Welcome

Welcome to Ginna Gordon 2018
the Diary of a Creative
300-500 Word Articles
Regarding Books, Ideas, Projects, Recipes, Quotes & Pix

My audience:
Boomers, authors, readers, crafters, cooks

My topics:
Books
Writing
GB’s Love Notes
Knitting
Crafts
Food/Recipes
Studios

My 2018 Goals:
Sharing ideas/recipes
Lucky Valley Press

I write about
• scaling down from an 800 square foot space to a basket of knitting and what that feels like after 50 years of large studio spaces wherever I have lived. I share the experience, physically, mentally and spiritually, and find out what other artists do at a certain age when it is no longer appropriate to spin in all directions creating in ten different mediums at once.
• being a writer, about re-writing when I thought the book was finished, about that process, which in the case of Humming, is months and months long: the fallow time of writing, when the characters are taking naps and your mind is filled with the many ways in which you could take the story instead of where you were going.
 • what it feels like to be doing the best work of my lifetime, about working with David, about creating in general, about being a creative, about being created.
• I’ll post recipes, knitting projects, stories, quotes, anecdotes about a client, book covers.
My blog wraps my creativity up in a package and shares it with the world.

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Studio #12a - The Cottage

The Asian Fusion Collection, installed at Valley Girls Gallery (now the Carmel Valley Art Association) in 2005, and the same little red table in our living room today, under a Melissa Lofton painting of Big Sur and holding stacks of knitted squares about to be sewn into a lap robe.

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Studio #12 - The Cottage

 
In the 7990 Cottage, the Give Someone You Love the Boot series was born, short-lived because I needed David’s help pouring the three gallons of slip into the gigantic boot mold and pouring the excess out of the mold.

The mold came with its own simple design. During the greenware stage, I sanded off the original designs and built more satisfying creations. I boldly posted my designs on my website, not imagining an order of 25 to a country club in Hawaii for a western-themed event. The boots were the prizes awarded.

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Studio #12 - The Laundry Room +

We moved into our love nest about three weeks before our first marriage ceremony, dubbed the IRS wedding, on December 31, 2003.  You’ll hear about Wedding Number 2, Valentine’s Day, 2004 elsewhere in the blog.



At 7990 I packed most of my studio paraphernalia into the dark and rather gloomy laundry room and shared my creative space with the washer, dryer, a cat box and the water heater.
In this space, and spilling into the kitchen and onto the decks by necessity, I painted one little Jack Russell terrier sculpture for the Carmel Art Festival and the next year four plaster-cast dogs for CAF and five resin cat sculptures for a spin-off fundraiser.

Although I enjoyed painting the little terrier, the clean lines of the elegant Egyptian style dogs in 2005 allowed for exquisite details - layers of paint, tiny lines, many dots, applications of beads and other adornments. The CATZ, sponsored by the Monterey Symphony, the Mozart Society, Chamber Music Monterey Bay and the Carmel Music Society,  were PizziCato, MagnifiCat, Meowzart and Kitty Bouquet.

Tout Uncommon, Pied a Terrier, Haut Diggity Dog and Cinnabar represented four of the local retail shops. All dogs and cats were sold at auction to raise money for charities.

This event inspired me to organize twelve local artists to paint “Musical Chairs” for the Carmel Music Society 12th Night Auction/Dinner Dance. Once again, my studio spilled out of the laundry room, this time, onto the deck, where I spread a drop cloth and decorated two matching straight back chairs.

At 7990 my garden expanded from a few herbs in a pot to an acre of Sugar Pie pumpkins, artichokes, beans, tomatoes, and flowering herbs and this, too, became part of my outdoor studio, with a potting shed that held all the usual tools plus a mannequin names Kate Hepburn and a little corner with old wood, brushes and a few acrylic paints for sign making.

 When the tenant in the guest house moved on to greener pastures, I moved myself in lickety-split and spent the next few years amid myriad projects before the next folly took control of my desires.

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Studio #11 - Above the Market

The studio above Carmel Valley Market: 800 square feet with two big rooms and the only unit in the building with its own bathroom.

Others more transient that I lived in a couple of the units: the red-headed, balloon-blowing clown and his wife lived behind their bike shop on the first floor facing the alley, a down-on-his-luck poet slept in sawdust in the woodworker’s back room. I was next door to an alcoholic hairdresser who sometimes slept in her chair at the salon and whose every utterance and popping cork and musical accompaniment was heard clearly through the paper thin walls. I was above the deli and and the pet groomer and down the hall from the chiropractor. The aromas were a mix of bleach, pastrami, flea soap and the herbal tea blend of the week. I added varnish, glue and ceramic glaze dust to the atmosphere.

This studio saw the biggest production of dinnerware, to use in service and sell at Ginna’s Cafe, just down the block. Under and over my designs, my friend and assistant Christine layered coats and coats of color and glazes to cups and plates and bowls, wrapped each piece in newsprint and delivered them to a local kiln for firing. Not too efficient, but our customers loved the colorful stuff painted with flowers and leaves and hearts.






Erin produced beautiful paper vessels and books.

After Ginna's Cafe closed, the studio above the market was my refuge, a place to rest while figuring out what to do next. The twenty years before had been one long catering job: for gurus real and fake, shamans and showmen, for business partners, leaders and would-be leaders, for parties and weddings and overnights in the mountains, always on the move, running my own business and/or managing a staff and driving my jeeps up and down the California coast.

It was time for me, my artist self and I. My writer, who had been not-so-patiently waiting, emerged.

It was in this studio where I accidentally whiffed Marine Varnish and half killed my thyroid and created a bunch of other chronic issues I won’t focus on (but will warn you about Marine Varnish accidentally up the nose).

It is where I settled down to create my cookbook series, Honey Baby Darlin’ -  where I realized I had something to write: 50 years of stories and recipes. The series started with my three year old alter ego, Little Glory, learning about the love of cooking at her mother’s knee on her grandfather’s farm in Ohio in 1951. I saw the project like a vision of a many-colored sunrise or a multi-layered cake with surprises inside.

I met David during this studio period and this became a familiar scene: Ginna at the big oak desk facing her iMac, tapping out ideas and words and scenes into the documents that would become her next books and David on the little sofa, singing ballads and love songs while playing his guitar.

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Studio #10 - La Mesa

In San Diego, we found a house large enough to handle the entourage, including my son Michael (on the Chopra Center construction team), his five year old daughter, Taylor, two colleagues from Rainbow Ranch who came with me on this cooking adventure, their Dalmatian and two kittens.

My my, what a scene. How did I do it? At least our bedrooms were private and pretty quiet, and the recreation room became my studio, complete with a leather-padded bar, tiny sink and room enough for my workbench (that same piece of 4 x 8 plywood used as a bead table at Rainbow Ranch in the tipi).

I focused on ceramics here, bought time in a local ceramic studio kiln, and began producing dinner plates, chargers and service pieces for my kitchen and catering business. Thus began a long relationship with ceramics, as will become clear in the next blog posts.

The process of painting ceramics: the coats and coats of glaze, drying each layer completely before adding the next, multiple firings for different results, this fit into my hobby motto, “No Hurry.” After-hours hobbies shouldn’t have tight deadlines.  

I covered the workbench with newsprint and set up my first production line of mugs, platters, bowls and plates. For the next twenty years, in every studio and even in the kitchen during times when I had no studio or kiln, I painted plates. If needed, I shlepped my carefully wrapped and protected un-fired dinnerware collection to available kilns and finally, almost too late (i.e., close to the time my interest in ceramics peaked) I purchased my own kilns.

I can set up each of my three granddaughters for life with plates and bowls just from my kitchen cupboards. I could open a store.

The La Mesa house rec room looked out over a canyon of Douglas fir and oak trees. I opened two sets of french doors for the soft San Diego breeze. I cleaned up all my ceramic mess one night, set the plywood workbench on milk cartons on the floor, piled up pillows around it and invited family, friends and staff over for a Moroccan feast. We draped gauzy curtains around and lanterns and candles glowed on the table. We passed around huge Ginna-made platters and bowls of spicy meat dishes, couscous and rice and sweets. We drank wine and copious cups of tea out of Ginna-made cups and told stories in the dark.

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