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.

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.

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.

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.

I was going to update my last post where I showed you, the total destruction that is my studio at the end of a making phase, with a photo of the tidy and sparkly clean studio.

BUT.

I think this level of studio cleanliness deserves its very own blog post.

This is the carefully labelled chaos of one of my worktables. Do you see the doorknob in the lower left corner? That doorknob makes the best flower patterns when pressed into the clay.It makes the most wonderful daisy shaped dent in a ball of clay and I have had lots of fun experimenting with the impressons. The daisy making door knob is sitting on top of a pile of  tablecloths that were used for Veronica’s wedding, the lace of the tablecloth makes nice patterns in the clay as well.

Another photo of the previous chaos

Tadaa! Look at this! Look how sparkly and clean and home beautiful this is. There is even a bunch of flowers in the middle of my tablescape. Admittedly there isn’t a polished floorboard in sight but a photo of a clear table complete with vase of artfully arranged flowers should make the cut for this months edition of bland magazine. Yes?

I digress, I should be talking about studios and work and art and stuff and I was momentarily distracted by thoughts of all the Home beautiful type blogs I have seen popping up all over the place but I suppose it could be worse, we could have a plague of Rolf Harrisses to contend with instead.

I adore tulips and I came home from visiting a friend with an armload of tulips. I have some in the house but the majority are in the studio making me smile.

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.

A few years a go one of my girlfriends went to the Doctor because she thought she had Alzheimer’s. We were both very relieved when the doctor told her that if she was aware of her memory loss then it was most definitely not Alzheimer’s disease.

I have clung to that piece of information over the years as I regularly forget the names of common household items and rely on my children to fill in the blanks for me. I have included an example below.

Conversation with my son
Me: Where’s that thing?
David: What thing?
Me: That thing that squirts out light
David: The torch?
Me:  Yes.

I have forgotten the name of the tap, that thing, you know, you turn the handle and water comes out? Buttons, those things that are round and you poke them through holes in your clothes. I am sure that my loving children will be quick to add to the list of flippy things and oom chicky things that I regularly need them to find for me.

Apparently I have an elegant nose. I haven’t ever really paid any particular attention to my nose, it has just quietly been there, under the radar, doing its job for all these years. My favourite uncle complimented me on my elegant nose yesterday and the memory of that conversation had me smiling and proudly stroking my nose all day.

The Ceramics Triennale is in Adelaide from 28 Sept -1 Oct and I am trying madly to scrounge up the $44o registration fee. With a serious juggling of my budget I can manage the airfares and accommodation costs but the registration fee has put a bit of a stumbling block in my path. I think I will have to sit here for a bit stroking my elegant nose whilst I ponder whether the Triennale is a “must do” event or a just “wish I could go” event.

I have previously mentioned that  I have somehow managed to get myself onto this list. The first stage of the competition closes very soon and if you haven’t voted for me, as well as for the myriad of other lovely bloggers in the competition, I would really appreciate your vote, or even just a like on the facebook thingy over there will make me smile.

I did a huge cleanout of who I am following on twitter, it took me over an hour to manually unfollow a plethora of dead accounts, businesses, art site spammy links, as well as real people. If I have unfollowed you by mistake can you please tweet at me and I will follow you back.

I will leave you with a photo of a piece of work in progress. I am entering some work into the Rose Exhibition at the Art Society of Tasmania’s Lady Franklin Gallery at the end of this month. The theme is Picasso’s Rose Period and the exhibition is aiming to raise funds for the Cancer Council.

I have put my own slant on this theme and combined Picasso’s Rose Period Acrobats with the Cirque de soleil’s, Saltimbanco the combined imagery of the two have conspired to help me make three of these pieces. They are as yet unfinished but I hope you get the idea from this piece.

]]> http://frogpondsrock.com/2012/04/snippets/feed/ 7 http://frogpondsrock.com/2012/03/the-happy-wanderer-returns/ http://frogpondsrock.com/2012/03/the-happy-wanderer-returns/#comments Tue, 06 Mar 2012 21:19:55 +0000 frogpondsrock http://frogpondsrock.com/?p=7439

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.

]]> http://frogpondsrock.com/2012/03/the-happy-wanderer-returns/feed/ 9 http://frogpondsrock.com/2012/03/fired-up-the-journey-begins/ http://frogpondsrock.com/2012/03/fired-up-the-journey-begins/#comments Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:00:54 +0000 frogpondsrock http://frogpondsrock.com/?p=7428

Today I leave for Burnie 325 ks away in the Northwest of the state. I don’t know if I will have access to the internet or not, as I will be using my portable Telstra plug in internet stick thingy and Telstra’s coverage in regional areas is a bit iffy at the best of times. We are staying up in the hills somewhere about twenty minutes out of Burnie and the bed and breakfast place looks quite nice.

So any Tasmanians out there reading, please come along to the Fired up Exhibition opening on Sunday the 4th of March at The Burnie Coastal Art Groups Gallery, 211 Mount Street, Upper Burnie.

The Exhibition runs from the 4th of March until the 1st of April and the gallery is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday from 10-3.

It would be lovely to see you at the opening on Sunday the 4th at 2pm. Consider yourselves invited and bring along a friend or three.

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.