The Object Eye

This photo is of the latest work I sent to Lille- a shop in Chicago. it is really hard to get good photos of ceramics and this image is just about perfect in my books. I've found that for a photographer to get a good photo of ceramics that captures the personality of the object not just the physical fact of it that have to have "The Object Eye".

Weirdly "The Object Eye" looks at a vessel subjectively, bringing out the intrinsic features of the materials and capturing an elusive something that might make someone long to actually touch, caress or fondle the object.

Shock- proof , shit detector

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.
Ernest Hemmingway

This quote from Hemmingway is something all artists could learn from. Being your own best and harshest critic is an essential survival skill in the rough and tumble of the art world. But it is important to be realistic. When I studied painting at college there was a whiff of the attitude that every piece you make should be a masterpiece, that working for years on one artwork was OK as long as it was great in the end. To me this smacks of the dilettante and hobbyist rather than the serious artist. Great artists from the past have mostly all worked hard, spruiking themselves, finding patrons and producing work so that they might survive. The work that you produce should be the product of thought , design and the skill of the artist. To be professional means that even when you are not inspired, you can still produce professional, beautiful work.
...And sometimes the gods are with you and there will be amazing pieces that transcend the technical aspects and become masterpieces.

Could these magnificent robots from the Bennett Robotworks be "Shock- proof , shit detectors"? I don't know but I think I could use one of these around the house!

Stradbroke Island Pillow Book

We have been to Stradbroke Island. For a week I have woken up to this.....


with whales swimming past, locatable by lacy, delicate puffs of white spume against the deep blue sea.

I was tagged ages ago by someone whose name I accidentally deleted from my e-mail. As a result for the last weeks or so I've been walking around making lists of eight things in my head that I think might be interesting or linked to craft- my own Australian, Stradbroke Island Pillow Book.

1.Things I think are essential in a holiday house
Good linen, and tasteful bedspreads. I once made E and S move from one hotel to another in Spain because the bedspreads were a very bad colour and entirely synthetic (they thanked me afterwards)
2. Best Scrabble Word
GEISHA ( I often try and think of good Scrabble words even though I don't play all that much, or very well.)

3. Last Book Read
"History of the Dead" by Kevin Brockheimer. This was a fascinating, frightening and beautiful book. It deals with themes of memory and what living means through twin plotlines. The first following the disastrous trip to Anatarticta by scientist Laura Byrd and the second set in a place known only as "The City" which is pretty much like Earth but is filled with people who have died and are still remembered by a living soul.

4. I Love the Smell Of.....
sea air, Artemesia (sometimes known as wormwood), wet clay, which I like to think of as rotting granite...I love that smell.

5. Drawing is the central trunk of my practice. Without drawing nothing else I make would exist.

6. I consider throwing pots a form of drawing. 3-dimensional but as distinctive and immediately recognizable as a signature.

7. On Stradbroke Island there is a movement to plant the gardens with native plants. My favourite grevillas were the ones with blue/grey leaves and vivid red flowers and the different varieties of that lovely Australian seaside plant called "Pigface"


8. My favourite Glen Campbell song is "Galveston"

"Galveston, oh Galveston, I still hear your sea waves crashing
While I watch the cannons flashing
I clean my gun and dream of Galveston

I still see her standing by the water
Standing there lookin' out to sea
And is she waiting there for me?
On the beach where we used to run
At Galveston, at Galveston"

(To my mystery tagger, I am so sorry for forgetting your name, please get back in touch.)