jbbartram-illu

[jbbartram-illu]

It’s that time of year. Reblog with how many you’ve heard of.

[jbbartram-illu]

I've still got my shop update on hold due to the Canada Post strike, but am slowly putting work on the shop in case it ends sooner than expected (fingers very much crossed).

Just got done with the seemingly endless photo-editing process today, so here are some photos of the two leaf litter mugs feat. french press prop (suggested my my partner as he was helping with the photo shoot & is very clever & lovely <3).

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Thank you so much to my Patrons.

[jbbartram-illu]

I just loaded these little trinket plates (& a bunch of other things) into the kiln for their glaze firing and I am SO curious to see what happens with all the glaze combos I've done on them (both on the plates & the toads).

It'll be especially interesting to see the final toad colours - how much will the dots of different glazes atop the main body glaze spread? Will some get subsumed into the body glaze, or will all of them be visible & create a cool effect? Time (in a hot alchemy box) will tell!

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[jbbartram-illu]

New horse head necklace, carved from river pebbles.

Remembered a thing from my childhood - when I was a kid I was obsessed with a NatGeo documentary 'Ballad of the Irish Horse' (autistic kid obsessed with horses, hey), and there was a single frame of a bone-carved horse head, maybe an amulet or just a figurine. And it hypnotized me for some reason. Good thing I didn't have access to grandpa's tools back then, I was already drawing horses on every available surface 😁

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Leonora Carrington, Masks for 'The Tempest'

[jbbartram-illu]

My genius remains unrealised

[jbbartram-illu]

Owl Attacking a Bat, Horaku, Japanese, Early to Mid 19th Century

From the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

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wet specimens

[jbbartram-illu]

Coelacanths + my favourite gar! I'm so happy with all my little fishes (stay tuned for sturgeons soon) <3

P.S: If you look in the background there, you may spot a Special Little Guy made by @moldspace doing a great job guarding my ficus elastica!

[jbbartram-illu]

Chimeras galore!!

[jbbartram-illu]

The deep sea fish mugs are also out of the kiln & I'm really happy with them (well, as always I have some minor tweaks for next time, but overall think they're pretty dang cool)!

I'm continuing to work away at my shop update, tho actual date-choosing is on hold because Canada Post might go on strike, which would require me to figure out alternate shipping options (eek). Here's hoping the approach of the holidays = the postal workers getting what they want to avoid the strike?!

[jbbartram-illu]

[jbbartram-illu]

i was at a restaurant last week, watching the political ads on the TV between sports games. one from the trump campaign ended with the slogan “kamala is for they/them. trump is for you”. it was vilely clever - and it made a clear statement about who was the enemy, the other, the unwelcome, in trump’s great america. i thought about how the right had gone all-in on transphobia this election season, and i hoped it was a gamble that would cost them.

this week has been a gut punch, and i’ve been feeling a lot of things - rage, fear, grief, and subspecies of those emotions. what i kept coming back to, though, as i digested these feelings, were the people i love. my queer friends. the trans kids in my community. the people who, already, are losing their rights to bodily autonomy, state-by-state. the way that i’ve had to start looking at our country as a fucked up patchwork of safe and not-safe. the way that access to medical care, increasingly, changes depending on which side of an arbitrary border you’re on. i’m also realizing the ignorance and privilege it is to only think of our country this way, now. america has always been about picking and choosing who deserves rights, who we consider a person. but, despite the deep-seated flaws of this country, i live in it. so do so many people i love. and that’s what I keep coming back to: the people i love, and my desire to protect them. at the very center of all the rage and hurt and anxiety and sorrow i’m feeling, is a deep, perilous love. i am holding onto that love. i hope you are, too.

[jbbartram-illu]

After glaze firing / before glaze firing: existential crisis flatfish edition!!

In related news, I'm finally (FINALLY) working on a shop update - just about to start editing photos & will announce a date/time ASAP!!