Annotated Bibliography update

Time flies. 

Two more publications to add to the annotated bibliography:

• “Ocarinas.” Pottery Making Illustrated (November/December 2024)
• I already mentioned this public-service article here, but I forgot to add it to the annotated bibliography.

And this:

• "Laundry." Cover image. The Sun Magazine (September 2026).
• I sent a bunch of photos to The Sun Magazine for consideration this past winter, and in March they accepted two. In June, I learned that they'd decided "the right place" for one of them was the September cover. What a thrill!

My knees, S's knees, and the bees' knees

• "Laundry." Cover image. The Sun Magazine (September 2026)

• “Ocarinas.” Pottery Making Illustrated (November/December 2024)

• Goldstine, S., Paley, E., and Segerman, H. “Ars Mathemalchemica: From Art to Math and Back Again.” Notices of the American Mathematical Society. August 2022.

• “Light and Shadow.” Pottery Making Illustrated (November/December 2021). 

• “Raiding the Kitchen.” Pottery Making Illustrated (July/August 2021). 

• “Worship.” The Sun Magazine, Readers Write (October 2019), name withheld. 
• Can you find me? Hint: I'm the church musician who's destroying the world.

• “Thinking like a Pianist/Mathematician/Potter-Designer: Strategies for Tuning Ocarinas.” Proceedings of Bridges 2015: Mathematics, Music, Art, Architecture, Culture (2015), 559–562.
• Want to learn how to make an ocarina on which you can play a diatonic scale? This mathy article is for you.

• “Schumann’s Dramatic Choral and Stage Works.” In The Cambridge Companion to Schumann, 2007.
• This is the article about which a well-meaning colleague advised, "you know, to get tenure, you can't just publish in popular venues--you have to do solid research." While I'm sure many people have a copy of this popular book on their shelf--I do, don't you?--the suggestion that my research would be more valuable if it appealed to fewer people was one more reason to quit academia. I think the chapter is both solid and an interesting read--reviewers thought it was too--and I still stand by my reasoning for excluding Schumann's Szenen aus Goethes Faust.

• A series on leaving academia for The Chronicle of Higher Education under the pseudonym Catherine Evans:
•  “Giving Up a Good Thing,” 4 April 2003, http://chronicle.com/article/Giving-Up-a-Good-Thing/45138/
• “So Why Are You Really Leaving?” 6 May 2003, http://chronicle.com/article/So-Why-Are-You-Really-Leaving-/45203/
• “Cappuccino Dreams,” 19 September 2003, http://chronicle.com/article/Cappuccino-Dreams/45308/

• An advice columnist at the Chronicle named me Catherine Evans; I had written to her asking how to politely quit. Oh, what a young thang I was, trying not to burn bridges. She also turned me from a Music Theorist into an Art Historian. I was nonetheless still worried about being recognized, so I downplayed certain issues that, in retrospect, I shouldn't have downplayed. Or maybe I should have. I'll just note here that five years after I changed careers, I ran into a grad student who inquired whether I "worked outside the home," and fifteen years after changing careers, I ran into a colleague who bemoaned that yet another of his very few female colleagues had just up and quit, "and she doesn't even have a husband to support her like you did." What's wrong with women, eh? 

• “Zwischenreden für Zwischenakte: Egmont and the Melodramatic Supplement.” South Atlantic Quarterly, 2005.
• Derrida's "logic of the supplement" has stuck with me all the way into pottery, so that's something.

• “The Power of No.” Big Apple Parent, August 2003, p. 117.
• I wrote a lot of stories about E when he was wee, and I got this one published. Of course, I told no one about it, since it would have counted against tenure, and I have no idea if anyone even in New York read it.

• “‘The Voice Which Was My Music’: Narrative and Nonnarrative Musical Discourse in Schumann’s Manfred.” 19th-Century Music 24/1 (Summer 2000): 3-20.
• My first article post grad school, published in one of my favorite journals. Schumann's music for Manfred is some of the creepiest music ever. I used to play the music for the conjuration of Manfred's deceased beloved Astarte on the organ with all of the lights off except the ones in the organ loft, and it was pretty trippy.

• “Narratives of ‘Incidental’ Music in German Romantic Theater.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1998.

• Paley, E.S., Low, F.J., McGraw, J.T., Cutri, R., and Rix, H.-W. “An Infrared/Optical Investigation of 100 Micron ‘Cirrus.’” The Astrophysical Journal 376 (20 July 1991): 335–341.
• Interstellar gas and dust are cold.

A step toward Wikipedia

Mathemalchemy now has its very own page in Wikipedia, thanks to the efforts of some of the Mathemalchemists and a Wikipedia editor. 

I am the copyright holder of one of the photos the authors want to include in the article, and Wikipedia has very specific rules about how copyright permission to use photos is granted--which is surely a sensible thing and prevents a lot of lawsuits. One of those rules is that the photograph has to have a URL on the interwebs. So I'm creating one by putting the photo right here:

Ta da! There are additional steps in this process, but this is the first one needed to get this ball rolling. Look for these two charming chipmunks on Wikipedia soon.

Pot shots

The Durham County Pottery Tour takes place every November, but we start planning in January. Photos were due last week. My work is kind of all over the place--I have my signature "zigzag" and "swoosh" pots, plus lots of functional ware, but also lots of work that doesn't really match anything else--yet is among my favorite stuff to make. It's challenging to pick Tour photos that capture the spread without looking like sprawl. Here's what I picked for this year:

1. Glazed, soda-fired zigzag teapot. Usually I leave these pots unglazed to show off the contrast between slip and clay body (in which case I'll typically weave a cane handle rather than adding a hand-built clay one). I like the wiggle of the spout on this pot, and that the diameter of the foot matches the diameter of the neck. There are also some nice glaze details, including melty reds and blacks amid the ochre.

2. Unglazed slip-on-bare-clay zigzag vases (both have liner glazes). I really enjoy making this type of pot, in part because they capture what I see as math and physics in my work. I cut (zigzag) or swipe (swoosh) patterns into slipped cylinders; these expand into organic designs as I stretch the pots from the inside. Friction torques vertical zigzags into spirals; parallel swooshes drift apart or scrunch together; and coarse canyons emerge between smooth-slipped plateaus. The transformations are different every time, functions of variables both within and beyond my control: initial patterns, depths of cuts, slopes of curves, plasticity of clay bodies, magnitude of expansion, and directional spin of the wheel.

Looking at this photo now, I'm realizing the graduated background is unevenly lit, which is embarrassing. Poor quality photographs don't flatter pots.

3. Candlesticks. Tons of fun to make, but not necessarily safe if you have cats. We keep these out of reach (theoretically) on our mantle, but our cats still manage to figure out how to knock them over. I can't sell the candlestick on the left because it's epoxied back together. Thanks, cats.

4. Chickarinas. Goofy, geeky, reasonably well-tempered tuned chicken whistles. These days I usually make four-hole chickarinas tuned to play two tetrachords (sol to do plus do to fa), which is just right for playing the melody of Schubert's Die Forelle. (Why do I play The Trout on chickens? Because I can.) I sell them with a fingering chart and a really good poem. They don't exactly coordinate with zigzag vases, but I fantasize that past customers will see the photo and remember to bring their chickarinas with them when they visit, now with a year of practice under their belts, so we can play chickarina duets.

Ocracoke 2017

Photographs of a spotted teapot

Thanks to penguin-photographing needs, I've finally found a practical location for the Flotone graduated background. The background is taped to the living room wall, tucked away into an otherwise unused corner. It drops onto a small table that S made years ago for plants, but that we use now to semi-hide Kapla blocks and Space Chips. I leave the bottom half of the background rolled up against the wall when not in use, and I unroll it and tape the edge to the table when taking photographs. The table sits next to a large south-facing window that looks out onto the porch, so the space gets natural light but is shielded from direct sun. This set up works reasonably well for daytime shots, but sunlight from a west-facing window sometimes casts undesirable shadows. If I'm feeling energetic, I tape a big piece of cardboard over that window; otherwise I work around the shadows. Nighttime sessions are better: I set up my snazzy 55W bulb in its diffuser and have more control over the lighting.

Below are some nighttime shots of a non-penguin. As my holes addiction wreaks havoc on my wrists (and would wreak havoc on a teapot), I'm experimenting with spots. I think I showed admirable restraint in this piece.

Dragonfly

I went for a jog this morning at West Point on the Eno, and found the remains of most of a dragonfly near the end of my route. I brought it home with me and photographed it on the porch. After downloading the images, I went back outside to try to get a better color shot at the angle I liked best, but in the meantime, ants had found the dragonfly. Perhaps I will continue to take photos all day long, to see how this ends up.

Graduated background, four years late

One of my New Year's Resolutions a few years back was figuring out how to take decent photos of my pots. I move at a glacial pace on these sorts of things--isn't acknowledging that the point of resolutions?--but today, almost four years later, I finally took the first obvious baby step of buying a graduated background. While I was at Southeastern Camera, I also acquired some affordable lighting and a stand, thanks to the patient help of the staff there. Initial experiments suggest the white-to-black background is going to be way better than the white posterboard I've been using (which is now covered with kitty pawprints, feline herpes sneezes, and other lovely details that come with loving one's cats trotz allem).

While in the store, I was asked what kind of camera I have. I've been using an old Canon PowerShot A620, which I called "um, an old point-and-shoot, but I inherited a good digital Nikon camera from my dad. He was an avid photographer. I wish I could use his expertise on this--" at which point I had to stop talking to focus on not bursting into tears. I wish I could use his expertise on this.

For the record, here's what you can do with poster board:

More zigzags

I finally glazed my dark/light zigzag pots last night, and the kiln is ramping down as I type. Earlier this week, on ridiculously short notice, I needed some photos of recent work. The photos needed to look professional, and since I, um, still haven't set up any system for taking photos, and since I'm still using black posterboard for backgrounds instead of graduated paper, I went to a pro. What a difference that makes! Thanks to photographer/neighbor Tim Bailey for helping me reach my deadline. Here's one of my favorite shots:

Pottery photos

The postmark deadline for Lark's new 500 Teapots book is today, and in about ten minutes, I will go to the post office to mail off four photos taken by a friend, professional photographer Adrian Moreno. I also wanted to submit a detail photo for one of the teapots, but I didn't have any from Adrian and--procrastinator that I am--didn't leave time to ask him to take any. Having also procrastinated about that 2010-into-2011 New Year's resolution to build a workable set up for photographing my pots, I ended up spending this morning futzing with my old dented Canon PowerShot A620, trying to get some good close ups. I took the teapot outside for some natural partly cloudy light and took about 100 pictures. I learned a lot about glare and the complete randomness of getting the microphotography feature to actually focus, developed an increasingly steady hand (I was too lazy to get out a tripod, but not too lazy to take 100 photos), and ended up with this:

It looks a little sharper after it's run through an "autocorrect" filter, but the submission guidelines say not to do that, so that's that. I'm impressed by the detail of the crystals; thanks to the photo, I'm noticing details on the pot that I'd never seen before.

In other photograph submission news, I sent some shots of assorted geek pots to the 2012 Bridges conference on math/art intersections, and they were accepted! Charlie Evergreen took the first two photos below. I took the third--yes, I need to work on that photography set up--yet it's the tori that are going into the month-long (vs. conference-long) exhibit in Towson's College of Fine Arts gallery. Just goes to show what happens when mathematicians instead of potters evaluate your work.

Resolutions

I need to start an Etsy store. That will go on my list of New Year's resolutions, along with coming up with a way to take decent photos of my work, building a gas or soda kiln in the back yard, and learning to repair plaster walls. Can you tell which of the Klein Bottles below were photographed by a professional photographer and which were photographed by me using a low-tech piece of white poster board propped on a chair as a backdrop?

I didn't make any specific New Year's resolutions on January 1, 2010, but some goals did crop up along the way. I'm pleased to report that I have successfully renewed my devotion to Robert Schumann (to whom, incidentally, I dedicated my Master's thesis in Astronomy way back in 1989) by learning the six B-A-C-H fugues for organ. For those who question the absolute brilliance of the fugues, might I recommend several months of worshipful practice and analysis?

By comparison, I've been resisting my way through The Lord of the Rings, but with December 31 looming, I've bumped things up a notch and am now a mere 200 pages away from finishing The Return of the King (not counting the hundreds of pages of appendices). By New Year's Eve, I hope to call my cultural literacy oath to Tolkien fulfilled.

Luminarias

S thought coat hanger wire was too inelegant, so he bought some shiny new copper wire and made candle hangers (thanks for the tip, R!) for two of my impractical hole-filled pots, just in time for the Art Walk tomorrow. Not only do the candle hangers make it much easier to get a lit candle inside the pots, they also make these previously non-functional hole-filled Objets d'Art--poof!--functional. Of course, sitting on a shelf looking interesting while collecting dust is a function of sorts, but there is some urge to "be of use" (as Wilbur Larch would say). I can thus make hole-filled narrow-necked pots to my heart's content, knowing that potential buyers will appreciate them a smidge more because they shine prettily in the dark ("oh, that's what they're for!"). I just have to remember to keep the pot necks wide enough to accommodate a tea light.

My friend Adrian finished taking photos of my pots last week, and he's put together a snazzy slide show. It's a little shocking (in a good way) to see professional photos of my work, since the images I usually see are the cheapo snapshots I take using a piece of white posterboard as a backdrop, which doesn't exactly flatter the pots. Check out Adrian's slide show here.

Gee whiz

"Aging Reader" tells me I've been lax about posting lately, and he's right. So to keep him entertained, here are some updates about my exciting life.

The lot with the geo-thermal tubing balls now has a giant gaping hole surrounded by immense piles of North Carolina red clay. The first day of digging was pretty much the best digger action I've ever witnessed and made me want to borrow a toddler to share the joy.

Beamer and Leo now have three additional harlequin rasbora companions, named Leo 2, Leo 3, and Leo 4. We haven't bonded with the new guys yet, as they don't seem to have much personality (I'm sure the sentiment is mutual), but perhaps we'll grow on one another over time.

I'll be selling pottery in the Watts Hospital Hillandale Art Walk on Nov. 7. This will be my first sale since returning from our Germany hiatus last December, so I've started pulling pots off shelves and assessing my inventory. It's quite the eclectic mix, between the one-of-a-kind class demo pots and the intentional self-improvement pots. Self-improvement phases have apparently included Round Things, Tall Things, Oval Things, Stretched Things, Darted Things, Miniature Things (a phase that lasted about 30 minutes), Chickens, and--most impressively and somewhat disturbingly, when you put them all next to one another--things with holes in them. Lots and lots of holes. Wow.

It's especially nice to discover that pots I once felt ambivalent about--pots that, when removed from the kiln, looked nothing like I hoped they would when I put them in--actually look quite good thanks to several months' separation from my initial expectations.

My friend Adrian came over this morning to pick up a bunch of pieces to photograph for me, so I should have some quality pictures to post soon. In the meantime, here's some of the stuff he didn't take, looking oranger than in real life:


Because I like kitchen gadgets, I'll mention that the pots on the bottom right were made by zesting straight cylinders with a lemon zester, then stretching the cylinders from the inside, yielding the globe shapes with spiraled zest lines.

I've been working with clay for about eight years. I've been competent for perhaps the last five of those, meaning I've generally been the boss of the clay rather than vice versa--that is, I usually manage to turn the blob of clay I start with on the wheel into what I intend for it to become. I'm still waiting for some personal style to emerge, some characteristic detail or gesture that connects most of my work. Looking at the mish mash of pots in the photo is probably not the best way to find that connection, although the combination of zested pots, tall things, holes, and the isolated chicken has me leaning toward the "gee whiz" factor.

A lifetime ago when I was a grad student in astronomy, the grad student cubicle room would occasionally get telephone questions from inquisitive members of the public. The questions usually dealt with what my peers called "gee whiz" astronomy--delectable popular astronomy tidbits that emerged from stunning satellite or telescope photographs, the sorts of images and ideas that make people say "gee whiz!" (as in, "gee whiz, that's where stars are born?" [Omega Nebula image credit: European Space Agency, NASA, and J. Hester (Arizona State University)]). Gee whizness is what led me into a master's thesis on interstellar gas and dust--which, frankly, is not as exciting as you might think once you take away the pretty pictures and the Vangelis soundtrack from Cosmos.

When I later became a music theorist, I noticed I was drawn to what I called "gee whiz" theory: bring to the fore previously unnoticed details and discuss them in engaging and artful narratives that make people say "gee whiz!" (as in "gee whiz, even though the ghost of Manfred's deceased beloved doesn't ever sing, I actually hear her generating pitches inside my head in that single measure of silence in the third act!").

Gee whizness doesn't answer big questions: it resides in snapshots and unexpected convergences, in flashes of forest seen amidst lots of trees. It's nifty, but not particularly useful or utilitarian in the grand scheme of things. It's like using a Van de Graaff generator to make your hair stand up rather than to produce extremely high voltages for accelerating sub-atomic particles.

I hope I'm not just flattering myself to think my pots are leaning toward a certain gee-whizness, built into the making if not apparent in the final result. The Klein Bottles are pretty obviously gee-whizzy, as are the double-walled bowls and (I think) the chickens (wheel-thrown chickens!). And personally, I think lemon zested oblate spheroids are pretty gee whiz too.

It's possible that I'm simply confusing gee whizness with nerdiness. I recently submitted a proposal to Claymakers for a new class I've dubbed "Pottery for Geeks." I sure hope they let me teach it.

In other news, the auto repair shop just called and we need a new front axle.

Here's wishing all the best to "Aging Reader," "Aging Breeder," and the rest of you in Pixel-land. Leave a comment sometime so I know you're out there!