At home, we have a wide assortment of handmade mugs. We use them daily, defiant of the increased risk of breaking our beloved one of a kind functional art pieces. There is something about waking up to a lovely drink (like, say, coffee) when you are drinking it out of a mug that loves you right back that makes you feel like the world is actually a pretty good place, and that it will be OK to leave the comfort of the breakfast nook and be a part of it.

Introducing Lollipop Pottery, the creation of Tyler and Jessica, who got married and had babies and made mugs and bowls, and who make us happy every morning when we wrap our hands around their creations (the mugs that is… we haven’t actually met their babies). They hand throw each piece, apply Jessica’s hand drawn decals, and hand embellish with lead-free glazes. That’s a lot of hands!

You’ve got to get up pretty early to get the matching bowl:

Food/microwave/dishwasher safe. $27 - $32.

We went to a gift fair in Northern California mostly to show our line of cork jewelry to the wine industry. Who knew that we would find the brilliant Joanna Mendicino, who’s handmade ceramics she describes as “crafty modern”? Her simple, clean forms appeal perfectly to our sensibilities.

Check out “sea kelp”:

and “shorebirds”:

We should be receiving her work shortly!

Summer is here (finally!) and that’s worth celebrating. This weekend we’ll be kicking up our heels at the West Seattle Summerfest in the Alaska Junction. The free, three-day festival is in it’s 26th year and will feature booths from area merchants, works by local artists, and tons of activities and demonstrations for all ages.

Click will be setting up across from Northwest Art and Frame, showing off a sleek, new red loveseat and handing out coupons for 15% off in our booth or at the store. You can find us outside from 10am-8pm on Friday and Saturday and 11am-7pm on Sunday, taking advantage of the live music and food vendors and trying to appear as though we’re working. Come enjoy the lovely weather with us!

It’s really exciting to have Dixie’s work in our Jewels in May show. Dixie was our jewelry production manager up until last January. Her reason for leaving the perfect job you ask?, so that she could make her own work. Well she has. We have her bold brass hooped earrings freshly spray painted and literally dripping with color, her meticulously sawed and shaded feather pendants and her amazing one of a kind felt rings. We are also thrilled to hang her Paper Doll series of paintings on the walls of Click! Dixie found some old paper doll books at a second hand store and gave the ladies a new life. They are all grown up now and they each have something to say.

Paper Doll Series #4 $350

You can meet the one and only Dixie Darling at our Jewels in May artist’s reception on Thurday, May 8th from 6 to 9pm. The show remains up at Click! through the month of May.

We’ve often said that we live in a parallel universe with our good friend Daphne. She and her husband make jewelry together, and have opened a contemporary home furnishings store in “the other Washington” (DC). They recently bought a home on Chesapeake Bay (does that mean we we get a place in the San Juans?) which has inspired her to do a line of “botanical” jewelry, cast from the wild plants and seeds she finds on the property.

Her work is carried by many of the same shops and galleries that carry Frances’s designs, which makes sense as they have a similar, clean aesthetic. We will be featuring Daphne’s jewelry May 1 through 31, along with a few more of our favorite jewelers!

As we’ve been hinting about in our newsletter, we have something special planned for May. Beginning May 1, we will be featuring the work of five of our favorite jewelry artists (in addition to Frances). There will be an artists’ reception on Thursday, May 8, just before Mother’s Day weekend, where we will be serving cosmos and donating a portion of the jewelry sales to Northwest Hope and Healing. On a personal level, it seems natural for us to support an organization that assists women with breast cancer for Mother’s Day. It’s also exciting to get the chance to show off the work of some very amazing women!

We will highlight the individual artists here in our blog, but in the meantime you can view the postcard for the event here (front) and here (back).

This week for the West Seattle Art Walk we are having an official “opening” party for Brad Strain, who has been our featured artist for the last two months. Brad’s work will be coming down at the end of the month, but not before we hang his latest creations:
“Thoughts Left Behind” 11″ x 14″ $250

“Winter Talking Blues” 7″ x 7″ $80

The Art Walk is Thursday, April 10, from 6 to 9pm. We will have snacks and beverages and several more of Brad’s beautiful pieces… one of which might just find a home on one of your walls.

Not on the art walk or at Click! but worth mentioning: Friday night, March 14, several artists will be surfacing at 4221 SW Juneau, for an event they call “More Noise Please!”. T.S. Pew’s artwork has had us seeing the world from multiple perspectives for years, and we only just realized that the artwork Chad Steig makes is not limited to the beautiful cocktails he mixes at Blackbird Bistro. These are kids who are serious about their art, and we seriously love it.

Yes it’s true. We always have the best snacks and beverages on the West Seattle Art Walk (Thursday March 13, 6–9pm), but you have to when you’re a little off the beaten path. Of course it doesn’t hurt that we’ve got some kick ass art to show as well.

Our current featured artist Brad Strain has brought us some new work that takes some of his themes of home (and a longing for home) and incorporates them with polaroid images of local urban landscapes. He also brought more paintings, which seem to be gaining quite a following.

Our own “in-house” artist is featured this month as well: Frances is introducing new colors to her cork jewelry line. Fans of Frances’s jewelry will love the way the silver and gold light up with “ocean” and “sage” — two new colors of dyed cork, as announced in our recent email newsletter. (Sign up here)

On February 14th Click! will begin participating in the West Seattle Artwalk. Come out with your sweetheart or non-sweetheart for wine, cheese and of course, art. Our premier will feature new work by artist Brad Strain. His mixed media paintings are expressive glimpses of emotion. We love them.

see through thoughts, 14 x 11″, $280

no i am not, 18 x 24″, $350

We are so excited to go to Twilight Artist Collective’s 3 ladies + 3 years + New Location grand opening party this evening to welcome them to West Seattle! The Twilight gallery features eclectic local art including 2D work complemented by handbags, funky t-shirts, jewelry, and other great things.

The artist cooperative is all about giving artists opportunities to show their work. In fact, they have put us in touch with several of their members, whose work will be featured on the walls of Click! in the coming months.

Stephanie Hargrave was the first 2D artist we featured at Click! and people still regularly ask about her encaustic paintings. Thursday evening, January 10 from 6 to 8pm she will have an opening in Kirkland at the Patricia Rovzar gallery. She wrote the following about her new work:

Chrysanthemum, A Series will be in the back portion of the gallery, and is, essentially, one very lengthy encaustic painting. 32 feet to be exact! It is a concept I’ve been working on for quite a while, and is finally complete.

The painting is broken up, of course, into sections. Each of the 12 paintings is framed and available separately, and while each one stands alone, each one feeds visually into the next, and the last into the first. Oh, if only I had a round room!

It’s pretty hard to get us out of West Seattle these days, let alone Kirkland, but this is not to be missed.

UPDATE 1/12/08 changed image below to one from the show, which was stunning, and will remain up at Rovzar Gallery until Feb. 11.