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

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

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.

Professional Photography

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)

How to Use the Web for Artists OR a Lifeline for the Technologically Reluctant

I am doing a blog workshop this Wednesday at the Maleny Artworks Gallery. This post is also part of a panel I am taking part in at the Australian Ceramics Triennale in July this year.

Blogging can give people greater insight into the artistic process, most particularly how entwined the process of inspiration and making is in everyday life. I encourage all artists to find their own little corner of the internet, reading blogs, posting comments on others blogs and posting images to established blogs are all powerful ways of connecting with other artists and the wider community.

I heard an amazing statistic the other day...98% of web content is written by 2% of web users. Many people feel that blogging is something they just can't get into because they haven't got time. I maintain that artists can use the internet better, to meet their peers, learn technical information, gain inspiration and promote their own work. With this in mind I've compiled a list of links (or as I like to call it a lifeline for the technologically reluctant) This will enable you to dip your toe into the sea of blogs and wade out as far as you feel comfortable- who knows some of you may become addicted and venture off beyond the breakers!

Art and design
These blogs are good for inspiration browsing and researching names of galleries/markets etc that might be worth approaching personally.
Moda Muse- Australian Contemporary Craft and Design
Handmadelife- an artists blog featuring work from Ramona Barry and Rebecca Jobson and exhibitions around Melbourne, Australia.
Dear Ada- amazing art and design blog based in America but featuring international artists.
Design Sponge- design and interiors based in America, if you can get your work on this blog you will definitely recieve approaches from galleries- it is very widely read.
Udessi- Brisbane based artist and business woman Kim Wallace's blog connected to her online store, beautiful art and design.

Illustration Art- drawing and illustration blog.
High up in the trees- Gracia Haby, illustrator, zine writter and bookmaker extraordinare.

Fashion
Kris's Colour Stripes- fashion designer photography and colour swatches. Isolates the colours from his photos, excellent resource.

The Sartorialist- pure inspiration from fashion photographer Scott Schuman. Street shots from European capitals and New York.



Food
101 Cookbooks- cookbook author and photographer San Francisco based Heidi Swanson's cooking blog.
Not Quite Nigella- cupcake queen and food blogger from Sydney, Australia.

Recipe on Not Quite Nigella Blog


Photography
Simply Photo- Jennifer Causey excellent photography blog featuring international photographers.
Simply Breakfast- Jennifer Causey (professional photographer) beautiful photo blog of her breakfasts.

Jen Causey's latest breakfast.

Textiles
Kirin Notebook- Lara Cameron, Melbourne artist and textile designer gives insight into her studio and inspiration.

A shot from Lara Cameron's studio
Mantua Maker- Ruth Singer UK based textile artist and fashion designer.


Ceramics
Six Hundred Degrees- Sophie Milne, Australian ceramicist
Musing About Mud- Carole Epp's wide ranging ceramics blog. A good place to start.
Sawdust and Dirt- Michael Kline, a wood-firin' , country livin', dad from Carolina, beautiful pots and insights into the potting life.
Euan Craig- Australian born potter living in Japan and working with a top Tokoyo chef to create tableware and food that combine as one.



Australian Ceramics Triennale- Information about the Australian Ceramics Triennale and a comprehensive overview of the many exhibitors, speakers and ceramics. An excellent resource for those who can't attend in person.

hot off the press

I have just finished a book project. You can see "Shannon Garson Porcelain"
here.



If you click on through the book you can see a preview of the inside pages.

Blurb is a website which allows you to create your own books from your photo files.

This is great resource for artists.

odd piles of plenty

This coming season of excess has made me think about plenty, multiples and piles. Is it some ancient primal urge from times of scarcity that leads us humans to be so fascinated with multiples?

Many things create random patterns, leading the eyes to make more formal patterns of pebbles on a beach or piles of folded washing. You can clearly see this process in beautiful aboriginal paintings where multiples become formal, rhythmic pattern. Maybe our longing for multiplicity is simply an yearning towards order , the continuous human struggle against EM Foster's "Chaos and Emptiness"?




Sometimes art can emulate this feeling of wonder at many by isolating a single or a few. In this way the whole universe of pebbles on the beach can be ours through the delicate jewelery of Rebbecca Ward,



The mystery of a flock of ravens translated into a single bird by Sleeping Forest.



Or the luxury of a pile of knitted jumpers translated into porcelain by Alyssa Ettinger.






Amazing photos of odd piles of plenty by Tim Walker

The Object Eye

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

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

Year-round gardening

Two Lepidoptera art items.
Rose Cobb's "Unity" light shade is made of porcelain with the shadowy moths glowing through the translucent material.
And visit gardener extraordinaire and photographer Rinne Allen's website for an evocative walk through the minutiae of garden life in Athens , Georgia. I feel a certain kinship with Rinne as she has also moved back to the small town in which she grew up. This is a strange thing as I couldn't wait to leave the place when I was 17.

Rinne says of Athens "Athens provides a beautiful place to live and work, as well as a near year-round gardening calendar due to its mild clime." This is very similar to my town, she lives in what sounds like a historic house, and even though my house is not what you would call historic it is historic for me. I used to look at my house when I was a little kid and think what a nice house it was and how I would like to live in it. Rinne Allen has a great vegetable garden - which is what I dream about........

beautiful but little understood...

Joseph Scheer is a perfect companion for yesterdays post on Allyson Reynolds. Scheer has developed a photographic process where he takes detailed images of moths and reveals their secret colors, feathery scales in brilliant patterns and delicate fronded antenae. Scheer's book "Night Visions- The Secret Designs of Moths" contains an essay by Mark Epstein examining the beauty and variety of moths, their lifecycle and the scientific difference between a moth and a butterfly. I love his conclusion that,

"Ultimately it is best to think of butterflies as being one of several experiments in the evolution of day-flying Lepidoptera, the species overwhelmingly dominated by beautiful but little understood moths."(pp.13)

We go together like ramma lamma lamma ka dinga da dinga dong

We go together like ramma lamma lamma ka dinga da dinga dong
Remembered forever as shoo-bop sha whada whadda yippidy boom da boom
Chang chang changity chang shoo bop that's the way it should be
Waooo Yeah

This is an exerpt from that deeply philosophical musical "Grease". It is a good introduction for things that go together (like ramma lamma lamma ka dinga da dinga dong)
rainy nights and reading in bed
mint and cucumber
cups of tea and cake
.......Mav and Stephanie have a wonderful blog called 3191. They live 3191 miles apart and everyday both take a photo of their morning, for one year these little snippets from their lives will be posted every day.

Here is a pasage from the book I am reading "The Apricot Colonel" by Marion Halligon.
She is a great writer ....

"Desert came. Little glass dishes of rosewater ices. Sweetmeats, fruits, nuts, Turkish delight, on green leaf-shaped platesscattered with rose petals. Sweet wine in tiny glass cups." pp.150

I also think pink and green go together.

Beautiful pots by English ceramicist Joanna Howells.

Everybody Cares What You Had for Lunch

I saw a book at the library yesterday called "No-one Cares What you had For Lunch". It is about blogging and how bloggers get stuck, the author, Margaret Mason thinks that you shouldn't waste your blog space with boring bits and pieces about what you had for lunch etc. In the craft world bloggers are desperately interested in what others had for lunch- Sometimes just a brief look at Tummy Rumbles, descriptions of food can cheer me up and provide thought provoking conversation for days amongst my blogging friends. Jen Causey's Simply Photo gets me salivating and I also love Port2port's recipes and down to earth exchanges regarding the all important subject of Lunch, Breakfast, Dinner or for that matter Snacks.
(photo by Jennifer Causey)


I think the frank exchange of delicious things is a wonderful way of connecting the cyber world to the earthy, burpy real world of the craft artist. Way back in the mists of time I was doing a Masters Degree and the subject of my thesis was the pretty obscure study of "...contemporary women novelists and how food and cooking are used as a means of communication in their novels." (Ann Tyler and Helen Garner were two of the novelists I studied.) I've left the brow furrowing world of academia far behind me but I still think that communication through food is very subtle, immediate and important. From breastfeeding to wedding feasts to helping some-one you care about calm down with a cup of tea , this is a language we all understand. That is one of the main reasons I love making domestic pots.

Today I did not have a very exciting lunch. But this is what I wish I had for lunch...
(photo once again by Jennifer Causey)
Pretty all my favourite lunches involve some combination of bread and cheese.

Actually I think every one should care what you had for lunch- What did you have?

my kitchen

My kitchen 5th February 2007.

the beautiful mechanics of the everyday

A few years ago when Trevor was in charge of the Christmas Pudding making he left the house to go shopping and the pudding was burned black, a sort of superstick surface on the bottom of the the saucepan. In a very bad mood I told him to go downtown and not to come back without a Christmas Pudding. Trevor slunk out of the house and swaggered back in an hour or so late - empty handed, but with an incredibly supercilious expression and announced that the puddings would be arriving this afternoon. And what do you know? That very afternoon 2 beautiful homemade Christmas Puddings appeared on our doorstep.
How did this happen? Well, in typical Trevor style he had gone down town and there was not a pudding to be found but someone said "I think little D makes puddings." So Trev went racing from cafe to cafe in search of Little D. Eventually giving up and walking down the street contemplating how to break the news to his mad wife Trevor heard a voice behind him saying "Excuse me ? Did you want a Christmas Pudding?" It was Little D and ever since in about October when we see him in the street we put our order in and around Christmas receive 2 handcrafted puddings.


The point of this long story is that there are crafts people throughout our community, making all kinds of amazing things with thought and care. These things, a perfect pudding, a wonderfully trimmed piece of meat from the butcher, homemade goats cheese, an elegant and practical solution to guttering, doors that close properly, add texture, charm and quality to our lives. As artists I feel we are part of this web of people entering homes,and affecting lives. This is a very powerful responsibility and the work of "good "crafting, creating art that works on a practical level as well as an intellectual one is central to my work as a ceramicist. I love the thought of my work in someone's home, comforting them after a long hard day, or piquing their interest as they idly sip their tea in the morning. This is my way of affecting the environment we live in. Although it's subtle, objects in the hands and the home can have a powerful, meaningful effect on the wider world.



Jennifer Causey's photographs illustrate this principle perfectly. Combining the sacred and the mundane, giving insight into the beautiful mechanics of the everyday.

tiny details

That delighful Blueberry Fool has alerted me to the Biomedical Images Awards. These images are amazing. I love seeing things about the details of life and you can't get much more detailed than this.

In a funny kind of way the excitement I feel about the biomedical images links in to the excitement I feel about handmade objects. Both of these strange esoteric disciplines are followed by artists who have become skilled technichians in thier own special fields. The handmade object and the biomedical image are both ways of letting busy, unintrested people see into the life we lead and ponder for a moment or two over its wierdness, and wonder.

This image is a stinging nettle.