Shy Rabbit Ceramics

Larger Yunomi

2011-11-06T11:07:00.001-08:00

Yunomi #10

3-3/8" h. x 3-1/8" w.

8.5 oz. / 250ml

Yunomi #11

3-1/4" h. x 3-1/8" w.

8 oz. / 236ml

Yunomi #18

3-3/8" h. x 3-1/2" w.

10.25 oz. / 303ml

Yunomi #19

3-1/4" h. x 3-1/8" w.

8 oz. / 235ml

Yunomi #21

3-1/2" h. x 3-1/2" w.

9.5 oz. / 280ml

Yunomi #25

3-3/8" h. x 3-1/8" w.

8 oz. / 236ml

Yunomi #29

3-3/8" h. x 3" w.

7.25 oz. / 214ml

Yunomi #40

3-1/4" h. x 3-1/2" w.

9 oz. x 265ml

Yunomi for Susan

2010-08-21T08:44:00.001-07:00

2-7/8" h. x 3-1/4" w.
Volume: 8oz.-225ml
Price: $32
Priority Mail Shipping with Delivery Confirmation: $7

Red Tears Yunomi Tea Cup

2010-08-11T09:43:00.000-07:00

3-1/8" h. x 3-1/4" w.

Copper Nuka glazed Matcha Chawan Tea Bowl

2010-08-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

3-1/8" h. x 5-3/8" w.

My 3-D Photo Set-up

2008-12-01T13:34:00.000-08:00

Shino Recipes I use.

2008-10-29T09:25:00.000-07:00

Salt Shino
Cone 10 Reduction
(This glaze is used on the second teabowl at the bottom of this page. The green is ponderosa pine ash)

NPHSY___68.18%
OM4___13.64%
EPK___9.18%
TIN___4.50%
REDART or DESERT CLAY___4.50%
Total above=100%
Add: KOSHER SALT___4.50%

NOTES:
Dissolve salt in warm to hot water before adding to batch.
This glaze and most other shino type glazes are dependent upon claybody, thickness of application, length of time from glazing to firing and reduction. Generally this glaze will fire toasty brown where thin to a creamy, blushing white where thick and will crawl where very thick. Under certain high reduction conditions this glaze might fire to a gold luster finish.

Malcom Davis Shino (original)
Cone 10 Reduction
(This glaze is used on the third & sixth teabowl at the bottom of this page. The orange is a result of finger wiping the glaze when wet.)

SODA ASH___17.27%
KONA F-4___9.82%
NPHSY___40.91%
EPK___18.18%
OM4___13.82%
Total above=100%

NOTES:
Dissolve the soda ash in warm to hot water before adding to batch. USE CAUTION when handling SODA ASH it is very CAUSTIC.
This glaze and most other shino type glazes are dependent upon claybody, thickness of application, length of time from glazing to firing and reduction. Good Carbon Trapping with reduction starting at about 1645F. This glaze can vary greatly with time between glazing and firing. Use wax to stop the migration of the soda ash to the surface during drying to create areas of less carbon trapping. This glaze has many faces so I encourage lots of experimentation.

CERAMICS MONTHLY Magazine, October-2007 AD

2007-08-31T07:51:00.000-07:00

New "Rootless Jars"

2007-06-10T07:07:00.001-07:00

Click to Enlarge

New Platters from May 30, 2007 Firing

2007-06-06T06:41:00.000-07:00

Wood-fired Nesting Vases

2007-05-24T06:40:00.000-07:00

Some New Work

2007-05-21T06:22:00.000-07:00

Some New Chawan/Teabowls

2007-05-06T07:16:00.001-07:00

The not-so-shy SHY RABBIT

2007-02-08T06:57:00.000-08:00

Durango Telegraph
Published 01-11-07
Arting Around
by Jules Masterjohn

The creative process is alive and kicking at Shy Rabbit in Pagosa Springs. This vitality is evident in the gallery’s current exhibit, “Hold It!” featuring the work of Chad Haspels, Sarah Hewitt Clarissa Hudson, Mary Ellen Long, Chris Ritchter, and Shan Wells. The forms and materials chosen by each artist to represent the show’s theme of contemporary containers vary widely and give pause to the wonderfully enigmatic nature of the individual creative process. The works contained within the Shy Rabbit’s two galleries remind us of elemental concepts and processes. The works invite contemplation.

In conceiving the exhibit, Denise Coffee, co-owner of Shy Rabbit, stated, “Our intention behind titling the show ‘Hold It!’ was to request that viewers stop and take their time in carefully considering the works on display.” There is also a suggestion that the containers might hold ideas and thoughts. More than a request, the title is a command – and it is an appropriate one, not only for visitors to the exhibit but for Denise and her husband, Michael, as well.

For more than three years, in much the same way that an artist works from inspiration and vision to implementation, the Coffees have been invoking the creative process in their development of the Shy Rabbit. Their original 2,000 square feet of rented warehouse space was recently expanded to 4,000 square feet. Half the new area will be used for teaching ceramic workshops and the other 1,000 square feet is dedicated gallery space for their popular exhibitions. Along with the doubling of space has come a redoubling of the Coffee’s consideration of what they want to offer through their efforts at Shy Rabbit.

After nearly a year of the Shy Rabbit functioning solely as Michael’s ceramic studio, the Coffees officially opened the timid bunny’s doors in the spring of 2004. It was conceived as a contemporary art advocacy venue by initiating the Artist Roundtables, based on the European salon model whereby members of the arts community speak and lead discussions. Shy Rabbit also started offering workshops in specific art techniques and the business of art. And, most notably, the Coffees and their Creative Development Team of Pagosa residents Leanne Goebel, Al Olson and Shaun Martin, have presented some of the most provocative exhibitions of contemporary art in the area.

As with all things dynamic and alive, change comes. Though well attended, no roundtables or workshops are currently slated on this year’s Shy Rabbit schedule. Instead, the Coffees are expanding their physical space and pulling in their vision. They have succeeded in establishing the gallery as a premier contemporary art venue known not only for its support of emerging regional artists but also established, nationally known artists. They are inspired to make the Shy Rabbit a destination for art collectors by continuing to cultivate relationships with artists of the highest caliber.

Quality and professionalism have continually been the cornerstones of the Coffee’s efforts. Over the last few years, the essence of the Shy Rabbit has not changed, though its form continues to evolve. Three years and more than a dozen exhibitions later, the Coffees are turning inward. Their desire to share the Shy Rabbit space has been deeply rooted in their sense of community. Denise offered, “We have created the kind of artistic environment that inspires us. For our souls and creative spirits, we need to live surrounded by likeminded people.”

The Coffees have spent their lives associated with creative people and pursuing artistic expression. In West Los Angeles, where they lived and built art-related businesses before retiring to Pagosa in 2003, Michael lived a dual life as an architect and a professional artist. With her degree in fashion design, Denise built a dancewear company. Wildly successful, the business grew too fast, consuming Denise, and after nine years, she closed the company. Once revitalized, she began marketing Michael’s printmaking and ceramic work. Denise finds great satisfaction in promoting artists’ work that she believes in. “It is really necessary for the whole art-making structure,” she offered.

The Coffees wasted no time getting fully centered in their artistic lives in Colorado. D. Michael (his professional name) had a solo show of his ceramic work, “Place of Mind” at the Lakewood Cultural Center, near Denver, in August of 2004. His work filled the center’s 1,000-square-foot gallery, and in 2005, it was honored with a “Best of Denver” award from Westword Magazine.

Now, after a year of not making any new pieces due to the demands of directing the Shy Rabbit, Michael has began creating again. The Coffees are planning to present a show of Michael’s functional work – handbuilt platters and Asian-inspired tea bowls – in the near future. Denise emphasizes, “We are not being date driven anymore. We are scaling back from so many planned public exhibitions and will use the space more as a showroom for Michael’s work and for teaching workshops.”

It seems unlikely that these vital individuals will be able to hold back from their community offerings for very long. They have thrived on bringing people together around the arts. The Coffee’s latest interest involves exposing young people to contemporary art by hosting tours of their exhibits. The current show, “Hold It!,” presents work that is minimal, emotional, sensual and intellectual – unlike the usual visual faire displayed in the area – which should give the Pagosa Springs high school students quite a bit to contemplate. •

New Photos of Current Work

2007-02-08T06:33:00.000-08:00

"COLOADO GOLD", Hagnauer Gallery at the BAC

2007-02-02T09:58:00.000-08:00

Tapping Colorado's Creative Mother Lode

Hagnauer Gallery at the Business of Arts Center, Manitou Springs, Colorado.
January 19 - March 3, 2007.
Friday, January 19, 5-7pm - Reception with the Artists

Co-Curated by Gerry Riggs and Jason Zacharias

Featuring works in all mediums by: D. Michael Coffee and twelve additional artists from throughout Colorado.

"DIRT WORKS" at The Durango Arts Center, February 2006

2006-02-05T12:21:00.000-08:00

New Work From 01.12.06 Firing

2006-01-14T19:57:00.000-08:00

"Artists' Invitational & Open Juried Exhibition"

2005-11-08T15:55:00.000-08:00

SHY RABBIT
"Artists' Invitational & Open Juried Exhibition"

SHY RABBIT is proud to be hosting its inaugural "Artists' Invitational & Open Juried Exhibition," November 19 through December 17, 2005, to be held in the Showroom and the Space @ SHY RABBIT. An Opening Reception will be held on Saturday, November 19, from 5-9pm. This ambitious exhibition highlights the work of 4 remarkable Invitational artists, together with juried entries from 15 uniquely talented emerging artists. The juried portion of this show is the product of a Call to Artists that went out in October, which resulted in the receipt of nearly 80 entries from 24 artists residing in Pagosa, Durango, Salida and elsewhere. After careful review by a jury committee, several works by 15 artists were accepted for inclusion in the show. The committee would like to thank all of the talented artists that submitted their work for consideration, and also acknowledge their valuable contribution to the creative process.

Featured in the SHY RABBIT Showroom will be the work of acclaimed photographer, Emilio Mercado, whose work is inspired by master still life painter, Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin, b. 1699. Mercado's light painted photographs capture objects in their purest form. Additional invited artists are contemporary painter, Sarah Comerford, known for her thought provoking large scale oil and gold-leaf paintings; Mixed-media artist, Susan Andersen (MarSan), recognized locally and internationally for her fine assemblage art; and Installation artist, Shan Well, known most recently for his very impressive "Moments Project" in Durango, CO.

An Artists' Round Table will follow on Sunday, November 20, from 1-4pm. Featured speaker will be Durango artist and instructor, Shan Wells. All are welcome.

SHY RABBIT is located at: 333 Bastille Drive, B-1 & B-4, Pagosa Springs, CO, 81147. For additional information, please call 731-2766, or e-mail shyrabbit01@aol.com.

SHY RABBIT, "Prints" works by Ron Fundingsland

2005-09-18T14:45:00.000-07:00

Artist Statement

I am affected by a number of social, political and personal issues that are frequently seen in my work. More often than not, I think of it as commentary.

Biography/Exhibition Record

Born in Burlington, Colorado in 1947 and currently residing in Bayfield, Colorado, Ron Fundingsland has exhibited work in Taiwan, Korea, Norway, Poland, Germany, Czech Republic and Brazil. He has participated in numerous national print exhibitions in the US where he has received a number of awards. His work is included in several major art museums including the Denver Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.

Ron Fundingsland

SHY RABBIT CERAMICS SHOWROOM works by D. Michael Coffee

2005-05-01T17:43:00.000-07:00

2005-04-25T17:40:00.000-07:00

Fiction to Art

2005-04-22T20:47:00.000-07:00

Opening Reception for Shy Rabbit Showroom and Ceramic Studio

2005-04-01T15:25:00.000-08:00

WestWord Magazines-BEST of DENVER 2005

2005-03-25T19:05:00.000-08:00

Best Ceramics Show -- Solo
Best of Denver ® 2005:
Michael Coffee: Place of Mind

The Lakewood Cultural Center has made ceramics a specialty, with regular group shows devoted to the medium. The center hosted a rare solo show last fall, when Michael Coffee's smart-looking Place of Mind was installed in the north gallery. Coffee, a retired architect who turned to ceramics ten years ago, has mastered the art of clay, as evidenced by his totem sculptures made of glazed clay cylinders stacked on top of one another. Best of all, the exhibit came and went without anyone from the City of Lakewood seeking to censor it, as happened out there more recently with another ceramics show.

Link to Place of Mind images

March 20th, 2005 Pagosa Springs Artists' Salon and Round Table

2005-03-21T16:57:00.000-08:00

Intuition Vases

2005-03-18T18:19:00.000-08:00

Pagosa Springs Sun Article

2005-03-06T17:11:00.000-08:00

An Artist's Haven-In Pagosa?
by Erin Quirk
Staff Writer for
The Pagosa Springs Sun
March 03, 2005
Is there such a thing as satirical pottery? What about ironic ceramics? Can the art of working with clay and glaze be more than just pots and vases?

If your name is Michael Coffee, the answer is yes. And for the art world in Pagosa Springs, Coffee and his wife Denise have a proposition.

Coffee is easy to spot most mornings at the Higher Grounds Coffee Shop. He has a long gray goatee and an easy, articulate manner. Coffee is a fairly recent transplant from Los Angeles and brings to Pagosa Springs everything that is vibrant, remarkable and brisk about the City of Angels.

Coffee, an architect by trade, is an artist in many genres, from ceramics, to kiln brick sculpting to painting to printmaking. His monoprints hang in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the wall of hotels like the Mandalay Bay in Los Vegas and the Seoul Ritz Carlton.

But ceramic art is his current love and to Coffee it is the most technically difficult and satisfying of all his genres. Visit his Shy Rabbit Showroom and Ceramic Studio on Bastille Drive and on is immediately confronted by provocative fine art, ceramic structures in a spare, open-space gallery.

What they are isn't easy to define. One series, entitled "Intuition Markers" introduces the viewer to Coffee's mind and spells out just what he stands for as an artist.

"What I am doing is creating pure intuition," Coffee said.

To describe the pieces in detail misses the point. They are tall, gold cylinders with azure tops with rings around then and could be interpreted in a thousand different ways. Coffee said they aren't designed to be something, nor did he sketch out an idea before creating them. He says they are like "a post-it note or a diary entry" which remind him of the exact moment he created them-what the weather was doing, how he was feeling, what smells were in the studio. To put it simply, Coffee takes his clay and glaze along as he heads down the rabbit hole of his own intuition.

"If artist would work there, in that place, everything they do would be original," Coffee said.

But what about satire and irony? To that, Coffee offers the "Rootless Jars."

In traditional ceramics, Coffee said, the artist is limited to creating a functional item, such as a jar or vase. This leaves little room for artistic expression. The Rootless Jars actually are jars with lids, stacked on top of each other. On top of one of them is a cup full of holes. While it is ceramic and cup-shaped, it could not perform as a cup if it tried. To Coffee its total lack of function is absurd, as is the lack of artistic freedom inferent in most traditional ceramics.

While pushing the envelope on ceramics, there is another intriguing idea bubbling up at Shy Rabbit.

The Coffees have purchased property down Bastille Drive from their current studio and have drawn up plans fo a 14,000 square-foot artist's center. The plans show a 4,000 square-foot ceramic studio, learning center and gallery and the remaining 10,000 square-feet to be used for artist studios. They envision an art center and campus with a sculpture garden out front.

The idea is based on the model developed by the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Santa Monica, Caliofornia from which Coffee graduated. He said when he started there it was a "self-directed community of students and professionals" and no one told them what to do. The successful students got the picture wuickly and chased after the intensely personal education the school had to offer. Others never grasped the idea and moved on.

"We're looking for commitment," Coffee said about the project and who they want to help them. "We want people who get it."

Far from looking for new jobs, the pair is putting out feelers for all the other dedicated artists in Pagosa Springs to come out of the woodwork and seize the opportunity to take their work to a whole new level.

"We want to reach out and get the energy flow going," said Denise Coffee.

The Coffees said the have not found an art center anywhere in the world that fits this exact model, so they plan to build their own. However, they will only proceed with the help of the many other working artists they believe are tucked away in Pagosa Springs and throughtout the Four Corners.

Both Michael and Denise have strong business backgrounds, having run their own companies and successfully navigated the world of architecture and design.

"We want to be facilitators, contributing our expertise in business and the art world," said Michael.

Densie added that they are advocating for artists by planning business/art workshops on topics like portfolio development, framing techniques and even critique sessions with other artists. She also hoped to host a speaker series and exhibits in the gallery that are driven by quality not by an event schedule.

Already there have been three artist salons to discuss the concept and gauge the enthusiasm for the project. The Coffees said that while they already have preliminary approval from the county and PLPOA, they will not proceed unless there is a band of passionate individuals driving the project with them. They will stay in their current studio until the need for more space bursts them out of it.

"We want to create a hub of creativity and energy." Denise said.

"Passion is the criteria," Michael added.

The next artist rountable to discuss art in general and the artist center in particular, will be held March 20th from 1-4 p.m. at Shy Rabbit Showroom and Ceramic Studio, 333 Bastille Drive, Suite B-1. Any artist or supporter of the concept is welcome to come and contribute.

For more information contact the Coffees at 970-731-2766 of by email at dmcarts2u@aol.com.

Join ArtsNetwork Yahoo Group

2005-02-20T19:26:00.000-08:00

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Shy Rabbit Showroom + Ceramic Studio Announcement

2005-02-18T19:34:00.000-08:00

Reductive Ink Monoprints

2005-02-18T17:28:00.000-08:00

The following Monoprints were created using a method I developed that I refer to as "Reductive Ink Printing". The images are created from a single application of ink that is "reduced" to develop the richness of tone. All prints are hand-pressed which results in an ink surface that is "velvety" and "dense" similar to a drypoint print.

"Untitled"
11" x 14"
Oil Printer's ink on
140# Arches
Hot Press Rag Paper