Arty stuff..

You dont have cancer, Mrs Foale.

by frogpondsrock on May 4, 2012

in Arty stuff..,cancer,ceramics,friendship,Fun,Hope

But you do have to come back and have another Colonoscopy next year.

Inside my mind, the imaginary fist pumping and the “Fuck Yeah” thoughts are quickly replaced by the sinking feeling of, “Oh No not another colonoscopy.” *Gulps*

But it could always be much, much worse and so today I am pleased to announce that I don’t have cancer. YAY!

To celebrate my own cancer free status, I will be eating cake tomorrow at a fundraising afternoon tea at the lady Franklin Gallery in Lenah Valley.You can all come along as well and help to raise a little bit of money for the Cancer Council of Tasmania by buying some cool art and eating some cake as well.

The Rose exhibition is the brainchild of my friend, acclaimed Ceramist, Dawn Oakford.

The premise of the Rose exhibition was for invited artists to make some work in response to Picasso’s Rose period, with paintings by members of the Art Society of Tasmania and ceramics by members of the Tasmanian Ceramics Association.

This is the work that I have made and I have donated the sale price of this set to the Cancer council. So please tell your friends to go along and buy it.

I would be delighted if you could all come along to the Lady Franklin Gallery tomorrow as my guests and we can all eat cake together.

Three cheers for cake.

{ 11 comments }

A cycle of creative chaos

by frogpondsrock on April 24, 2012

in Arty stuff..,ceramics,Distractions galore!,potential insanity

I have never been a tidy person. I leave a trail of destruction behind me where ever I go. I have accepted this aspect of myself now at the grand old age of 46 and even though I make a token effort to limit my mess making in the house, it is a totally different matter in my studio. I totally destroy the studio when I am making the work and there is barely a surface left untouched. Once the work has been bisque fired, the studio becomes even more cluttered, as I do final stage decorations on pieces that couldn’t be decorated as I made them, either because they were too fragile unfired, or because I forgot about them and the clay had dried out too much to risk applying any underglaze colours.

In the studio I only have to answer to myself and now as we speak, I am at the pointy end of a making cycle. This table with the labelled clutter is actually my main large work table, I finish off my slip cast cups on one side and roll out large slabs of clay for platters on the other side, where that pesky bowl of rocks sits. At the moment the worktable is covered with stuff, that was essential in the making process, but now that I am about to glaze, it is all clutter that is in my way.

As long as there is a dinner plate sized space of clear table left to work on, I can still work happily enough, this photo shows me at the decoration stage of the work. I only have to decorate a few pieces as all the decoration and mark making is done as I am making the work. Once the work has progressed past the “leather hard” stage and onto the “too dry to do anything else”  stage, I have generally lost interest in it.

Now it is crunch time, my deadline is looming and both worktables need to be clutter free in order for me to glaze the work. I have to make some new glazes and my standard stock glazes which sit under the table in ten litre buckets all need to be stirred well and then thoroughly sieved. A very messy job.

The studio will be all sparkly and clean for about an hour today and then the process of creative destruction begins again as I make a hell of a mess glazing.

I have procrastinated enough dear internets, and will be (mostly) incommunicado for the rest of the day, as I knuckle down and get ready to fire this latest kiln load of work.

Also for those interested, here are the paint brushes that I make with my hair. I just sticky tape the hair onto a wooden skewer.

And here is a photo of the marks these paintbrushes make on the work.

{ 17 comments }

The happy wanderer returns.

by frogpondsrock on March 7, 2012

in Arty stuff..,ceramics,friendship,Fun

Sometimes trying to think of a title is the hardest part of this whole blogging caper.

I am home from my epic road trip to Burnie, I have a zillion ideas for new work burbling away in my head and I reckon that I am going to be very busy. Very, very busy.

The Fired up Exhibition opening was a great success with numerous pieces of work (mine included) selling before we had even officially opened.

Here is an overview of the exhibition, these photos were taken by my friend, ceramist and photographer, Robin Roberts

The Burnie Coastal Art Group were wonderfully generous with their help and hospitality and If you live in the area I would highly recommend you join up.

Here are some photos of my work also taken by Robin Roberts. The rabbits and skulls are by Philadelphia Hanson-Viney

I would like to take a moment to thank Dawn Oakford for inviting me to be a part of fired up, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and I cant wait to do it again. I would also like to thank the Burnie Coastal Art Group for being our very generous hosts.

If you are anywhere near Burnie between now and the 1st of April, you should pop into the gallery and have a look, it is a rather good exhibition, even if I do say so myself.

{ 9 comments }

“Fired Up” The exhibition.

by frogpondsrock on February 23, 2012

in Arty stuff..,ceramics,Hope,plastic pollution

In one weeks time I leave home to make the 325 kilometre (200 mile) road trip, up to Burnie in the North West of the state. I will be firing the kiln today and as per usual I am skating very close to the edge. One toss of the coin and all is well or all is lost. I am a gambler as well as an artist. But I am not gambling with games of chance, I am gambling with my own technical veracity and offering up a prayer to the kiln Gods at the same time. It is always all or nothing with me. I have back up work I can put in the exhibition if the firing is a disaster but the main body of work is in the kiln right now and I will not know until Sunday if it has been a success or not.

And this suits me, it suits how I work and it suits my personality.

This is the artist statement that I have decided to use, new readers can read the first draft here. I decided to go with this statement and to add the stories about the cigarette lighters and the Albatross to my canvas.

Fired up Kim Foale

My name is Kim Foale and I am a storyteller. In ages past we would have sat around the fire together and I would have woven a tale to suit the times.  In this second decade of the twenty first century my tale is one of anger, despair, inertia, and ultimately hope.

3.2 million pieces of plastic enter the world’s oceans every day and if I think too deeply about the  massive amount of plastic pollution slowly choking our oceans to death I am filled with anger and despair.

If I read the scientific data about mercury toxicity levels in seabirds, the rapidly accelerating rate of extinctions in Australia, the impact of climate change and the inertia of our leaders, I become overwhelmed  and gripped by inertia.

So I think instead of the immortal words of Samwise Gamgee in the film version of Lord of the Rings. When all looked to be lost, Samwise said, “There is always hope Mr Frodo, there is always hope.”

As an artist I take my inspiration where I can get it and I firmly believe that there is always hope.

I hope that when you look at my work and you read the story on my canvas, of the cigarette lighters and dead Albatross chicks, that you don’t walk away, but that you pick up a touchstone and decide that you can help. I hope that when you see the oiled bird bowl and the ceramic eggs that you decide to think about your own plastic consumption. I hope that when you see the photos of the plastic pollution that you will feel not despair, but determination that you can make a difference as well.

I hope that you decide as I have, that one person can save the planet.

So there you go my lovelies, I hope the Lord of the Rings reference isn’t too silly but that line in the film really did touch me. It was only a few weeks after Mum had died and David and I were having a LOTR movie marathon together, we were watching the DVD’s Mum had given Dave and when Sam told Frodo that there was always hope and they continued to climb the mountain I cried. I cried for my mum but mostly I cried for myself and for weeks afterwards I would whisper to myself in an atrocious accent, there is always hope Mr Frodo and I would just keep on putting one foot in front of the other.

Now I need to go and glaze the last few pieces and cram them into the kiln.

The edge, I am skating on it.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Writing An Artist Statement.

by frogpondsrock on February 18, 2012

in Arty stuff..,ceramics,Dead Albatross bowls,plastic pollution

As an artist I have to write lots of artist statements. I am always so grateful for you my dear internets, because each and every artist statement I write I always treat as if I am writing to you. I generally give my artist statement a trial run here on the blog to see how it reads and more importantly to see how you react to it and to ask your opinion on my words.

Some artists statements are so convoluted and so wanky and I become so baffled by them, that I stop reading after the first sentence because they have boggled my mind. I know that in their first year at Art School, students are taught the common  language of art which ostensibly makes it easy to have a conversation across all disciplines.

But Oh My Word internet, for us common folk that are reading these statements at an exhibition,sometimes the statement is less a statement and more an incomprehensible puzzle that makes me feel quite the dullard.

But I digress. This post is about MY artist statement and mine are never ever wanky. (Ever.)

I woke up this morning around 6 and being a Saturday, I thought I would stay in bed and snooze for a bit longer. But my brain was awake and filled with words all busting with impatience and clamouring to be put onto a a page with their friends. So here we are again internet it is just you and I in the early morning, you and I and my words.

Oh and by the way, David’s first day at school went well. He didn’t go to school for his second day though and yesterday he broke up with his girlfriend again. So he is home for the moment and will most definitely be going to school for his third day because muggins here, will be bloody well driving him the 50 ks to school.

Now what were we doing? Oh that’s right Artist statements.

Here we go then, tell me what you think of this one.

Fired Up, Kim Foale

I was invited to be part of this exhibition because I am “fired up” about what I do. I am passionate about my work and if you are here today at the opening please feel free to ask me any questions that you may have and I will try very hard not to talk your ears off. I am the one with the purple hair and stripy socks. If you missed the opening and would like to talk to me, my cards are here, shoot me an email and we can have a yak.

 3.2 million items of Plastic Pollution enter the world’s oceans every day. Plastic bottle tops, helium balloon clips and cigarette lighters are common ingredients, found in this deadly plastic soup. If I think too deeply about the implications of that amount of pollution clogging up the already messy ocean, I could become paralysed with despair and inertia.

So I don’t think about the vast amount of plastic that is thrown away every day. I think about small bits of plastic that I can actually do something about. I think about bottle tops and cigarette lighters.

Disposable cigarette lighters by their very nature are designed to be thrown away. The cigarette lighters that are glued onto my canvas were removed from the stomachs of dead Laysan Albatross chicks on the Kure Atoll in Hawaii in 2009. These cigarette lighters were  floating on top of the oceans and the adult Laysan Albatross collected them in their search for food and fed them to their chicks. Eventually the Laysan Albatross chicks stomachs were filled with plastic pollution and they died from starvation.

I often use plastic pollution that has been removed from dead sea birds in my work. I painted this canvas using a cigarette lighter as a palette knife and the primary colours used are the bright colours of everyday plastics. I used the same cigarette lighters to make marks in the Southern Ice touchstones that fill the “dead albatross bowl”. The touchstones whilst beautiful are a poignant reminder that we are filling our oceans with plastic pollution. I hope that their small beauty will inspire you to think about small ways that you can help as well.

I also used plastic bottle tops and other small items found on the beach to make marks in the clay. The black eggs are a reminder that if we don’t act soon, all that will be left of our seabirds are photographs and trays of hollow eggs in dusty museum cases.

One person can make a difference.

********************

After I wrote this I went back and read the guidelines for my artist statement and it is supposed to be only 150 words. I have 462 words.

Bugger.

I will cull it tomorrow.

My words are tired now.

Thank you for listening.

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