Materiality

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?

Collaboration- Swamp Cartography

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

People of the Pearl Shell

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.

Collaborations...........and Prue Morrison

This is an entry written by Rebecca Ward about our collaboration "Swamp Cartography" You can read more about our adventures through the coastal swampland in pursuit of collaborative art pieces on our blog "Swamp Cartography"

Last week we did a mold-making workshop with Pru Morrison at her fabulous Metro Arts Studio shared between about 5 other potters. How wonderful to work in this space- and share equipment and ideas with such an interesting group. We spent the first hour or so perving on works in progress and talking to Pru about her latest pieces bound for the big smoke.

Pru is an expert slip caster known for her slipcast simulacra of flasks, thermoses, bottles with legs and arms which she covers in naughty and thought-provoking terra sigilata drawings.

We wanted to learn the technique of making a plaster mold from an original form into which slip could later be poured. Shannon found a stick outside for that purpose. As we are casting from nature and Pru uses manufactured objects to create moulds, it was interesting for Pru as well as us as she figured out how to mold the stick. Pru's method was meticulous and patient. She was able to anticipate undercut problems and prevent them from occurring by leaving no dramatic corners and plugging up with clay. The cast object could later be carved back if necessary. The piece was done in halves- as a 2-part mold. Some of Pru's more complex shapes are 6 or 8 parts and it can take a number of days to create a mold that will register and release well.

Mixing and pouring the plaster was carefully done to minimise bubbles and while we were waiting we started to mold a cup handle from a 1950's cup. Before we knew it, it was 5 o'clock and we'd forgotten all about lunch!

The stick casting came apart perfectly and Pru said the mold was probably overengineered for the object but better to err on the safe side. I'm not sure that Shannon entirely agreed as she lugged the dinosaur-bone-like object back home on public transport!

We were both stuck by the contrast between Pru's crazy tattoo-like excisions on pots and her calm measured studio processes. But then you dont see many tattoo artists waving their arms around and emoting!

More photos here.