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Spring 2009
Welcome to our website where we hope you enjoy your visit with us.
Our site is a way to keep you posted on our life and work, which are so intertwined that it is hard to separate them. Our life influences and inspires our studio work. Spring has transformed our city landscape
into a wonderland of color. As always we are busy making pots!
Neil demonstrates during our annual Fairmount Arts Crawl & a
glimpse of the studio set up for our Spring Open House & Sale.
Sandi & Neil glazing work for a commission.
Sandi unloading finished cups for commission from the kiln.
Neil’s finished commission for breadstick holders & dipping bowls.
Cups, Bowls, Teapots, Vases, Jars, Platters, Candlesticks,
Handmade Cards and much more! New this Year, Dinnerware.
Necklaces, Bracelets, & Earrings made from Glass Beads,
Semi-Precious Stone, Freshwater Pearls and beads from
around the world.
Sandi is still busy working on a Handbuilding Conference.
It will be held this September. This will include demonstrations as well as a show of nationally known handbuilders. Check it out!
Our Studio is open by appointment or chance. Look for our Saturday retail hours to return in September.
February/March 2009
We had a few studio projects to do, such as adding more shelves for our student work and also changing our workspace to include a small retail area. We were ready to get back to making pots!
Our new retail area chock full of pots, jewelry and handmade cards.
Finally back in gear and happily making pots. Time to fill the shelves!
Sandi continues to explore porcelain with these new pots and keeps adding new stamps to her already extensive palette of designs.
January, 2009
Although we are ready for Spring and look forward to planting our garden, we have had some good snow and ice storms that transformed our urban landscape into a bit of a wonderland. This transformation is much like what happens when we glaze our pots. January was an exciting month as we welcomed our historic new president into office.
A neighbor’s tribute to President Obama / Our street after snow fall
Pines and winter cabbages glisten after an ice storm.
Neil working on a spoon for the show “Spoon it, Fork it, Cut it Up” at Baltimore Clayworks in March.
Sandi has always made pouring pots and is constantly working on making them pour well. This is a new series she has been working on in porcelain. They are happy pots that beg to be picked up!
Time for work and time for play. We only get to do this once a year!
Our back yard wall…these look like little lidded pots!
Our classes are in full swing and the students are making some great work. Here are two figures by Olivia Coran and part of a sculptural piece by Anina Banks. We love that they bring us their great energy.
Thanks for visiting our site. Keep checking in with us for updates on our work and teaching . Our site reflects about a year’s worth of news since we try to add new content every two months. Below is old news if you want to keep on going!
November/December 2008
Below are some photos of work in progress, the Azalea Garden at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in all of its Autumn glory, last Spring in Italy, our backyard paradise at home, and some of the beautiful bounty from our plot at the local community garden in Summer.
May through October 2008
Noah Beytin, our new assistant.
ITALY! May/June, 2008. We had a fantastic Adventure in Italy!
We traveled alone for two weeks walking miles every day. Went to Rome, Florence, Venice and Cinque Terre, and then hooked up with a group of other potters in Siena to go to Volterra, in Tuscany, where we rented a villa for a week. What a week it was. Traveling to small towns, visiting museums together, cooking, eating, and drinking chianti! There were eleven of us, and we felt so fortunate to have been invited to participate in this great adventure with a group of favorite potters and friends from all across the country. Let us have a toast to clay, which brought us all together.
Here we are in Colle Val d’Elsa, a beautiful little town. Going around the table
from the left: Gail Kendall, Mary Law, Josephine Rand, Jim Newlin, Silvie Granatelli, Suze Lindsay, Kent McLaughlin, Malcolm Davis, Clary Illian and us.
This is a photo of one of the rooms at the Etruscan Museum in Volterra, which houses an amazing collection of Etruscan art and POTS. A paradise for potters!
This is Manarola, one of the villages in Cinque Terre which means “Five Lands.”
There are five villages all along the Lagurian Coast and you can hike from village to village along the coastline. It was breathtaking and we had beautiful weather.
This is us stopping to take in the view on one of our hikes to the villages.
Murano - This is a paradise if you are a glass artist. There are glass furnaces and shops all over Murano which is a short vaporetto ride from Venice. The Glass Museum was filled with amazing work including many glass pots. These next couple of photos are of some of the public art on Murano.
We loved this giant abacus…they are giant beads!
Burano - Catch another vaporetto (boat bus) to Burano which is where they make lace by hand. A beautiful and very colorful little island.
Thanks for checking in and taking the time to indulge with us about our trip. We are filled with much inspiration from all of the pots, architecture, windows, doors, textures, food and drink. Look for new work from both of us. We were very ready to get our hands back in clay and filter through all of our new ideas for pots. Keep checking in to see what happens with our work. Ciao!
We are constantly adding new information and images here so please keep checking in for updates. As always, you can contact us at pots@sandiandneil.com if you have any questions about our work or the classes and workshops we offer.