Live Free and Ride Bikes: New glazed work

Mugs and Tumblers-$24, Short cups with no handles-$18.

No worries if something is sold, because I am a creature of the studio, and am surely making more. Just talk to me.

Some of the recent bike tumblers:

SOLD (above)

SOLD (above)



Some of the root beer float mugs:
SOLD
SOLD
SOLD
SOLD

Some of the mugs:





Some of the cups:

Buy Local this Holiday Season

With Etsy, craft and art shows, and plenty of talented folks all over the place, there is more than enough opportunity to buy something locally made or to buy something handmade for your friends and family this Holiday Season. You don't have to worry about traffic or parking at the mall, your loved one will get something purely unique, and you use your money to strengthen your community instead of shipping it off to Asia or South America.

One good place to browse for your locally-made unique gifts of awesomeness is coming up this weekend, December 4th. It's the Husdon Junior Women's Holiday Craft Fair in Hudson, NH. There will be over 100 local artisans selling their work. It is reputed to be a quality and well attended show. I will be right inside the front entrance, around the corner.

I'll have some of the new series of bike tumblers, new mugs, and root beer float mugs, as well as the salt fired classics. Also, I am taking commissions and you can always email me at monicaleap@gmail.com to send a request for a certain piece. Check my website to see what is available. Hope to see you all there!

Name: GFWC Hudson Junior Women's Club Craft Fair
Date: 12/04/2010
Time: 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM
Day: Sat
Venue: Hudson Memorial School
Address:1 Memorial Drive (off Central St.) Hudson, NH

Family Quasi-vacation

There hasn´t been any new news in the personal studio front for the past month because I just have not been in the studio. What could possibly be a good excuse for not going to the studio? Well, simply because I´ve been in Scandinavia and Europe since the end of October.

Still, it hasn´t been all fun and games! Conversations with the architect and the builder have been ongoing in regards to the community art center (meaning community art classes, a residency program, a gallery and much more) we´re building in Manchester, NH. We´ve had regular meetings to discuss our plans for it.

Look for a website this winter and an art center this summer! You´ll be the first to know more about it.

Fresh bisqued work and new glazed work

And so the drive to make a better mug handle continues. My very first were too small to fit even the average pinky finger, my next weak and timid on the bottom, the next were plagued with cracks when layered with terra sig, and after a brief stint working with Kristen Kieffer's two-piece handles, these are so much better.

They are pulled from a lump of clay attached to the cup (soon to be a mug). I wet my hand, form it into a mold for the clay to move through, and I shape it into a handle. My friend told me once that holding a well made handle is like holding the hand of the person who made it. To a point I believe it. Every potter I know has their own unique handle, from each of their unique two hands. Still, if you don't want to imagine holding someone's hand you're not intimately involved with the entire time you're sipping your coffee, I'd understand that, too. Just remember it's a handmade object that another human being put time, thought, and character into. It's a beautiful thing.



Cups with Kristen Kieffer glazes pirated from our summer Penland workshop together. She is awesome.


Root Beer Float mugs with shop glazes. They are tall enough to account for the delectable dessert spoon you will be enjoying your root beet float with, or for your jumbo straw. They would certainly work for bubble tea or shakes, too! Anything you want a massive serving of.


My brother taught me that the way you remember to spell "dessert" with two "s"s is because it's so good you want two servings of it. So true...

Root Beer Float Mugs 2.0

They're back! By popular demand (and because I like them so much), I am making a second series of Root Beer Float Mugs. They have my trademark bellybutton and waist, with a variation on Kristen Kieffer's two-piece handle. The original series was for my senior show at Syracuse where I had root beer, vanilla ice cream, and desserts galore for visitors to gorge themselves on. The best variation I've ever had on a Root Beer Float is green tea ice cream and ginger ale (thanks for the idea, Alex)!

The longest tandem ever (goes around the whole cup):


And of course, we have bicycle tumblers and playful cups. They were all glazed this afternoon and should be done by next week. Stay tuned for the results of the first glaze firing of my work in the new studio!

Fall Sales and Shows

Just a heads up, you can find my work not only by contacting me, but also at the following venues:

The Artstream gallery in Rochester, NH. I'm being featured as a new artist in their collection. My fat belly teapots will be there, as well as some functional works - cups, bowls, and the like.
Show dates: October 1st to November 30th
Reception date: October 1st from 5-7 pm

The Concord Arts Market in New Hampshire: Eagle Square on Saturdays from 9-3pm. There is a great collection of NH artists - from blown glass to slumped glass, crocheted couture, paintings and plenty of jewelery - plus pottery. Great ideas for housewarming, wedding, or Christmas gifts. It was featured on Concord's "Art in Focus" episode 6.
I will be there: September 25 (tomorrow) and October 9.

I also just started working in the Pipeline Pottery in downtown Nashua. You can find my work there anytime, or come visit during the open studio tour on October 2nd & 3rd in the afternoons. The address is 99 Factory Street Extension.

Coming soon - Etsy, a new website, and an art center. Stay tuned!

Studio Upgrade

It has a great view of the Nashua River and Downtown

Trimming in the new studio

Hello again!

As of last week I started working in the Pipeline Pottery in the Picker Building. Located in Nashua's downtown Millyard, the address is 99 Factory St. Ext. and it is found behind all the millyard apartment buildings and close to the entrance to Mines Falls. It's at the end of the hall on the second floor.

The Picker Building and a number of other galleries downtown are having an Art Walk on October 2 and 3 next month. Come and visit and see what Nashua has to offer! You could start here and within walking distance are so many delicious downtown restaurants on all sorts of price points. The Nashua Garden, The City Room Cafe, and the Mexican Bakery are some favorites.


The wheel/studio portion of the studio. There is also an electric kiln, slab roller, kitchenette, glaze mixing materials, and gallery space up front.

Put Something In: Shel Silverstein

Draw a crazy picture,
Write a nutty poem,
Sing a mumble-grumble song,
Whistle through your comb.
Do a loony-goony dance
'Cross the kitchen floor,
Put something silly in the world
That ain't been there before.
-- Shel Silverstein

This is a poem a good friend re-introduced me to in college. I love it. It was on my studio wall all through undergrad, and it's found it's way to my current studio. You can see it in the middle of the postcards and pictures on the back wall.

Though it is not as glamorous as I thought my first studio would be, it's great to have one again. It is tucked away in a corner of the basement in the house I grew up in. I'm working on the kiln and glazes part of the equation, but that will come in time.

In the meantime, I am soon to be found selling work at the Concord Arts Market. The dates I'll be there are September 18 & 25 and October 9 & 23. See you there in the brisk fall air! The work will be new works from this summer supplemented with work you can get a preview of in the "New Works" section of my website. Enjoy!

Manchester, NH's newest art center

The mission: To enrich the lives of diverse communities through increased access to the arts

The core values: Community engagement, sustainability, and social consciousness

The Services: Gallery space, rentable studio space, longer term residency program, mubmobile, community youth classes, evening adult classes, empty bowls, public art projects (murals on the building, bus shelters, etc.), a performance/movement/rentable open space with mirrors, kitchenette and changing rooms (maybe an Aikido dojo later?) and a greenhouse on the roof.

The name: Unknown

Want to join me in this awesome endeavor? I'm just getting starting, but I'll be needing help all along the way. Web design, marketing, students, teachers, painters, thinkers, dreamers, dancers, laughers, bakers, every skill is a valuable skill.... Let's talk!

Coming home

All in the last week of June I was offered two amazing opportunities - both childhood dreams, both once in a lifetime. On Monday my dad offered to help build up a community art center in the old Manchester, NH store space. The rest of the building is being renovated into residential units and instead of renting the space out to someone else, he figured it would be a perfect space for my art center. The first floor and the basement are "mine". The building is in downtown Manchester, right across from the Verizon arena and on Main St. It probably is the perfect place.

The building was built in 1890. The photo (1972) shows the building at the tip of the arrow. (Photo compliments of the Manchester Historic Association.

Then, on Friday morning, I received a phone call from the US Fulbright office in DC saying they had money available to offer me a grant. The project was to live and work for ten months in Cambodia under doing community development/resource and capacity building with resettlement communities outside of Phnom Penh. He wanted a yes or no by Monday morning.

Well, I'm in New Hampshire again, so you know I've turned down the Fulbright Grant and decided to move forward with the art center. It will be great. More soon.

In addition to all that I'm setting up a personal home studio in Nashua to prep for the Christmas season. More on that soon, too!

Penland 2010: Kristen Kieffer - Altered, Ornamented, and Electric

The first night in the studio - I starting giggling right when I started to wedge again

A view of the knoll on my way to the kitchens around 6 am


After pleading my sad story of being studio-less for the past two years to the Penland School of Crafts (which was sweetened by some great letters of recommendation - Thanks Reeder and John), they gave me a scholarship work study position to attend a summer workshop with Kristen Kieffer. While the work study position in the kitchen for AM prep cook (6am-10am) did take me away from the studio a bit, the kitchen staff is so much fun and the job is fairly easy. I cut more melons and veggies those two weeks than I think I have my entire life.

The class was great. It was such a laid back environment - very nurturing and open. Kristen showed us some of her novel decoration techniques and we tried them out.

Not knowing what I would make, I'm really surprised and excited about what did come out of me. Bicycle inspired motifs made by a bicycle wheel stamp and slip trailing in various colors. Another bike bowl was purchased by the director of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in Atlanta, GA at the auction. Unfortunately, I don't have an image of that piece. No doubt, the bicycle is something that is part of my lifestyle right now, and it will continue to surface in my work!


Barbara - a fellow bike enthusiast who purchased my first and (currently) only bike vase in a vicious auction bidding!


A collection of demitasse cups (with Kristen's trademark two-piece handle


A bike mug that was purchased at the show and tell by Boyd Sugiki and Lisa Zerkowitz (fabulous glass artists)


A view of the sunset hillside on summer solstice - 8:35pm

A view of the knoll from my window in the Craft House

View of the clay studio at sunset


Penland is Beautiful. It also is full of beautiful people.

Fresh new wheels for a fresh new studio

Thank you, Raleigh craigslist.

I am now the proud owner of two wheels - one a treadle wheel (powered by my foot) and the other an electric. Both a little used, but both equally functional and equally awesome. The treadle wheel is the same as one that I used to trim on when I was learning how to throw in high school. It's wonderfully nostalgic!

Pictured is my friend John from my department who helped me pick them up in his well-abused truck. he helped me with well wishes because he could tell how momentous this act was in setting me up for this next phase of my life and love. I could not have done this without him!

Beginning again

It was the title of one of my pieces from four or so years ago, but it has a whole new meaning this time around. Back then, it was very emo. This time around, it is very real. In a matter of days I will be a graduate of a Master's in City and Regional Planning program. Where I go from here on out is still fairly open to serendipity. However, what I do know is that I'm excited to get back into a studio/pottery producing rhythm.

Below we have my first attempt to make plaster bats from old donated and waterlogged plaster. Eh, didn't work so well, so I'm attempting try #2 today.



Still, I've got donated reclaim clay, I'm soon to have a plaster bat to dry it out on, I've got some interest from local galleries, I'm heading to Penland in mid-June and I'm soon to have the time resources to put all these other pieces together. Yes, it is an exciting time. If you know anyone who is selling a wheel, please send them my way.

The end of the SEASSI summer

Always a graceful goodbye

It was eight weeks of intense language learning in Madison, WI. The teachers were phenomenal. It ended August 7th, 2009, and I am just getting to write about it. A summary in ten points...

1) I learned to sail a tech dingy and a sloop on Lake Mendota in my spare time.
2) I lost my prescription glasses in the lake during a pirate water battle.
3) I made my first Khmer friends!

The Cambodian SEASSI kids (clockwise from me, Vichet, Mary, Gina, Richard, Niroth)

4) By the end of the summer course we finished reading a famous Khmer novel, Sophat, and then created and acted a small skit based on it.
5) I learned an amazing amount about my language and my culture. However, nothing compared to what I would experience in December of 2009 when I traveled to Cambodia with my family.
6) Volunteered with the Bike Federation of Wisconsin.
7) Hung out with people in the park at sunset who hula hooped & spun poi.
8) Got walking pneumonia, which may now be dormant in my body and recur if I don't take care of myself.
9) I went on a two week family bike ride with Alex's family, who just happened to be planning the annual family bike ride in Central Wisconsin.
10) Returned home to North Carolina to begin a new semester.

The very beginning of the ride - Onalaska, WI, August 9th