Touch makes reality

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.

Noosa Travelling Scholarship

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

"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!