The reason for this lovely picture of Nick Bivins’s “Coffee Time” set is because I am making good use of a nice little green and white liquor cup of his that I got at the Seattle NCECA gallery upstairs tonight. I should take a photo of it, along with a few other cups that I got at NCECA and post it, but it seems like the lighting and timing are never right when I think about it and have all 5 cups with me. Oh, I should also post a pic of the nice cup that I got from Bede Clarke (our visiting artist for the workshop this month). We had a cup trade at the potluck last night. It was randomized, pull a number out of a hat and see which cup has the same number in it… and I was lucky enough to get his (I swear I didn’t cheat, I didn’t even know what numbers were in the cups. Even more ironically, he got mine! He seemed fairly happy about it, too 🙂 He came over to give me a hug. It was the only time that happened during the cup trade– we were the only ones that got each others’ cups.

What can you possibly say to help a friend who is living in agony when you’re 200 miles away? I have been extremely happy for the past two weeks, but now other things are seeping into my thoughts, making me remember the things that were wrong before I came up for this awesome workshop. By the way, the workshop officially ended yesterday. We unloaded the last two kilns and did a complete cleanup. Now it’s time to prepare to go back home. Home? I meant to say… my summer job, my dad’s place, the middle of nowhere. I feel like this is my home here, near the studio, in this town where all of my friends and my passions are. I will leave Sunday morning, or maybe sleep in… and go to my mom’s place for Sunday dinner. She is planning a Father’s Day thing at her place, and it’s on the way back to my dad’s place anyway. I bet it will be alright, and it will be good to have the whole family together again. I am thinking about giving my dad one of my latest pots for Father’s day, but I just remembered that I should probably give my mom a late Mother’s day present too… and I have the perfect pot for each of them 🙂 I am thinking of giving my dad this cool sculptural pitcher thing that I made last week and soda fired this week… it started out as a wheel-thrown vase and was so soft that it flopped when I took it off the wheel, but I saved it anyway and squeezed it together and carved a hole through it and smoothed it out. When my professor saw it and I told him how it came to be, he said “Make some more ‘failed pots’ ” 🙂 It is completely different from most of what I’ve been making, including my hand-built stuff. Speaking of, I was thinking of giving my mom another hand-built vase that I made… a flask vase. She is always asking me if I will give her nice pots to decorate her home with, but the cabin just wasn’t the right place to display my articulate pots. If I made “country pottery”, it would have been absolutely perfect. Now she lives in a house with a cleaner design, and I think I have the perfect pot for her coffee table 🙂

Anyway, I’m worried about one of my closest friends because of his current dramatic living situation. The reason why I’m worried is because I know he is in pain and he is trying to distract himself from it. I hope he can find a way out of there soon. I really don’t know how I can help him when I’m so far away. He said that he has a couple of options for new living situations, but everything is up in the air at this point… no real plans, no real relief. I really would like it if he were to visit again soon, but there’s no telling what will actually happen at this point. I feel like he needs distractions, like new friends or hobbies or something. A new place should help…