Unemployment

I've been working in a large company that was swallowed by a larger company and then again devoured by another even larger company.  I made it through seven layoffs.  Seven of them in so many years.  Year eight however I was not so lucky.  In December I got the dreaded email with a subject line that said "Meeting" and the Master of Layoffs was one of the invitees.  We all know what that means.

Well, as it turns out I got to stay on 60 days thanks to Illinois mass layoff WARN law and then I had 60 days (four paychecks) of severance.  Time for ART.

My last day was February 12th.  February 13th I had my first interview with a start-up company in which I would be the first 6 month to hire employee.  I ended up getting the job.  So for February and March I was able to focus on ceramics!  I worked on a world of these little characters called Unfunts.

Stuff and Things

I was unemployed for a little bit this year and made a world of little ceramic characters I named Unfunts.  They're still sitting on the shelf that I put them on in April because I'm looking for a place to fire or a kiln to share.  Since April I've only focused on my new job (as is typical in the early stages) with a start up company.  The hours were brutal but I've got the work down to a manageable amount now.  A couple of things occurred to me in the past year, one of which being that my interests are similar to a nerdy 12 year old boy....video games.

 Making ceramics is just as much fun so it's time to refocus my after hours into that instead.  I started on a project that is based on some rock posters I've made for various shows over the past year.  They're based a lot on silhouettes and John pointed out that I can use lighting to create shadows behind the piece to create the silhouettes.