Paul Chenoweth

The modern day context of an employee reporting the wrong doings of an organization, (i.e. Whistleblowing) is reborn here. Whistleblowing crusaders rarely wear a mask or a visual identifier of their actions…being real people builds credibility more-so than anonymity.  However, it frequently means less than pleasant consequences for the individual.

But what if that elite fraternity of credible whistleblowers wore a mask. And what if the mask wasn’t a means to conceal the intent but instead to clearly identify the wearer’s intent to be a whistleblower.  Well, here it is.

Let’s not get all practical and explain how silly this is. This mask is more of a narrative.  The person behind the mask has a covert view but displays an overt intent.  The cynics of the world might say that real life whistleblowers are more likely to have an overt view, but a covert intent.  For me, I see this as a piece that hangs on the wall greeting the owner with the message, “there is a Whistleblower watching you, you have been warned!”

The freshly formed Lizella Clay piece pictured here will fire to a terra cotta color in the first firing and will be highlighted with stains and glaze in a second, Cone 6 oxidation firing…available in early March 2014.

Looking at the list of The 10 Best Cities to be an Artist, I feel like Nashville is in pretty good company and should be pleased to be holding down the Number 6 spot…and I am really surprised/pleased that Atlanta, another city in the South, is ranked Number 1.   I’d like to actually hear from some of the artists in these cities to get their particular perspectives.  For instance, I can see where Nashville is a great place to be an artist, but is there a strong community of artists, particularly in the visual arts?

This is another test of the 3-D gears-on-tiles that I started a week or so ago. This time, I used old clock gears to make imprints into the tiles as a textured background for the project.  Hopefully, a little stain or wiped-off glaze in the imprints will add dimension to the piece.

When finished, this set will be mounted and framed 12″ x 12″ panel.  I’m still pondering if the mechanics implied by the gears should produce something that overflows the half-cup in the lower Left-hand quadrant..or, if light emitting from the cup might be a better effect.

The best news about this sort of project is it can be spread over several days of preparation and the actual construction completed in a relatively short span of time.  The 3-d gears begin as small bottle-top flanges that are cut from a larger lump of clay on the wheel (throwing off the hump).   That first part, the preparation, really does give new meaning to getting it in gear.

As the popularity of JK Rowling’s characters exploded, the likelihood of successfully searching Google for a local potter /craftsman by including the word “potter” in a search string diminished dramatically.  I posted that issue on a forum over at ceramicartsdaily.org just recently and received good reactions to my post, “Google – Find a Potter“.  The consensus of opinion from a small group of responder (but very engaged/passionate responders) is that the following search terms are most likely the best to use when searching for a potter/clay-artist…obviously, if you know the individual’s name or the name of the studio your chances of success are excellent.  But what if you are in a new place and just want to see who-is-doing-what with clay?  Here are the recommended search terms:

• pottery
• ceramics
• potter
• crafters
• hand made

I like this list, even though I’m scratching my head about still including “potter” on that list (no offense, Harry).  So, here goes.  I reviewed the meta data, title tags, and content on my own site and have made sure that these words are included…ok, I excluded crafters to avoid the whole clay is a craft not an art debate.  In the next month or so, the amount of time that it seems to take Google to circle back around to index the content on my web site, I hope to enter “Nashville” plus some of these terms and have my site show up on the first page of the search results.  I tried it today, and…nothing – not even page 2 or 3, so today is my baseline for this experiment.

For those who actually use Google to find clay artists and potters when you are on the road, I would be curious to know if you use other search terms…I guarantee that there are artists out there who need to know! And for the hard working potters in the world, take note: look at your web content and make sure that your copy includes descriptive words that people might actually use to find you (see list above).  Don’t be a muggle…use your magic to be discovered on the web!

P.S, And bless all those clay-artists/potters whose actual name is “Harry“.
P.P.S. Yes, I get it. This very post is the most likely to return in search simply for the concentration of key words…we shall see:)
P.P.P.S.  No one uses “Home Page” in a search engine  to find you, so use something else in you title tag…trust me on this!!