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.

One Day Winter Workshops in My Studio!

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

Mapping -wallum, creativity and collaboration

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

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.....

Drawing on the surface

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

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.

The wallum is wild and secretive

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.

Thirst

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.

Wallum porcelain- leptospermum

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.

Drawing from it with his eyes.....

"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

Spotty Cups

Solving Logistical Problems

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!

clouds

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.

Australian Ceramics Triennale- coming up...

I'm firing madly getting ready to take some work down to the Australian Ceramics Triennle.

I'm on a panel about education. This sounds very dry but it will be a cracker - I think it should be called "Revolting Education- the Changing Face of Ceramic Learning in the 21st Century" It will be a panel discussion with plenty of input from the revolting artists who are watching. Throw us questions (not rotten fruit and vegetables) on mentorships, how they can work with contemporary artists. The internet, does it have a role in education(!?) Is formal learning of ceramics dead? ......And other contentious issues.

I'll also be doing a presentation on using blogging as a powerful tool for creativity and financial independence.

And last but not least I'll be bringing down a selection of work to sell at the Ceramics Direct Market on Sunday. One of my favourite memories of a conference is finding Sandra Black sitting behind a table at the National Conference a few years ago. She only had a small selection of beautiful items and it has been my lasting pleasure to have bought one. I look at this little pot nearly every day.

It makes me think of clouds, the soft/hard, cold/hot push and pull of the clay and lovely Sandra making a few dollars to supplement her trip. I'm so glad she was there and I could buy this lovely pot.


Maybe I'll see you at the Triennale.

Coming up........

I am in a few shows in Sydney opening soon.
"On the Table Too" at Planet Commonwealth is a group show that promises to be full of beautiful, amazing and practical handmade vessels. I love the group shot of ceramics on the invitation. It emphasizes the notion of the lively table, a place for food and ideas. In Italy the majolica ware used for the everyday table is bursting with history, colour and pattern. The food is there as an element, a vehicle for the flow of ideas and discussion around the table. I've often wondered what the trend for pure, white, factory made plates signifies. Is it a kind of control freak thing around food? Putting the food in a frame with nothing to distract the eater, none of the connection to community that a handmade plate brings to the table creates a strange kind of over-emphasis , almost a fetishization of food.

"On the Table Too" can cure this!

Exhibition from wednesday 8th - 22nd July to coincide with the Australian Ceramics Triennale

An exciting showcase of new ceramic tableware from Australian studio ceramists, including

walter aue,r bridget bodenham, kris coad, catherine fogarty, shannon garson
szilvia gyorgy, nicole lister, sandy lockwood, ruth mcmillan, sophie milne
vanessa owens, chris plumridge, simon reece, jane robertson, liz stops
dawn thirlaway, murray topham.

planet commonwealth is located at 114 commonwealth street
surry hills between reservoir and campbell streets

monday - friday 10 - 5.30
saturday 10 - 5
sunday noon - 4
ph 9211 5959

Throwing pots- in a few easy steps!