about a jewelry box? It is small and can make a great gift, something that you use and is also decorative. I decided to carve the piece with birds, and I chose the Scarlet Tanager bird because this little bird flies around where we live. Perhaps the same little bird can be resting in Massimo's garden and then he can show up in my garden, before going to visit Massimo's family in Peru. Then, he flies back, and so we all can send our love to Massimo with this little bird.


The jewelry box will be my small contribution in the search of finding a cure for the  Eosinophilic Esophagitis. I don't have money but I do have clay ; ) Hopefully someone will like my piece and buy or bid for it. 

Here are the photos of the process, tomorrow it will fired again and hopefully it will look good, Then it will be mailed to TX and arrive just in time for the event.