ceramics

This week in the Studio. #1

by frogpondsrock on May 17, 2012

Adriana Christianson from the Mud Colony Blog has a weekly link up of ceramic posts on her website.

I thought that It would be nice to do a weekly what has, or hasn’t been happening in my studio and link these posts up with the Mud Colony Blog.

When I decided to get serious about clay in 2006, I knew deep in my heart that I was a thrower, in fact I knew that I had been born to throw. In my first year of study, I spent hours and hours on the wheel and with each pot that I cut in half and threw into my recycle bucket, my conviction dimmed.

It took me three years of serious effort on the wheel to finally realise that I don’t actually like throwing all that much. I don’t like the time it takes to get set up, I don’t like sitting still and I really don’t like coming back to the work and turning yesterdays pots.

I was taught by Dawn Oakford a slip casting maestro with a love of colour who fires in oxidation and Ben Richardson a woodfiring, production potter with a passion for digging his own clay and glaze materials.

Both of my teachers influences are strongly evident in my work and I have learned to balance my love of delicate slip cast pieces with my need to create rustic earthy slab formed platters.

For first time visitors there is a bit more about me on my ceramic gallery page.

So this week in the studio I have been distracted by crows (or Forest Ravens for the pedants) I have been trying to photograph the Ravens without much success as they are sneaky buggers, who well remember that one time, 20 odd years ago when I blasted a few shots into the air to scare them away from my day old chickens. The Ravens have the most gorgeous blue eyes but this is as close as I am able to get to them. So Far.

Also I have been nagging (I asked him twice) The Spouse the cut off the tops of some tree stumps in my new orchard so I can plonk some sculptures onto the stumps.

I opened the kiln recently and was shocked by how very, very, very blue some of my work was. As I was staring blankly at the blueness of some pieces, I had a terrible thought. I thought, “Kimmy you added 5.0 g of Cobalt Oxide to 1 kilo of dry weight instead of .05 g didn’t you?”

Oh dear, oh deary dear. A quick check of my glazing notes confirmed my suspicion, that I had indeed made such a mistake. I have no idea where my head was that day but it certainly wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

The blue isn’t too bad on this bowl as the texture breaks it up but oh my word the blue is hideously measled on some of my slipcast peices.

The blueness of the cobalt mistake glaze, luckily also works here on my barnacle platter. So the whole firing wasn’t a total waste of time

And just for a bit of reality in the studio. I have been asked to make some slipcast cups for a friend. It has been a bit chilly down here in Tassie. So chilly in fact that I have been loathe to stick my hands into a bucket full of cold, cold clay.This is the chaos of my slipcasting area as it looked this morning. I will be cleaning this space up today in preparation for destroying it all over again with a quick burst of slipcasting. Or I might be chasing Ravens.

Recipes.

Blue Mistake glaze

Potash Feldspar 60. Whiting 20. Silica 10. Kaolin 10. ( I added 5% Cobalt Oxide) instead of .05%

The glaze on the Dragon Eggs is VSAG (Vitreous Slip as Glaze) one of Ben Richardson’s recipes

Nepheline Syenite 35. Silica 20. Kaolin 25. Dolomite 20 for the black colour I added Red iron oxide 5% Cobalt Oxide 2% Manganese dioxide 2%

I didn’t have any Dolomite so I substituted Talc 10 and Whiting 10. The glaze was almost the same as the original VSAG glaze that I have been used to but it is a touch shinier and inclined to run a bit if thick

For the red flash on the dragon eggs I added 2 level teaspoons of fire engine red stain to one cup of VSAG base Glaze.

Iron Wash on Barnacle Bowl

Red Iron Oxide 60. Rutile 20. Nepheline Syenite 20.

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Sunday Selections #68 A ceramic edition

by frogpondsrock on May 6, 2012

in blogging,cancer,ceramics,environmental stuff,friendship,Fun,real life,sunday selections

I like to make rocks. I get a great deal of personal satisfaction from making ceramic rocks. As I am making rocks I go elsewhere in my mind and I find a place of beautiful stillness and in this space I am working at my most intuitive.

I enjoy making all the work that I make, otherwise I wouldn’t make it BUT it is these rocks that give me the most pleasure.

So without further ado here is the Ceramic edition of this weeks Sunday Selections. There are some rules to this meme but I am fluid, follow them or not, it is up to you. I do ask that you link back to me though.

The Blurb

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

The Photos

These little lidded vessels are about the size of a squished tennis ball. I call them puzzle boxes because it takes a few twists and turns of the lid to make it sit correctly. I had heaps of fun making these.

This is a candlestick and incense holder. We had a power failure recently and I didn’t have anything to stick any candles into.

This is the side view of the same candlestick and incense holder.

This is part of the first platter that I made in response to my recent trip up to Burnie. I can still feel the psychic impact of driving over the hill into Devonport and being smacked in the soul by the ocean.

This platter is available in the Off Centre Gallery in Salamanca Arts Centre

And then we leave my rocks and travel to the other side of my artistic brain and have this work, which I also adore making. These three pieces are part of the Rose Exhibition, which is showing now at the Lady Franklin Gallery in Lenah Valley. I have donated all of the sale price of this work to the Cancer Council.

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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.

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Hello May, it is nice to see you.

by frogpondsrock on May 2, 2012

in ceramics,Grief,thinking out loud

April was very hard this year and I spent an awful lot of time being very, very sad. Next April I am not going to make any plans or commit myself to any exhibitions or anything. I am just going to eat cake and be kind to myself for the whole month.

I often wonder what impression of myself I give to people who read this blog.

The ceramics that fulfill me are made using pieces of plastic that have been inside dead birds. This plastic came out of the stomachs of only three Flesh Footed Shearwaters on Lord Howe Island.

And so using this plastic I made this work.

These cigarette lighters came out of the stomachs of Laysan Albatrosses on the Kure Atoll in Hawaii in 2009.

Using these lighters to make marks in the clay, I made these porcelain touchstones.

I take photographs of roadkill and I cry for my mother a lot .

The ceramic cooperative that I am a part of, has a shop in the Salamanca Arts Centre in Hobart. On my days in the shop, some time is always spent chatting to the other shop owners and members of similar cooperatives. One of these people is Viv, a lovely bubbly woman,with busy hands, always pricking a piece of felt or sewing bits of something together as we chat away each week. Viv was quite shocked by my ceramic touchstones and dead bird bowls. “But you are the most irrepressibly cheerful person I know,” exclaimed Viv in horror when I told her what I used to make the marks in the touchstones.

Viv’s bafflement has stayed with me in the back of my mind and I bring the thoughts out every so often and examine them.

I am also the most irrepressibly cheerful person I know as well and even though I make such sad, sad work, the work makes me happy.

I think this next photo is the woman that Viv sees. I didn’t have my teeth in when David took this photo and I am far far too vain to be photographed sans teeth. So that is why parts of my cat hat is artfully draped across my face. *grins*

So I really hope that I don’t give the impression that I am eternally gloomy, because honestly, inside my head it is a never ending Monty Python skit.

Beware of Rabbits.

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