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Winter in the studio.

Is cold, it is very,very cold.

Icy buckets full of slip need to be stirred and sieved, lifted and poured. Freezing cold lumps of clay need to be cut and wedged and thumped into shape. My hands are in and out of water all day and the electric kettle, my only source of hot water, is currently working overtime.

As the cold winter chill seeps into my bones I find that I want to spend time inside my warm house, cooking and eating and faffing about on the internet talking to people, rather than working in the cold studio. My procrastination levels are the highest they have been for a while and the days are slipping by at an alarming rate.

I am thankful for the beanies that you, my lovely internets sent to me when I shaved off my hair, as it was so cold up there the other day I was getting an ice cream headache. The front wall of my studio has a large roller door which I use as my main door. I don’t particularly like closed spaces, so even when it is bitter and an icy wind is blowing from the southwest, I keep the roller door partially open so that I can watch the world working around me, as well as keep my eyes peeled for those elusive crows.

I had left a bar of chocolate on my work table and the next morning I found that the mice had been nibbling away merrily overnight. I admired the texture marks their teeth had made in the chocolate and daydreamed about hyper mice full of sugar and caffeine having a party in my studio. Instead of throwing the chocolate away I left it there for the mice to finish off, as the thought of them coming back  to finish off the chocolate and finding it gone, made me feel a bit sad. I empathised with those poor cold mice, struggling through the cold with only a bit of chocolate for sustenance.

My empathy for the mice only lasted another day as there was mice shit absolutely everywhere and I could see that their little mousey party had turned into a full blown sugar and caffeine fueled mousey rage, so into the bin it went.

I have been working on a series of textured bowls and this photo shows a bowl  in its raw unfired state. I am planning on staining the outside of this bowl with a red iron oxide wash and glazing the inside a pretty green or blue gloss. It will either work or it wont.

I have been thinking about lots of things, even as my making has slowed down and ideas for new work pop into my head, as I allow myself the time to daydream and paint song lyrics onto the inside of my roller door.

The large purple vase that belonged to my mother is still full of dead tulips and every time I look at the flowers they whisper to me and I wander off into another head space where I use my camera intuitively, only thinking in terms of light and shade.

I hear the Ravens calling as I am working and through the half open studio door I follow their flight with my eyes, checking the sky for Eagles at the same time, as often the first sign of an Eagle in the vicinity is the raucous caw of the Ravens as they harass the larger birds. I haven’t had any Eagles in my yard since I gave away my chickens and I am thinking of getting some more hens to see if they entice the Eagles in closer to my camera.

Away from thoughts of chickens and eggs and eagles and back to the cold. The work isn’t drying and so I have been bringing armloads down into the warmth of the house and arranging small pieces in lines next to my wood stove. There is a danger with this faster drying that the work will crack but it is a risk I need to take as July is my turn to display my work in half of the large retail window frontage of the Off Centre Gallery.

My life is busy at the same time as my life is slow. It is winter and I am cold but I am happy. To see what other mudslingers are up to you should check out Adriana’s blog at Mud Colony

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Trish June 16, 2012, 11:40 am

    I would not share the same empathy for the mice – bugga about the chocolate.
    It sounds a very peaceful place to work and daydream Kim, love the idea of the lyrics on your door.

    • frogpondsrock June 16, 2012, 5:36 pm

      I don’t mind the mice Trish, it is their habit of shitting everywhere, leaving a trail of urine and chewing holes in things that annoys me. The lyrics are cool, I will have an exhibition with those lyrics as the idea behind the show.

      • Trish June 16, 2012, 6:02 pm

        I don’t mind mice either except for the Sh*+ , my cat has a great time stalking them but it is the dead bits I cannot handle. They are cute little tings otherwise . They ate my choc too – unforgivable.

  • Sadhana June 16, 2012, 12:04 pm

    Love your textured bowls and your new hair do 🙂
    I very much enjoy your blog entries and your way of looking at the world.
    It is really cold here too my hands are also suffering
    I also have a roller door,like yours , which gets super cold in winter and super hot in summer
    they are convenient but I am not sure about their efficiency in a pottery studio :\

    • frogpondsrock June 16, 2012, 5:40 pm

      Thank you very much Sadhana, I read this comment just before I went out to visit my daughter and your kindness made me smile. I only put the roller door in when I was building the studio, (it is a steel framed shed) so that we could get the kiln into the space. 🙂 But in summer it is lovely to be able to open the door wide and enjoy the view, and the birds that fly in as well.

  • Happy Elf Mom June 16, 2012, 1:06 pm

    I can just imagine the mouse party! That would get me so mad to see my stuff all trashed like that and pooped on!

    • frogpondsrock June 16, 2012, 5:40 pm

      I was a bit annoyed with myself because it was nearly a full block of chocolate, I had only eaten the top row.

  • Sue June 16, 2012, 1:12 pm

    You rock.

    Because you’re so bloody cold. Baha. Sorry 🙂

    Okay, an aside to the universe. Dear Universe – what’s the deal with the bloody ravens, eh? I mean, they’re flying in – from two different blog posts just this morning, TV shoes (last night’s Ace of Cakes, where they made a cake for an Edgar Allen Poe-themed restaurant that had a big raven on the top). What’s with the bloody ravens!!

    I so love that you left the chocolate out for the mice. And then that you threw it away 🙂

    • frogpondsrock June 16, 2012, 5:45 pm

      lol You idiot hehe I was nearly frozen solid this morning I tell you. The house fire had gone out and there was only a tiny cluster of coals in the firebox of my combustion stove. But it is all good now.
      I have been trying to photograph the ravens for a while now as they have the most gorgeous blue eyes BUT they are so damned wary of us. I think they think my camera is a gun. The mice have abandoned the studio now that it is a chocolate free zone.

  • Sharon @ Funken Wagnel June 16, 2012, 1:49 pm

    I love the way you think:)

    We had the mouse plague here last year, and our studio really copped it, so I can empathise!

    Hopefully the cold weather kills them off in droves soon; that’s what happened to our mouse plague. We started out with the toilet freezing and the mice stayed. But once it got much, much colder, it was like a mass kill. Kim, do you have any cats? I find they are fantastic for helping this issue as well

    • frogpondsrock June 16, 2012, 5:50 pm

      *grins* Thanks Sharon. I have a cat here Matilda (Tilly) and she is the best mouser we have ever had. Veronica got her when she was in year 7 and the farmer who gave Tilly to us said that Tilly’s mother was the best mouser she had ever had, I thought yeah yeah, you just want to get rid of the kittens. Imagine my surprise when I see this 8 week old kitten with a mouse. This time of year, Tilly the cat is a walking football, she is so stuffed full of mice she can barely move. She catches rats and shows us the dead rats, but we never ever see a trace of a mouse 🙂

  • Kel June 16, 2012, 4:17 pm

    what lucky mice
    and lucky your for realising they had munched on it, so you didn’t munch on it after them
    the lyrics on your roller door are now rolling around in my head and I can’t help but wondering what the tune is

  • Lilly June 16, 2012, 4:32 pm

    I really love your photography and your generosity to those lucky mice, lol. You are a better woman than I.

    • frogpondsrock June 16, 2012, 5:57 pm

      hehe I am just a soft touch and every animal within shouting distance knows it.

  • river June 16, 2012, 8:05 pm

    It would seem that pottery is much better suited to warmer weather.
    I admire you greatly for perservering in the cold.
    I like the shape of the new bowl, I’ll be interested to see how the colours turn out.
    No mouse ever got his teeth into any of my chocolate. Ha Ha.

    • frogpondsrock June 17, 2012, 4:31 pm

      lol I bet they didn’t River 🙂 I will see you in September when I come up to Adelaide for the triennale and If the bowls turn out well I will bring you one 🙂

  • Jayne June 16, 2012, 11:07 pm

    I bet you’re getting chillblains on your hands, Kim, rub some cream in at night to stop your hands cracking in all that cold.

    • frogpondsrock June 17, 2012, 4:29 pm

      No trouble with chillblains so far Jayne I do get problems with the quicks of my nails getting red, but mostly I have “Hands Of Steel” and I do use my Mum’s handcream a lot which is lovely and full of almond oil and lavender and other yummy stuff. A friend (hi Jebaru) gave me some lemon myrtle hand cream as well which is in the studio, my main problem with my hands is drying out from the silica in the clay.

  • Fiona June 17, 2012, 10:04 am

    “their little mousey party had turned into a full blown sugar and caffeine fueled mousey rage, so into the bin it went.”

    🙂 hahaha. Awesome.

  • Mary June 17, 2012, 12:22 pm

    Lovely post Kim
    Shame about the chocolate. Meant to say a while back I liked the tulips in their decline.
    Very poetic and evocative…can feel the cold. Love the vandalism on the roller door. You really get to express your SELF in so many ways. I admire you working the cold hard clay. X

    • frogpondsrock June 17, 2012, 4:33 pm

      Thanks Mary, the tulips are just as beautiful dead, the colours are still lovely and they just have a different form. I have about 15 red tulip bulbs waiting to be planted out. The only problem with them here is that the wallabies adore tulips as much as I do.

  • Tanya June 17, 2012, 4:48 pm

    I giggled at the part about the mice. I’ve done the same thing so many times, felt sorry for the animals and then felt annoyed when they’ve made mess again. When my old house was being built, there was a little mouse who used to climb the extension power cord in through the laundry and make his way around the edge of the loungeroom to the kitchen, sort through our rubbish bin and then leave back the same way. He never made noise or mess and I used to get a kick out of his visits. I was sad wheen we had the power connected and didn’t need the extension cord anymore!

  • Melanie Reed June 18, 2012, 3:08 am

    You were so generous to the those lucky mice. The pictures are so stunning!!!

  • Sophia Grace July 6, 2012, 5:25 am

    Poetic. I love this post!

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