Mary Richmond Design

Setting Goals, Artistic and Otherwise....

If you click on the picture to enlarge it you will see some of what I saw yesterday--part of a pod of at least 100 Atlantic white sided dolphins! We were out on the Naviator in Wellfleet Harbor with a group of high school marine biology students when we had this amazing sighting. In all the years I've done programs on this boat I've never seen anything like it. Dolphins are off the Cape in good numbers but they don't usually come into the harbor areas and when they do it is not always good news. We contacted the stranding network but fortunately the dolphins headed out to sea as the tide changed and all was well.

As I helped unload the nets and gear from the boat yesterday and prepared for my afternoon after school session with younger kids I realized my goals are becoming much clearer. I love being outside and I love being with kids, answering their questions, showing them things they've never seen before.

My problem has always been I seem to have too many choices, not the opposite. There are always too many things I want to do. When I opened my studio/gallery a few years ago it was after working more than full time as a naturalist/educator and I missed my creative work. When I focused on my creative work and selling that work I lost touch with the part of me that thrives outdoors. The story in my life has always been about balance, or lack thereof.

I love to paint, I love to write, I love to wander around in nature and I love kids. Actually, I love grownups, too. I love people and I love to teach, to share my own wonder of the world around me, both through nature and through art. So how to combine all those without working 40 hours a day as I've sometimes been known to try and do?

It suddenly came to me on a recent early morning walk on the beach. I can do it all. My goal became crystal clear. It is to help people, children especially, understand how important nature and creativity are to their own personal survival as well as the survival of our culture and history. That may seem like a grand goal but the way I see it, every child that understands and accepts their role in the natural world will be more likely to be a humane and compassionate steward of that world. Creativity is part of our better nature, in my humble opinion, and can be nurtured in all environments and activities so is easily included in science and natural history curriculums. Each child that learns to love the natural world is one more citizen that will help keep the natural world diverse and in balance which in turn nurtures us.

  As many of you know I have been sorting through boxes and boxes of my family's memorabilia as well as my own paintings, tiles and supplies from the shop I recently closed. I am literally overwhelmed with STUFF. Then I go to galleries and am bored silly, not just with the work but with the whole idea that art should be this idealized special thing.

I start to think maybe we should just all create just like we all eat and sleep and work. Maybe we should just integrate it into our daily lives like children do. I find I am no longer interested in creating paintings to frame and hang on a wall. At the moment I am much more interested in my art being functional, being used, whether as a tile installation or a book illustration. So much of what an artist saves (or what anyone saves) is worthless to anyone else. So much goes to waste. Something like 72 million Americans buy art supplies and aspire to be artists of one kind or another. And guess who buys art. Artists buy more art than any other group. We are selling our work to ourselves. So why not expand that thought and invite everyone to do it? Let's just enjoy the process and not worry about the bs that often attends the academic presentation of ART.

This girl knows what it's all about. She carries nothing, she spends nothing, she worries about nothing. For a while at least I'm going to take my cue from her.

My goal is to help nurture a love and understanding of nature and creativity, especially in children. This can be done in many ways; through teaching, walking outdoors, writing my columns, writing and illustrating small books about the world outside our doors.....

And it only took about a hundred walks on the beach and about 600 children to help me see the light....

My Grandmother's Dishes....

How cute is this little Meito China service for one? I found it deep in a box of glasses and dishes my grandmother had carefully wrapped and put away.

Boxes and boxes of glasses and dishes and china and more are being unwrapped one at a time and I find myself feeling both wistful and frustrated with my family as I do this.

All these years (about 25) these boxes sat unopened in my mother's basement. I'll get to them someday she would say. Even after she herself died it took another six years for my sister and I to go through the boxes. The numbers were daunting. And there were so many filled with clippings and trash that it was disheartening. The papers were full of mold and made us miserable, never mind the sad stories that unwound through so many of them. I find myself wishing I knew these little treasures were there the whole time my kids grew up. We could have been using them. Instead, they come as my children are grown and starting homes of their own and there is literally no tradition or family in any of these for them. How sad is that?

For years I was part of an art group that painted together on Wednesday mornings and we always served tea. How lovely it would have been to have my grandmother's tea cups and plates to use.

Of course they can still be used but the years that I lost with them make me feel wistful and sad.

And where were these beautiful pink serving dishes when we had holiday dinners? We've always used my grandmother's delicate pink water glasses and dessert plates but who knew these serving pieces even existed? Surely my mother must have known. She must have grown up with them.

You have to have seen the piles of boxes to really understand the daunting task it was to consider going through them. And you have to know how many boxes were filled with clippings and articles and restaurant place mats and matchbook covers. I understand that the task overwhelmed my mother. It took my sister and I these last three months.

These tablecloths got water stained and have rust spots on them even after being carefully washed. I will still use some of them. There are dressers full of embroidered dresser scarves, napkins, guest towels and bridge table cloths, so many we will never use them all. There are vintage cloths and vintage towels, all fun and festive and not something everyone will use every day. I will keep some and give away the rest.

I guess the moral of this little story is to use the special lovely things you have. Don't store them away.  Don't wait for that perfect day. Today is the perfect day to enjoy what we have.

Get out that nice china tea cup and have a spot of tea. Don't forget the embroidered napkin and tablecloth while you're at it!

Nantucket Dreaming....

Nantucket Island, about 20 miles off the coast of Cape Cod is so dreamy and dreamlike that the people who live there have come to believe the dream. I don't know if Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard is richer than the other but they must be pretty close and both are right up there in the income per capita figures nationwide. Houses may be found here for under a million dollars, but not many. The building going on is discouraging to someone like me. The houses get bigger and bigger and the time spent in them is ridiculously short. They use so many resources and are so obviously in the trophy house category that it is sort of sickening. The old time wealthy families here had lovely homes but they were definitely summer homes. They were somewhat expansive in terms of how many bedrooms they had but also a bit rustic. There wasn't a bathroom for every bedroom and the place was usually furnished in a shabby chic sort of way. It was a cottage after all. The new wealthy families are way more blatant than that, however, and are building places that flaunt their money and their.....money.

Once a year I love to take the ferry and go explore the village. I take my drawing pad, my camera and book to read on the boat. I always choose a beautiful day and late summer is my favorite time to go. It's just fun to look in all the galleries and daydream by the harbor. It's sort of like home but it's not home.

Here is an old house along one of the main drags that still has plenty of charm and presence. In fact, the whole downtown area of the village is still very charming and quaint, sometimes a little self consciously so.

Nantucket has a long whaling history of course and the whaling museum has recently been renovated. It is a cornerstone to the downtown area and attracts many visitors from around the world.

Other businesses in town have jumped on the whale bandwagon and you will find many signs with whales on them advertising different kinds of businesses.

Here we have reference to that most famous white whale....helping sell clothing and accessories.

And here we have a nice whale advertising an office.

Here is a stylish little place selling hats. I loved the little hat sculpture serving as a sign.

This lady sells flower arrangements in Nantucket baskets from her truck on the street.

This lady sells fruits and vegetables on the street corner.

She had an amazing selection of heirloom tomatoes. Yum!

There are lots of antique shops with overpriced goods. Most have a resident dog but I liked this little corgi the best.

There are quaint little galleries along the dock like these.

Tiny little cottages out over the water in the harbor where the occupants can get a close up view of all the fancy yachts that come in and out.

And picturesque little boats to remind us all that bigger is not necessarily better....

Much as I hate all the glitziness I have to say it's fun to indulge in the dream that is Nantucket once a year. Everything is beautiful, everything is lovely and now and then it's nice to think of the world that way....it's our secret Disney wish, perhaps, or our hope that wonderland really exists? I know it's not real and I know it has a scary price, in more ways than one, and I still love to go there and pretend for the day that all is well in the world and that it's really all about tomatoes, antiques and ice creams. Oh, and whale signs.....

More photos are posted over on my flickr site here.

Raku today!

What's one of my favorite things to do on a beautiful day? Raku with my friend and potter extraordinaire, Diane Heart.

Two other potters joined us today and we had a splendid time loading and unloading kilns, getting smoke in our eyes and noses and scrubbing down our finished pots and tiles.

Tiles are interesting to Raku because they want to bend and crack. Of course this isn't anything I want them to do so right away there's a nice little conflict going on. I have to sort of go to the Zen place with this and since this is Raku, that's a pretty good place to be.

These are some of my tiles drying after they've been glazed. I use a white low fire clay and the Raku glazes I used today are copper sand and copper penny with a touch of Higby blue here and there for accent.

I was hoping for black to happen and it did to some degree but on others barely at all. I also had quite a bit of cracking today, more than usual, which was sort of not fun, if you know what I mean.

These 4" tiles will be used in wall pieces put together sort of like tile collages.

Here's the kiln firing its first load and the barrels all stocked with sawdust and newspaper ready for their first load.

Here's me with a face full of smoke as I prepare to put a tile into a barrel full of paper that will light as soon as it touches.

There it goes!!! A cover was put on very quickly after this shot.

After cooling awhile the pots and tiles get put in cool water which shocks them, causes the glazes to really stand up and take notice and then they get scrubbed up a bit to polish them off.

Part of all our potter meetings is a nice pot luck spread and today's was no different. We all had brought garden goodies and Diane's lovely pottery made it all look wonderful.

 

By the end of the day we all had lots of cool pots and tiles. Even the broken ones were pretty cool in their own ways.

A great way to spend a day, especially if you're a potter!

You can see more Raku shots here on my Flickr site.

My Mother's Dolls.....

As many of you know I've been going through endless boxes from my mother's estate. We can't keep everything and I just put my mother's dolls up for sale over on Craig's List Boston. Every now and then she would go up to the attic and take these down to show us but I don't think she looked at them once she married my stepdad in 1974. Every now and then she would mention them but even when her granddaughters were showing interest in doll collecting she didn't share these with them. The granddaughters went on to other interests and none are willing to take these at this point. I can't help but wonder if that would be different if they had been shared while my mother was alive. I think she wanted to keep them safe. They were safe but they were also unloved and dolls need to be loved, I think.

It's odd to have the mammy doll and Indian doll in today's world but both were given to my mother when she was born in 1932. It goes to show how much things have changed since then. The Indian doll was made by a tribe in Maine and the mammy doll came from a relative in Pennsylvania. It's hard to imagine that such things were done and considered normal but then as I look at the "foreign" dolls they are certainly steretyped as well. I don't know if you can even find such dolls today.

There are other dolls as well and we have had a few restored and will keep them. For instance, I have my grandmother's beautiful German made doll that she received when she was 2. I am also keeping my mother's favorite doll, a Sonja Henny doll.

This little Gerber Baby was given to my mother as a baby gift. My grandmother insisted it looked just like my mother.

It's sad but no one in the family wants these dolls and no one has space to display or store them so it is time to let them go. They are mostly in great condition and it would be nice if the collection went as one piece. If you know anyone who might be interested, please let me know.

It's so weird going through all these things my mother and grandmother treasured. On the other hand I have to remember that these were all in storage for a long, long time. They were treasured more in idea and memory than in reality. In reality they were barely thought of.

It's a difficult and lengthy process going through all these boxes and keepsakes and letting most of them go. It makes me realize how small and insignificant our lives really are. We all know it's not about the stuff we accumulate and yet we keep accumulating it and holding onto it as if it is truly the key to our past, the key to our heart.

In many ways letting these things go is very freeing. There has been so much family drama around some of these things that letting them go is letting go of the drama, too. Most of the dramas have not been positive so why not let them go?

Family Myths and Stories

Many years ago I read that all families have basically the same myths and stories. The names, places, timelines and circumstances vary of course but the thesis was that the same themes run through all family stories that get passed down through generations.

If I remember correctly one can count on every family having a story about a black sheep, a lost fortune, love gone wrong, talent unrecognized, a fateful encounter and so on. This idea fascinated me so much at the time I admit I look for it and so far I have not been disappointed. There is something so universal about family life, especially extended family life. The whole multi ringed circus and drama of humanity plays out in each of our lives if we are open to seeing it.

In my family there were all these stories and more. Many of the stories revolved around those who tried to raise themselves out of immigrant status and uneducated poverty using only their bootstraps, integrity and faith. The reality of these humble but proud stories often differs from the stories we were told growing up and as I go through my mother's and grandmother's things more and more pieces of certain puzzles fit together.

My mother was in love with the idea of talent. She was sure it was inherited and she would try to trace every bit of musical, literary or artistic flare of talent to someone who had come before. In her mind we were all connected by a very complicated genetic maze with many arrows and notes.

My mother wanted to be a writer but she had too much fear and too huge a self editor living in her to ever actually do it. It made me sad to realize as she got older and older that she was really never going to do it. She left nothing but some notes and attempted starts at a play she was going to co write with a friend many years ago. She read voraciously all her life and read writing and literary magazines and journals,too, hoping someday to write and submit something wonderful. In some ways I think the family myth of unrequited talent was way more powerful and intriguing to her than any lost fortune or love gone wrong, though she had both of those, too. There was a dark romance to talent unrealized that was both thrilling and seductive to her.

Her father had been very poor but well educated, his Irish German family convinced that education would guide him out of poverty. He worked as a salesman most of his life but also wrote short stories and poems, many of which he submitted to various publications and publishers in the 1930's and 40's. My grandmother would labor over the typewriter after the children were in bed, transcribing word for word his sentences and paragraphs. He sent out lots of inquiries and recieved lots of rejections. From what I know, he was never published and eventually gave up. I have boxes of his stories as well as the rejections he got for each of them.

As I look over his writing in light of some other things I have learned I wonder why he didn't write what he knew. He wrote mostly pulp mystery sort of things, something he certainly didn't know much about. In one of my grandmother's boxes I found a set of paperback mysteries with a note inside. They were written by my grandfather's best grade school chum. Was he trying to emulate him? There's no one left to ask.

In the meantime the stories, which really weren't very good, will fade away, as will any memories of this man who made such deep impressions on his daughters. They are all deceased now. I hold the envelope with what's left of these faded dreams. Do I toss it? Will anyone else ever care? It's a funny thing to be left with all these family papers, linens and photographs. I don't have room for them all. And somewhere inside me stirs a story and a series of collages to keep these humble memories alive.

New Drawings

These are three new drawings I did yesterday. They are very simple, almost doodle like. These faces keep showing up so I keep letting them out on paper. They don't seem like something I want to spend serious energy on but they remind me of Peter Max drawings. Remember him? I feel like "Strawberry Fields Forever" should be playing in the background whenever you say his name.

Anyway, these drawings are for sale over here.

They are on 8 1/2 x 11" card stock and are done in black ink.

Please remember all my work is copyright protected.

Catching Up on Overdue Work

One thing that happened this summer was that my move got put on a big, big hold due to my working full time, writing 5 or 6 articles a week and doing a few tile jobs on top of all the usual family and friend commitments. I am still unpacking boxes and as I am finally getting around to setting up a studio once again I am finding all sorts of unfinished projects that need attending to.

In the plastic bag are tiles that were ripped out of a kitchen I worked on years ago. The house was destroyed by interior flooding and the owner would like the tiles redone. They dropped off the tiles but we have not communicated in months. I think there are blank tiles, too, but I don't have the tiles to paint on so we are at a standstill (these are on customer supplied tiles, not my hand made tiles).

In the tote are some unfinished little sculptures that should have been delivered to a shop back in May. The yellow bowls are color samples for wall tiles I was to do for someone's kitchen and the wooden sign was supposed to be finished back in May as well.

There are other unfinished projects as well. At the moment they are all lined up on my desk. I've been making calls and surprisingly everyone's pretty cool. I'm very lucky they are so patient. They all say they, too, have had a busy summer but if I could finish the work now, that would be great.

This is a great example of what NOT to do in business. Of course I lost some sales by not having my sculptures in a shop this summer and I will lose sales this fall since I can't take on more work until I've finished the work I'm already committed to.

Several weeks ago Alyson Stanfield suggested all artists should underpromise and overdeliver. She said many of us do exactly the opposite and I know I for one am one of those. I overpromise and underdeliver.

From now on everything goes on a calendar in the studio and gets done on the day assigned to it. As I mentioned yesterday, I have a tendency to over commit myself. I think it's time to get real, both with my time and my energy as well as my commitments.

Showing this picture of forgotten and unfinished work is embarrassing but maybe it will help someone else take a good long look at their own work habits and then it will at least have been useful as well.

Etsy Update

Over the next few weeks I'll be selling off lots of the small things I had in my shop. These ceramic mosaic pieces are hand cut, hand cleaned, bisque fired, hand painted in underglazes, glazed and fired again. I did a whole bunch of them for some projects I was working on and these are some of the leftovers. I just listed them over at my Etsy shop. I'll be adding cards and prints and other things over there as the days go by. Please check it out here.

Paying Attention to Promotional Materials is Key

Just before I closed my shop in April I had been hard at work designing new promotional materials for my custom ceramic tile business. This is a picture of the latest brochure which I am using to send to designers and tile shops. It has photos of installations and murals and invites people to my website. It is sent in a package with small sample tiles and several other brochures showing more photos of murals and individual tiles.

If you read this blog regularly you know I took a full time job as I was closing my shop in April. This meant I spent very little time on my tile business at all and actually spent very little time thinking about it. As of last week my job became part time and I can once again focus on the tile business. Although I closed my shop I never intended to shut down the business. I just needed some time to reconsider what direction I was going to head in next.

I have had a ceramic tile design business since 1979 and it's a funny thing. It has a life of its own. I tried to leave the business in 1995 but people still found me. When I opened my shop in Mashpee Commons three years ago I thought I would give the tile business another shot at going full time, especially since it seemed to be picking up some speed again. The truth is that it is not a full time business. It's a dribble here and a dribble there, enough to qualify as a very small business, maybe even a micro micro business. It's fun, it's simple, it's interesting and I always think it could do better. And I always wonder if I want it to do better. Making tile is very labor intensive and hard on my arms, wrists and shoulders. I can hire people to do it but they never do it with the same attention I do and it's discouraging.

What's encouraging is that the tile business just keeps on humming, even without me. With virtually no attention, no marketing, no thought whatsoever, the tile business hummed along this summer even while I was doing other things. People find me. They find me through word of mouth, an old ad or through the internet. Some, like the last two calls I had, were former clients who are either building new homes or renovating that wanted to incorporate more of my tile. None of these are big jobs. None will pay my mortgage. But they do pay for themselves and for some other things so I keep on going. I'm not sure how big or small I want this business to be and I think that's always been my problem.

Although all my work is custom my clients have always wanted to see a brochure. This little black and white one was the first I ever designed in 1980 or thereabouts. It was before the computer was commonly being used and was drawn with black ink on blue graph paper (because the blue ink didn't show in the printing process!) It was hand written and believe it or not, I sold a lot of tiles with this little brochure.

I had (and still have) a separate price list and information sheet. I also have portfolios that go out to the tile stores that represent me and one I carry around with me.

   This next brochure was huge step for me. It was done with a printing company in Rhode Island and my husband and I schlepped all the tiles down there for a day long shoot. It took weeks to get printed and I think I paid about $1000 for about 1000 copies, a pretty good price in those days. This was probably done around 1984.

There were two others in between, both of which I still use but they are packed up somewhere. I'll put them up when I find them.

This was the last brochure I had professionally printed and I still use it. It is a 4 page brochure and has been very useful over the years I've had it.

I also had a postcard done at the same time which has been very convenient to use as a handout.

The next few shots are of the same brochure, different pages.

This is the center panel, showing the border designs I offer as well as the different color palettes. The color printing was not what I hoped for on these pages but was close enough to work well. The tile business is one that uses actual samples way more than pictures so clients use these as introductory materials as they plan their projects.

This last page has always gotten a lot of interest from lookers but very few actual sales. It has occasioned a lot of talk, however, that has lead to other interesting work over the years.

As I look back at all these brochures I know it is time to upgrade and update my materials.

Yet, these still work. They are something the client takes home. At the shop they look at the portfolio, the actual tile panels and samples or go to my website for more information.

Right now I am putting most of my attention into updating my portfolio. Up to now my portfolio has been a big looseleaf notebook with lots of photos from jobs I've done over my 28 years in business. My new portfolio is being put together on the computer and I am hoping to have it bound as a book. I know there are places out there that do this with photos so I just need to do a little homework. If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to suggest away!

These are the first pages of the portfolio I am putting together. They include some basic information about me, the business and the tile making process.

This is just a beginning but I had to start somewhere. It's interesting blogging about this but I am open to comments, suggestions, etc.

Last year I redesigned the package I sent out to designers and when I was doing that I took a bunch of idea samples to my goal setting group meeting and we looked at all of them, talked it over and I ended up having a great sample package to send out that brought in some really great business.

I'm still working on my goal setting for the end of the year. As someone who juggles a custom tile business with freelance writing, illustration and painting as well as working partime as a naturalist/educator, planning and goal setting are more than a little interesting. Sometimes putting my day together is like putting together a giant floor puzzle.....on too small a floor! And I wouldn't trade any of it for anything!