More of my work -Southwestern theme

When we were in Arizona I decided I would like to try hand building clay. I enjoyed it very much. Here are 4 of the pieces I did. The first two are 'Story tellers' the 2nd one is a story teller vase and the
3rd one is another story teller. If you have been to the southwest you will have seen many different types of clay story tellers. I also did a lot of other subjects - it was lots of fun. I was especially interested in
the southwest carvings and history- Below are more pieces of my
clay work. As you can see, a lot of my work at that time was southwestern.
The far picture is a stained glass candle holder from a class I taught in the stained glass room at the park.

The three indians were out of my head- one of my friends was working
on a navajo indian - I decided to do a wall with 3 heads on it.
The interesting part to me was that as I was doing it one of the
indians BECAME Chief Standing alone of the Morley tribe - I had seen him at every Calgary Stampede parade since I was a little girl. I was so impressed with his wonderful feathered head dress. I had no problem with the other two heads that represented the Apache indians from
Arizona. I have kept it and it brings back an interesting memory for me. (click on the
pictures to get a close up). Our visits to Arizona were wonderful-
Practically all the work I did during that time and for a couple of years after we stopped going down was southwestern. I still have two of my SW wall hangings on my wall, and just recently taught a southwestern wall hanging class to my learningfa group.
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I also got very interested in making pine needle baskets using the long needles found near Tucson. I sometimes made a clay center, with holes around the edge and made baskets that way. The bottom basket was used with dyed pine needles -- with cream raffia - and the centers were walnuts
that a man from the park sliced and put together with epoxy. I really enjoyed doing them. I picked up some Ponderosa Pine needles in
British Columbia and have made a couple since we got back. Hard on the hands though!



===================================================================Here are three pictures I did on plastic canvas size l4 - I also
taught a class using plastic canvas to design and make our own bags - we had lots of fun doing them. If I remember correctly I taught over l00 people over the years we spent in Arizona. Here are some of the bags we did in class. We used wool and each person in my class had to draw their own design - Most did soutwestern but some did other subjects. Lots of fun!

Hmm - I wonder whether the girls in learningfa would like to do one of these--?

Well, that is enough for today - I have been gathering pictures of my work over the years and
can't believe the different things I have done! Enjoy! (I hope!).