bodner045

Adults can learn a lot from children and their sense of play. Watch a child walk down the street. They don't they hop skip and smell the roses all at the same time. That is my kind of multi-tasking. Many years ago, I was rushing to the car with Ian's little hand in mine. "Hurry!" I said and his reply was, "But Mom, did you see the birds up there on the line?" I stopped, looked and remembered to appreciate what is around me. My recumbent bike takes me where I want to go, usually. Cool bike racks like this were everywhere on the Big Island in Hawaii. If you can't bring your bike join a friend in a pedicab. Whitney, TU's ceramic professor, and I ride around Phoenix at the Nceca clay conference. The most fun way to get anywhere is to ride a bike. I don't understand why people don't ride their bikes to work if they live close enough. And, if they don't live close enough why not? I like to ride my bike to the grocery and put a giant b...

Drinking coffee from an earthy mug made by Joe Blair on Earth day and a favorite handwoven coaster made by a potter/weaver from Silverton, Colorado. Earth day. Earth day and early morning muses. A few years ago I had the pleasure of being on Karen Keith's wonderful and ever so missed Oklahoma Living TV show. It was a real compliment and fun to be on her show three time using up an hour and a half of my 15 minutes of Andy Warhol fame. And she officially referred to me as Brookside's "Mother Earth" several times reinforcing this idea. A local garden club gave me a certificate as well declaring me Mother Earth. And it was suggested I rename my pottery shop, Mother Earth's Pottery. And that too is a real compliment.I guess I am an earth hugger maybe even more than a tree hugger, damned extremist liberal that I am. I don't like to "naval gaze" too much but I will declare this "earth gazing" instead and try not to capitalize i's just li...

Spontaneous "Earth Day" idea. Come to my shop tomorrow and for $20 I will help you make a clay pot on the potters wheel, kids or adults. I will donate half the money to the wonderful Global Gardens Project for kids in Tulsa! Call first to find my new location: (918) 697-6364 cell or 747-7574 work! An spontaneous potters? We will sign a card and give half to the kids. Visit their web site.

Garden Pots, Planters Starts: Thursday, April 23, 2009 Ends: Thursday, May 28, 2009 Times: 6:30 pm to 9 pm $136/member, $170/not-yet member Artist: Linda Coward Using high-fire clay, hand-building and throwing techniques, students will create a variety of fun vessels for the garden. All skill levels.

A good handmade lunch on a plate designed by Jerry Rothman in the 70's. It helps when the sun comes out. It is a new week. The day is warm and I had to go weigh in at Weight Watchers. I take a couple sips of black coffee and hope it does not make me weigh .4 more. I got on the scale a few minutes later and had lost 3 pounds. Not bad. And the good news was my attitude improved. I saw two good friends there and one had lost 60 pounds since August and the other 40 pounds in the same amount of time. That is a whole skinny person. And I know they have the same zest for life, food and cooking I do so...if they can do it I hope I can too. They told me I am in the best group to be in, they like the leader and enjoy the others there as well too. I'll have or "not have" what they are not having. Butter, I guess. So I decided to come home and make something good and within healthy diet vibes. Not oatmeal! I sprayed to small corn tortillas with pam and stuck them in th...

It is sad. It is depressing. The notice came in the electric bill. Hooray! !t is free get rid of your crap day at the land fill. Show your license and get rid of stuff for free. We loaded up our car with yard junk, left behind by a son with his own apartment and not apt to remove any junk until we kick the bucket. Bike wheels, meant to be used to build a bike or sculpture , the remains of an easy-up tent that quickly collapsed in the rain were loaded in our car and hauled with smiles on our faces to the land fill. Well, it was muddy and overcast. Bulldozers were running the hills like hornets pushing crap under the earth. We did not even want to get out of our car but we had come this far so we made ourselves unload our metal that I felt guilty for not recycling. We had the only car. Most people approached the edge of the landfill with trucks loaded down with old overstuffed chairs, couches, lamps, toys, old used rubber tubs and even a computer! Computer dumping and who knows ...

Have you ever eaten blue oatmeal from blueberries? The walnuts "saved" the flavor and added a better texture. It is just oats, whole grain oats. It is served in a gorgeous bowl from a wood firing workshop in Tennesee, made by MacKenzie Smith. This is the pottery bowl I made about 24 years ago. When I tell friends and customers how nicely pottery can age, this is the bowl I am describing. It has been used for years and ages only with little chips on the rim. I love it and use it a lot. It is the perfect size. Horses like oats. Horses are strong. I am not crazy about horses or oats. Oatmeal is a healthy food so I make myself try and like it in a healthy way. I did not add more sugar only Stevia and and blueberries and 1/2 a container of yogurt and 1/4 c. toasted walnuts for some texture. The nuts helped it not to resemble papier mache paste. I cannot tolerate instant or quick oats and unlike the promises it only satisfies me for a short morning. I know how to make it...

Study showed new miracle food is beans. Add a half cup to anything you can except pie. High in protein and fiber. Maybe spend more time alone. A diet is a diet and called by any other name does not smell as sweet. "No more cream for you, big girl." Rats. OK. Reality struck and I realize the pounds, holding hands, one by one, have reappeared. OK. I have almost reached that maximum set point again. Rats. I looked in the full length mirror in Phoenix (there is not one available at home) and oops. There it is again. So much more to love. All my friends are either on or have done weight watchers. Here we go again. This is about the 5 th time. Yes, I know it is one of the healthiest ways to lose. But I don't go down easily, in attitude or pounds. Reality check. In my fantasies I see being fork lifted out of the hospital bed. Or having a bulldozer plow into the side of the hospital so they can get me in there in the first place. It was great to be in Costa Rica wh...

I am delighted to be exhibiting at Water Street Gallery in Sapulpa. They will be opening officially Thursday, April 24th. Visit their blog for more details. My most recent Buffalo pots, bird woman and large angel titled "Reflections" plus more, are on exhibit there now. I will link my blog to theirs as soon as I figure out how to do it. Oh the joys of figuring out computer skills. Anyway, take a look. I am impressed with their gallery.

A typical psychic sign on the square in New Orleans. This quote was not predicted by this particular psychic but I bet she had some stories to tell as well. The truest quote I have heard from a psychic was recently in New Orleans. "People just want a lot of stuff for free." Yep, that sums it up. It is true in every profession right now. I was just thinking this evening about how true this really is. Everyone wants their palm read for nothing, right? I think the going rate was $20 a hand.

Trash truck in Costa Rica. They have a universal smell. My friend Joe came by the other day and told me a great story about an unusual art critic. The story went sort of like this: Joe was working on a rectangular window box and asked the janitor cleaning the room what he thought about it. "Needs a roof." said the man with the broom. "But it is a planter and if I put a roof on it the plants cannot grow." "I've seen lots of art like that. I know a lot about art."said the man sweeping. "Oh yeah," said Joe. "How do you know? Where did you learn about art?" Janitor, "I used to run a trash truck. And we found lots of stuff like that sitting on the curb. And lots of art like these pieces sitting around you too." "Really?" said Joe. "Oh yea, and all I had to do was pick it up and look at it and before long I could tell what was wrong with it and why it was sitting by the curb. Yes I saw a lot of stuff in...

Buffalo at midnight, $150 available at a new co-op gallery in Sapulpa. About 20" across. Buffalo #2, available in Sapulpa These new pots are terra cotta and are from my new "Where you are." series. We moved to Oklahoma because of my husband's research about Native Americans. The buffalo symbolizes time gone by in Oklahoma to me and is a fascinating creature beginning to make a come back. This will be a creative way for me to interpret how I feel about Oklahoma. My most recent Oklahoma series focused on the Oklahoma wind as I interpreted it in clay masks for the wall.

Just a glimpse at some of the pots I saw. The show was successful with exhibits, gallery participation, visiting with old friends and getting more inspired. The mugs famous and not so famous generally ran around $45-$150. There was a giant mug sale and lots to do in a short time.

Sometimes kids just know how to say it. My friend Kristine or "Tine" as the nieces and nephew call her, brought them all to the pottery for a surprise visit. The extended family is from Chicago and they always come to visit when they come during spring vacation. They were watching me throw mommie pots and putting them on the table for me when I heard Jimmie say, "It looks like the pots are dancing in front of you." Quite an observation. I had them write it on a large sheet of brown paper so we would not forget it. We had fun and I hope they will come back for another lesson soon.