Family Collaboration Time (Again)

Mugs w/ decals of Sofie's manga drawings

I transferred my granddaughter's manga drawings to decals and put them on some mugs. I still need to work some more on the glazes to find the ones that do well in the third firing needed to put on the decals, but I think they look great! 

Sofie was proud to put her initials on the bottom of the mugs, but when I told her that she could have them to give to her teachers she responded that she wanted to work more on the drawings. "It's not my best work," were her words. And so it starts, that second-guessing of ourselves, the feeling that what we do is not quite good enough... It made my heart sad to see it start so early in this generation. She is quite a talented artist. It's a joy to watch her develop this gift. I hope that she will learn to love her creations rather than focus on perceived flaws.

*****

Tumbler w/ line from Chris's poem

The other family collaboration was with my husband. Chris was into writing poetry and song lyrics in his twenties. I found a poem he had written that contains a line that spoke to me: 

"The trees were trying desperately to tell me something
waving their leaves frantically..."

So I made some tumblers and wrote those words into the leather-hard clay. To make it stand out more, I rubbed black underglaze into the words and glazed with my favorite green glaze.