Studio practice - go.

I've recently begun a new method of working, and I'm sticking to it.

Between 7 and 9AM: Wake up, tend the garden, work in the studio until lunch. Regardless of when I start working, I give myself an uninterrupted 3-4 hours. I don't check email, I try not to answer my phone, I don't walk to the kitchen to snack. I work in my living room studio.

From 12 and 2PM on: Lunch, computer for email, marketing, photographing work, taking care of Studio 550 business, etc. Studio 550 is the art center my family and I are starting up in Manchester, NH. If you know of any aspiring artists who are looking for a studio to work in as a resident artist for a year, send them my way.

And the rest of the day I mind the pots I made in the morning, probably do some intermittent studio work at night, and reserve time for fun/reading/relaxation. The result has been a better structured and more productive day. Here are some of the fruits of that labor:

Bowls and pie plates

A recreated French butter dish for my Aikido Sensei

Bourbon cups and tumblers

Plates with brushwork

A close up of those plates with brushwork

Pots that make you smile

Still playing with the bike idea, but making mugs and bowls. Also, I'm breaking into some more nature inspired brushwork pieces! I'm focusing next on larger pieces - serving bowls, serving dishes, and vases.

Etsy happened to me.

It's a good thing for both you and me, but after years of putting it off, here it is!

Monica Leap Ceramics on Etsy

NCECA - Watershed Greens & Grog show

Here is a sneak peak at what will be for sale at the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts Greens & Grog show at NCECA in Tampa, FL. It all just came out of the kiln just this weekend! Get it while it's hot (and it will be hot in Tampa)!

Bourbon glasses, with brushwork on the bottoms - $20 each

Bike cup, sliptrailed and stamped - $26

Green salad plates with brushwork and slip - $35 each

Bike cup, sliptrailed and stamped - $26

Bike cup, sliptrailed and stamped - $26

Bike cup, Detail of bottom, sliptrailed and stamped - $26

Bike tumblers, sliptrailed and stamped - $28 each

Bourbon cups, with brushwork - $20 each

Bike bourbon cup, sliptrailed and stamped - $20

Bike cup, sliptrailed and stamped - $26

and much more!

Cups! Cups! Cups!

All on display at the Artstream Gallery in Rochester, NH:

Pie! Pie! Pie!

Pie plates galore - dishwasher, microwave, oven safe. I use two in my kitchen regularly! $48 each

Confessions of a snowed in potter

When the weather report is calling for 25 inches for your region and the rest of the country looks like this for the next two days:

What can you really do?

Perhaps I got this habit from a winter of being snowed in and stuck in the studios of the Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts. You can read about it in this article, but the kitchen became a place where Daniel Teran, Misty Gamble, Krisaya Luenganantakul, Elisavet Papatheodorou and Adero Willard and I all gathered when it snow stormed. So many deliciously memorable times happened there.

So now, whenever it snows, my first instinct is to bake and to make pots in the studio. And that is exactly what I'm going to do tomorrow. Apple Crisp, salad plates, bike bowls, and bike pie plates are on the agenda.

Instead of driving from my car-centric neighborhood to the wonderful Pipeline Pottery in the Picker Building in downtown Nashua, I converted my brother's living room into a temporary studio! Where will the mysterious pot-spinning magic happen? Behold:

In addition to that sort of shenanaginery, this is how I have been shooting slides of my work recently:

Yup, you got it. That is our bathroom.

So there! I spilled the beans and now you know my secrets! That's okay. We're still friends.

Stay posted - new pie plates (with a twist) will be posted soon, along with new tandem tumblers (also with a twist)! Stay warm!