strange fragments

Farewell.........

2011-09-02T09:00:00.006+10:00

You will have seen in my last post that I am starting a Masters Degree. Writing is sometimes easy and sometimes like pulling teeth (the really hard wisdom teeth!) Having to concentrate on writing things such as "Reflective Journals" and "Study Plans" has made me see that I can't do this blog justice and do the hard thinking and writing needed for a Masters.

I've been writing "Strange Fragments" for over 6 years now and it has been a wonderful, wonderful experience. I've felt connected to a world of people that hopefully, over the next few years, I'll actually get to meet in the flesh. Being part of an international community of artists and people who love art has given me so much strength and inspiration and I am still part of that community...but in a different way.

I've just started a Facebook page called Shannon Garson Porcelain that will offer snippets from the studio and information about workshops exhibitions etc.

Please keep getting in touch and sending me your information and one day, at a conference, exhibition, workshop or maybe at my studio we will meet up and I'll get to see you in person!

Thank you all for the feedback, encouragement and just for reading the "strange fragments" of a potter's life.
Shannon

Touch makes reality

2011-08-21T12:09:00.002+10:00

Home sweet home.

I've just been away for a week, it's so good to be back at home, with the family, sleeping in my own bed! I've started a Masters degree in ceramics at the ANU (Australian National University) in Canberra. Last week I spent every waking hour involved in an intensive masterclass with Belgium artist Anton Reijnders.
One of the first things he said to us was

"Touch makes reality. This is very essential. We tend not to look. We tend only to see what we know."

This is an essential thing to remind yourself of when you are in middle of a creative struggle to tease something new out the muddle of old stuff, ideas, things you have seen before and wondering what's for dinner. To truly look at our work is a time consuming and sometimes confronting task that gets pushed aside in favor of something easier (like making more objects) Looking is hard and valuable.

Latest News..........

2011-08-13T08:43:00.001+10:00

LATEST NEWS AND INFORMATION

For those of you who have seen my recent range on Designsponge. The spotty teawares and the other ranges featured in the photoshoot are stocked by the lovey Judith Bickridge at Potier in Melbourne. Sue Clement in her wonderful gallery "Pomme" in Mornington Victoria and Catherine Healy at "Aspects" in Kings Park Western Australia.

NOOSA TRAVELING SCHOLARSHIP

Work from the "Mapping" series has been won the Highly Commended prize at the Noosa Travlleing Scholarship. Awarded annually, the Scholarship provides funds of $2,500 for the purpose of undertaking travel and study that will support career development. The finalist exhibition will be held at the Noosa Regional Gallery from 27 July - 11 September 2011.

Photographing pots

2011-08-08T12:35:00.006+10:00

I had the most fun a girl can have with
1. a load of pots

2. a beautiful house

3. a lovely garden

and
4. a stunning retro beauty.

I wanted to take photos of my pots in context as I'd noticed that I tended to use photos of the pots "gallery style" all by themselves on a totally white background. I love pots photographed in this way but it does tend to give them a more gallery feel. This isn't a great fit with interiors magazines or blogs.

I wanted a retro, slightly Australiana theme and to show how much darned fun handmade pots can be when you bunch them all together with your other bits and pieces. So here are some of the results - I'm absolutely thrilled. You can see more here.

Music

2011-07-28T09:40:00.004+10:00

I've been listening to Gillian Welch's "The Harrow and the Harvest" in the studio. It is as beautiful as her previous album "The Revelator" which Trevor and I listened to everyday for a year when we first bought it.

There is some music that is only for certain times (like "How Bizarre" for the summer of 96) and other music that has kept me going through some very hard times. When the first measured, calm notes drawn across the cello strings of Bach's Cello Suites sound out I remember all the times I've listened to this music. I've listened when I'm upset, when I'm happy, I heard Trevor play it thousands of times on the trumpet as a warm up when he used to practice for gigs, I listened to this music single and now when I'm a mother. I love Bach's cello suites so much I hope I'm listening to them when I'm old.

Here is a list of some of the timeless, music that I carry with me for every occasion
"River" Joni Mitchell- for Christmas and anytime you need comforting

"Greetings to the New Brunette" Billy Bragg- for taking you back to the years of Doc Martins and vintage dresses.

"My Funny Valentine" Chet Baker- Reminds me of when I first saw Trev at a gig, singing his heart out with funny lyrics. Unfortunately as he is a mumbler no-one in the audience could understand them, but the band was laughing!

"Nadine " Chuck Berry- first heard the quintessentially American song when I was travelling around Europe.

"Gymnopedie -No 1" Eric Satie- this piece reminds me of water

37.2 Le Matin" Gabriel Yared

"I Dream a Highway" Gillian Welch

"Flamenco Sketches " Miles Davis

"Tracks of My Tears" The Miracles

"Sex" The Necks- for long summer afternoons just as good in bed as out.

"Heart of Gold" Neil Young- This is a song from my childhood . I love the yearning regret in Young's voice.

"My Baby Just Cares For Me" Nina Simone

"Only the Lonely" Roy Orbison

"Come on Up to the House" Tom Waits

"New Favourite" Alison Krauss

Vitrified Studio- Take a break........

2011-07-21T12:16:00.003+10:00

Give yourself a big treat and check out Shelley Martin's blog Vitrified Studio. Shelley runs a small ceramics studio in Portland , Oregon and her blog is just the thing you need at lunchtime, when you have a lot of boring e-mails to reply to,or tax forms to fill out. DON'T DO IT!!!!! Take a break and browse through beautiful ceramics from around the world.
Shelley Martin's pots from Vitrified Studio

When the drawings stop

2011-07-14T12:10:00.004+10:00

Working weekends and being a mother can just about make you want to drop where you are standing and not get up any more. I think the added thing on top of the physical hard work is that you have to remain calm so you are inspired. The minute you start to get that tight-at-the back-of-neck- frowny-feeling the drawings stop.

Is it a lesson in "letting-go" or holding on tightly and having everything going along to a highly sophisticated plan? ....a plan that involves a lot of last minute tweaking, and numerous unplanned addendum....and some hysterical hyperventilation style breathing.

Issac Button can throw a ton of clay into pots a day!

2011-07-01T14:22:00.003+10:00

Students of ceramics and the austere beauty of hard work will love this film. Made in the 1960's it features English potter Issac Button, a man who makes herculean tasks appear effortless. I like the way he smokes a pipe while throwing, I like his simple robust pots. Issac Button claimed that he "never left a pub the same day I entered it!"
As a country potter myself I admire the plain way he goes about his daily work. We are very lucky to have a visual record of something at once so amazing and so ordinary.
Thanks to David Neale for putting the film up on his blog.

Basquiat, Rene Ricard, squeezing inspiration

2011-06-17T13:37:00.005+10:00

"As much as undervaluation can kill, so can a false sense of the value of your work. Jean-Michel was advised to stop giving it away. But if your friends can't have it, why live? Overprotection is deadly; the stuff has to get out there to be seen. Making money is something between artists and their stomachs. To turn one's work into fetish that is almost indistinct from oneself, to overpersonalize and covet one's own work, is professional suicide. Fear of rip-off is paralysis. One is always ripped off. Keeping work a secret is the psychology of the applied artist, not the fine artist who must live in a dialogue. "

Poet Rene Ricard writing in his 1981 essay "the Radiant Child" that bought Jean Michel Basquiat to the attention of the wider art world and the New York art-collecting glitterati. This beautiful essay seems almost elegaic even though Ricard is writing about the new work from burning, incandescent artists rising from the world of graffiti, punk music and the streets of New York. He captures the longing, inspiration and intertwined practical, monetary concerns of being an artist and gives them all the finger, in disgust or delight. His sarcastic, sad, beautiful words are worth a read and a re-read.

Studio

2011-06-10T08:28:00.002+10:00

The studio is FULL of work. I've got pieces going out all over the place soon. Including the Noosa Travelling Scholarship. Awarded annually, the Scholarship provides funds up to $10,000, $2,500 and $1,000 for the purpose of undertaking travel and study that will support career development. The finalist exhibition will be held at the Noosa Regional Gallery from 27 July - 11 September 2011.Leave on jet plane to Sydney now! Whoooooo hooooooooo!

One Day Winter Workshops in My Studio!

2011-06-01T09:55:00.002+10:00

Winter Workshops

The leaves are falling fast, and now is the time to come to Maleny and enjoy the blue, blue sky and crisp mornings. Finally, after many years of requests I'm holding workshops at my Maleny studio! With only only 5 participants per workshop this will be an intimate, hands on exploration of decorative surface techniques. The workshops will begin with an introduction to the beautiful, translucent porcelain and then we'll plunge straight into creating. We will discuss design, pattern, surface texture and imagery in order for you to create two porcelain bowls with your own design. What we are aiming for is a reflection of your own unique personality with all it’s complexity, in your final design! But the day can't be all about work and there will be plenty of demonstrations and a delicious, vegetarian lunch.

I'm running the workshops from 9.30 until 3 so they are convenient for those with school children.

Work will be fired and available to pick up or be sent to your home.

So, bring a friend and come along for a lovely day in the country and enjoy the creative chaos of the studio while making your very own translucent porcelain bowls.

Shannon Garson Porcelain - Winter Workshops
Tuesday June 21st

Tuesday June 28th

Tuesday July 5th

My Studio
9.30-3.00
$130 per person
See details on my website

The Potter's Task

2011-05-25T08:33:00.005+10:00

fresh turnings on my studio floor

It is a perennial problem for artists of all descriptions that not enough people buy original , handmade work. I've heard many, many discussions about this over the years . Potters take a range of views from "The public just don't "get" handmade pots and that is why I'm not selling more. " which could be best described as sour grapes, through to "Maybe ceramics are just not fashionable enough for people to buy and the industry is dead." Neither of these opinions encompasses the complexity of the world we live in and how artists fit into our communities.

Design blogs and magazines are aspirational, most people do not live in tidy houses where gleaming objects lie in tasteful arrangements on vintage Swedish sideboards. The relationship of humans to objects is complex and encompasses personal history, emotions, memory, habits, practical needs, evolving relationships as well as aesthetics. It is rare to find a home where all the objects are chosen to match each other for purely aesthetic reasons. The contemporary ceramicists greatest challenge is to find a place within a life, to become an integral part of the complexity and rich texture of a home. This involves building relationships. Not just personal relationships with those who want to buy and collect your work but also making work that hooks into a person's sub-conscious. Intelligent intriguing objects that the collector longs to see, objects that comfort and provoke emotion.

decorating a " Mapping" bowl

The fact is that being a potter is a low-paid profession, you don't hear many people in other traditionally low paid professions expressing surprise at the fact that they will never become wealthy while working as a waitress or a gardener. Some potters earn a decent amount of money but the pay-off for being a potter is not financial. I am as vulnerable as anyone to discontented envy when perusing design magazines and seeing all kinds of work BUT NO HANDMADE POTS featured in their glossy pages, but my job is to make objects and connect with friends and strangers through these things. The connection is a haptic language* quiet and almost unheard in the babble of fashion and mass-produced objects that fill the world. Starting from my local community and working in wider and wider ripples through friends of friends, strangers on the Internet, talking about my work and showing it to people who might never see it, and making, and making and making. The tiring, inspiring never-ending push and pull of responding and eliciting response with words and pots is the potter's task. If work is not selling then you haven't either found the people who are able to hear you or, through arrogance and fear you and your pots are not even in the conversation.

Judith Rofe, a great supporter and communicator in the world of ceramics recently made the point that:

"People looking for an aesthetically pleasing object for their sideboard - one that they will purchase from the heart and possibly pay more for than they meant to - may not have the opportunity to see Australian pottery in the places they go to. Outlets are few and far between, exhibitions ephemeral, potters with open doors not necessarily well advertised or signposted."

A potter's task is to signpost and advertise the aesthetic, emotional and practical value of handmade pots. It is a conversation which involves the sometimes boring, sometimes painful but always useful act of listening to others opinions and needs and responding to that with a new pot or a solution, or an discussion.

* "Haptic" refers to sense of touch. It is a very useful word for potters but really quite academic and I've often found it a bit scary. Good word to pull out at your next Scrabble game though!

Saturday Afternoon

2011-05-14T17:08:00.009+10:00

Saturday afternoon. The setting sun and closing of the day has always been an inspiring time for me. Since the "Time of the Children" began the closing of the day is a signal to frantically finish up what ever I'm working on and rush up the stairs to the dinner/shower bedtime tsunami, finishing at around 7.00 by collapsing on the couch. But today we have Holly Throsby playing really loud and the table has a pot of freshly made tea steaming on it and my camera is handy and somehow the elegiac ordinary, setting of the sun through the western windows washes the room with golden light and beauty descends.

And we all have a cup of tea and play our music REALLY LOUD. And I stop wishing I lived in a groovy house that looks like something off "The Selby" blog and that Trev and I hung around the house looking like Potter/cheesemaker/ex-models in our nouveau boho clothing somehow incorporating something in the vague form of a vest that looks like it was made out of a flokati rug.

And I think of an idea to celebrate my normal, wonderful life and the normal wonderful lives of the unstyled cups and plates that we use everyday. Every so often I am going to post images of pots in their natural environment. Chipped, cracked,being sipped at by grubs who insist on drinking out of their teaspoons and spilling milk all over the table. This is how art and life connect.

I've always said there is no use in a having a teapot that is only for looking at.

What's happening in the studio?

2011-04-30T07:58:00.005+10:00

Having days off from the studio has an aftershock that occurs about 6 weeks after the original event. Friends or colleauges or collectors"just dropping in" during the work day, is something that artists who work from home literally pay for later in the year.

When I first started my studio practice it was very difficult to get into the studio and start work everyday without fail. The establishment of this routine is absolutely essential to the growth of skills, creative processes and bank balance! I used my favourite radio show, starting at 9 o'clock in the morning to get me down there. But the creative routine is fragile and easily thrown off balance by the robust demands of domesticity and family life.

Creating uninterrupted space within the family week to make pots and toss over new ideas takes nerves of steel as you stare down the homemaker guilt, school mother guilt and the plain old wish to be around your fabulous children and make sure they have moral and intellectual grounding in life, fresh vegetables and do not develop tendencies which are linked to becoming dysfunctional adults in any way. (Like I'd know.......I thought being a professional artist was the only job I could possibly live with!)
Having children has enhanced my work as an artist. It has opened up new emotional territory and trained me to work faster and harder and concentrate in different ways. It is a stark contrast to the luxurious, long, loops of time I spent thinking and making things when I was younger and I'm still in the frantic early years of motherhood (my daughters are 4 and 6) but I am interested to see what kind of artist will emerge from this tempering. I feel that my basic material is being changed. When you fire clay at around 600 degrees it undergoes a process called 'quartz inversion" where the crystals in the clay body change their molecular structure. If a pot survives this metamorphosis twice, once during the firing and again during cooling a beautiful, hard fired vessel will result. I feel like motherhood is a similar process.

Beautiful handcrafted bags- "Nancybird"

2011-04-15T15:12:00.005+10:00

I saw these beautiful bags today at the new Maiocchi shop on Ann St in Brisbane.
They are "Nancybird" bags and wallets created by Melbourne designer Emily Wright.
"Nancybird" is a beautiful business using leather by-products of the meat industry, tanned using analine or vegetable dyes. The fabrics are cotton or jute and chosen for the low environmental impact.
Emily's business doesn't just pay lip service to being sustainable as she has developed her shipping and packing using recycled materials and prefers to send her merchandise flat-packed by sea freight to reduce air miles. If that doesn't impress you then how about this....
"Nancybird" headquarters uses 100% windpower!
But to get to the heart of the matter, these objects are simply beautiful. They capture a ruggedness and practicality in their construction combined with soft femininity and a dash of retro in the use of printed fabric and drawings. The crafted finish is such a pleasure to see in an object such as a bag that is usually created as a disposable, consumer fashion item. You can imagine that these bags would just get better with age. Marks of wear and tear and living enhance such objects.

It is worth saving up to buy such items. My advice for starving artists and others of Very Little Assets is to buy sparingly and buy the best.

connections-songs, art, chandeliers, and walking in the woods.

2011-04-10T12:12:00.012+10:00

This movie incorporates everything I love about this world. Creativity, hard work, the building of a home and how deeply, personally connected it is to making things, songs, art, chandeliers, and walking in the woods.

Thanks to Natalie Chanin from Alabama Chanin for bringing it to my attention.

I heART Japan

2011-04-10T11:38:00.003+10:00

A group of talented and generous invited artists from around Australia have donated work to be auctioned on eBay as part of the 'I heART japan' charity auction from 8-10 April to aid people affected by the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan.

The items are beautiful. I especially covet the Mitsuo Shoji bowls

Start bidding here.......

My Nana

2011-03-31T07:58:00.003+10:00

My Nana was the first person to give me an appreciation of the soothing powers of a cup of tea served in fine china. Now, when I drink tea and make teacups and teapots it reminds me of all the lovely cups of tea I've had over the years in Nana's old teacups, from the 1970's cup and saucer sets completely covered in gold through to "fine, bone china" cups with roses on the interior. This was just one of the many, many precious things she bought into my life.

She died yesterday at the age of 89.

Japan

2011-03-20T07:59:00.002+10:00

For a personal story of one potter, one family in the earthquake zone read Euan Craig's blog

When the world is going crazy and there is bad news from every corner it's important to remember the scope of the disaster is intimate. People have lost their things, their homes are unsafe, their windows are broken and those who survive wake up from nights of broken sleep to have to find water to boil for their kettles and pick their way through rubble to their own kitchens. Euan's bravery and the beauty of his writing will move you to tears.

Porcelain, Glass and an Old Barn- Gympie Road Trip

2011-03-01T09:10:00.003+10:00

Last Saturday I drove the back way to Gympie for the opening of "Swamp Cartography".
I love driving through the golden afternoon light, the paddocks flying by, the girls in the back seat chattering about their day and taking mini naps.
We stopped to take photos of this beautiful barn. The crossroads were deserted, all we could hear was the wind in the grass and we were surrounded by the sweet, spicy smell of the afternoon sun on the fields.

For the exhibition we borrowed an old cedar table from a friend and set up a "collectors table" with all our tools and impressions laid out.

The "Swamp Bubbles" looked great in a gallery under real lights

Swamp Cartography The Movie!

2011-02-24T07:26:00.001+10:00

I'm pretty excited to present our movie!

Who has the most beautiful tools in all the world? Chris Weaver!

2011-02-22T11:13:00.004+10:00

Who has the most beautiful tools in all the world? New Zealand potter Chris Weaver! These tools are made from driftwood collected on the beach outside Chris's studio.

The West Coast of New Zealand is a wild , rugged landscape and Chris says this has forced him to be resourceful and develop his own ways of making.
This series of teapots were inspired by Chris's Grandmother's old metal pressing irons. Although they were inspired by a woman and a prosaic domestic task these pots capture the true grit and determination needed to wield pressing irons and other household tools back in the days before electrical power. They simultaneously encompass femininity of the tough, single minded, Protestant work-ethic variety and the promise of a cup of tea, relaxing, and recharging during a hard days work.

...the final countdown

2011-02-10T16:18:00.004+10:00

The Swamp Cartography collaboration is entering a white hot, nerve-wracking, exciting phase as the travelling exhibition begins on the 26th of February at the Gympie Regional Gallery.Exhibition design has never been my strong point and mostly I just opt for white plinths deluding myself that they somehow appear "Classic". We had a very fruitful visit last weekend from Australian ceramicist and teacher Janet de Boos (this doesn't really describe her fabulousness as a supporter and encourager and inspirer of literally hundreds of students, artists and teachers over the past decades) who gently but insistently prodded us into the uncomfortable process of examining our assumptions. This is a process that is totally absent from the everyday studio practice. Compared to my own very gentle examining of my aesthetic motivations Janet's was positively brutal! It was worth enduring the discomfort as Janet's questions forced me to think carefully about every aspect of the exhibition space, how to make it dynamic and how to pare down the ideas until every aspect of the space is resolved so the exhibition becomes an experience drawing the audience into the beauty and isolation of the wallum. This process is so valuable it is worth enduring the discomfort and the exhibition will be a cracker with not a white plinth in sight!

The exhibition commences in Gympie and will trundle on it's way over the next two years encompassing a film launch in Brisbane at the Botanical Gardens in September, an exhibition at the Museum of Brisbane in October , Noosa and Canberra, and Melbourne in 2012....with more to come.

$18 000

2011-02-10T16:17:00.000+10:00

The auction of ceramics for Flood Relief raised over $18 000!!!!!!! This is an incredible number when applied to contemporary ceramics. Thanks to Vipoo and all the artists who took part and thanks to all the generous supporters who bid for the pieces.

Flood Relief Ceramic Auction

2011-01-28T19:33:00.004+10:00

I'm taking part in a great auction organized by Aussie/Thai legend in his own lunchbox, ceramicist Vipoo Srivlasa. It will be on EBay on Friday the 4th of Feb. All the artists have donated their work to the Flood Relief and, although I hope you are not totally motivated by the thought of a bargain, the bidding starts at very low reserves. I've donated these two pieces

They would retail for over $300 AUD but the bidding starts at $50!!!!!!!!!!

Have a look...and a bid and own some amazing ceramics while relieving flood victims!a tiny sample of the beautiful work available.

Here is what Vipoo has written about his inspiration for this wonderful project.....

"My call out for artists to donate a piece was responded to very well ... overwhelmingly in fact. Artists from all over Australia donated their work for this auction. Some artists come from as far as USA and Canada! The auction will happen online at ebay.com.au Starting from 9.00 pm on Thursday 3 Feb and finish on Sunday 6th Feb at 9.00 pm You can see a preview of the work on Facebook here...

or visit my website. Starting bids are at the discretion of the donor artist and will range from AUS $20 upwards. Please kindly help me promote the auction to anyone you know that might be interested in the auction. We need a lot of bidders to make this auction successful! The following artists have agreed to donate their work.
Akio Takamori (USA)
Andrea Barker (Victoria)
Angela Valamanesh (South Australia)
Avital Sheffer (New South Wales)
Ayumi Horie (USA)
Bridget Bodenham (Victoria)
Carole Epp (Canada)
Christopher Plumridge (Victoria)
Cyrus Tang (Victoria)
Dawn Whitehand (Victoria)
Gerry Wedd (South Australia)
Greg Daly (New South Wales)
Heather Creet (Tasmania)
Irianna Kanellopoulou (Victoria)
Jane Sawyer (Victoria)
Janet DeBoos (Australian Capital Territory)
Janet Mansfield, OAM (New South Wales)
Julie Bartholomew (New South Wales)
Keiko Matsui (New South Wales)
Kenji Uranishi (Queensland)
Kevin White (Victoria)
Lene Kuhl Jakobsen (Victoria)
Louise Boscacci (New South Wales)
Lynda Draper (New South Wales)
Naoko Yehenara (New South Wales)
Paul Aburrow (Victoria)
Robert Doble (UK/Victoria)
Sandra Black (Western Australia)
Shannon Garson (Queensland)
Shin Koyama (Queensland)
Simon Braund (Victoria)
Somchai Charoen (New South Wales)
Sony Manning (Victoria)
Sophie Milne (Victoria)
Tanawat Suttasoontorn (Thailand/Victoria)
Tatiana Gvozdetskia (Victoria)
Vicki Grima (New South Wales)
Vipoo Srivilasa (Thailand/Victoria)

Vipoo Srivilasa is authorised as the promoter for this event and the fundraiser reference number is TF/11/3165 Net proceeds of the funds raised (100%) will go to the Premier’s Disaster Relief Appeal. Donation collected by the Premier’s Disaster Relief Appeal will be disbursed to the people affected by flooding in Queensland Communities in December 2010 and January 211 The successful bidder is not eligible for a receipt for taxation purpose as they are receiving a benefit in return for the successful bid amount which will be donated to the Premier’s Disaster Relief Appeal. Please contact the Australian Taxation Office should you require further information in relation to the tax deductibility of donations Please note: freight/insurance and any additional fees are to be paid by the successful bidder and arranged with the respective artist.

Narek Galleries- regional inspiration

2011-01-18T08:36:00.004+10:00

Teapot and cups by Bruce Nuske

Narek Galleries is a phenomenon. Situated near the small town of Tathra on the far South Coast of New South Wales, Narek has been showing amazing contemporary craft for the last 35 years. A few years ago director Karen O'Clery moved the galleries to the Old Tanja Church a venue which has been described as elegant and serene. The work that Karen shows from Australian and international artists is an inspiring survey of Australian masters of ceramic, glass and textiles interspersed with group exhibitions introducing emerging artists.

Ceramic by Hiroe Swen

I love the fact that Narek is raising the standard for Australian craft galleries from a small country town. There is a perception in Australia that quality, notable art is the exclusive province of Sydney and Melbourne. I have always argued (from my own small country town!) that this is not so. High quality venues such as Narek build relationships between artists and collectors on a regional level and also introduce the city-centric to the concept of a vibrant, regional arts community.

Glass by Wendy Fairclough

Check out Karen's website for more photos of beautiful, inspiring work.

Janet De Boos latest work

Things that made me happy this morning....

2011-01-17T09:09:00.003+10:00

Things that made me happy walking to the pool this morning.......
Two Willy Wagtails swooping and diving over the Obi River

A truck piled high with bales of hay driving in the sun.

The thick mat of Hoop Pine needles on the pavement beneath the trees outside the Primary School. (next week they will be swept up and thrown away ready for the first day of school)

The thought of swimming laps in the cool blue pool then walking home into my damp, clay smelling, studio and making pots.

2010-12-21T07:33:00.000+10:00

Happy Christmas

What's real?

2010-12-11T07:07:00.003+10:00

Last weekend Trev and I went to see the Gotan Project. It was great. From the moment the musicians walked through the floor to ceiling fringed curtains in their 3- piece suits and fedora hats it was an exhilarating blend of live music and new technology. I love it when artists hit the perfect balance between old and new. Potters often have arcane arguments (mainly at conferences and sometimes on arcane e-mail applications) about what is "real" pottery. It is implied that the only "real" potters are those who make the work from start to finish with their own hands. This artisan approach emphasizes skill over concept. When I was at art college the opposite was true of the painting department, so much so that I graduated with a major in painting without ever using oil paint at all!

Both approaches are ridiculous. Every kind of art is real. The only thing to ask when feeling art is "Does it move me?". How it is made and what tools are used, are all subservient to the final result. The Gotan Project captured the exhilaration and warmth of live music with the accordian, violin, guitars, grand piano and beautiful voice of Cristina Vilallonga while the two musicans on the mixing desk were using amazing new technology which I can't even really describe (it had flashing lights and computers and samples of voices and music). Each element heightened the essential values of the others until there was a glorious blend of old and new with the geeks on the computers one minute, and hitting an ancient percussive instrument known as a cow bell the next!

making tracks

2010-12-03T11:44:00.001+10:00

When I did these I was thinking about walking through the wallum with my children.
Last time I did this Sweet P. got tired and I had to piggyback her. I lost my new sunglasses.
The wallum swallowed them up and in the glittering, sparkling, scratchy, wallum with the bright hot sun bearing down I looked and looked for my sunnies as the little girls sat under a banksia wilting and sucking their thumbs.

We didn't find the sunnies ...but the shy wallum did reveal her treasures as we saw many many of the elusive vanilla orchids with their pale,unphotographable mauve spots.

Lately.........

2010-12-02T15:50:00.004+10:00

Here is some of what I've been doing...... Exploring the wonderful world of the medieval beasties. Mermaids were originally seen as monsters and often depicted in medieval beastaries with wings and feathered legs ending in wickedly taloned toes.

These Beasties are cavorting their way over to "Drift" at Point Lookout on Stradbroke Island.

Spots have a habit of migrating . My new favourites are these spotty butterflies. I like the craziness of the spots and butterflies. I had the crazy, clashing patterns of High Victorian Chinoserie in mind when I started these.
They will be featuring at the Young Designers Market , this Sunday at Southbank. Please stop by (especially if it is rainy!)

Funny and illuminating- the art and writing of David Neale

2010-11-22T12:06:00.002+10:00

David Neale is a fantastic Australian jeweller and his blog "The Golden Smith" is simultaneously very funny and illuminating
......have a read

studio sale tomorrow

2010-11-19T07:06:00.002+10:00

Sorry about the blogging silence. I've been running around like a chook with it's head cut off getting ready for the Studio Sale/Brisbane Young Designers Market on December the 4th and Christmas orders.

Firing and decorating until late into the night takes it's toll on mother/artists. It's hard to get the head space to be good at either role. I've been working more on the map bowls...photos coming.

The sale is tomorrow 9-5 at my studio!
Wish you could all come.

ceramics, tapestries and googling medieval owls..........

2010-11-07T08:07:00.008+10:00

Sometimes Googling is an immensely satisfying, inspiring process.

I was looking up images of owls in medieval tapestries this morning (as you do) and I was thrilled to discover the ceramic and textile exhibition of Dan and Amanda Wright.

Dan produces thrown, altered earthenware and his influences range from 1950's English slipware through to the graphic work of Piero Fornasetti.The terracotta base forms of English slipware have a warmth and vitality that infuses the drawings and seems to pull them into the surface of the vessel.

Dan and Amanda's exhibition was shown in St Davids Cathedral in Pembrokeshire in August. The setting, combined with the beautiful soft detailed texture of the tapestries and the dynamic composition of the vessels, where the image seems to be thrusting against the constraints of the forms creates a visually exciting exhibition. I wish I could have seen this one.

I have to credit illustrator Jackie Morris for the photos of the St David's exhibition. I came across them on her beautiful blog. Jackie's website is extensive and browsing through her enormous body of work is a perfect thing for a Sunday morning.

Monday morning eye candy from Josie Jurczenia

2010-10-25T08:22:00.005+10:00

Here's some Monday morning eye candy from American potter Josie Jurczenia.

I love Josie's loose, slab style and retro 30's/40's feel. This pomegranate vase is in the new Lark books publication 500 Vases, unfortunately with the wrong name! (page 282). So now when you open page 282 and are stunned speechless by the vessel , you will be able to think "Hang on a minute..........Josie Jurczenia!"

Christmas work for studio sale

2010-10-23T09:22:00.003+10:00

Studio Sale

Shannon Garson Porcelain and Rebecca Ward Jewellery

20^th November 2010

Maleny

9am-5pm

Launching a range of works from the “Swamp Cartography “ project at this years studio sale. We received a $40 000 Arts Qld grant last year to produce a body of work based around the Wallum areas of SE Qld including glasswork , jewellery and ceramics. I've has been working on a range of teapots and cups using the scribbly gum as inspiration. We travelled down to Canberra Glassworks in July this year and a range of beautiful, sandblasted, glass pendants will also be available at the studio sale.

The studio sale provides an opportunity to catch up with what local artists are doing and be one of the first to purchase work from “Swamp Cartography” series before it begins a national tour starting next year.

If you miss the sale my studio will be open by appointment during November and December.

The brittle, translucent beauty of barnacles

2010-10-19T07:17:00.003+10:00

I've been on holiday at Stradbroke Island.
Sea anemones are pretty much my favourite of all the rock pool delights.
The silvery leaves of the banksia.

Artist Jennie Truman has opened up a lovely gallery at Point Lookout. "Drift -handmade treasures from the Pacific Rim" is full of beachside things, handmade porcelain beakers by Jo Armytage, shell mirrors sustainably harvested by Pacific Islanders and figurative ceramics by Monte Lupo. Jennie has restored the old building to it's ramshackle 50's glory including the beautiful, sandblasted mermaid window.
The brittle, translucent beauty of barnacles.

Craft Australia Newsletter

2010-10-05T07:17:00.003+10:00

The Craft Australia newsletter this month focuses on studio ceramics.

There are a number of interesting articles including one written by ceramicist Angela Valamanesh on the arts/science crossover and how she has worked in this field. She points out that scientific methods of research combined with artistic methods such as intuition can lead artists in interesting direction. Valamanesh aslo explores the connection in her own work to microscopic images and scientific illustration.

The Craft Australia newsletter is available monthly straight to your inbox should you subscribe and is a valuable resource containing both articles and an opportunity section with grants, exhibition etc.

Molly Hatch- Contemporary American Decorative

2010-10-01T08:43:00.005+10:00

This is the work of American ceramicist Molly Hatch. Molly's practice combines making domestic ware and creating amazing, beautiful exhibition installations. Molly's work explores the power of the domestic vessel. She says

"A cup or a bowl is almost universally accessible and navigable as most people use them in their daily lives. For me, the blank cup is anonymous in a manner similar to a blank piece of paper. The three-dimensional surface tableware provides is rich with conceptual potential as a place for drawings and paintings. Interaction is encouraged through the decoration of hidden surfaces—the underside of a cup, beneath a lid or on a handle. "
I've voiced many similar sentiments over the years!

As well as being a great artist Molly is a writer and academic and her blog "stripes and dots" is essential reading for followers of contemporary decorative ceramics and aesthetic concerns within the strange world of modern pottery.

Mapping -wallum, creativity and collaboration

2010-09-29T08:30:00.004+10:00

Swamp Cartography-
Cartography (in Greek chartis = map and graphein = write) is the study and practice of making maps (also can be called mapping). Combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.
The process of making new work is harder than I usually like to reveal for fear of sounding a little too highly strung and artistic. It starts a long time before a single mark has been made and swirls and gestates for anything up to a few years. The collabotaive process adds another element that hasn't come into my working process before. Rebecca's brooches got me thinking about the ferns in the wallum, the way she connects two disparate materials with silver, the threads that connect all the wallum flora and all the ideas we continually revisit, merging and submerging. Sometimes an idea that one of us has bought up many times seems like a breakthrough when we are finally at a stage of being able to appreciate it.

These pots are maps. The marks are intended to draw the viewer over the surface, they map the volume and exterior of the vessel, the journeys I've taken through the wallum and the creative process.

Arthur H Robinson states that a map that is not properly designed will be a "cartographic failure". "The intent of the map should be illustrated in a manner in which the percipient acknowledges its purpose in a timely fashion. The term percipient refers to the person receiving information and was coined by Robinson. "(from wikipedia cartography entry)
I wanted the percipient of these bowls to feel their way over the surface and through the wallum. I also wanted the pots to contain a secondary map of the collaboration which doesn't sound so dry and boring when I refer to it as the inspiration and alchemy that occurs when two like -minded and wildly different artists get together.
Mapmakers claim that maps should contain a wealth of information and be multivariate. The richness of information in a map generates hypothesis, stimulates ideas and further research. Perhaps the purpose of art and the purpose of mapping intersect.

Around the world........Design studios

2010-09-15T07:51:00.006+10:00

Jung Porzellan
Jung Porcelain from Berllin. Made by hand in a small design studio by Katy Jung.

Fienedinge
Created by ceramicist Sandra Haischberger Feinedige porcelain is a design studio based n Vienna, Austria. Sandra has the most beautiful workshop I have ever seen you can read more about her here.....

Shoko Teruyama- lyrical decorative

2010-09-13T07:39:00.005+10:00

Scraffitto is one of my favourite techniques. This is one of the very first, most simple techniques people learn when they are first starting ceramics but there are never-ending variations on the technique of scraffitto.

Shoko Teruyama, Japanese born American ceramicist is inspired by the temples and shrines "decorated with texture and pattern contrasted by areas of calm and stillness" of her native country.
These beautiful works use overwhelming pattern in a poetic way leading the viewer around the pot. Decoration functions as an end in itself as details are revealed on closer viewing and also as an integral part of the form. Teruyama's use of pattern and colour reveals and amplifies the shape of the vessel. You often see decorated ware taken over by strident decoration but Teruyama's work avoids this by an insistence on the form and function within the decorative field. I like this work very much."Birds appear throughout my work to create focal points. Some birds swim in the motion of slip and fly around the vine patterns. Others are walking or sitting in thought. To me, the birds represent my sense of freedom."
From Shoko Teruyama's website

Drawing on the surface

2010-09-01T08:51:00.006+10:00

Decorating. Sophie Milne wrote a post recently on how trivialising she finds this term as a description of what she is doing to the surface of her pots. I too find the word "decorating" inaccurate and a bit demeaning. I spent many years studying drawing and many more studying ceramics in order to make theses pots. "Decorating" implies a bit of frippery, something superficial added at the very end, something not integral to the vessel. What should we call it?
Working
drawing
surfacing
Sophie's beautiful pots..........

Jewellery/ceramic collaboration- wallum jewels

2010-09-01T08:24:00.003+10:00

Here are some images of new work from the Swamp Cartography collaboration I am doing with jeweller Rebecca Ward.
This brooch was made with Southern Ice porcelain impression from the wallum and set in oxidised sterling silver.
Rebecca made a pate de verre cast of one of our wallum impressions when we were down in Canberra working at Canberra Glassworks. She then set the plaque in sterling silver.

Quiet Beauty/Wild Beauty

2010-08-23T08:53:00.005+10:00

I am a finalist in the Gold Coast Ceramic Art Awards. Judged by ceramicist Stephen Benwell. this years exhibition is amazing (if I do say so myself!) . Stephen talked about the two categories that he could describe in the exhibition of finalists as "Quiet Beauty" and "Wild Beauty". All this talk of beauty is inspiring in the the often cynical, bureaucratic world of artspeak. The entries all contained a certain lyricism, an emphasis on concept that is sometimes neglected in the ceramics world of materials and process. This made a really interesting show, the viewer was constantly confronted with the bizarre, or whimsical, or crazy but the thread running through this was the IDEA. This has been deeply unfashionable in ceramic circles and of course the idea of beauty is viewed with suspicion at best and derision at worst in "high" art circles, as a result this show was a refreshing change.

The winner was Peter Cooley's "Tree with Busted Guts and Galahs".

Cooley is a fascinating mid- career artist who oeuvre includes carpet design, paintings and ceramics. His work is definitely in the category of "Wild Beauty" This piece references kitsch and the "busted guts" form includes two "handles" however the sculpture transcends these associations on closer examination. There is a sense of companionship and community in the way the galahs interact, from every angle they are inclining towards one another. Concurrent with this is the sense of imminent ,creative explosion, the colours are vibrant and beautiful and the busted guts of the tree function as a metaphor for the roiling crazy creativity of the artist.

Peter Cooley is represented by Ray Hughes Gallery in Sydney.

Professional Photography

2010-08-16T14:24:00.004+10:00

After many tries at
A. Getting my pots to professional photographers
and
B. getting professional photographs
I have come to the conclusion that I should just bite the bullet and learn how to do most of my photos myself.

A tool that is going to be invaluable is my new collapsible light box. I tried it out the other day......

When photographing outside it is important to WEIGH DOWN the lighbox in case of a breeze (I did this with a kiln shelf.)

Now to just get the darned thing down. Look very easy............

Oh yes. I've got ! I've got it! .....just hang on a minute..........

Voila! (fuzzy photos courtesy of timer on camera and slow film setting)

Noosa Travelling Scholarship

2010-08-07T08:41:00.007+10:00

Wallum Nests- finalist in Noosa Travelling Scholarship

I'm thrilled to be a finalist the Noosa Regional Gallery Travelling Scholarship. The winner gets a prize of $12 000 to travel to a destination of their choice and undertake research or study. The Scholarship has recently changed to a 3-d prize and the forty finalist include ceramicists, jewellers, sculptors, paper artists and textile artists.

Shona Wilson won the prize with her beautiful, delicate "Diatom 13", a sculpture made of twigs,seedpods,seeds,branchlets and plastic. Shona's work is absolutely stunning combining found natural materials with beach plastic. These works explore the cross-over between the natural world, the world of science and human impact on the environment. It is rare to see works using found natural objects with such beauty and delicacy supported by a rigorous, conceptual framework. The use of macroscopic images evokes contemporary scientific practice while the construction using seeds,twigs and natural objects evokes primitive talismans or magical,ritual objects.
These images are from Shona's website. You can see images and read artist's statements from the Noosa Travelling Scholarship here.

Herb and Dorothy

2010-08-05T09:30:00.006+10:00

"Herb and Dorothy" is a great documentary about two of America's most influential collectors of contemporary art. The amazing thing about these two passionate and unassuming people is that they have collected art with a tenacity and vigour beyond both the constraints of their income and of their tiny, one bedroom apartment.

Now in their 80's, Herb and Dorothy Vogler began collecting art from New York's artists working in Minimalism in the 1960's. Herb was a postal worker and Dorothy was a librarian and their collection was constrained by their modest income. They would visit artists studio's and attend openings and often pay the works off over a series of payments. Their zeal for collecting continued and during the 70's and 80's they moved in into conceptual art. Eventually their collection numbered in the thousand's represented the finished works and working sketches of some of the 20th century's most important artists including Sol LeWitt, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Richard Tuttle, Chuck Close, Robert Mangold, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Lynda Benglis, Pat Steir, Robert Barry, Lucio Pozzi, and Lawrence Weiner.
Sol Le Witt
Herb and Dorothy became a respected part of the national arts scene in America and many galleries vied for the rights to buy part of their collection which was still impossibly housed in their one- bedroom apartment. Herb and Dorothy resisted all offers and in 1992 gave most of this significant and priceless collection to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. They believe that these works are items of beauty and should be enjoyed by all people for free. The Vogel's speak of themselves as custodians of the art and the incredible loyalty they have shown to artists and generosity in sharing their passion continues as they are still filling up their apartment with new work bought out of the small stipend given to them by the National Gallery in recognition of their services to the arts.

Borrow this wonderful documentary by director Megumi Sasaki as soon as you can!

Shannon Garson Porcelain- new website

2010-07-30T07:34:00.003+10:00

"Bloodwood" in progress from Swamp Cartography collaboration with Rebecca Ward

Steve from Helped By Design has been re-designing my website. Having a good website has been of enormous value to my practice over the last 10 years. I get many enquiries and comments through my website. As my friend Florence once said to me you have to envision the internet as a web, the more connections you make to and from your website the more fully you are participating.
Porcelain and silver brooch from Swamp Cartography collaboration with Rebecca Ward.

Having a website sitting lonely, unvisited in cyberspace is a very poor use of money and the enormous free potential of the internet. I link the website to this blog, and through Strange Fragments it has been linked to many other blogs. Besides the internet I support my website by using the web address. This is something that many artists neglect.
Print cards with your web address, if you have any articles or photos of your work published in newspapers and magazines include your web address in the captions.
A website is only of value if potential customers can find it........
.........And don't forget to update your photos and information!

Materiality

2010-07-26T11:40:00.005+10:00

First day at Canberra Glassworks I was very nervous. I had to work with glassblower Annette Blair to make the "swamp bubbles" for the Swamp Cartography exhibition. I've never worked with glass before and, as I labored over my sketchbook only to produce some very basic drawings I realize how much I rely on touching my materials to make my work. I make thousands of little decisions when I'm making, from the very moment I cut the bag of clay open right up until deciding how slowly to dry the piece out I'm tweaking and adjusting to what the materials are telling me they can do. Designing a piece in a hands off way is a totally different mindset.
I'm so used to working in contact with the materials that in some ways I can't even tell what the piece is like until I touch it. You see this in crafts of all types from the way bakers touch the dough through to the way mechanics cradle engine parts in their hands. The touch is what's telling them about the object. Entering a process where there is no touch literally felt like being blind, weirdly panicky and uncertain.
But...Annette did a fabulous job. It turned out that we liked the same colours and when I said "Brownish /purple" she really knew what I meant. This was instantly reassuring! Here is what she blew...swamp bubbles
Aren't they beautiful?

symbiosis

2010-07-19T07:44:00.005+10:00

I'm going to Canberra for five days to work at Canberra Glassworks and make blown glass spheres for the Swamp Cartography project.

Going away from the children is part of being an artist in this huge country. I live in a small town and everything is always happening somewhere else. But I have to say it causes me a lot of angst. Most of the time when I'm at home I feel like I am barely keeping my head above water constantly getting knocked off the tiny bit of art flotsam I'm desperately clinging to by the heavy seas of domestic life. When I'm home I cling to being an artist tightly.

It is only when I go away that I realize this is a symbiotic relationship. All the things I see as coming against me to prevent me from making pots, the demands of the children, their noise (which they are making this very second, singing "Bad Romance" with the wrong words so loudly I can hardly think!)their demands, the house and endless throwing of food into gaping mouths actually keeps me alive as an artist, and the small but essential part of me that refuses to dissolve into motherhood makes me a better mother. Going away upsets this delicate balance. Maybe I should just accept the flux between parasite and the host as a natural part of existence.

"The term symbiosis (from the Greek: σύν syn "with"; and βίωσις biosis "living") commonly describes close and often long-term interactions between different biological species. The definition of symbiosis is in flux, and the term has been applied to a wide range of biological interactions. The symbiotic relationship may be categorized as mutualistic, commensal, or parasitic in nature. Some symbiotic relationships are obligate, meaning that both symbionts entirely depend on each other for survival. For example, many lichens consist of a fungal and plant symbiont that cannot live on their own."

Prescription for handmade

2010-07-12T07:53:00.007+10:00

My friend has to go into hospital for an operation. I suggested that she take her own teacup with her. As I was having my own cup of tea this morning I wondered why I thought having your own teacup might make you feel better and using a generic hospital cup might make you feel worse.

The only comfort thick, white slightly scratched hospital cups are offer is the fact of their bleached,impersonal, grey-scratched cleanliness. The fact that crockery is very clean is unlikely to offer a patient any comfort, or relief from the fear and pain.

The very feel of a familiar cup in your hand with it's associations of home and loved ones could go long way to quieting fears. This is where handmade cups are at their greatest. In their inherent texturality, the individuality of handmade pots creates connection both between the vessels and the user and between the artist and the user. These associations are driven far from the patient in the sterile, flourescent lighting of the hospital ward. I've often thought potters should band together and provide handmade cups and teapots for recovery rooms for chemotherapy. The chemical process being finished off with a simple ritual of tea or coffee (or even water) in handmade cups marking the transition between being a patient entering the world again as an individual.

Being in hospital is a scary time, alienated from your own body by the processes of modern medicine and by the necessarily sterile atmosphere, bringing your cup from home is a powerful reminder that you are an individual, you fit into the world and are connected to the human race through mysterious and comforting everyday rituals.

The intimate, familiar feeling of your cup at your lips can whisk you out of the hospital and back to your own kitchen. What other small object would have so a powerful and comforting effect?

All tableware made by Australian potter Sandy Lockwood including my own favourite cup pictured with Jane Sawyer teapot and little blue Susie McMeekin milk jug.

greg hatton- through the garden gate

2010-07-03T08:19:00.001+10:00

DSCN0282, originally uploaded by twiggie's.

Here is an example of perfect design. Does Greg Hatton's gate just invite you to push it open and find out what is further down the road? A gate is an important symbol containing both concepts of privacy and invitation. What I love about Greg's gate is that it invites the wanderer in and by echoing the natural landscape evokes the wonders of the forest and fields you might find beyond it.

In the most perfect the design the object itself catapults you into a dizzying ,colourful world of ideas that spring from the original thing.

Greg Hatton is a handyman, designer and recycler extraordinaire. He moved from vegetable farming into stone masonry and his projects expanded from creating chairs out of salvaged crates through to designing inner city gardens and re-designing a backyard swimming pool. Greg's creativity is informed by the beauty of natural materials and found objects he says...

"As with my furniture my garden design and construction is very materials driven. Old wharf timbers, or those from sustainable plantations or local stone where possible. Soils form from the ecology beneath and the colours in the indigenous vegetation reflect the minerals in the soil. the use of local stone in the landscape is the most harmonious. this is how I like to approach my landscape design....I encourage indigenous planting or productive gardens...."

From Greg's Website

Read more about Greg's philosophy and approach to design at the Design Files.

Collaboration- Swamp Cartography

2010-07-02T08:34:00.002+10:00

Written by Rebecca Ward...........

Shannon is correct in saying that art like Wallum takes a long time to grow. Of course there is some that obligingly pops up like mushrooms overnight, but this is definitely not of the fungi variety. Maybe I am using the wrong fertiliser. I won't go into what makes mushrooms grow so well under commercial conditions but I'm sure you are all familiar with the substance.

I guess if these were any kind of fungi, these would be the tiny wild ones that may or may not pop up under decaying leaves and branches by their own unfathomable whim. Which leads me to suspect I have been inadvertently clever in not tidying up the rich litter layer that is my bench as it has finally produced some results.

Shannon' hands scratching back the resist to reveal beautiful leptospermum flowers drawn from photos.

These delicate little leptospermum flowers scratched into ashphaltum coated silver plate by Shannon have been sitting on my bench mocking me for months, too precious to commit to. Visitors say 'what are you going to do with those?' I mutter expletives under my breath. But now I have a much more polite answer.
I think patience is a great virtue and one that is good to have when dealing with acid. Like gloves. They were etched very slowly over days in a very weak brew of nitric acid so the detail is superb even though the etch is shallow. I'm thinking of starting the slow etch movement. I'm sure it will make my practice even more lucrative and in this age of conservation it is probably time to start dissolving precious metals alot more slowly.

So after procrastinating for ages, I cut them out, soldered posts on the back, drilled some holes and made this necklace. It is very simple. Why I couldn't do that earlier I will never understand.

Written by Rebecca Ward from the Swamp Cartography blog

Invitations.........

2010-06-23T08:24:00.007+10:00

This necklace is from "Revisiting the Australian Landscape - interpreting the landscape on an intimate scale"
Redland Art Gallery, Cleveland
Sunday 18 July – Sunday 15 August 2010
Opening Event 11am Sunday 18 July 2010

As you can see the fabulous Rebecca Ward is the feature artist on the invitation with one of the pieces she has developed for the Swamp Cartography project that we have been working on.

Here is another invitation........ I am in the "Teawares" show at the Jamfactory in Adelaide opening this Friday evening.

"Teawares
Selected Australian ceramic, metal and furniture designers
With a rich history of travel through trade, links to British imperialism, strong cultural significance through tea ceremonies and countless personal memories of grandmother’s scones and tea service, the enduring properties or tea have ensured its place as an important beverage within daily life. Tea is a fertile subject for investigation by writers and artists alike. Drawing on the real and the mythic, this stunning exhibition combines compelling contemporary tea wares in ceramic and metal in a setting of finely crafted furniture."
This should be a really interesting show as it includes metalwork and furniture.
Spoons by Anna Varendorf
Teaset by Kenji Uranishi

Seconds

2010-06-17T08:07:00.003+10:00

The thought-provoking response to the previous post has led me once again to the difficult subject of "seconds". (Thanks Gerry and Sophie)

Tadashi NishibataTeabowl

I have read a variety of views on the subject of what to do with seconds, pieces that, for some reason, don't reach your standard. Brother Thomas Benzanson says that he has smashed 1000's of pots over the years, but in the same essay he emphasizes the importance of not smashing anything as soon as you open the kiln, but leave it to marinate for at least six months. Brother Thomas observes the curious phenomenon of the work that initially caused that sickening plunge of the heart when the kiln was opened becoming, gradually respected for it's own properties and not the imagined picture in the artist's head.

Kazu Yamada Black Seto

My partner, Trevor Hart played jazz trumpet in pubs and bars for years and when fans used to come up after the gig and compliment him he would scowl and point out where the music didn't meet his expectations. One night as he observed the fan's face fall and the enjoyment drain away and he realized that his expectations shouldn't affect others enjoyment of what they could hear. The music Trevor thought he should be playing shouldn't intrude upon the experience of the audience.

I struggle with seconds. So often someone has come to the studio and rummaged around at the back of the cupboard and come up triumphantly holding some old thing that I've been hanging on to because it was still functional and I couldn't bear the waste of throwing it away. That person has gone home with the pot as happy as a clam and I've often visited these people years later and seen the pot in use. Should I have smashed this pot? Just because I didn't like the look of it? What if it is still perfectly functional? The person who took it away loves it and uses it.

The accepted attitude is to be a "master craftsman" and smash all things that are not perfect. I wonder if this is a bizarre Western idea linked to the notions of masterpieces and genius. The very word masterpiece implies that there will be many, many other pieces in an ouevre that are not "master" pieces. I feel it is wasteful to throw away a finished pot, the product of numerous raw materials and a couple of firings, all non-renewable natural resources, because it is not perfect. In my experience perfection occurs rarely, skill and care with materials can produce perfectly beautiful pots that enhance the lives of those who use them.

Warped

2010-06-10T07:40:00.004+10:00

I know I've mentioned this funny thing I'm on called "The Australian Ceramics Discussion List" before, and I know I've mentioned very funny, very wise potter Owen Rye before, but I can't help it. I live in the country and don't get out much, comments from the aforementioned sometimes make my day.

Recent discussions included a query about how to stop clay from warping. This is something that occurs quite a bit in my own work. Porcelain as an excellent "memory" and when thrown thinly and fired at high temperatures finds it's most comfortable position, often far from a perfect circle. I love this quality. When working on the wheel there is a tendency to arrogance, an uptight attitude regarding the amount of control you have over your materials. It's a funny thing that the wheel, this ancient, simple tool should encourage the modern potter to become obsessed with the aesthetics of industrialisation.
The obvious signs of the vagaries of making each piece individually, by hand are a natural part of handmade ware. The perfect circles and absolute uniformity of industrially produced wares are usually the effect of slip-cast ceramics made in a mold. To try and emulate this in the studio with the wheel is hubris and folly.

Here is what Owen Rye has to say about it.........
"I cannot say what causes clay memory - but my way of thinking is that most 'technical' questions are in reality questions about aesthetics - what is desirable and what is not. If imperfection is your aim, as it is mine, then 'memory' providing some distortion must be a good thing, regardless of how it happens. If white knuckle control (to quote Jack Troy) is your aim - then maybe you need to find materials that suit that. I prefer to find what the material wants and let it do that.
Sorry about the digression, no help in explaining clay memory - but a way around it. "

The wallum is wild and secretive

2010-06-07T12:12:00.002+10:00

The process of making new art takes almost as long as the process of growing a flower. This is the second generation of the leptopspermums. The surface is very intriguing as the scratchy drawing is inlaid into the surface of the form and the veil of shiny glaze raindrops overlays the form. I'm playing with the idea of the surface of a ceramic piece being so absolute. The glaze drops reflect the light drawing the surrounding environment into the form and the most satisfying interaction of all is picking up these vessels the smoothroughshinysmoothscratchy-ness.

The wallum is a wild, secretive environment, full of detail and wonder I think pieces of work that capture the wallum should try to capture this.

Tips for fungi hunting.........

2010-06-02T08:45:00.001+10:00

I have a new camera and it is perfect for my new hobby....fungi hunting! Here are some tips.
Start in Autumn, after rain

Keep your knees bent and centre of gravity low (this is also a good tip for hip-hop dancing should you ever want to rap about fungi with the guys in da 'hood)
Get your "fungi eyes" on. Once you start seeing them you'll see them everywhere.
Look around the roots of trees, on rotting stumps and under ferns..fungi pop up in the strangest places.
Expect weird and unusual shapes and beautiful colours.
These fungi are all from Stradbroke Island and the process of fungi hunting became totally addictive, the variety of these wonderful organisms is fascinating. The fungi we see aboveground is often only 10% of the entire organism. Fungi have no chlorophyll and feed by producing enzymes underground that break down complex molecules found in organic matter. As they exhaust the food supply the underground mycelium move further out. The actual fungi is the fruiting body of the organism known as the sporocarp, it's purpose is to disperse the microscopic spores which get carried by the wind far and wide to produce a new web of mycelium that will erupt with a sporocarp when the conditions are right. There are so many interesting fungi facts for instance :"All fungi need existing organic matter for their food. A fungus that feeds on dead organic matter is called a saprotroph and one that feeds on living organisms is a parasite. While there are species that are always parasitic and others that are always saprotrophic there are also those which may feed on either live or dead organic matter and so change from parasitic to saprotrophic behaviour (or vice versa), depending on what food sources are available. " Read more about fungi here.

shellac

2010-05-25T14:19:00.000+10:00

Stacking and shellacking in the studio.

Kako Katsumi- Japanese potter

2010-05-19T08:06:00.001+10:00

I love this work by Japanese potter Kako Katsumi. Katsumi began his career making tableware in the kyo-yaki tradition of his forebears. The birth of his daughter led him to make an "itegoi "kiln- a one chambered wood fired kiln. The work that started coming out of the new kiln was a marked departure from the traditional tableware.
"One cannot talk of Kako without mentioning his "ittekoi" kiln. Fired with wood, it is small enough to fire alone, without the help of others. Thus in practicality it is similar to an electric kiln, or perhaps even closer to the small anagama kiln that the Tsujimura family uses. Since it is small yet high-powered, he can fire a load in approximately 20 hours. This allows Kako to fire once every two weeks, sometimes even less. It is this fast pace which allows for Kako to hone his skills to perfection, perhaps more quickly than his contemporaries. from an article on Robert Yellin's website
I love how these works combine monumental strength and form with warmth. There is a softnes and gentle sensitivity in the attraction of the surface that brings a push and pull response.
The form is saying"Don't touch...Serious Art" and the surface is saying "Come on...Just stroke me, just a little...."

Thirst

2010-05-09T08:12:00.005+10:00

I'm working on the scribbly gum for the wallum project. Rebecca made me some metal plates etched with impressions taken from out photos of the wallum. After the yunomi were thrown I re-dampened them by the highly technical process of putting them in a plastic box with a wet plaster slab in the bottom of it overnight and then used the rounded end of a rolling pin to press the bases of the yunomi onto the etchings from the inside.
These are the second incarnation of this design and the third incarnation will be pared back further. I'll keep going until the pure essence of the bush is distilled into the drawing. Until picking up these yunomi captures first the smoky rays of sun touching the tops of the eucalyptus, the cool damp smell of the dew and the "wheeeeeeee- CRACK" of the whip bird's call.
As tea drinking vessels these pots will be handled a lot. From the setting of the table through to the washing up a drinking vessel constantly interacts with the body and brain of the user. It needs to be stimulating yet calming. Sometimes I feel like having a cup of tea is a tiny island of calm in the midst of a chaotic world. It is really important to me that the drinking vessel is the focus of this expanding circle of calm, yet leads the mind to wander in a creative direction. Having a cup of tea is not just for quenching physical thirst.

Mark- making - Minnie Pwerle Barbara Weir

2010-05-07T13:15:00.001+10:00

The above image is by Aboriginal artist Barbara Weir. Barbara is one of the world famous "Utopia" artists from the Utopia region north East of Alice Springs. Her paintings are inspired by a small native grass called "munyeroo".

These paintings are by Barbara's mother Minnie Pwerle who died in 2006. Barbara and her mother were sadly separated when Barbara was 9 and took many years to find each other and become reconciled. (This is a very common story of Aboriginal children who were separated from their families and sent to orphanages or to work as indentured labourers for white people, in a systematic government sponsored kidnapping from 1869 -1969. These children are known as the "Stolen Generation") Barbara encouraged Minnie to paint and her beautiful paintings reflect some of the oldest designs in the world based on body painting used in women's ceremonies.

I love Barbara Weir's paintings for the rhythm they capture and the rippling effect of the grass that seems to spread beyond the canvas. Minnnie Pwerle's paintings are so joyful, the exuberant use of colour and repetition of shape deny that fact that Pwerle would have been in her late 70's or 80's when she painted these works. Both these women are an inspiration as artists and as people who have overcome terrible injustice and sadness in their lives.

leptospermums in silver

2010-04-30T14:03:00.002+10:00

First we clean the silver and coat the surface with bitumen paint.
Then I draw leptospernums, Scratching in the silver, the scratchy, twiggy, sticky bushes covered in tiny white blossoms.
Then Rebecca goes to work with her jeweller's saw and ...........
The lovely tiny blossoms appear, magical, and softly gleaming silver.

From Swamp Cartography Rebecca Ward jewellery and Shannon Garson porcelain collaboration we are doing in preparation for a nationally touring exhibition 2011-12

Wallum porcelain- leptospermum

2010-04-27T13:00:00.001+10:00

Leptospernum blossoms are familiar to all lovers of the wallum. Tiny and white these five petalled flowers completely cover the small scratchy bushes that produce them. I made these porcelain works with an scraffitto/inlay technique which in itself is a rather scratchy dry process. The interiors are pure, translucent Southern Ice porcelain covered in a clear glaze. The exterior captures the light with a spotted pattern of clear glaze over the dry drawing.

The final exhibition for Rebecca and my collaboration will include some groups of 10-15 pieces of this leptspernum work ranging form large bowls through to tiny teabowls all covered in the sepia drawings and softly capturing and reflecting light from their spotted surfaces.

Mark making- Ian Fairweather

2010-04-22T07:36:00.012+10:00

"Mark making" is the pretentious but appropriately descriptive word we used for it at art college. It describes the act of drawing and was regarded as very old-fashioned and many times declared to be "dead"! Well drawing will never be dead. Even in these days of electronic communication making marks is an ancient impulse, from the time when our chubby little fingers can grasp, even if it is a medium as soft and difficult to control as mashed banana, humans want to make marks.I saw an exhibition of Australian artist Ian Fairweather's work the other day. Fairweather has become a bit of a legend as, after the WW2 he sailed a raft from Timor to Bribie Island in Queensland and famously lived there in a humpy on the beach in dire poverty until his death in 1974.Fairweather's paintings are magnificent. He plays with the pictorial depth, the calligraphic lines push and pull the flat patches of paint. His works recall medieval stained glass windows in their division of the pictorial plane and the way that they seem to draw light into the surface creating volume where there are only two dimensions. Close up these works are beautiful patterns emerging and disappearing, as you move further away the lines resolve to form children on a donkey, women's heads, scenes of domestic life celebrated and elevated to become spiritual.

This forest floor is from Stradbroke Island. The she-oaks and banksia leaves fall in this pattern. Fairweather would have looked at patterns like this every day. The brilliance of his work is that it connects these quiet, natural patterns with Asian village life and the meditative practice of calligraphy as practiced by the masters of Chinese calligraphy in their monasteries. Fairweather's materials were meagre, his colours could be described as dull yet his paintings transcend the material limitations and become tributes to the human condition. The computer screen does not do justice to the stark, rhythmic beauty of these works.

Throwing, Clouds and Magnolias

2010-04-22T07:29:00.001+10:00

The wheel
clouds
magnolia bowls

Potier- distinctive objects made by hand

2010-04-18T12:38:00.005+10:00

I'm so excited to be part of a new store/gallery that has just opened in Melbourne. Lovers of handmade ceramics feast your eyes on this......

Potier is the inspiration of Melbourne ceramics collector Judith Buckridge and represents many of Australia's most exciting makers. Artists Judith has collected in her store include, Bridget Bodenham, Phil Elson, Jane Sawyer, Christopher Plumridge, Sandy Lockwood, Chris Coad and Sophie Milne. I think the motto says it all
"distinctive objects - made by hand."

Here is Judith's statement of intent
"From individually crafted domestic ware to exquisite one-off sculptural pieces, Potier provides the perfect space to experience and buy beautiful and important works of local and national significance.Marianne Huhn

Potier was created to promote the importance of ceramic practice and develop a broader understanding of, and desire to acquire, handmade one-off pieces for everyday use and as collectors' items."

Christopher Plumridge

Revolutionary words in a retail environment. Viva la Revolution!

yunomi

2010-04-12T08:13:00.005+10:00

Listening to ........The Unthanks
and
This American Life

Making Yunomi

You could study yunomi for years and the course of the journey would encompass every aspect of the potters art, and many of the quieter, more profiound pleasures to be found in simple acts of eating and drinking.Yunomi made by American potter Steven Colby

A yunomi is simply defined as a ceramic drinking vessel with a turned foot that is taller than it is wide. They are used in Japan for everyday drinking and are often sold in pairs. The pairs are not identical but complimentary with decoration and shape differing slightly, the larger cup being the "husband" and the smaller the "wife". I like the idea of making mismatched pairs, the husbandly/wife part is not so important as a mismatched but compatible to companion to share everyday pleasures with.

Silver and Clay

2010-04-03T08:52:00.005+10:00

I've been visiting Rebecca's studio. We are into the creation phase of our wallum project and are spending time in each other's studios,learning "cross discipline" skills.

We painted silver and copper with brown, road tar goo and when it was dry, I scratched leptospernum blossoms and leaf silhouettes exposing the metal. The plates were then dipped into and acid bath.
We are working on a couple of ranges of jewellery incorporating metal, porcelain and thread. Here are the porcelain pendants in the background with silver cuttle fish castings of twigs in the foreground.

Brass etched plates ready for some work in the ceramic studio.

Things

2010-03-29T07:18:00.003+10:00

It is really good to have a blog discussing the philosophy and poetry of objects as a compliment to all the blogs presenting craft and illuminating the making process. I think it is really important for the continued existence of the handmade crafts that people who are not craft artists enquire into the meaning of objects in their lives.

Journalist Ruth Quibell has started a blog called "Precious Things" discussing the signifigance of the things we live out lives with. Ruth interviews artists about their favourite objects and also writes revealing and beautiful posts about her own interaction with objects.
Photo from Ruth's blog- a post about the demands of life and escape to be found in her op-shop Tasmanian teatowel.

Drawing from it with his eyes.....

2010-03-28T15:45:00.003+10:00

"It is often said that Leonardo drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well." (Kenneth Clark)
I have been working on a HUGE order. It seems as if it has been going for years. by the end of a huge order I am getting drawing fatigue. Every piece has to have the same level of attack and commitment in the mark making and it is hard to maintain this, your hands and mind gets tired.

"The process of drawing is, before all else, the process of putting the visual intelligence into action, the very mechanics of visual thought. Unlike painting and sculpture it is the process by which the artist makes clear to himself, and not to the spectator, what he is doing. It is a soliloquy before it becomes communication." (Michael Ayerton)
It's really worth persevering with this approach though....or else you end up with meaningless marks.

"To 'draw' implies everything the word stands for: to pull or to drag or to draw forth, as from the earth, a vein, or well. (Lance Esplund)"

Emerson wrote the quote below referring to drawing as in "bringing out" I think it can apply equally to the intimate process of discovery in rendering a bird's nest in oxide and underglaze onto a porcelain surface.

“(s)He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time (s)he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues it possesses” Ralph Waldo Emerson

After the rain......

2010-03-20T08:06:00.003+10:00

Crummunda Park, Currumundi. The girls and I went down the other day to see the wallum after all this rain. The paths were flooded with shallow sepia coloured ti-tree lakes. I took photos and thought about the form of the banksia tree, the children looked at things through their magnifying glass. I think they are getting the hang of the wallum project which has become through necessity a family affair. Of course bribery in the form of a swim and various delicious snacks is essential!

Working with children isn't as easy as it may sound when I write about it. Your thoughts are constantly cut short, it is like cutting all the spaghetti into tiny short segments instead of long, luscious strands dripping with sauce. You have to try and save these tiny fragments of coherent creativity for later then, in a moment of peace recapture the initial thrill. You have to trust your abilities as an artist, that you'll be able to reconstruct the beautiful idea and bridge all the gaps and somehow your subconcious and learned skills will provide substance to the finished piece. It is a frustrating process compared to the luxury of thinking a whole thought through from beginning to end and making a work from it.

But you have the benefit of children in your life, a whole different existence. I try not to hold onto the past long hours of thinking, and when I really contemplate being a single entity again I know I just wouldn't like it. It's different now, even without children around, that previous way of thinking and working is no longer possible or even desirable.

Slow Fashion

2010-03-12T13:57:00.007+10:00

Natalie Chanin from US fashion label Alabama Chanin is a woman with a mission. Every statement on her website proclaims her commitment to creating sustainable products. She uses US made fabrics and employs women throughout her local community to embroider them. Natalie Chanin is also involved in community projects highlighting and strengthening the connection between handmade objects, slow food, small manufacturing plants, recycling, history and communication.
Chanin has produced a documentary on the tradition of quilt making in the American South and as a response the the high price of her handmade couture has also published a book and sells kits so that anyone who can learn the skills to make a beautiful, piece of clothing can afford these lovely, lovely things. Read her blog for an insight into the threads that bind artisans to their community and from there to the wider world.
From Alabama to Australia...... Little Green Dress is the label of my friend Genevieve Edmonds. Genvieve employs local sewers and sources her fabrics from manufacturers using sustainable fibres, reclaiming vantage kimonos (amongst other things) for her beautiful, comfortable clothing.
She says
"At Little Green Dress we want to emphasize the value of quality garments made with attention to detail. Our garments shouldn’t be a throwaway commodity but a cherished and defining staple in your wardrobe which has come into existence with integrity and thought for our planet."

Spotty Cups

2010-03-12T13:39:00.000+10:00

Solving Logistical Problems

2010-03-07T08:16:00.004+10:00

I've just finished this Beastie cake plate and set of cups for a special order. The Beastie were inspired by a masterclass I did a few years ago with Marino Moretti in Umbria (it's not like I go to Italy all the time or anything. It was just that I did go once or twice.) The cake plate presented quite a few logistical problems as the shape of a flat plate supported on a raised base is not really suited to porcelain.
I threw the plate first and turned it upside down onto the base and bisque fired it upside down but then I was stuck...... If I fired the cake plate upright the porcelain would slump. San Fransisco potter Whitney Smith offered some excellent suggestions such as grogging the porcelain before I threw the plate and covering the piece with porcelain slip. (unfortunately it was a bit late for that particular bit of good sense), or throwing a concave plate to compensate for the slumping during the gloss firing. I did it the difficult, time- consuming way by throwing a stand to support the plate from underneath and leaving a ring under the cake plate unglazed so the stand could fit exactly under the plate and support it during the firing. This was labour intensive but I now have two stands to use when I am making more cake plates and, very importantly, the plate fired absolutely flat.
All cake bakers will know that a flat cake plate is essential to the success of an afternoon tea!

Canberra Glassworks......working on the wallum

2010-03-05T11:58:00.003+10:00

engraving, originally uploaded by rebeccathewrecker.

Rebecca the Wrecker and I have just spent 3 days at Canberra Glassworks doing a masterclass with glass artist and teacher extraordinaire Kirstie Rea. We had an amazing inspiring time.

Canberra Glassworks is a state of the art facility based in an old power station. There are so many workshops covering different aspects of glass forming that we didn't get to see them all, the cold shop, the mold making room and the sandblasters were the ones we concentrated on. Once again we came back to our impressions from the wallum as the source of inspiration and made molds for glass using these.

I was particularly interested in the sandblasting which uses a painterly approach as the resist used is PVA glue. For these little pieces I sandblasted brushbox blossom silhouettes onto the back of "float" glass (common window glass) and used a diamond stylise to etch a drawing into the glass on the opposite side.

Glass engraving is such an immediate way of mark making, the scratchiness of the drawing echoes the twiggy scratchiness of wallum vegetation. I really liked using the window glass as the everyday nature of this material creates a subconscious visual reference linking the glass drawing to windows and all that they represent. The automatic assumption with a window being to look through or out of it, hopefully the viewer of this type of piece would be inexorably drawn towards the drawing to looking closely at and through it!

While we were in Canberra we did a talk for the ceramics students at the Australian National university Ceramics Department. Rebecca and I were struck by the vibrant, international diversity at both ANU and the Glassworks. The place is buzzing with international artists coming and going, Australian artists and students are constantly encouraged to make international connections in terms of residencies and, entering competitions and other professional development programs. It is very exciting for studio artists to be in the hustle and bustle of a creative, institutional atmosphere and I highly recommend anyone thinking of coming to Australia to consider doing a residency or a degree at Canberra Glassworks or ANU.

The JamFactory

2010-02-22T08:01:00.005+10:00

Tegan Empsom's beautiful glass Robots and Rabbits. Tegan began her career in the arts with a design associateship within the glass studio at JamFactory Craft and Design Centre.

Based in Adelaide the fantastic JamFactory includes four studios (ceramic, furniture, metal and glass) that regularly host visiting national and international artists, a wonderful gallery showcasing exhibitions of contemporary craft, and a retail spaces. Here are some amazing facts about the Jam Factory....
Pourers by Karen Cunningham a Jam Factory alumni.

JamFactory is Australia's leading studio-based craft development organisation.
Don Dunstan's vision for a craft organisation has been growing successfully for more than thirty three years.

Through sales, JamFactory provides income for over 400 artists and practitioners.
From sales in excess of one and a half million dollars, JamFactory returns over $750,000 to artists. Over the years, those returns have added many millions of dollars to the local creative economy.

JamFactory has employed and trained more than 360 of Australia's leading makers, artists and designers.
JamFactory Alumni are spread throughout the world - many are at the top of their profession.

JamFactory's audience continues to grow.
In 2006 over 125,000 people visited our shops and 75,000 people visited our galleries.

JamFactory is an energetic exhibitor of creative talent.
Last year JamFactory displayed 23 exhibitions demonstrating the works of 104 craft practitioners.
(from the JamFactory website)
Glass jewellery from JamFactory alumni Peta Kruger.

The JamFactory has a great blog and the links to alumni and JamFactory associates will provide many hours of happy web browsing. I am thrilled to be making a body of work to be exhibited down there later this year.

Peel Island- Park Rangers Rock!

2010-02-15T09:18:00.000+10:00

On our recent trip to Stradbroke Island we met Rebecca's good friend Rowley Dowling the Park Ranger who took us across to the deserted Peel Island in the middle of Moreton Bay. Peel Island used to be a leper colony and due the to the care and hard work of the Rangers the compound comprising of the hall, official residences and the leper huts is still standing. We drove along a rutted track through wild looking cypress and gum forest. It was very dry and the trees had dead branches ripped off by storms or drought hanging from the the canopy, many trees were covered in veils of dusty green "Old Man's Beard"
Suddenly the forest opened out into the lazaret, a mown, green lawn dotted with little wooden huts.Two of the leper's huts. The Rangers have repaired some of them and left others in various stages to show the history of the site.

This is one of the official residences where we stayed the night.

The best thing that we did on Peel Island was go for a real bushwalk. Rowley took us right into the wallum. It was hot. The wallum is extremely dense vegetation and we had to push our way through scratchy, prickly branches and grasses with sharp razor like points (I've learnt my lesson about wearing shorts when bushwalking!) To get back to the road we walked through head height ferns n a dry peat swamp, every so often our feet would plunge to through the dry crust to the knee and as you grabbed a paperbark stump to get your balance that too, would just come away in your hand. I loved it! When I was a kid we used to go "exploring" all the time time, my mother was surprisingly blase about this and would just call "Take the dogs in case of snakes!"
Artistically it was great to really get in amongst the wallum vegetation. Your eyes, nose and all the senses are taking in information and filing it away for later. We took heaps of photos but they really couldn't convey the excessive heat, prickly scratchy, fecund vegetation, the colours of the leaf litter, the cicadas shrilling, the smell of the dust as a dry papery stump crumbled in your hand.

Ingenuity.......Australian craft in and out of the studio

2010-02-09T12:10:00.003+10:00

There are many potters who have an ingenious do-it -yourself streak. They work in studios they have cobbled together out of a few bent nails and some wood salvaged from the local tip, they make their own machinery from washing machine engines they found by the side of the road and brew their own evil beer from secret forest ingredients. I am not one of those potters.

But I admire ingenuity and building skills. I love getting glimpses into other people's work places to see the solutions they have come up with and the more whimsical the materials they use the more delightful and funny it is. This reminds me a show that these sort of potters would love. The Bush Mechanics followed the exploits of a group of aboriginal guys from the Warlpiri tribe as they made their way around the Outback in a series of old bombs. As the cars slowly disintegrated these guys would replace parts with anything they could scavenge- I remember one episode when the wheels fell off and were replaced by bits of wood acting more or less as skis attached to the rear axle!

The flip side to the Ingenious Potter of course is the Smug Luddite Potter who stands up at conferences and speaks in an insufferably superior tone about the intellectual and artistic moral turpitude of potters who "buy clay in bags". You might also hear this boring type raving on about how the "public" is woefully ignorant of ceramic technique and needs to be "educated" so they can see the immense cultural and spiritual value of the Smug Potter's own work!

Wallum Vessels- deeper water

2010-01-27T15:28:00.001+10:00

"It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child. "
Pablo Picasso

The "vessel" is a form of enormous significance in ceramics. What distinguishes a vessel is its ability to contain something. These vessels are embryonic, they are carriers for an idea about the wallum. Prototypes, fragile, ugly, often contain a germ of an idea that continues, untouched through the creative process.

Picasso said we should all learn to draw like children, by this he meant let go of learned, technical skill and capture the joy of sensation, colour, form and wild imagination. It is really hard to do, I take refuge in skill, feeling that if something doesn't quite capture the fleeting, glimpse I had in the original inspiration then at least it will be beautiful because of the skill. I keep letting go "just a little bit" - which is an oxymoron. I have to trust that these funny little vessels will be able to carry me beyond the safety of technical skill and into the wild blue sea.

You can read more about me and Rebecca Ward's collaboration at our blog "Swamp Cartography"

Wallum Kit

2010-01-19T15:05:00.004+10:00

Currimundi, originally uploaded by rebeccathewrecker.

This is a photo of what Rebecca Ward and I get up to when we enter the wallum. What you can see here is our "Wallum Kit" contained in it's super- duper heavy duty 4WD toolbox.

This contains a couple of reference books on the wallum, some plastic containers for holding our "impressions" and samples, a lump of porcelain, two containers with "silpression" (a two- pack jewellery moulding silicon rubber), brushes, video and normal cameras, and water.
"Silpression" impression from the wallum.
Currumundi was the first big outing for the Wallum Kit and it worked great.....but I have to say that dragging it up another really steep sandhill when we thought it was just a short walk to the beach was hard work.

positive and negative impressions

Yesterday I swam across Baroon Pocket Dam......

2010-01-12T09:25:00.004+10:00

Yesterday I swam across Baroon Pocket Dam. This is the first time I've done a big swim in open water and it was quite a scary experience. We went across and back, it was 2.6 kilometeres and took about an hour. The others advised me to look up every 10 or so strokes and get my position on the bank to aim for but as we got deeper and deeper I just couldn't bear not to see the bank so I did breast stroke for most of the way. The feeling of 10o's of meters of dark water pressing from below and around was overwhelming. On the way back I stopped and floated on my back, lying in a huge bowl of water, surrounded by hills, looking up at the clouds drifting across the sky the peace and insignifigance were overwhelming.

So there are two sides of swimming in the open water, irrational fear of the unkwown, anxiety over whether you are going to make it, and exhilaration over the beauty of being all alone with natural elements all around, visual delight, and physical pleasure.

I've been moving into our Wallum Project, making new work and, although I try not to indulge in "artisty" neurosis it has been quite nerve- wracking.....and exhilarating.

a sense of occasion

2010-01-04T13:01:00.005+10:00

Australian expatriate potter living in Japan, Euan Craig recently posted a blog on the Japanese tradition of boxing special works . Works of special significance are boxed in paulownia boxes, resistant to fire, and rot and marked with calligraphy denoting the contents and the maker's kanji. The bowl itself is wrapped in yellow tumeric dyed cloth, also marked, and placed inside the box. This subtle and poetic tradition leads to a sense of occasion, and anticipation when the owner of the pieces uses the vessel. Using a pot boxed in this way involves an active decision about which moment calls for the pot.

Although I am a strong advocate of handmade pots for everyday use, there is something special about getting a pot from a cupboard, admiring it as you indulge in the private sensory moment of unpacking, running your hands over the vessel, reacquainting yourself with the curves, foot and maker's marks on the underside. This private moment leads to a sense of celebration when the table is set with the "best china", it is something I remember vividly from childhood. I loved going to the china cabinet and choosing which of the special pieces to use, it smelled dusty and sharp.......and exciting.
The images are all of Euan Craig's teabowls you can see more of these and read his gentle and illuminating explorations of these pieces here

Book of the year- the winner

2009-12-30T08:45:00.004+10:00

"Fludd did import, by train, a pale, creamy clay from Dorset, which he used to make a pouring slip, or engobe and mixed with the red clay to lighten it. Phillip learned to pound and sieve this clay, and mix it in water. He learned to revolve the clays in the bladed pug mill which stood where the butter churn had been.......Like most potters Fludd was secretive about the recipes for both these things. He had leather-backed ledgers, locked in a drawer, written in a code based on Anglo-Saxon runes and Greek lettering which Phillip could not read. He did not use conventional weights, but had his own spheres of dried clay, numbered from one to eight...." pp128,
"The Children's Book", A.S. Byatt, Chatto and Windus, 2009

The Children's Book by English writer A.S. Byatt was my favourite book of 2009. Set in England a the end of the Victorian era "The Children's Book" follows the story of the Wellwood family, a bohemian group of artists, writers and dreamers as they formulate ideas on living, loving and society through the changing fabric of British life at the turn of the 19th century. Olive Wellwood is the beautiful, talented matriarch of the family, in love an errant husband, trying to reconcile the emotions of an "open" relationship and the financial hardships of living a bohemian lifestyle. Olive writes fairytales. These stories capture the tension between creativity and family life as Olive is forced by continuous child-bearing and the pressure to bring money into the sprawling Wellwood establishment to write more and more stories. The wild joy of creation is suppressed under a thick blanket of weariness and worry .

Olive's children and younger relatives follow their own journeys through rejection of Bohemia, creative flowering and fervent belief in Socialism. An orphan boy adopted by the Wellwoods takes up an apprenticeship with genius mad potter Bernard Fludd. This character, based in some ways on Palissy runs his household with a rod of iron, terrorising his fey children and wife with his insane rages and depressions. Through all these stories run the twin threads of descriptions of work and descriptions of objects. Byatt's evocation of the era and use of tapestries, houses, pots, dresses, and jewellery to illustrate the emotional and political growth of her characters is wonderful. As you can see in the above description of Fludd's studio the research is meticulous. It is such a pleasure to read detailed accounts of working life complete with details of tools and materials.

This novel connects creativity to socio/political movements and to work and this insistence on the reality of the innovation and inspiration makes "The Children's Book " powerful document of artistic life. I found it very inspiring to realize that my ideas about the power of objects and the need for art to be connected and active in the wider world of politics are part of a long tradition of artists being politically active and changing the ideas of a nation. Amongst all the other beautiful, inspiring, intriguing ideas in this book the integral pairing of creativity and politics is the thing that galvanised me.
Fizzy D was inspired by the cover to do this drawing.

Book of the Year

2009-12-18T07:30:00.003+10:00

I read between one and three books a week. Sometimes it's genre fiction, fantasy and crime that slips down pleasantly without too much effort. Sometimes it's what I think of a "serious" fiction, the books that I remember and think about long after I've read them. "Serious" fiction are the books I consider buying because I know I'll read them again and again.

This year I read two books that were so intriguing I have been thinking of them on and off for months since I first read them. The first was T. C. Boyle's "The Women".

Set in the early years of the 20th century "The Women" follows the fortune of genius architect Frank Lloyd Wright through the stories of the four seminal women in his life. Wright followed his vision for a new American architecture that worked in sympathy with the environment, was monumental, simple and beautiful, with a passion that bulldozed through all of his human relations. His first wife Mamah was left, with six children and debtors knocking on the door as Wright decamped to Europe with his new mistress, the wife of one of his clients. This disastrous affair is the background to the building of Wright's sylvan masterpiece the, wonderful "ideas factory" Taliesin. Built in his home town of Spring Green, Wisconsin Taliesin provides the spiritual, creative and physical backbone of the novel. Described by the various women in Wright's life as an inspiration, a prison, and a fortress to be breached it is this building more than any other that serves to illuminate the brutal force of a creative vision on the lives of those involved.

"The Women" is a rollicking tale evoking the cult-like atmosphere that Wright encouraged amongst his apprentices and workers. He was always in debt and refusing to pay his workers and suppliers of materials and labor as money was always short in the grand Wright establishment, but never too short to buy original Japanese prints or commission furniture especially for Taliesin. The women in Wright's life had to cope with his long absences, freezing Wisconsin winters in the huge, stone house, and the dislike of the locals to whom Wright owed money. These four women are fascinating characters, all individuals who struggle to maintain their identity and their families in the maelstrom of Wrights creative genius.

The Hinterland Times

2009-12-14T07:01:00.002+10:00

This photo is from our lovely local newspaper called "The Hinterland Times". I love this newspaper as owners Micheal and Faith Berry work very hard to ensure that the content reflects our diverse, interesting local community. As a result we have a paper that is full of news , photos and articles about what is happening in the little towns all along along the Blackall Range. You can read the whole article and lots of other things here......

Inidgo Kingdom- Vipoo Srivilasa's latest work

2009-12-02T10:37:00.003+10:00

Melbournites do yourselves a favour and pop in to
Anna Pappas Gallery.
3-23 December 2009
Opening Wednesday 2 December 6 pm. All welcome!

This show is the latest imaginative musings from the brain of Australian ceramicist Vipoo Srivilasa.

"Indigo Kingdom tells a theatrical story of the contemporary human impact upon coral reefs. Using a traditional Thai narrative of an imagined kingdom as a foundation from which to create his own personal kingdom, Srivilasa turns ceramic sculpture into a storytelling device - in this exhibition the installation becomes the reinterpretation of an ancient Thai temple plan.

In the same vein, he uses his work to write his own biography. To guide us through the play of references in this complex commentary, Srivilasa calls upon the help of his mermaid alter-ego. The mermaid, like the coral, is the canary in the mine, an indicator of imminent threat. In all, Indigo Kingdom is as much high-camp globalist fantasy as it is a sober reminder of the environmental crisis of the present day."

working process

2009-11-26T16:52:00.003+10:00

This work is in an exhibition at Salmon Galleries, 71 Union St Mc Mahon's Point, this December. I've just had a flying visit to Sydney to deliver the work and give a talk to art lovers at Salmon. It was such a lovely experience, it is so rare to be able to talk about what you do and meet people who already own your work and hear about how they experience it in their own homes. Fascinating.

Megan Washington

2009-11-22T14:20:00.002+10:00

My nearest capital city is Brisbane, well -known for the quality of indie music over the years. I've just discovered Megan Washington she has a beautiful voice and, in the theme of this blog here is a clip from youtube using collage!

Studio sale

2009-11-17T15:54:00.004+10:00

My God it's hot!
The studio..........getting fuller.....Must prepare for studio sale..........
Shannon Garson Porcelain
Studio Sale
Begins....Saturday December the 5th 9 am
featuring ...Jewellery by Rebecca Ward
& catering by Cedar St Cheeserie

Children Welcome
studio open for the month of December

Grilled Eggplant with Yoghurt

2009-11-11T08:28:00.002+10:00

I made this the other night as an attempt to redeem myself with my friend for forgetting her birthday.
It is based on a Claudia Roden recipe.

Grilled Eggplant and Zuchini with Yoghurt
Eggplant
zuchini
plain yoghurt
homemade tomato based pasta sauce
garlic
olive oil
mint
1.Slice the eggplant and zuchini length ways
2. Mash olive oil salt and garlic, if you do it vigorously enough the whole thing emulsifies and turns into a creamy, mayonnaise type sauce.
3.Rub the veges in the garlic mixture
4. cook the veges on a hot grill (I did mine on the bar-b-que)
5. Lay them out on a platter (with a huge hunk of deliciously charred meat done on the bbq at the same time)
6. Dollop generously with tomato sauce and then yoghurt.
7.Sprinkle with finely chopped mint and several good glugs of olive oil

This is one of those dishes that ascend far beyond the sum of their parts. It is very easy, totally delicious and, (I think) elegant in a rustic kind of way.
Shannon
Ps . my friend forgave me , but I also made Rosewater Meringues with Grand Marnier custard for dessert!

out of whack

2009-11-10T12:27:00.001+10:00

I've just broken up a whole lot of greenware for recycling.

The other day I just couldn't throw. Everything I threw looked lumpy and horrid. It was terrible, usually throwing is my favourite part of making, it was like the odd occasion when I can't cook. Nothing goes right and you know you are in trouble when you start thinking "Maybe if I just add some soy sauce that'll fix it."

Today I was back on form,. I blame the weather, it was very hot and dry the other day, I live in the sub-tropics, heat is meant to bring humidity. I was all out of whack.

clouds

2009-11-06T09:08:00.001+10:00

The other day I went to "stroke correction"(!) swimming class at 6 o'clock in the evening. My strokes sort of worked but I was constantly distracted by the pale, china blue sunset sky and beautiful clouds. For years I've been working on clouds. Porcelain is the perfect medium to capture the ephemeral nature of clouds, but how to get that three dimensional instubstantial beauty? A book I read recently described clouds as "floating lakes". It is true, when there are clouds in the sky there is humidity in the air. I like to think of those huge bodies of water, suspended, defying gravity above us.

11.20 pm Weather Report & Firewheel Tree

2009-10-30T06:51:00.005+10:00

I can confidently report that it was raining lightly at 11.20 last night. I was up very late (for a mother of two pirates) firing the kiln. Today I'm unpacking, cleaning and pricing for the Finders Keepers Market.

I'll be exhibiting these pots I've been working on for a while. The Firewheel tree stenocarpus sinuatus is a Queensland rainforest tree flowering through summer. I wanted this design to recall old 1940's Australiana and fabric designs.

People of the Pearl Shell

2009-10-30T06:34:00.004+10:00

Rebecca Ward and I spent the weekend at Stradbroke Island working on the Swamp Cartography collaboration.
Words cannot encompass how beautiful and inspiring this was. We did a cultural/archeological/botanical tour with Shane Coghill of the Goenpul tribe- the People of the Pearl Shell. Shane took us right into the wallum on the narrow tracks made by wallabies. All around us was the stiff tangle of leucopogon, leptospernums, sedges and Dianella. As we looked into the heart of a clump of reeds for lizard eggs I noticed a Forked Sundew on it's long spindly stalk reaching through the blades towards the sun.
Shane took us along an old road shaded by the huge Bloodwood trees, there was an eagles nest , big enough to house human children balanced high up.
We took a lot of impressions in clay and our weird resin products. We took a lot of impressions in our impressionable brains, ancient stories, vegetation, dried leaves stippled shadows , in that strange, filtering, creative, process.

Originally published in Rebeccca Ward and my blog about the collaborative project Swamp Cartography.

Pupal Soup

2009-10-26T12:55:00.007+10:00

Pupal soup is the liquid, living matter that you will find in the cocoon of a moth during metamorphosis. The caterpillar totally dissolves into liquid DNA and can remain dormant, or even frozen for long periods of time. Eventually this soup coalesces into a new animal and a moth emerges.

I realize that the children are a complicated natural phenomena. They take inspiration away and deliver it in great gouts at unexpected moments. Every time I feel frustrated and stymied it works it's way in tandem with a million other little pieces of family life to come out in pots at a later date.
What can I say about Fizzy D and Sweet P? They have filled my whole heart and mind and the rest, my thoughts, creative life, beautiful and rare is like the light of an eclipsed sun leaking out around the edges.

Learning how to learn

2009-10-15T07:09:00.004+10:00

I am on this strange thing called "The Australian Ceramics Discussion List". It is full of alternatively infuriating and inspiring thoughts, opinions and practical tips from any one of the 400 members. There has been a recent thread on education, the value of contemporary Australian ceramics education, what it adds to personal practice and to the world generally. This morning I opened an e-mail with this from Owen Rye:

"Education is the difference between you yesterday and you today. I can say what I had in mind about postgraduate education - but please do not imagine this applies to teaching beginners. That is a skill very few people have and I'm not one of them.

First thing was to try to bring out what was in people rather than try to put something in from outside ( put simply that involves mainly listening rather than talking). Second was believing that postgraduates should learn for themselves - and if their aims were serious then quite likely I could not answer their questions anyway. But I could try to learn with them and in the process we both learned how to learn more. Learning how to learn is far more important than acquiring 'facts' or 'knowledge'. The most common advice was "Try it and see what happens". ( My friend Tony Stewart said that you did not ask your kids 'what did you learn at school today? , the real question is 'What did you think about today?).

Another was that postgraduates were headed to professionalism and so had to be competent at presenting their work in public, at writing, at exhibiting and so on, as well as making. One result of this thinking was that it was almost irrelevant to me what kind of work anyone wanted to do - functional, conceptual, installation, fire art - the same basic approach applied. In fact I most enjoyed the weirdest aims because I learned so much from the students.

Another supervising (that is something different to teaching) device I used came from Ivan McMeekin, my teacher. Whenever you showed him some work you had done he would say "Yes, and now you could try doing this as the next step". After all that I realised, as I think Ivan intended me to, that there was always a next step. It was never 'finished'. Fifty years later I am still thinking about the next step - the next firing in a few weeks is a big experiment in many ways and I don't know how it will work out. (if you know what you are doing it ain't art).....Owen Rye"
Lucky students who have Owen for a teacher.

Tropical Gothic

2009-10-14T06:46:00.004+10:00

I'm getting excited about the Finders Keepers Markets on the 31st of October and the 1st of November. I don't do many markets so the once a year outing is a fun way to meet other artists and customers.

I have a soft spot for the Old Museum in Brisbane. It brings back memories of long trips to "the city" from my childhood. After hours and hours of driving we'd go through the boring outer suburbs and when we saw Tyranosaurus Rex striding through the palm trees outside the tropical Gothic grandeur of the Old Museum we'd know we were nearly there. Rex is gone now and the building is dwarfed by development but the slightly sagging elegance of this beautiful building still remains.

motherlove/insanity and making pots

2009-10-09T17:00:00.002+10:00

It is a good feeling to see the kiln filling up...and to see crosses through the list.

I had to take my feisty old Nana to the doctor's yesterday and as I was driving down to her place I was thinking of ways to maximize the potential of the trip. Seeing as it was in a working day and the drive is "down the coast" where there are shops etc I thought that maybe I should buy the kids new underwear. I looked at the car clock as we crawled along stopping at roadworks every five minutes and calculated that I'd have about ten minutes to get in and out of the shopping centre so I'd have to actually run as fast as I could. The thought of doing this and what I would look like, a demented person running through the shopping centre to buy undies, frown on face, handbag flapping stopped me from this exercise in motherlove/insanity.

The "working" day when the children are at school is so short and so prone to getting nibbled away by household tasks that when I can't work on a "working" day it makes me very anxious. Working as an artist is hard enough in the first place, withdrawing from the life of the house into the free, floating, quiet disciplined space needed to make pots and drawings is an impossible feat some days....... most days. Pots and drawings are a miracle, an a physical improbability like one of those old Laurel and Hardy gags where 20 or more people just keep pouring out of an impossibly tiny car.