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  I just sent this pot to a collector in Brooklyn. I'm so grateful. The form of the vessel is inspired by Gwari water pots made by Ladi Kwali (Nigeria's most renowned potter) and other women potters of that region whose names we do not know. The surface design is inspired by my favorite plant the Thai red roselle which I'm harvesting in my garden right now. The decorating slips were made from clays foraged in Puerto Rico, Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Virginia. #pottery

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  I was given the recipe for the off-white glaze I use by another potter and it was a game changer for me. Before that, I was using glossy opaque glazes that completely covered my red stoneware clay whose color I loved so much. For years, I would compensate by wiping glaze away from certain sections to let the iron rich clay body show. Finding this glaze made my work more subtle and rustic, recalling antiqued or rusted surfaces worn with age. #ceramics #pottery

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  RE: https://mastodon.green/@PermaSolarPotter/117327239276742010 My new hobby is growing. For the first decade of my clay career I had no mental space for anything but ceramics. In the last year or two, that has begun to shift. It feels like a relief, honestly. I obviously still love clay but for many years felt like I was possessed 😂 Now, I can finally make room for other things. Gardening led me to cotton which led me to spinning yarn.

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  Just switched up my website header photo. It's from a shoot I did with Ringling College of Art & Design graduate Jesse Clark in 2024. https://www.jesseclarkart.com/ #photography #StillLife #BlackArt #AddToBlackSky

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  What do you call people who buy entire storage units, like after someone has died and their estate is being sold? Well, that’s what one of my neighbors does and he found me this old but functioning #pottery wheel. I can use it to slow-build larger pieces while I work on my other wheel and I can use it for students/mentees. Or if I don’t end up using it, I can pass it on to a beginning potter looking to set up their own studio. Horray #FreeStuff.

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  I finished a load of #pottery yesterday, including these two lamp bases. I love the way they came out: one funky little Earth Tone lamp for a desk or nightstand and the other more subtle but still highly decorative. They’re at the lamp shop getting wired.

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  Wild garden bouquet for my husband’s birthday get-together tonight. 💐 This is the first pot I ever made that united coil building and wild clay terra sigillata. I learned this method of coil building from a Zulu potter in 2023 and I started painting pots with wild clay in 2024. Uniting the two techniques felt like a huge progression for me. It came out with a crack so I kept it and I’m glad because it’s sentimental and perfect for an occasion like hubs’ birthday. #flowers #pottery

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  I love this part of my process. I spread out all of my test tiles (both glaze and terra sigillata) on my work table and create combinations that I’ll use on my #pottery. The four tiles to the right are one of the color combos I picked out. I wrote about the process of converting foraged #WildClay samples to terra sigillata (refined decorating slip) in this blogpost: “Earthen Rainbow: Decorating with Clay” https://potterybyosa.com/blogs/clay-people/earthen-rainbow-working-with-wild-clay-terra...

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  Last night, my husband took me to see "A Life Illuminated" about Dr. Edith Widder, the first marine biologist to document deep ocean #bioluminescence. To me, the #film served as a reminder to leave room in our minds for the beautiful, magical things that exist in this life that we don't often hear about or that remain unseen. Check and see if this #movie is coming to a theater near you. https://www.alifeilluminated.com/ #MarineBiology #science #OceanScience

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  I have a #RocketKiln that fires using scrap wood but I've never heard of a traditional wood fire kiln using scrap wood to fire. Typically, people either chop their own over the course of a year or buy cords of wood which can be very expensive. Josh DeWeese, a well-known ceramic artist, shows his wood fired kiln in this video that uses throwaway wood from local cabinet makers who are happy to give it to him rather than pay to dump it. https://ceramicartsnetwork.org/clayflicks/clayflicks-video...

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  A local collector just sent me this photo of her dinner on one of my plates. #pottery #ceramics

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  Today, after my admin tasks are done, I'll begin working on some commissions that I've had on my list to complete. One is for a lidded vessel to be placed on an altar that honors ancestors and orishas. This isn't the first time I've received such a request, but it's been a while. I'm always honored to be asked to make pieces that carry spiritual significance.

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  I’m making a clay body out of a dried out bag of porcelain a friend gave me and some super sandy clay from a construction site that someone brought me back in 2023. It’s for a community event on Monday. I can’t wait to see what it feels like to work with. Here are photos from the source. #WildClay

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  A recent Ringling College film school graduate got in touch with me asking to take photos to fortify her portfolio. Aside from the usual headshots, she took very cool photos of random things in my studio that I thought it would be fun to share, to give an inside view of my workspace. If you live in SW #Florida and need a photographer, check out Vivian Hoang: https://lilmissvivian.com/ #photography #ArtistStudio

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  This is the second time I can remember this happening: Someone got in touch with me because they found my pottery at a thrift store. Part of me is bummed that someone out there got rid of my pottery. But the thrift shopper in me is always happy because—what a score! 🤣 Also, this person joined my email list and is inquiring about my next seconds sale, so that’s a win, right? #HellYeah

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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@joynewacc/116744416775409343 I’m just now seeing that @joynewacc@mastodon.social made it out of #Gaza and is continuing her studies in Italy. I just wanted to boost for all those who contributed to her fundraiser just in case they missed her previous posts, as I did. The support we provide as a global community can be life changing. Her family in Gaza obviously still needs our continued support: https://chuffed.org/project/farah-needs-help

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  Super fun activity with the teen mentee today. I showed her how to turn #WildClay into a workable clay body, a slip and terra sigillata. We processed the clay, removing small rocks and root material with a sieve. We dipped a test tile into the resulting creamy slip and then poured some of that slip onto plaster to quick-dry it into a plastic state. She made a little pinch pot from that. Then we watered down the slip and added a touch of sodium silicate for the sig. She was stoked. #AltText

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  It’s hotter than the hinges of hell out there (to quote my husband’s late grandma) but mango season makes it a bit more bearable. We planted a dwarf Malika tree when we moved here and it began bearing fruit a couple of years ago. Every year, of course, the harvests increase. The variety is floral-tasting and fiberless. Heaven! A couple of days ago, a freak wind storm blew through and we got a literal windfall of mangoes 🥭 #Zone10 #Florida #TropicalFruit

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  A couple favorite Earth Tone pots from my last kiln load. I sent them to a gallery this week for an upcoming show. The theme is geometric patterning. I can’t wait to see the work from the other makers. It will be very cool to see everyone’s pottery grouped together—unique, yet united by a common theme. #pottery #ceramics #WildClay

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  Funny stuff kids made during today’s clay workshop: six-seven and a snail that looks like it’s open-mouth laughing. #clay #KidsArt #sixseven

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  I’ve been making bedside water bottles for years but I don’t make them very often. They’re inspired by Mexican botellones—small clay water jugs with an accompanying cup which serves as a cover. Sometimes the cup has a handle. I’ve also discovered a Congolese version of the botellón. It’s such a simple and effective idea that it’s no surprise it would appear in multiple cultures. #pottery #ceramics #beautility

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  Epic fail in the studio just now! I knew I was taking a risk with this larger statement piece. The attachment of the leaves was a challenge and something I’d never tried before. The vase had been sitting and drying for days, waiting for terra sig application. I carefully moved it to my work table today. No issue. Brought a jar of sig to the table and set it down beside the piece. A leaf fell and crumbled as soon as I sat the jar on the table. #ceramics

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  Two different terra sigillata results from the same #WildClay sample. I’ve talked a lot about how terra sig is just refined clay slip—Clay and water blended, left to settle and then you collect the silky fine layer at the top to decorate with. Well, you can get varied results depending on how long you let the clay solution settle. The shiny red is a highly refined sig (left to sit for four days) and the green is a less refined sig (sat for 24 hrs.) I find this so interesting!

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  Osa, it’s Gloria Steinem. Hi Osa, it’s Stacey Abrams. Osa, it’s Barack Obama.

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  Art and Craft Show & Tell Post a photo of a piece from your home collection and tell us what it means to you. Anything goes—something your kindergartener made or a piece you purchased from a gallery. This #painting is by distinguished Belizean artist Pen Cayetano. His work often depicts #Garifuna culture. Here, women are shown processing cassava, their staple food. Cayetano is also the inventor or Punta Rock music. It was an honor to meet him and his wife Ingrid on our travels to #Belize.

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  Rain Vase. It’s been eerily dry. It hasn’t rained heavily in almost a month. Usually, this is my favorite time of year. I love standing on the beach under a dramatic, overcast sky watching lightning and off-shore rain storms. I love walking out into the garden after a thunderstorm and noticing how turgid and bright-green all of the leaves are. This year, even the native plants in my yard are barely hanging on. We’ve been in drought for years but it’s so hard to accept this as the new normal.

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  Day 1: Camp True Colors clay workshop at ALSO Youth. We’re going to paint them with colorful underglazes tomorrow and then I’ll bring them back to my studio for firing. These kids are always super fun. 🌈 #HappyPride #LGBTQ #clay #pottery #ceramics #ISeeYourTrueColors

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  After I left this exhibit, everything else looked gray by comparison. Woody DeOthello (b. 1991, Miami) “coming forth by day” Peréz Art Museum Miami #ceramics #sculpture #fineart #BlackArt #Miami

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  I just had my first mentorship session with a recent high school graduate. This mentee is special because she’s actually interested in pursuing #ceramics as a profession whereas my other mentees mostly just wanted to exposure to the medium. This means that besides honing her clay skills, we discuss self-education outside of the university path, how to connect her art to the public thru craft festivals, online, galleries… We’re both really excited to be working together.

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  Got my first breast scan today. I opted for a clinic that uses the Koning Vera CT scan—no painful compression, you just lay down and stick your boob in a hole and they scan each one. I believe you get about 30 cross section images of each breast from a scan that only takes a few seconds. If you dread conventional mammograms, look into this option. It will become more widely available in the future.