It's a funny thing about money...

Thank you for all of your concerns. With the economic hard times, everybody has been affected. I am lucky to have a job...there are many out there without. I know the numbers came out to nearly some 600,000 people, but I know that there are more out there without work.

On another note, I have begun working again! Nothing impressive, but surely thought provoking...in a procedural way of course.

I had a thought one day...about Jun Kaneko. He does huge pieces, called Dangos (trans. Japanese dumplings, or dumplings), that are often seen in public spaces (in front of buildings, etc). I went to a lecture that he was doing at the Japanese American National Museum in LA a while back where he was explaining that he bisque fired these Dangos for weeks because they were so large and thick. I know that this might sound crazy, but does he really need to fire em that slowly? or is it a marketing scheme to pump the value into this work? ie, unlike standard ceramic artists, I fire by pieces an exorbitantly long time and thus my work is priced higher. Like I said, crazy thought about what it really takes for a ceramic artist to make it in the mainstream.

Of course, this is all really prompted by the fact that I feel that ceramic artists are, in general, at the lowest spot on the totem-pole. One might say we were are the pediatrics of the art field, although that might even be questionable considering the fine line we dance between art and craft.