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Gallery Updates

My March Madness

My March Madness

Winter Thoughts -

Ellison Bay Pottery barn covered with snow     Do we talk about the weather too much?  Do we discuss how much we love the cold or winter or the snow? Or how ready we are for spring?  I'm getting tired of the 'I'm tired of the snow' talk now. The "Bring on Spring" conversations are bugging me a little.  Why? It's a ridiculous idea.  It's March in NE Wisconsin.  It's March. There is no spring here in March.  No flowers or buds or bugs or birds or beautiful mornings on the porch with a coffee.    
      Melting snow=mud=mess=extreme sadness.  That's what we've got to live through once the snow is gone and before we get spring.  And spring is here for a mini-second.  Then it's summer and we wonder if we missed spring again. I prefer winter--it's clean. The dog poo freezes. The mosquitoes are dead. And I've got a cozy fire to sip my coffee next to. And a comfy chair.  I'd love to go to sleep now and wake up on Memorial Day. 

The importance of Flowers

Amaryllis blooming
This Christmas gift gave us plenty of deep rich red color throughout February. 

This is NOT a lemonade story

Years ago this clump birch that stands outside the kiln shed/next to the raku pad was healthy and strong but as trees do, it began to fail.  The tree trimmer came in and cut down the dead parts of the clump. I almost cried.  It was so naked, alone and frail almost.  In a serendipitous moment, I noticed the vases on the side porch that were destined for the second sale. I knew that they would fit just right
on the newly created stumps, so before the tree trimmers were even finished cleaning up I had moved the tallest vases to the clump. Two handthrown pottery vases outside in the snow                                                                                             Throughout the years some of the vases were knocked over by wind or dogs or people and broke. Even with sand in the bottom, that would happen.  Sometimes I wanted new vases on the stumps. I left these on the tree way too long before I finally put them away for the winter.  First, though-photo time!

 

Founder of Ellison Bay Pottery Studios

We are working in the studio, reading pottery books, moving snow (not me, John does that), walking dogs, stacking and burning wood, hauling wood ash, cleaning snow off the roof, visiting medical pros (we're a little older :) and we've learned it's an older person "hobby"), reading and having a few naps. These are all good winter activities for creatives and makers. We're taking a very nice break and refueling, giving our brains some room and time to work without our interference. It's working, too.  It's an exciting time in the studio.  

 

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Our May Shows - The 'Treasured Teapot' and 16th Ellison Bay Art Crawl

Our May Shows - The 'Treasured Teapot' and 16th Ellison Bay Art Crawl

Two in one-We've got two very special events going on this weekend!

Our Treasured Teapot Collection Show - with Tea provided by Tea Thyme of Sister Bay- is our first big event this weekend, and in fact the rest of this month.  (just not the special teas, though)

invitation to pottery teapot show in door county

This was a 'Teapot Winter'- John set aside several weeks to devote all his time to time consuming teapot constructing.  There are many, many parts and steps to making each teapot.  It was interesting to watch. Quietly.

images of potter making a teapot
Large teapots
handmade stoneware  copper red teapot
Small Teapots
handmade stoneware  blue teapot

And this weekend is ALSO the Ellison Bay Art Crawl.  For 16 years the artists of Ellison Bay open their studios, serve refreshments, offer studio tours and artist discussions, drawings for a piece of art, have demonstrations.  This gives you a chance to see and buy before the County gets full of art collectors. 

invitation to art crawl in ellison bay wi

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2017 Marks John Dietrich's 50 Years in Pottery

2017 Marks John Dietrich's 50 Years in Pottery

This year, as all we know, has been full of major changes and huge announcements that have rocked the world. We’ve got the biggest one of all to announce:

2017 Marks John T. Dietrich’s 50 Years in Pottery

John’s short story begins way back in 1966, the Dark Ages to some. While John was hanging out with friends in the pottery studio at the Peninsula School of Art in Fish Creek, a friend said ’You should try this, John’ meaning throw on the potters wheel. John threw a dog dish. He. Was. Hooked. What big changes can you look for?  You'll see them in the gallery, in our newsletter and blog and social media especially Instagram which is particularly good for images.  But first, more about John.  Without him and his hard work I'd have nothing to tell you.

Making of Handmade Pottery

After finishing college and a year in graduate school he knew he wanted to be a studio potter so in 1967 he talked to Abe Cohn, a Wisconsin master potter with a studio/gallery in both Milwaukee and Fish Creek about an assistant’s position. After 6 years with Abe and his wife Ginka he bought the property in Ellison Bay and started his own studio and gallery: Ellison Bay Pottery.

Home

So for me, for us, here, this is a very important milestone. It’s wonderful to look at photos of the barn as it was and as it is today. John has wonderful stories of how it was to live in this big wooden tent with no well and no septic and no heat for three years. He worked hard to create the gallery and then studio in the first year so he could be in business as quickly as possible. His living quarters came last, but eventually everything was done. All the while he was working in his studio developing his skills, his ‘voice’, distinctive his style, his signature, his glazes. Surrounded by his various cats and dogs that made up his ‘Ellison Bay Pottery and Pet Farm’ he was often guided by those adorable creatures. This is Bibs giving John a should massage, or suggestions.

Making of Handmade Pottery

After all those years of creating a successful design and recognizable signature, we as artists are faced with choices: To continue down the safe road or venture off into the unknown. Stretching creative muscles isn’t easy and coasting on past successes is very, very easy. It’s also boring. No one wants to be bored, or boring!! So I’ll reveal a few new things we’ve been working this month.

Handmade Pottery Designs Ikebana    Hand crafted pottery Mug    Handmade pottery   Dish

                                                                                                                  

John and I are in the middle of developing a new ikebana. It’s going to be completely hand-built. Look at these photos as a potter’s sketchbook. We expect to see changes. The first iteration will be fired and ready to show you soon and then we begin change it again! These photos are of green-ware: pottery that is just drying and not even close to what they will look like when completed. The mug has a new foot (that's what we call bottoms of things) and a different surface design. My square dishes are continuing to evolve. 

While we are committed to functional pottery that can be used every day, the need to make decorative ceramic art is deep.  John is working on a series, which he is currently calling his 'Planet' series which is beyond exciting to me.  These were shot in the studio, not very good lighting.  But their shapes don't need good lighting.

hand thrown pottery


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hand crafted pot

 

Handmade Pot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Making Enough Pottery for the Season and Preparing the Soil for Planting in Door County

Making Enough Pottery for the Season and Preparing the Soil for Planting in Door County

small pottery studio production

John loads up the glazing table with cups and covered dishes for me.  These are two of our most popular glazes. 

There was a time, years and years ago, when Ephraim was our family's vacation destination.  Then my folks bought a hotel in Ephraim and I started cleaning bathrooms.  I got summer jobs in the tourism industry, mostly housekeeping and dish-washing and as a server. I went to college and finally married and moved to Baileys Harbor to become a ------ dairy farmer/dairy farmer's wife. Yeah.  How did that happen?

Years after that, once I sold the cows and machinery, I moved myself and my four children to Ellison Bay and married a potter.  It didn't take long before I noticed that the seasonality of my previous dairy life was similar to our studio and gallery life. 

On the farm in Baileys Harbor, the job I hated the most was picking stones in fields, preparing them for planting.  Hate is a strong word, I understand that.  But it doesn't even get close to how much I loathed that job. 

Door County's soil is mostly rock with a little dirt thrown in.  If you've gardened here you'd be nodding in agreement.  Look around as you drive through the county and you'll see those cute rock fences.  Those were made by farm families every spring.  Parents and children, and if they could afford it a hired man, would walk out or ride the bucket attached to the front of a tractor, to the first field to be cleared of stones.  A seed planter can be damaged by rocks and stones in the field, so this was a very important, never ending, chore.  Winter with it's freezing and thawing heaved new rocks and stones up from the core of the earth to make my life a living hell each spring. 

In small fields we'd fill up the bucket on the tractor and Dave (my first husband) would then drive it over to the rock fence that seemed a little thin and drop those rocks. With larger fields, we'd pull an old manure spreader into the field and fill that up.  We'd each carry a white plastic five gallon bucket and fill it. Then walk over to the spreader. Dump. Repeat.  Our two older kids shared the bucket and would help each other carry it to the spreader, but they needed Daddy to pick it up for them.  They were probably better at picking rocks than I was because I was so crabby about having to do this task. 

It was a cold, damp, dirty, hard job.  But vital to our survival and success on the farm.  We all worked together as a family, something that built a strength in our family. 

When I moved my family to Ellison Bay, it wasn't obvious to me just how much my life on the farm, with it's cyclical nature, would have prepared me to life in the tourism industry.  Farms had better months for milk production and pottery galleries have better months for pottery production and income generating. 

The seasons corresponded as well.  January milk production would drop based on the fertility of our cows and, as everyone knows, Door County is totally closed after Christmas.  (That's a joke by the way.  It's people's perception that everything is closed so they don't come up and then businesses have to close for the winter because no one comes up; that's the Circle of Life--cue the music).

What we did on the farm in the winter was maintain and repair machinery.  We deep cleaned the milk house and updated records. Researched how to get a better yield with better seeds and how to improve the genetics of our cow's offspring and keeping our cattle healthy consumed us and increase milk production.  I'd spring clean the house in the winter so in the spring I could be outside picking those damned rocks. 

In the studio we learn what pottery sold the best last year, what glazes were most popular, what new items we've been thinking about should be made.  We create plans for events, for inventory building, for maintenance and repair inside and outside of the gallery. Paperwork.  Improvements in the business, advertising to try and to drop. And we make pottery, lots of pottery, so that our shelves are full when we open the doors in May, or April, or whenever people start driving down the driveway a lot and we put up the open sign for good. 

Building an inventory can feel not so arty and more like a business, yet we have to think of what we do as a combination of creativity and taking creative risks and practical pragmatic decisions and jobs that must be done.  In order to keep our creative muscles strong we give ourselves some time each day to play with clay, to experiment with textures, or shapes or watch a YouTube video on a different way to fabricate a box or mug.  There are jobs that are not so cool such as recycling scraps of clay using the pug mill, with smells really bad and is loud.  That's John's job.  Keeping the inventory straight is mine.  All of these little things combined plus commitment to going to the studio and working every day is both ordinary and extraordinary. 

I mentioned the job I hated on the farm was picking stones.  One of the reasons was that there are so many sizes, from grapefruit sizes to Cadbury Egg size and smaller.  We had to have a limit or it would have taken days to clear one field of all stones and rocks.  But there was an upside.  Sometimes I would find pink quartz.  Sometimes I'd find granite rocks.  Sometimes I would find amazing fossils.  If I could get over my disgust with this essential job I could get into the treasure hunting excitement that even my kids, who were under 10, had.  Learning about the geology of Door County became a passion of mine.  I've always collected rocks and stones and they moved with me for over 40 years.  I remember where I got each one.  My Mom collected stones and rocks, as did my maternal Grandmother and they kept those collections close, like lining up the precious stones on the window sill in front of the kitchen sink overlooking the garden they came from. 

Then one day I meet a potter and begin learning a completely different aspect of stones. Of granite.  Learning where clay comes from. How it's created, by the earth, over millions and millions of years.  How we can transform this sticky plastic material into a kind of stone when we fired it just to it's melting point. 

I miss so much of my previous farming life: working with my children in the barn or field.  Dealing with my 'girls' in the barn and out in the field.  Fetching my 'girls' in the pasture at 4:00 am every morning and seeing shooting stars and amazing northern lights.  Slipping into the barn at 10:00 pm to give them one more slice of hay.

Then I think of how I, right after dinner, slip into the studio to cover up some project I've been working on, watch John at the wheel, sketch my ideas everywhere, write, meet people who fall in love with John's work, greet returning customers.  I get to create a display in the gallery. We get to have a picnic on our porch for lunch every day during the busy season. 

 

picking rocks in the spring

I didn't take photos when we were picking stones in the 80's so I've borrowed this one from a dairy mom in Ohio.  I had no idea Ohio had rocks in it's fields as well. 

 

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August Newsletter Birthdays and Anniversaries and Parties.......

Hurray----It's summer in Door County and...........

EBP Shop
it's hot and humid right now, I left the air conditioner in the gallery on this evening and I'm sitting in coolness enjoying myself and writing this letter. I think I'll sleep here!
Door County was called the "Air Conditioned Playground of the Midwest" years ago for years but not anymore. We have steamy hot days and nights when the fan doesn't do much but move the sticky air around.
Anyway, that's not the only thing that's hot here at the studio. We just had a firing and John unloaded the kiln today. You can go over to our Facebook page and see the new pots right now.

Work in Progress......

Pottery Making Process   

and..........    

Completed.  

     Pottery Vase
Here's one John and I created together. We think it's amazing. Can't even tell you how I felt when I saw it this afternoon. Stop in the gallery. We'll have the pots on the shelves by Monday.Or you can wait a week and come to our Anniversary/Birthday party on Saturday, August 22 from 1-5 and party with us as we celebrate 41 years here at EBP and John's 72nd birthday. I wrote a blog post sharing my thoughts on anniversaries and birthdays which you can read here.
We'll have cupcakes and refreshing beverages and stimulating conversation all afternoon. Please come.


UPCOMING EVENT!
Our September 'AMOST PERFECT POTTERY SALE' is coming up soon. It's one day only--Saturday September 12, 10-5. I'll send a reminder early September, but put it on your calendar.

ON THE BLOG!
A delegation from Jingdezhen was in Door County in July and they came up to our studio for a short talk and visit. (Eleven years ago Jingdezhen and Door County became Sister Cities; and two years ago John and I were members of a Door County delegation that were guests of Jingdezhen.) The delegation consisted of doctors and an administrator and they were most interested in learning about our health care system in Door County. They got to experience a good ol' Door County potluck and brat fry, visit some of the our parks and meet people. I've got more about that experience on our blog.

Thank you for reading.
Diane

PS

One more thing. We're on TripAdvisor and we'd so appreciate it if you would leave us a comment or review. If you have a suggestion or criticism, email us. We're always looking to improve everything we do. Thank you very much.
dm






 

 

 

https://tinyletter.com/ebpottery

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Jingdezhen in Door County

I still think and dream about China.  We flew over so many mountain ranges and they were beautiful.  The cities were full of an amazing variety of people and food and each building qualified as an antique.  History in every step.  And this history goes back thousands of years.  I still don't grasp this. 

John and I were in China in 2013 as members of the Door County Sister City delegation.  We were all guests of Jingdezhen and they provided a hotel and food and transportation and tours and entertainment for three full days.  

So when we heard a delegation from Jingdezhen was coming for a few days in July we knew we'd have to be as involved as our crazy summer schedule would allow.  We joined everyone involved with the Sister City relationship in sharing a uniquely Wisconsin tradition: a barbecue.  A brat fry, more specifically.  

The next day everyone came to our studio to visit and hear John and I give a talk about our work and so many photos were taken.  Of course, we all love taking photos with each other.

 

In our gallery we have a small display showcasing some of the porcelain pottery made in Jingdezhen, the home of porcelain.  In fact, the Chinese were pioneers in the technology to fire pottery at high temperatures using wood.  And no pyrometers.  Just by using their ears, eyes and brains.  Amazing. 

Here's a list of some articles from the July 2015 Jingdezhen delegation to Door County.  

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/local/door-co/news/2015/07/11/chinese-medical-professionals-visist-door-co/30007373/

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/local/door-co/news/2015/07/14/chinese-visit-door-county-ministry-hospital/30162531/

An article about the 2015 Door County delegation visiting Jingdezhen in April 2015

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/local/door-co/news/2015/04/22/door-county-delegates-visit-china/26169541/

 

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Landmark Moments: Anniversaries, Birthdays and Other Dates

John & Diane

I mark my days, weeks, months, years by what's happened in the past.  Two years ago this October we went to China. Twenty-one years ago John and I married. Seventeen years ago John's Dad died and my Mom died.  There are birthdays and holidays and weddings scattered throughout these years. It's easy to forget how much my past influences my decisions today, so making a point of remembering these moments and even celebrating them brings my attention to how important they are to me now. 

Handmade Pottery Making Process

Actually, since we work hard every day making pottery, mowing the lawn, washing the dishes, weeding the garden, talking to customers, demonstrating in our studio, vacuuming the gallery floors, sweeping the cobwebs that re-appear daily, making a big deal of an anniversary may even seem like one more chore on my To Do list. And I even groan and whine to myself, why do I have to throw a party, again. 

Food

Because we should pay attention to what we've done. We should honor the hours spent in the studio or gallery or on the lawn mower, that kept us here for forty-one years. We should stop and appreciate our own selves, and then share that amazement with our friends.  We are amazed that it's already been forty-one years in Ellison Bay at EBP.  

Ellison Bay Pottery Studios & Gallery

It IS a big deal, and on Saturday, August 22 from 1-5 we're going Celebrate our 41st year here AND John's 72nd Birthday all at once.  We're going to eat cupcakes and sip something cold and refreshing and toast ourselves and YOU, all of our friends.  We'd enjoy ourselves a whole lot more if you were here to celebrate this with us. 

 

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Nature and Our Ceramics

Our ceramics are inspired by the stunning natural beauty of Door County, the southern part of the amazing Niagara Escarpment.

The arbor vitae cling to the cliffs and fill the air with it’s tenacious aromas, the fresh air off Lake Michigan and Green Bay lift spirits, the clear water and skies expand hearts and minds of all who visit.

 

It’s impossible to not be inspired. Our shapes, images and glazes reference the lakes, cliffs, forests, beaches, and weather in each piece of functional art we make.

We translate these powerful experiences into abstract and universal images that elicit an instant response by the viewer which makes visiting our showroom an interactive experience.

A bowl or pitcher may be reminded of a certain beach, person or moment, or a certain season, night sky, a concert or meal when you see a bowl or pitcher.  A connection is made, the story becomes yours and you know you've found what you were looking for.  

 

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