Well here we are in Minneapolis!!! The high temperature today was 68 degrees...heaven!!! While I am sad to leave my family and friends in Arkansas I am NOT sad about leaving 105 degree weather...in June...what will July and August be like!?! This has been the hottest June on record in the state and I still have enough northerner in me to really dislike the heat! As we were loading up the truck on Saturday full of 200 pounds of plaster, 300 pounds of clay and another 150 or so pounds of plaster molds in this heat the (probably overly simplistic) thought of.."I should have been a graphic designer...all I would need is my laptop and some clothes" did enter my mind and few times!

Bill (my husband), who is far more tolerant of the heat, was more than willing to get in the back of the truck (with the cab on) and shift around clay and plaster for 2 hours between noon and 2pm! I think he must be crazy but I certainly feel lucky that he is because it was really helpful!

The truck half packed...

As of this Sunday morning we had the studio only half packed, I still needed to load all of my clay tools, mixed glazes, and other miscellaneous items that I think I will use. I am taking a no limit approach to moving the studio but have limited myself to one suitcase for clothes etc.!

It was hot again Sunday, Bill felt like it was worse than Saturday, so packing up the rest of the truck required some air conditioning breaks but by the evening we finally had the truck packed to the gills....Bill couldn't fit in his bike but was over the heat and kind of done with packing. After waking up Monday at 5am! he was revived and willing to successfully repack the truck so he was able to fit on both of our bikes!!!

The truck packed absolutely full

We hit the road by 7am which was 2 hours later than planned but the ride was still pretty cool the whole way to Kansas City (of course we were both partially deaf upon arrival from the wind that had been whipping our ears from both open windows going 80 down the highway (Bill drove). It is here that I should add we drove my truck... beat up as it looks it does only have 128,000 miles on it but alas no air conditioning (being a true Northerner I thought A/C was for wimps and promptly sold the unit that came with the truck (but not installed) when I was in graduate school (I needed the money). The truck drove like a champ! I have since learned that A/C in the South is the equivilent of heat in the North...and I love it!

Lunch on the way to K.C.

We were tired and hot when we arrived in KC so we didn't really do much other than take naps, eat dinner, shower and sleep. We woke again at 5am to hit the road to Minneapolis! We stopped for breakfast in downtown KC before we left town and someone tried to break into our truck cab! Bill...the real hero of the story...had packed the truck sooooo tightly that the thief who had opened the back of the cab was thwarted, unable to pull Bill's bag out of the pile! It was full of Bill's clothes so the thief would have been disappointed but Bill was happy he still had his shirts and boxer shorts!

The ride to MN was great, a cloudy day which made for a cooler (less windy) ride. We made it into town around 2:30 checked into a hotel (where we are staying for the first 2 nights) and went straight to the Northern Clay Center. We were given a tour of the place by the residency director Sarah Millfelt, she intoduced us to all of the folks in the office, many of the artists working in the space and the gallery director and assistant. The gallery space is beautiful, broken up into a large two roomed retail space, a third and fourth room for exhibitions, at the moment last years McKnight residents and McKnight fellows. The building is huge, as I said large gallery spaces, 4-5 huge communal studios where community classes for adults and kids take place, a big kiln room with 4 gas kilns two of which are soda kilns and about 7 -8 electric kilns, a glaze room, a ceramics library, a clay storage room, about 20 or more private studio spaces where people are juried in,a communal kitchen and of course the Mcknight residents studio. The McKnight studio is minimally outfitted, a space with a few tables and some shelves facing huge windows that look out into the parking lot but it will be perfect for what I need.

Bill in my new studio space above and below the wall of windows on the other side (a little like a fishbowl)
Above is one of the three or four community studio spaces and below is four of the studios gas kilns, two are soda kilns

Below is one of two retail gallery spaces and below is one of two exhibition rooms, you can see the doorway to the other space in the back.As we were touring the spaces and galleries I was getting anxious...the feeling of pressure that comes from being surrounded by so much good work and so many talented people and I'm supposed to be this (sort of biggish deal) resident. It felt like (and continues to feel like) graduate school all over again. In my mind I am thinking "how did I get here?...all of these people are so talented" I just had to keep telling myself that I've got them all fooled, most don't even know what my work looks like and was just really lucky, so if I just work hard enough maybe I will make something good enough to not look like I don't know what I'm doing! It is an odd thing to be in a field where there is no "right" answer, there is very little in the way of proof that you are good or talented beyond technical skill, and it is hard to explain a good idea ahead of time, plus no one cares what your good idea is (unless you are in school)...they want to see the results of your good ideas then there can be an assessment. The problem is that the process of getting to those results in this environment all happens in public, and with certain expectations of success (I often equate it with writing a paper with the entire class watching the whole process over your shoulder from beginning to end, not just reading them the third, fourth or final draft...they can see if you can't spell and don't know proper punctuation!) On the other hand that environment can drive you to do better and work harder. "Work harder do better" is going to be my mantra...of course at the moment with Bill here (which I am very happy about) it is a little difficult to jump right in and work like a maniac! But I have time and so I will enjoy our time here together and then work work work.

Within and hour or so of arriving we unpacked all of the truck...Bill again, a hero! and that took some serious time and muscle. After all the supplies were in the studio we left the Clay center we went out to dinner with an old girlfriend of Bill's who happened to be in Minneapolis for a few days and Tuesday was the only night we could all get together. She is very nice but it is here that I should mention it was also Bill's and my second wedding anniversary! Yes I am the least jealous and most laid back wife of all time...and to be honest we were both so tired and dirty from unpacking the truck that a big nice anniversary dinner was not on the rada

Wednesday we went back to the studio to learn about kiln sign up and material usage (how to schedule firing in a very busy studio and how to keep finances straight when using Clay Center materials) and to arrange the studio. We had to run out to get a few supplies, I covered the table which was wood and covered with red clay with padded vinyl like I have at home and mixed and measured two kinds of casting slip. I am trying to turn my commercial clay (the clay I use to throw with) into casting slip which requires that I slice it up, dry it out and reconstitute it with water and sodium silicate or darvan 7 (both are deflocculants which make the clay liquid without adding as much water as would be required without the deflocculant). I also ordered 50 lbs of premixed dry clay from Continental Clay supply which is nearby, I will test this one too. To test it means to see if it fires to the tempuratures I want, that it has the required durability, and most of all that my glazes "fit" (they don't crack off or craze, fine crackle lines in the glaze) etc. I will mix those, cast some pieces and do some glaze tests and we will see how it goes.

The living situation (I think) will be great! We are going to Josie's (the woman who I am renting from) tomorrow. We drove past her place though and it looks great! It is bright blue, 5 blocks from the Clay Center, two blocks from a natural food co-op and both her house and the Center are surrounded by Ethiopian, Thai and Vietnamese restaurants and groceries (they sell injera in the grocery)...heaven on earth I think! It is also a block in the other direction from a bike path that goes around the river! Bill is sure I will never go beyond a 5 block radius from the Clay Center and he may be right!

Tonight we are relaxing and tomorrow Bill will drop me off at the studio and go off to find wireless internet so we can both get some work done. We are also going to Josie's tomorrow to meet her, see the house and drop off some clothes, then we are staying with a friend of Bill's through Sunday. Monday Bill has work meetings (one with the same McKnight foundation who is paying for my residency) and he is back to Arkansas on Tuesday morning. Wow! this will be the longest that we have been away from each other in the 6 years we have been together. I am glad I have a flight back for the weekend at the end of July!