Frogpondsrock...

Photos of the dragon eggs, a work in progress.

Here are some photos of the newest dragon eggs.

Dragon’s eggs and eagles.

Two dragon eggs are out of the electric kiln and I have been staring at them and thinking about them for a week now.

Today I took them outside to play.

I was concentrating on photographing the eggs and nearly missed these two beauties soaring high above me in the winter sky.

Today was a good day.

Photos are a nice distraction.

If I think about how much I actually have to do in the next three months or so, I start to get a bit panicky. I have a bit of an “EEEK!!!” moment and my chest tightens up and I start to breathe a little bit faster. This feeling of being overwhelmed, of having far too many irons in the one fire lasts for a minute or so and then my laid back Aussie spirit kicks in and as I whisper, “She’ll be right” to myself  I am fine again.

Neriage porcelain dragon eggs, a step by step process.

A few weeks ago I attended a weekend ceramic workshop with two ceramic artists from Finland, Nanna Bayer and Riitta Talonpoika. I had never heard of these artists before the workshop but once I had googled their work I knew that I would come away from the workshop with a lot to think about.

I have played about with Neriage or coloured clay before but I have never really thought about it seriously. I tend to work intuitively and let the clay or the idea lead me. Lately I have been spending an awful lot of time thinking about the dragon eggs and the different styles of eggs that I want to make. As I want some brightly coloured eggs as well as some fossilised rock like ones, I knew that neriage would be a technique that I would use.

Here is a step by step process showing how I made a swirly patterned porcelain egg.

Weigh out approximately 500 grams (1 lb) of clay and press a hole into the centre of the clay. Add 2 level teaspoons of coloured body stain. These weights and measures are only a rough guide as I wont know what worked and what didn’t until the piece is fired.

Then add a dribble of water to the powder to make a paste.

You will notice that I am wearing gloves, this is because a lot of the materials used in ceramics are toxic and can be absorbed through the skin. I have consumed enough toxins in the last twenty or so years to last me a lifetime and I don’t need any more.

You now need to wedge (knead) the clay until all the colour is mixed through thoroughly. I spent all morning making coloured blocks of clay yesterday. I used varying amounts of coloured stain for each different coloured block depending on its strength. I would highly recommend taking detailed notes so that you can alter the weights of the body stain if the coloured clay fires either too bright or not bright enough.

Also clean hands and cleaning your work space each time you finish making a coloured block of clay is really important. I have accidentally put a green thumbprint on the blue and red blocks, luckily it was easy to remove but this kind of carelessness can potentially ruin a mornings work.

I wanted a dark blue, sky blue and white egg to start with so I made a layered block of clay by putting slices together side by side. The pretty mauve colour will fire to an almost navy blue.

I banged the clay around a bit on the table to squish everything together. Then I sliced the block in half and started the process of carefully wedging the clay together.

I wanted a swirly pattern so I kept on wedging the clay until I was happy with the colour balance.

Once I was happy with the colour balance I put half the coloured block of clay aside for later and I cut the remaining block in half again.

I then put slices of plain porcelain with slices of the coloured porcelain together.

And started the process of mixing them together all over again.Once I was happy with the colour ratio of navy blue to sky blue to white I made two pinch pots.

Notice the scoring on the top of the pots, that is to help the pots join together. I slapped some slip onto the scored edges of the pinch pots and stuck them together and shaped them into an egg shape. I made a small hole with a needle on the base of the egg so that the air can escape when the egg is being fired. Otherwise the egg will explode.

Tadaa, the first experimental Neriage porcelain dragon egg. I say experimental because I don’t know if the porcelain will hold its shape when I fire it or not. These eggs are about the size of a goose egg at the moment and they will shrink down to smaller than that once they are glazed and fired. If the porcelain eggs dont work properly I will just use white stoneware clay.

I have made some similar sized eggs using CRT, a lovely robust stoneware clay that I use to make my platters. These eggs have a twofold purpose, first and foremost I will use them as test pieces to see how the porcelain fires, see what glazes work, that sort of thing. But their secondary purpose and the one that will give me the most pleasure, is that I want to be able to give these away to anyone who wants one as a memento of the open day next February 2011.

I also need to make a hammock to keep the eggs in so that they don’t get a flat spot as they are drying out. These are in a nest of old towels inside one of my slump moulds in the middle of the lounge room floor, which is okay as a temporary measure but it makes things a bit squishy inside the house. I want to have about fifty of these smaller eggs ready on the day so I best jump off the computer and get making.

Thinking in public.

Yesterday was my last class with Dr Christl Berg. I cant remember the exact title of the class but in a nutshell Christl’s class was all about developing ourselves as artists as well as  learning to look at art critically. It was a valuable experience as we had lots of presentations from established artists describing their own art practices.

Our last presentation yesterday was from visual artist, Glen Dunn and I had a lightbulb moment during his presentation when Glen said,”That in essence, artists are thinking in public.” I realised that is what I am doing, I am thinking in public, I am having a public conversation with you. I know it looks glaringly obvious but I hadnt actually thought about it that way before. A couple of pieces of the puzzle clicked loudly into place yesterday and my mind is buzzing.

My proposal for the sculpture trail has been accepted by the friends of Chauncy Vale committee and I am really excited and terrified at the same time. Now I have to do more than actually think about making the eggs, I have to produce them. Eeek.

Just to add more excitement and terror to the mix, yesterday Glen also suggested that I should film the whole process. I was going to photo document everything  anyway but making a short film has captured my imagination. I have absolutely no idea how I am going to go about it at all but the thought of making a film is really exciting.

Now back to the idea of thinking in public. I hadn’t really thought much about the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico other than general, “gosh that’s awful”  type of thoughts until I followed a link on twitter to the Boston.com’s Big Picture, News stories in photographs and the images truly brought home to me the devastating impact of this massive environmental disaster.

The dragon eggs are a very public thought. The dead albatross bowls are very public thoughts. And now I want to make a couple of oily dragonfly plates. This dragonfly is trying to clean itself while it is perched on an oil soaked blade of grass. I cant get the idea out of my head that to the executives of companies like BP and Monsanto we are as worthless to them as insects.That the destruction of our environments dont matter as long as they get their fat paychecks and the shareholders get theirs.

How can BP compensate the world for the loss of a dragonfly? How much is a dragonfly worth?