Amy Uthus & weekend recap

As I've mentioned before, I spent last spring at the Penland School of Crafts in a 2-month long glassblowing class. In addition the fantastic experience of the intensive amount of time I was able to spent in the studio, one of the wonderful things about getting to be at a craft school like Penland is the many fantastically creative people that you meet there. One such person is my friend Amy Uthus, a ceramic artist from North Dakota, who happened to be visiting New York with her family this past weekend, giving us the chance to see each other. In honor of it always being so nice to be able to catch up with friends, I thought I'd share some images of her work. Lucky girl is going to be attending grad school at UMass Dartmouth is fall, which is no surprise, considering the beautiful work that she does. You can check out her website to view more of her work here.

Cream & Sugar

Sugar Bowl

Surf Cup

Memory Pot

As for all of the arts and crafts going on around town, unfortunately, I didn't really get to see any of the Bushwick Open Studios & Arts Festival, but spent a very nice afternoon walking around the Renegade Craft Fair. Basically, it was like Etsy had come to life and set up shop in the park (and yes, Etsy did, of course, have their own booth). Having the fair actually in the park as opposed to in the former McCarren Park pool was a hugely positive improvement. Not that they had a choice since the pool is being turned back into a pool after its years of use as a concert venue/movie screening area/festival space. As it was a beautiful day, however, the park was definitely the place to be, with the trees and grass of the park being a huge improvement over hot concrete of the pool. Great job to everyone who participated!

And speaking of the summery weather: we experienced our first really hot day in the glass studio, meaning that even with all of the doors open and fans blowing, it was still incredibly hot and sticky in there. Gotta love it.