The Pot Shop

06/13/2026

Space to Bloom

I’m on a little vacation this week enjoying my daughter’s new house in Placerville. I’m finding the time away from the studio very restorative – sitting on the back deck and enjoying the lovely garden. The previous owner was an avid gardener and we’ve been enjoying watching the garden come to life this spring. There have been so many wonderful surprises but the truth is that a beautiful garden like this takes time to nurture, grow and develop.

This makes me think about the process I go through when I create a custom totem for someone. There is a quiet period of time between when we meet to talk about what the totem will represent for them and when I actually get to work on it. That ‘percolating’ time is where the magic happens, kind of like the winter time in a garden while it prepares itself below ground for the spring to come.

I came across a phrase this week that described this process pretty well for me:

‘…someone who let the world in slowly, who had carried it around in their heart for long enough to create something that felt true — because it was.’

The memories that a totem preserves through allowing my creative process space to ‘bloom’ transforms them into visual keepsakes. It is always a great pleasure and honor for me to create these special pieces.

Here is the story of one of them.

Tuco’s Story
It was a gorgeous day at the Art Fair when I met Tuco's family for the first time. They were enjoying a totem pole I had made about my dog, Charlotte, and her many moods and they started telling me about their Goldendoodle, Tuco. She was currently undergoing chemotherapy and her future was uncertain.

They told me what a great dog Tuco is and how much she is loved as a member of their family.

They shared stories about her like the time she found a fawn trapped in some fencing and went and got the family to come set it free. Stories about her playing with rabbits that come into the garden and family vacations they took together, including a trip to the snow, which Tuco loved. Through their photos and stories I got to know Tuco without ever meeting her.

I spent the next 6 months studying photos of Tuco and creating this special tribute to her, not knowing if she would be around to see it completed, or if it would serve as a memorial to this beloved family member. When it was finished it was with great joy that I learned that Tuco was in remission and doing well. I would get to meet her when the totem was delivered!

When I arrived for the installation Tuco greeted me at the door and I had the strangest feeling that I was seeing an old friend. It was like somewhere during those months while I sculpted her and thought about the family's stories of what she meant to them, I actually met her. It was really a wonderful feeling to have told Tuco's story through my sculpture and preserved those joyful memories for her family. I’m so glad I got to meet her and be a part of her story too.

https://mailchi.mp/b11cc6c9f57b/tucos-story-how-she-captured-my-heart-1527330

https://mailchi.mp/adc096238797/space-to-bloom

I’m on a little vacation this week enjoying my daughter’s new house in Placerville. I’m finding the time away from the studio very restorative – sitting on the back deck and enjoying the lovely garden. The previous owner was an avid gardener and we’ve been enjoying watching the garden come...

06/06/2026

Art Cycle at Archival

Have you ever noticed that the things that need to be ‘broken in’ for use are at their absolute best just before they wear out?

I’ve noticed this over the years with my jeans. Just about the time they become really soft and comfortable they show signs of wear along places where they wrinkle. Then, before you know it, a little tear opens up. It grows rapidly from there and in the blink of an eye those jeans are done - unless of course, one likes ripped jeans! Many people buy them that way right from the start but those phony rips aren’t the same as the authentic soft ones that come with time. I suppose ripped jeans could be altered a bit and given a new use as cut-offs. Then they could continue to be worn for a whole other season.

There are a lot of artists who are using this ‘altering’ idea in their art. There are items that became obsolete for one reason or another that can be given a whole new purpose and become useful again.

For the month of June, Archival Gallery in Sacramento has invited me to be in a show with artists who do this. They are calling it Art Cycle. That’s kind of a nice twist on recycle or upcycle. It features artists who, like me, like to reuse and repurpose. I’ve put 4 pieces into the show which I think kind of span the breadth of what I do.

Here are the pieces I have in the show:

“Slipping Through My Fingers” is a piece I made a while back when Susan and I were doing our I & I Exchange Project. I’ve held onto it because it was one of my favorites from that series. This was before the re-use bug really caught on with me but I happened to have a copper hand at the time. The piece represents time, which marches on no matter how hard we try to slow it down.

“Cat in the Boot” is reusing what I think was a boot vase to show the endless curiousity of cats. Dogs investigate but then take a nap. Cats on the other hand always seem to be exploring.

“Octopus Tea” is from my octopus series. I usually put them into crusty looking teapots that have an undersea feel but this time I used an elegant silver coffee pot.
I like the idea that a pot becomes a house. It makes me think of hermit crabs searching for the perfect shell to move into. This octopus has investigated and chosen himself a shining silver home.

“Women’s Rights” is a piece I created as my response to women’s rights being eroded in the current political climate. I found this antique slicer, likely for lunchmeat, and decided to use it to give voice to my frustration over women losing control over our own bodies. I think that those difficult personal decisions belong to individuals not to politicians and I don’t like to think that my own daughters will have fewer options for their health care than I have had.

The show is open to visitors Wednesday - Sunday 11 to 4 at Archival Gallery in Sacramento for the month of June. Each artist has ‘Art Cycled’ objects in their own unique way. Like old jeans given new life, it should be an excellent show!

Have you had a ‘favorite’ wear out when it felt like you just got comfortable with it?

05/30/2026

Wise as an Owl

Often the pieces that come out of the kiln serve as the muse for my weekly story, inspiring me to share what I was thinking about when I created them, or perhaps they trigger something in my thoughts or memories that I share.

This week it was my new friend, “Sugar,” who emerged from the kiln to serve as my muse.

‘Sugar’ arrived with interesting timing because, to me, owls symbolize thoughtfulness and wisdom. A few days earlier I had received a blog about ‘AI’ from Seth Godin, who always has interesting kernels of wisdom. I was still thinking about this blog because it was not about the ‘AI’ that is on everyone’s minds these days but the other one, Actual Intelligence. He sent a list that made stop and think about what we bring to the world as individual people. Here’s his post:

The Real AI
To quote the great Steve Wozniak, “Actual Intelligence.” The kind we’re born with and can develop if we choose. It’s worth more now than ever before. Alas, it’s rarely taught in school.
The difficult work of making choices.
The act of curation.
The responsibility of putting your name on it.
The judgment to ask the right questions and skip the other ones.
The imperative to ship useful work.
The pursuit of good taste.
The patience to sit with the right problem rather than solving the wrong one.
The generosity to create for someone specific.
Seeking justice.
Offering dignity.
Knowing when to stop.
Investing in deep empathy, not a shallow substitute.
Taking initiative and doing the reading.
Being patient, or impatient, depending on what’s needed.
Ignoring the noise.
Making something that matters.
Caring.

This list really struck me as being worth thinking about. There’s so much concern about AI taking over jobs but it’s important to remember that it can’t take over being human. The acts of caring, generosity and creativity are human actions that can’t be replicated by a machine.

The friendships and connections that I’ve made through sharing my pottery over the years won’t ever be replaced by a computer. You all have enriched my life beyond measure and I hope the handmade pieces, those created with care and love that you have collected and live with, have equally enriched your life as well.

So, this week I salute each of us as we take those quiet moments to use our actual intelligence to do the things that make us truly human and so truly valuable to our friends, family and community.

If you were to choose one item from the list to focus on this week, which would it be?

‘Sugar’ is available for adoption. She’s 11” tall x 7” x 4” and sits in an antique sugar jar. I love the way the lid becomes an almost botanical type of hat. A night cap for a night owl.

She’s $375. Send me an email if you’d like to adopt her.

05/23/2026

https://mailchi.mp/1a3b99b497f4/unexpected-inspiration-10950708

05/16/2026

Mood Lighting

The other day I dropped into my friend Rob’s workshop. It’s a cute little outbuilding beside the house. I’d seen it many times when I’d been out on a walk but never been inside before. Rob was sitting at his workbench sorting nuts and bolts into little jars. The whole place had a snug, cozy feeling, like a place where someone could sit and tinker for hours on a project. But what really caught my attention was the chandelier. It was so delightfully unexpected, so playful and just so perfect that I had to smile all the way down to my toes. It made me realize how much a light fixture can really change the feeling of a room.

These days a lot of our residential lighting comes from recessed ceiling fixtures of one kind or another. The accent lighting we choose to add can really make a statement and set the tone and mood of the room. So, with inspiration from Rob’s chandelier, I created a pair of lamps for my daughter’s night stands. I decided to make them look like a cairn of colored stones – I do love things that stack!

I have always admired colored stones in creek beds. They get polished by the flow of water over time and sparkle like jewels (with such a variety of colors!) as the water passes over them. I wanted my lamps to bring back the feeling of the creek bed so I created a bunch of colored ceramic ‘stones’ and stacked them in different orders until I had two lamps were the same height with a pleasing flow of colors.

They are quite beautiful even with the light turned off and sparkle wonderfully when the bulbs are turned on. This is one of those times when I wish I was a better photographer because I truly couldn’t capture the magic of the light on the beads – it washes out in my pictures instead of showing the true shine - you’ll have to use your imagination a bit here.

Now that I’ve been thinking about light, I have some other lamp ideas I want to try out so I guess I’m journeying down the lamp maker path for a while. I am so grateful that I can let myself explore what interests me and go where my imagination takes me. I know it is a privilege to be able to create at will and I think it keeps my work interesting to take these little side journeys.

Thanks for your support for what I do and let me know if you need a lamp while I’m in lamp mode!

05/09/2026

Testing, Testing…
My new website

This week I did a soft launch of my new website. This is a project that I’ve been working on for a while now with the help of Shannon Borg. Shannon has mentored me through the building process doing a lot of the work for me, which was so appreciated as I’m truly not a tech type person.

The new site is AlexisMoyer.com If you peruse the site and find anything amiss - typos, broken links, etc., I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know. I’m trying to fix the flaws before I officially launch. Please let me know if you are using the desktop or mobile version so I know where to fix– thanks in advance for helping me proofread!

My other testing project, and a much more fun one for me, has been starting to develop a glaze with clay I brought back from Louisiana. I’ve noticed that when I dig a hole at my house there the ‘dirt’ sticks to the shovel in a very tenacious way. When I scrape it off the shovel it’s adhered itself to my boots. So, I thought I’d make a little pinch pot with this sticky clay and put it into the kiln to see what would happen.

The clay fired out to a rich dark brown and was ever so slightly sagging, just beginning to melt. Naturally I got excited about its potential to make a beautiful glaze as my Philo clay makes my beautiful Philo Green glaze.

I scooped some clay onto a piece of cardboard, flattened it out as best I could and put it in the sun to dry. Once dry I used a hammer to smash it into smaller pieces. I bagged those up and put them into a brass teapot in my luggage for the trip back to California. Of course, my friends at TSA had to open the suitcase, take out the teapot and look into the bag. Once satisfied that it was truly a bag of dirt as I had stated, they sent me on my way.

I’ve done the first few tests of adding some ingredients to help the clay melt better. It’s firing out to a dark shiny brown, somewhat translucent. I’m not super interested in dark brown so I’ve added some opacifiers as well as trying tin, copper and iron to change the color a bit.

In blending these things together through a layering grid I’ve gotten some pretty results. With each new test tile, I make a plan for what to layer up, mix together or add next. The hardest part is waiting for the next glaze firing so I can see what will happen.

I’m liking the interesting blue type color that I’m getting from a combination of copper and titanium so I’m seeing where I can go with that. I’ll keep you in the loop as the tests come out. I can hardly wait to see what the ‘Wild Bayou Glaze’ will turn out to be!

https://mailchi.mp/6c6d33226a7d/testing-testing

05/02/2026

Mother Goose

“There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children, she didn't know what to do.
She gave them some broth without any bread;
And whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.”
By Mother Goose

Well, that’s not such a nice old lady! There’s another version where she kisses them gently and puts them to bed. Maybe that’s a nicer way to say the rhyme but I think it’s just an attempt to make the old woman into a more likeable character.

My cat is not fooled by this kinder version! He’s searching for that mean old lady, determined to give her a sound whipping of her own.

Mother Goose was certainly an interesting character to think up all the twisted rhymes she wrote. But who was Mother Goose? Did she really exist and write all those famous rhymes?

Google tells us… ‘There is a theory that Mother Goose was a woman named Elizabeth Goose who lived in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 1600s. Some people believe that the rhymes she made up for her grandchildren survived as the Mother Goose tales familiar to us today. But no one has found any proof that she actually wrote the stories.

Meanwhile in France a book of fairy tales published in 1697 was called Tales of Mother Goose. Then in the 1760s John Newbery of England published the first edition of Mother Goose rhymes as they are now known. He probably took the name Mother Goose from the French book. Newbery’s book was published in the United States in about 1785.’

We will never know for sure who actually authored Humpty Dumpty and the rest of the Mother Goose rhymes. One thing I do know is that they make good inspiration for sculptures and other types of artworks. You never know where inspiration will strike. Mother Goose, Dr. Seuss, Walt Disney and all the others who have dreamed up characters for their stories have given us visual artists food for thought as we think up characters of our own.

In one of my searches for ‘interesting stuff’ in Louisiana I found several styles of metal boots. They struck me as witch’s boots when I first saw them. I seem to be using them to create ‘cat cousins’ with the boots and cats in various positions. I’m not sure if the cats are bewitched or not? For this one, I thought it would be fun to have the boot tipped over with the cat heading in.

Coming or going, I like the composition of having cats interacting with all types of vessels. So, I’ll keep searching for interesting places for my cats to play and telling my own silly rhymes with them.

Do you have a favorite rhyme from our friend, Mother Goose?

04/25/2026

The Louisiana Civil Code

When I was growing up, we had a set of Encyclopedia Britanica, a collection of official looking volumes that held all the knowledge an average person would need to know. Law libraries have a similar set of reference volumes with the codes and laws for each state. I wonder if these books will go the way of the encyclopedia with everything being available online these days?

I’ve created this wonderfully playful sculpture as a commission for a judge but I have a feeling that it’s not as fun to be in the courtroom with her as this judicial dog would have us believe. The sculpture is a ‘cousin’ to another one that I made a while back for a California judge called ‘Balancing the Scales of Justice’.

For this new sculpture we decided to use the Louisiana Civil Code as the book-base that would support the dog and give the piece its title. It made sense to use this particular book because Patricia (our judge) practiced in Louisiana. In the odd twists of life, we actually got connected in California not Louisiana.

Patricia wanted a retriever or golden doodle type dog to represent the dogs she’s had and I decided on the retriever. We used the gavel and the scales of justice as additional symbols of her profession.

I enjoy using totem poles to tell family stories through the animals and other elements on the pole. Each piece brings a little bit of the tale to light. I really like how this more compact version of storytelling works so well too. We can easily see that we are looking at someone’s career in the justice system.

I was just about to start this piece last fall when I broke my wrist so there has been a bit of a delay in getting it done. The heavy book was one of the first things I made when I got back to work in January. It needed to be flipped over every few days so it would dry evenly without cracking. That first flip was a real eye opener on just how little strength and range of motion I had regained by then.

The book was sandwiched between two boards and normally it’s a pretty easy motion to flip this ‘sandwich’ over. However, in this case I did the flip to a stab of pain and the realization that my wrist wasn’t going to go where it needed to in order to put the book back down on the table.

After all the effort it took to make the book, I was quite determined not to drop it so I balanced it on top of my head while I regrouped for a way to hold on to this thing and bend my wrist in a way that would get it safely back down onto the table. My head actually made a good stopping point – brings new meaning to the term headstand - and I was able to rearrange my hands and safely lower the book down.

Every few days when I flipped it, I was able to feel the improvement in my wrist so it was a good way of measuring my progress. Once the book was safely through the kiln firing, I was able to build the dog and the gavel. The last pieces built were the scales of justice, which had to fit without hitting the gavel.

I like the idea of capturing careers in clay. I think I may add more of these to my project list. There always seem to be more ideas for what to make than days to make them.

Do you find yourself with more ideas than time too?

04/18/2026

Fancy Feast
During the pandemic, when we all suddenly found ourselves with a lot more time at home that needed filling, I started an Instagram page called PotShopCookingChallenge. I shared simple recipes for foods that were easy to make and looked great plated on my pottery. It was a good way to stay connected to the outside world and also have a bit of fun. It’s still up, so if you are ever looking for a simple appetizer or side dish there are some delicious recipes there to share.
I must confess though that while I love to bake, I don’t really like to cook, so once we were free to go about our business again, I let go of posting to the site in favor of creating in the studio instead.
A few months ago, while out antiquing with my friends, Jim and Dinah, I found a small wooden bench, or mini table. I didn’t know what I would put on it but I thought it would be a good display piece for my pottery until inspiration struck so I bought it. I’ve set various little tea party’s out on it while I pondered what special sculpture I could create to go on it.
One of the first pieces I made when I was able to start throwing again after my wrist injury was a sweet little low bowl with a scalloped edge. I’m not sure why, maybe because I was hand building more than throwing at first, but I decided to make a fish to go into the bowl. It turned out to have a nice humor about it so I put it onto my table to be part of a tea party. I’d look at it from time to time and try different teapot pairings with it but none were quite right.
Then when I was working on my raccoon pieces it occurred to me that I could make a cat sitting down to a delicious fish dinner’ and I’d call the piece, ‘Fancy Feast’, just like the cat food commercial.
The cat does seem a bit skeptical about my ‘cooking’ and is going to paw at it a bit before he digs in, but hopefully he likes it in the end.
What do you like to cook?

04/11/2026

The Fortune Cookie

We went out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant this week and, as is traditional, we were given a tray of fortune cookies at the end of the meal. My daughter chose one and her fortune said good things would happen for her in July. Next my husband’s fortune cookie said he was optimistic and an easygoing person. Very nice.

Then I opened mine and it said, ‘surround yourself with people who understand your mental issues’. What??

My first reaction was, what kind of fortune is this? I want to be an easygoing person with good things happening to me in July!

But on reflection I realized people often ask me how I think up what I create so I got to thinking that maybe my ‘mental issues’ are more of an asset than a liability. Maybe I need to be a little different to be able to imagine the things I dream up to create.

I shared this fortune with my good friend, Alicia, and she pointed out that I do surround myself with my creatures who come from the inner me, they understand me from the inside out. The animal friends I create make me feel joyful, warm and happy. All good things, so maybe that fortune was just right for me after all.

You also surround me with understanding because you enjoy what I create. So, I thank you for being part of my tribe. I’m glad to have you and I hope that what I do brings you as much joy, warmth and happiness as it does me.

I can’t take a fortune cookie too seriously but it is fun to have the food for thought. And I still think I am the ‘easygoing optimist’ from our dinner trio, whether I’m a little off balance or not.

Do you have a favorite fortune?