10,000 owls

I am so excited about art right now I have decided to make 10,000 owls. It will take me all year. I am also going to make a bunch of other stuff of course.....and NCECA is coming up soon.

I am curating a show at Fancy called Cascadia Now!! That I hope will be successful. It is in March for NCECA. It is a group show with a theme of regional independence in a future society. I'm leaving it up to the artists to interpret it however they want. There have been books written on Cascadia, and there is even a description in Wikipedia. So the idea is certainly not new. My idea was that when the US started off, there were only around 3 million citizens or so, and the state of Washington alone has 8 mil. There are lots of countries with smaller populations and since we share common politics, environment, and culture with our southern and northern neighbors it is only reasonable tat some day this region could become a nation.

Can Can

I've got a new show up at Fancy. Can Can is the latest installment of my beer can collection. Each can has a unique design painted in underglaze colors. Some of the cans are overglazed with gold lusters. I ended up making over 130 cans for the show. It is up till the first week of December.

Summer Stuff

Today is beautiful. I've been making giraffes in my back yard. I am driving to Kirkland in a while to teach two classes at the Kirkland Art Center. The Wheel World for Teens and Clay 101 for adults. I also get to pick up some things from the glaze firing.

Yesterday I fired 9 pegiracorns, I also made some bears riding giraffe sculptures plus a bunch of skulls. I even made a unicorn skull. These were all made out of recycled clay, so I am eager to see if they survive the firing--often the recycled clay contain foreign objects(like bits of wood) which make things explode......I also trimmed 12 wheel thrown pots and glazed a couple small sculptures. Where I teach, at Alki beach on Mon- Wed. , is right off the water. I get a perfect unobstructed view of the Olympic Mountains, along with tugboats and ferries passing buy, diving osprey chased by seagulls and even an occasional seal pup slouching on the sands down below.

Beer 40: Art Show and Birthday

Well I'm turning 40 and am celebrating with an art show at Schooner Exact Brewery. The show is all about beer. I made over 100 beer cans with unique titles, beer bottles with and without labels, a bottle cap collection, beer mugs, paintings of beer bottles, and painted beer can cards and post cards. The cans are each unique and are grouped according to the method I used to fire them. Some have ceramic decals, china paint, gold and white gold lusters. Others are gas fired, raku, or are fired in an electric kiln. I am displaying them on top of old cardboard beer boxes. I already sold one can-- "Lil Tug " and am looking forward to this coming Friday when I have my opening/birthday celebration.

Also, since we closed Nancy, I've just been readjusting to a new schedule. Fortunately the closure has allowed me to start an Etsy shop www.aaronmurray.etsy.com and to spend more time on making art. In addition to the Beer themed stuff I have also been painting a series called "Urban Decay" which is mostly paintings of grungy old buildings, graffiti, and warehouses. I have also launched a line of owl pendants with sparkling gold lusters (sold at Fancy). I am also making sculpture of "concert kids", a series of figurines depicting people in rock concert t-shirts and similar attire. I hope to make a crowd of these and have them in front of a cramic rock band on stage. They are the rock'n roll version of my cowboys....