....Well, April is nearly over which means (for better or worse) so is my time teaching ceramics here in New Orleans at Loyola University, where I've had the good fortune to be part of the College of Visual and Performing Arts for the past 5 years.  After 32 years, Ceramics has been cut from the program entirely, due to budget constraints, curriculum revisions, and a few other speculative details that I do not feel the need to bore you with....Either way, the result is the same: another dirty, out of work potter, roaming the streets and riverbanks of southeastern Louisiana, desperately searching for a natural clay deposit :)

.....Of course, I'm kidding, ...but not by much....Especially when it comes to the clay- that gets expensive.  But, to be perfectly honest, after the past 6 weeks, I could really use a break.

Throughout the month of March, I flew on 12 different airplanes in a span of 16 days....Not bad if you enjoy that sort of thing but I do not, nor have I ever, really liked to fly.  It's not that I'm so terrified of flying (not nearly as much as I once was)..it's just that the experience is emotionally exhausting to me, much in the same way that I don't particularly like to be too close to snakes, big dogs, or children....I don't trust any of  them and feel I must remain on my guard at all times, never fully being able to  predict what the bastards might do.  Crowds of people all moving in different directions have a similar effect on me, and being forced into a small, pressurized tube a mile up in the air with them does nothing to improve the situation.

Vodka does.  However, since most of these trips involved job interviews, I felt it best to err on the side of Professionalism and play it straight.  Even on those little Express Jets that shake up and down and side to side (!), especially when banking into 35mph head winds over the Blue Ridge Mountains from Charlotte to Asheville, N.C.

The first of these trips involved a Visiting Artist gig at the University of North Carolina Asheville,  followed closely by subsequent on- campus interviews at 2 different Universities...and then the NCECA conference, which is for a whole other post, entirely...But, I digress....

The amazing students of the UNCA Art Front graciously invited me to be a guest juror for their student art show, in addition to giving a lecture and a demo.

here's the poster....

This proved to be a much harder job than I expected, but only because there was so much good work (really good work) that it made selecting the 40 or so pieces from over 100 entries a fun challenge.

I always enjoy doing these kind of things, and I truly couldn't have asked for a better group of people to take care of me while I was there.   So, to Mary Grace Wynn, Aaron Gibbons, Allison Fawcett, Kimber Lawson, Emily Ellison, Emma Bussard, and everyone else to whom I apologize in advance for not remembering your name* (and, believe me, i tried to find you all on the UNCA website): 

                                     Thank You!  

* for this, i blame that late evening with y'all at the Bywater Bar.

Should any of you, while bored or something,  ever Google your own names  and this post comes up, I really want you to  know just how impressed I was by you and how much I enjoyed your company.

I wish you all the best, and hope our paths cross again later on down the road.........