February 2010

Getting back into the swing of things.

by frogpondsrock on February 27, 2010

in Arty stuff..,blogging,ceramics,scenery

This year is the final year of my advanced ceramics diploma. The pace has been stepped up a notch and I make the trek in to the polytechnic three days a week instead of two.Two days are studio access days where I am busily refining my throwing skills and getting ready for a serious block of glaze testing. Fridays are spent in a classroom with a group of artists from all the other studio areas. It is a good mix of jewellers, printmakers,woodworkers and ceramicists.

Going into the studio for an extra day has thrown my schedule at home out of kilter and I know it will take me a few weeks to get used to it. I am surprised by the fact that it is nearly March, as time seems to be just racing away. I looked at my blog and thought, I need to let my internet friends know what I am up to and pfft another three days just vanished into thin air.

So here I am sitting here by myself in the quiet of the morning with the thoughts and words swirling away in my head. I keep on coming back to that blasted review and the phrase this is boring slides into my head. Once I start to second guess myself and lose the flow of the story the words start misbehaving and I struggle to string them together. Sorry.

Yesterday our theory group had a full day in the city visiting the museum, the art school, art forum and two exhibitions. It was a harrowing day emotionally as one of the exhibitions, Never Again, a photographic essay of the survivors of the Rwandan massacre was very confronting. As was the subsequent presentation about it and photojournalism. I haven’t fully processed the information and sorted it into its respective boxes in my brain yet. But I will do that here in the next few days, as I think my response to the photos of the survivors of the genocide in Rwanda needs to be shared.

So still reeling from the photo presentation we went up to Cast gallery in North Hobart to see an exhibiton by Vernon Ah Kee. This exhibiton was also very thought provoking and deserves a post of its own as well.

I am working through some ceramic ideas using the plaster slabs and I think I will spend tomorrow making and photographing a series of ceramic ideas. I should be doing the housework and laundry but instead I will be making a bigger mess of my already chaotic home. Oh dear.

My friend Robin Roberts, a talented photographer is going to send me some lovely landscape photos of Tasmania, especially for your viewing pleasure. Yay. These next photos are indicative of the type of work that he does. Robin is a recent arrival to Tasmania and as most people do he has fallen head over heels in love with Tassie and travels all over the place snapping away merrily.

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Sometimes you don’t need any words.

by frogpondsrock on February 21, 2010

in Distractions galore!,Hope,scenery,weekly winners

There are more photos over here.

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Tech Issues

by frogpondsrock on February 18, 2010

in Uncategorized

Hello, Veronica here – frogpondsrock will be in a state of flux for a little bit while I try and work out an internal issue that won’t let me change themes without serious issues.

Forgive me!

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Clay impressions.

by frogpondsrock on February 15, 2010

in Arty stuff..,ceramics,dragons

I have been dreaming about the Dragon eggs. I keep on going back to the dragon post and re-reading all your comments and spinning off into wonderful daydreams. I have a couple of glaze combinations that I want to experiment with that should give me a lovely sparkly green. I am hoping to get the depth and surprise of an Australian opal. But the glaze might be too runny for an oval surface like an egg and might be better suited to the edges of a dead albatross bowl instead.

I start back at the studio this Thursday and I will be doing an awful lot of glaze testing to get the colours and textures of the eggs just so. I will keep you posted with photos of the tests.

I have been thinking a lot about the eggs and I don’t want to say that they are dragon eggs, that will be just between you and me. I want the people that see them and especially the children to make up their own minds.

Last Thursday “The Spouse” and I went down to the river. I had packed half a bag of clay in the car along with my rolling pin and a large board, just in case the fish weren’t biting.It is hard to concentrate on fishing when the ceramic juices are flowing so I rolled out a heap of clay slabs and pressed them into the rocks.

Here they are drying out a bit, so that I could safely transport them home.

Later on that evening I used the slabs of clay to make plaster press moulds.

Here  are the finished press moulds. I have no idea what I am going to do with them yet other than some vague ideas of rolling the dragon eggs over them for some texture.I might press slabs of clay into them and use them as sections of the dead albatross bowls or for texture in a sculptural piece. The possibilities are endless.

I do know one thing for sure though, just looking at them makes me extraordinarily happy.

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Shoddy workmanship.

by frogpondsrock on February 14, 2010

in blogging

If there is one thing that really gets up my nose it is a job poorly done. Why on earth you would even decide to do something if you were going to be half arsed about it is beyond me. Either do the bloody thing properly or just don’t bother.

I submitted my blog  to Ask And Ye Shall Receive for a review, their blog has the url of  iwillfuckingtearyouapart.blogspot.com so you would reasonably expect that you weren’t going to get bouquets when you deserve brickbats.I have been a regular reader of ‘Ask’ for a couple of years now, so I am also well acquainted with how they operate.

What I didn’t expect, was that I would get a reviewer who was unprofessional enough to let his distaste of the bloggies awards colour his review, to the point that he only read the first few pages of my blog.

In the comments he is very quick to point out that there are much better Aussie blogs out there that could have been nominated.Whilst I agree with that sentiment, this review wasn’t supposed to be about my unworthiness as a bloggies finalist. It was supposed to be about my words,which he didn’t actually bother reading.

He is a gushing fan of my daughter, which is as it should be because quite frankly, Veronica is brilliant. The disappointment that my blog wasn’t the same as Veronica’s was almost palpable.

On the strength of a couple page views and roughly half an hour on my blog, I have been dismissed out of hand as nice but boring.

I think it was the accusation of dullness that stung more than anything because it is the first time in my life I have ever been accused of being boring.

So how do I deal with a label of dullness. Well apart from stirring the guts out of my daughter about her ardent admirer from Adelaide. I am going to ignore it.

As I wrote in my about me page I am comfortable in my skin and I don’t feel the need to portray myself as anything other than what I am.

I know who I am and where I am going.

I have shed my skin numerous times. I left all the edgy, angst-filled, woe and the desire to change the world behind me when I was a teen. The dark experimentations and addictions were sloughed off in my twenties. My thirties were a decade of coming to terms with myself, coupled with some very serious drinking. Now in my forties all my various addictions are distant memories and I know that I am on the cusp of a great adventure.

Do I need to tell the stories of out drinking a twenty stone tin miner with more hair on his back than King Kong or doing drugs as a teenager in a public toilet. Will these stories, dredged from my past make my blog edgy and hip? Or do I put those recollections behind me and be thankful that I am alive,that I have made it to 44 with only the loss of my teeth to mark my journey and just write about who I am now?

I think the here and now suits me.

Professor Booty says that I am not his “demitasse of espresso”. Simply by uttering that slice of oh so superior superciliousness, he shows that he isn’t my fucking cup of tea either.

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