hazelnut and ME

(row of elephant pitchers and cups, elephant teaset, in the window, Spirit and Kitsch Art Garage)
Let’s talk caffeine and inspiration. Much has been said lately about this mysterious mystery coffee, Hazelnut, http://www.ludgatefarms.com/
from Ludgates. Sure, hazelnut may be the most popular coffee flavor out there, but something about this stuff, maybe the Ithaca air and water are extra psychedelic ( a very real possibility) but that stuff powers my days lately. I have heard that one reason the English rose to power 400-500 years ago was the rise of coffee and tea houses, while the rest of Europe got out of bed and started drinking wine and beer.
Anyway, I was feeling, as I said Monday afternoon, like turning horses into zebras, getting crazy with the cheeze whiz, as Beck said. So, I made some doodles. Now, when I finish monkeying around with those monkeys, later today, I can do something new. I am often surprised at what comes out of the muddy murk of my brain. I don’t talk about it much, but at college as art students, we had to study 2 topics. Mine were, as you know, ceramics, the other was architecture. I was a poor architecture student in many ways, because there is a level of precision I was too lazy to pursue, and also the teachers and visiting jurors were MEAN. So, at Bennington College, downstairs was this vast mess of a ceramics studio, always full of mellow dead heads and other messy types (such as myself!), and kindly and esoteric instructors who only wanted you to work hard, finding your own direction, improving. Upstairs there were sharks circling in the architecture studios, and I made a habit of avoiding the late-every-night smoke cigarettes and draw up buildings and talk about how brilliant you are crowd, instead working at home or in the morning. I still love architecture and design, in an abstract and incompetent way, but can you see how I came to that career crossroads??? Architecture study made me hate architecture, but yes, I LEARNED something. A few things. Therefore, to bring all this around to my point, I am sometimes surprised at the way I strive for certain designs and shapes, and a balanced appearance (I hope). I studied architorture, as we called it, and bring some of that training to the pots, this post to be continued when I get some of these ideas actually made.