Recently I went for a visit to the Flour Power Bakery, opened and run by my good friends the Rowley's.   It was an afternoon filled with pastry, coffee, laughter and inspiration.  JR ( stands for Jean Robert-say it like you were born in Paris) and Denise Rowley ditched their high profile jobs as commercial stylists and now spend all their waking hours creating magic out of flour, butter, sugar and eggs.   JR was a food stylist and is French so each pastry, cookie and loaf of bread is a work of art and tastes as good as it looks.  Denise, who is no slouch in the baking department, has styled the bakery into a retro 60's tribute to peace, love and pop-art flowers.  Together they are like super-heroes and their costume is a fine dusting of flour.  Visit Flourpowerbakery.net on line , but for a real treat find them in Livingston Manor or wait for the Farmers' Markets (Sullivancountyfarmersmarket.org) to open up, in early may, and find the Flour Power goodies there.

I have dropped off some pottery, bowls, platters, cups, cookie jars... all covered with dots in all manner of color combinations for the baking duo to sell and now I am working on a very special cookie jar for the Flour Power team to fill with melt in your mouth treats.  The process of making any pot is slow, first the ideas need to bounce around in my brain for a while, then I can start to throw the form.  It may take several tries for the perfect shape to arrive.  Then the piece starts to come to life.  Here you can see the decorated but not yet dry or painted Flower Power cookie jar.  Denise- you will notice it is more detailed then we discussed.   I just can't seem to help myself,  when it comes down to it, the philosophy of more is more, has my name written allover it.   I'll post updates of this work in progress as I get it painted and then fired, glazed and fired again.  Fingers crossed.