Monday, September 28, 2015

Pottery Classes in Tulsa Oklahoma, Update

Pottery Classes  update for 2015

Beginners-All about hand building- Wednesday afternoons from 3:30-6pm, $25 plus materials.  Learn pinching, coiling, slab building, hollowing out in various forms of pottery and sculpture plus glazing techniques. Limited to 8 students.  Starts to be announced. Please call or text to make sure the class is meeting that day.

Beginningand Advanced Handbuilding Pottery Class-Wednesday nights. 6:30-9. $25 each night. Plus materials and firing.  Monthly sign up. On going. Use my shop to create and I will be glad to help you advance your techniques. A Demo or talk every week and then play. Limited to 8 students.  Ongoing class. Very active and full class. Please call to make sure there is space available.

Tuesday class will not be meeting until after the holidays. It may resume in the early spring.

Tutoring on wheel available. $45 per hour. 30 min of one-on-one  help and 30 minutes to work. By appointment

Small parties and get together for groups of 4 more. Info available. BYOB and have fun. $50 per person, materials included

Date Night by appointment. Get to know each other while working on a clay project. Champagne suggested.  $50 per person, per evening, materials included.  May need to return to glaze with 2nd date unless we plan otherwise. 

Scout groups, church groups and home school students by appt.  $25 per hour per person, minimum 4 persons or $50 per person per hour, materials included

Traveling Pottery Teacher… Got the space and I’ll come to you in your studio and show you how to fire your kiln, tutor and help you get started or do a home party. $100 per hour plus travel. By appointment.

Lectures by appointment. Call for details and availability. 

For more info
Linda Rimstidt Coward
Brookside Pottery Downtown
415 S. Boston Ave Suite 105
Tulsa OK  74103
918 697-6364
or find me on FB and send me a message at Linda Rimstidt Coward


LindaCowardPottery.blogspot. com

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Just Another Birthday...When I'm 64...

Just another birthday...again.

It's early in the morning and I wake up,wondering in that semi-conscious state, am I sure I'm going to be be 64?  A lot of my friends are in their 50's. Maybe I'm turning 55. How can this be?  Don't panic. We've got this.  I'm going to be 64. The Beatles warned me when I was a teenager. It's ok. Really it's ok. Remember your fav mentor, Beatrice Wood lived to be 105 and didn't loose her libido till she turned 102. And what about your wise Native American friend, Peggy. She is 88 now and is heading for her fathers age when he died at 105. 105. Maybe 105 is the new 70. Maybe.
Yes it will be 64. I'd planned on making a big event out of it. Carpe diem. Carpet diem!  Well, I got to tired and had to scale back. I attended an incredibly wonderful painting workshop where the teacher worked us to death. 5 days of super focus, not allowing us to talk to others except at lunch so we could really focus. Everyday, at the end I drug my sorry but proud worn out ass to the motel and fell in the bed until I got the energy to go eat at some fabulous Santa Fe restaurant where I was able to drink appropriately and lift my fork to my face.
I looked in the mirror and saw a little more crepe skin hanging under my chin. I saw a few funny paper looking areas on my arms, funny looking skin I could pull on and it stretched a bit and went back into place. Oh surely it is just dehydration, not that old lady who jumps in front of me sometimes when I comb my hair.
So, reality struck and I decided to scale back my party for starters. Just have fun.  Don't overdue it like I usually do. Make it fun. Make it small. All my friends warn me all the time to slow down. Wink wink. At least when I walk I don't hear. Step clank clank yet, while holding onto an aluminum easy to lift walker thing with bright yellow tennis balls.
So I lie in bed before the sun comes up thinking, thinking those cloudy early morning thoughts. It is the time I usually think about fun projects to try today and plan artistically. But nooooo.  Today I keep wondering, wondering about time. Perhaps it stems not only from my more reasonable birthday plans, as i hear the "slow down Bessie," warnings. But also because I've been doing so much naval gazing making these damn 64 pots representing each year of my life and trying to remember something about each year. Who thought of this idea anyway?  Oh, the person accepting time passing, me.
I remember other birthdays. Why can I only remember the weird ones? I know I had good birthdays as well.  I certainly remember good cake, the preferred base of my food pyramid.
When I turned about nine, in southern Indiana along the Ohio river, I remember planning a fun birthday party. I wanted a festive day on a hot summer afternoon in July. There was the neatest thing that had just come about. Bakeries were sticking Barbie like dolls in the middle of cakes. How cool was that!  Icing for a dress. A beautiful "young" girl stuffed in a yummy cake with sticky sugary lickable  icing all around her plastic naked body. Every girls pubescent what's next cake dream. Could this be pre-sexual thinking, there in the middle of my birthday table?  Someday could I be pretty enough to be the girl popping out of the cake? Anyway, the party was a flop.  Hardly anyone came was how I saw it. Such a beautiful table all decorated in ribbons with napkins and paper plates. Only my brothers and a close friend or two came. It was a hot summer day. Everyone was on vacation. Dang.
In my mid 30's I had an opposite experience. I was working at a pottery shop in Austin, Texas and noticed around lunch,  friends kept showing up. They were hanging out longer than usual and some even brought food."What a coincidence"  I thought. All these friends are  Showing  up for lunch."   They kept coming. Finally someone told me it was a surprise birthday party. They whipped out a cake and we celebrated. I thought I was getting old. I was. Lol
On a lighter note, only a few years ago I had a very fun birthday and it didn't take much.  I was in Santa Fe with friends. Around lunch time I was visiting the Tesuque pueblo. I'd love to have a margarita for my birthday I proudly announced. My husband poo pooed the idea. "You really shouldn't" he declared and that popped my bubble. We were traveling with a couple friends and later that night when our spouses wanted to read, my playground kinda friend said let's go find a margarita and we had to look hard to find a bar open. We did. And the bartender added a shot at the end for my birthday. That was even better than the doll coming out of the cake when I was 9. Santa Fe being the aware of late night drinkers needs, suggested we walk a block to have breakfast before driving away. It was delicious and while we were there, a man pulled up on his bicycle wearing a big plastic pig head. After that I looked for pig head man and usually spotted him while visiting Santa Fe. I saw him riding on St. Micheals rd  later and in Whole Foods Market  as well. He has become a symbol of a good time for me.
So now npr is playing from my husbands side of the bed. The distractions of the day begin. I'm  losing those special early morning thoughts and I'm still 63 till Friday.

Hang on lady. Let the party begin. Bird by bird. Carpet diem. I'm as old as I've ever been and as young as I'll ever be. Just breath and stay I the moment and hang out sometimes with people 10 years older than I am if i need to feel younger. It's gonna be ok. Age is just a number, kinda.

Monday, April 20, 2015

Brookside Pottery Downtown, Tulsa Oklahoma...Gallery, Studio, Classes, Clay, Glazes, and Tools

Change and then after change, more change happens and its ok.

My old block on Peoria after 22 years of business and wondering when it would happen finally got bulldozed. Gone. Flat. It is a scraped clean lot now and waiting like a phoenix rising from the ashes and will become a Trader Joe's and a shopping center. Could be worse.  The property got very valuable.

I have survived. I moved 22 years of collected project idea supplies to my home as well as my clay supply and kilns.  I have a beautiful gallery/studio to work in downtown in the Atlas Life/Marriott hotel in the Deco district of Tulsa.

If you are looking for clay, glazes, tools, pottery or classes, I'm the place for you.  I continue to sell many kinds of clay and several cone 5/6 and low fire glazes as well, kemper tools, amaco, spectrum and lagoona glazes.  

I have classes for beginners and advanced in hand building (see earlier post for details) and host date nights and small get togethers. 

I work in my shop making new pots and painting on canvas, Monday-Friday and  I slip into the studio/gallery and secretly work getting things done on the weekend as well. I'm there a lot more than my hours indicate. 

So yes,  I have survived the move, hernia surgery and a few life changes.  Where there is a will, there is a way.

Come see me. If you want to be sure to not miss me. Call or text first at 918 697-6364.