dragons

A gentle stroll along the foreshore.

by frogpondsrock on April 11, 2010

in ceramics,dragons,environmental stuff,Sadness

On the last day of class before the Easter break our tutor Ben Richardson organised a field trip for us near Clifton beach. One of the aims of this trip was to see where Ben gathers his raw clay so as to get a feel for our chosen material in its natural state.

We all met up at Ben and his lovely partner Peta’s home, where Peta had cooked us hot cross buns for morning tea. Then it was off down to the foreshore to walk to the clay fields.

The group split into factions, as groups do. There were the power walkers who strode briskly off into the distance, the balance of the group who walked along at a normal pace, the dawdlers and then there was me.

I had warned Ben that I wasn’t much of a walker and that I would whinge and moan and carry on. I could tell that he wasn’t sure if I was serious or not and I was happy to leave him wondering. Heh. I knew that I wouldn’t whinge too much as I enjoy walking but I am seriously unfit and my knee generally gives me heaps of trouble.

Ben set a cracking pace, as we needed to get to the clay field before the tide came in and I was reminded of a sheepdog trying to round up and hurry along a mob of recalcitrant sheep. He hid his frustrations well and politely told me on more than one occasion, that there would be plenty of opportunities for photography once we got to our destination.

Of course I didn’t listen as I know that a photograph lost is never found again. But I did try and limit myself to only taking a few shots as we walked along the beach.

At about the halfway mark the terrain started to change and the sand flats gave way to a rockier shore. I wished that I had thought to bring a wheelbarrow with me as there were Dragon eggs galore on the ground, but of course it isn’t everyday that you have a wheelbarrow lurking in the boot of your car *sigh*

As I was walking along the beach I looked at the tyre tracks in the sand, the occasional piece of plastic rubbish and other evidence of human occupation and environmental degradation and my mind began to wander. I thought about my planet and the fact that a lot of people don’t seem to realise that it is a closed unit. That my lifestyle here in Tasmania, the products that I use can affect someone in the North pole. I thought vague thoughts of extinction and apocalypse, I pondered the implications of the end of the Mayan calender in 2012 and I wondered what had really happened to the dinosaurs.I was thinking about the fossils that were being formed today and as I thought about this Earth in a million years time, a geological blink of an eyelid, I started to feel depressed.

When we reached our destination Ben wanted us to make a transient art work. A piece of work that we would leave in situ, we could use the materials at hand however we liked and we had approximately an hour to play around.

These next series of photos are some of the sculptures that some of my fellow students made.

I wandered off from the group a bit and started to set up my own transient work of art. As I threw rocks into the water I photographed the splash, the ripples and then the calmness as the ocean smoothed herself back out. As I photographed the results of my effort I thought that it was an apt metaphor for the transience of human life and endeavour. As a species we disturb the environment around us but at the end of the day when we are gone The earth will still be here and eventually she will erase the more obvious traces of our habitation.

As I wandered back to the group, one of the first year students, a recent arrival from the mainland, asked me if I had fun playing. I responded rather heatedly that I hadn’t been playing and I tried to explain what I had been doing but as per usual when I am feeling vulnerable I reverted to flippancy and I could tell that I had lost her. So in the spirit of continued flippancy I made another small work of art, which I called Look at what we do.

I have been writing this post for a few days now and I will stop here for the moment. Today is my Mother’s birthday and I am starting to have a sad day. So instead of finishing this post properly, I am just going to leave you with another photo.

I took this the other day and I really think the male grasshopper is telling me to piss off and leave them to it.

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Clay impressions.

by frogpondsrock on February 15, 2010

in Arty stuff..,ceramics,dragons

I have been dreaming about the Dragon eggs. I keep on going back to the dragon post and re-reading all your comments and spinning off into wonderful daydreams. I have a couple of glaze combinations that I want to experiment with that should give me a lovely sparkly green. I am hoping to get the depth and surprise of an Australian opal. But the glaze might be too runny for an oval surface like an egg and might be better suited to the edges of a dead albatross bowl instead.

I start back at the studio this Thursday and I will be doing an awful lot of glaze testing to get the colours and textures of the eggs just so. I will keep you posted with photos of the tests.

I have been thinking a lot about the eggs and I don’t want to say that they are dragon eggs, that will be just between you and me. I want the people that see them and especially the children to make up their own minds.

Last Thursday “The Spouse” and I went down to the river. I had packed half a bag of clay in the car along with my rolling pin and a large board, just in case the fish weren’t biting.It is hard to concentrate on fishing when the ceramic juices are flowing so I rolled out a heap of clay slabs and pressed them into the rocks.

Here they are drying out a bit, so that I could safely transport them home.

Later on that evening I used the slabs of clay to make plaster press moulds.

Here are the finished press moulds. I have no idea what I am going to do with them yet other than some vague ideas of rolling the dragon eggs over them for some texture.I might press slabs of clay into them and use them as sections of the dead albatross bowls or for texture in a sculptural piece. The possibilities are endless.

I do know one thing for sure though, just looking at them makes me extraordinarily happy.

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Dragon eggs

by frogpondsrock on February 10, 2010

in ceramics,Distractions galore!,dragons,Fun

What colour do you think the dragon eggs should be? I was leaning towards bright colours. Not highly decorated like easter eggs which was my first thought but single colours,ranging from light blues and greens to reds and purples. Now I am not so sure, Veronica suggested light swirly pastels hmmm. I think I will nip over to Robin Hobb’s blog and ask her what colour she imagined her dragon eggs to be.

To answer Achelois there isn’t a shop at the sanctuary though I will be able to have a stall and sell my work there on the day. There will be stalls from groups like the Understorey Network and Weedbusters etc. I was a sensitive child as well Achelois, now that you have reminded me of that, I am thinking about the dead albatross bowls from the perspective of a child and maybe they might be a bit too much. I will see.

The annual fundraising open day for the Chauncy Vale Wildlife Sanctuary is this Sunday the 14th of February. I will go down there and hand over my proposal. I will check out the age range of the visitors, see where they set up the stalls,just basically do a bit of light reconnaissance. I will come home and in order to get the ideas straight in my head I will write about it here and then I will start making. Yay.

Another point I need to keep in mind as I am working towards this event is the very real possibility that I could design a wonderful one off series of work especially to be viewed in situ and the whole day could be cancelled due to it being a day of total fire ban. Australian summers certainly keep you on your toes.

River and Mrs C also wondered whether my work would be safe there.That is a risk I will have to take and one that I am comfortable with.The whole process of making ceramics is fraught from start to finish, there are so many things that can go wrong as you are making that I dont even worry about it any more. I just offer it all up to the universe and what will be will be.

I want people to be able to pick up my work and look at it closely so I will make the dragon eggs sturdy enough to be handled.I might even throw a couple of cracked ones into the nests as well.

Robin Hobb answered my question about her dragon’s eggs, I suspect that they’d be rather like turtle eggs, with shells more leathery than brittle. And camouflaged to blend in with the sand and protect them from predators.

Now I am thinking of leathery bands of texture on the eggs as well. Oh I am getting more excited about the dragon eggs than anything else. This year is going to be a good year but I will need to remember my key words, Focus and Resolution in order to take advantage of all the possibilites this year has to offer.

So tell me what you think about the colour and size of the dragon eggs, send me off on a zillion tangents with your suggestions.How would seeing a giant nest full of eggs make you feel? I have been hopeless answering my emails lately as well, sorry about that. I love reading them and I really mean to reply but I am off with the faeries at the moment with my head full of dragons and dinosaurs and beautiful blue bowls and oh look at that cloud where’s my camera…

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Ceramic snails in a dry creek bed.

by frogpondsrock on February 8, 2010

in ceramics,dragons,environmental stuff,Hope,thinking out loud

There is a wildlife sanctuary just down the road from here and I have been mulling over an idea to have an exhibition down there for a while now.

My friend Dawn Oakford initially suggested the concept. Over the past four months I have gotten the idea out and poked at it, then I have put it away in the bottom drawer of my mind.

Next Sunday it is the annual open day at the sanctuary and I need to have a bit of a proposal drawn up for the committee. Typically I have left it to the last minute to put anything down on paper as I only have a vague idea of what I want to do.

I know that I want to make a series of bowls with questions written on them. I want to make people think about extinction. I want to appeal to the children that are there.I want my work to inspire the people that view it to start asking their own questions as they think about the the questions on the bowls.

So in order to get the ideas flowing I took three sample pieces of my work down to Chauncy Vale and photographed them in situ.

The dead albatross bowl looked really out of place on a nest of sticks. I need to make some dragon eggs for this spot. Some brightly decorated dragon eggs. Dragon eggs that have been inspired by Robin Hobb’s novels that I will enjoy making and that will be a bit of whimsy. I am sure that the children will think that they are dinosaur eggs and I am fine with that. Seeing a nest of giant eggs on the side of a bush track should inspire some questions.

There are plenty of places to stash some ceramic sculptures along the trail. Obvious spots like in a crack in this stone wall.

Or at the base of a tree.

There are also plenty of places to put my work that isn’t as obvious.

I have been making ceramic shells for a while now and I keep on covering these beautiful shells with graffiti. I decorate them with jarring colours and great black runny drops of glaze. As a species we seem to be hell bent on destroying beauty.Graffiti covered shells in a dry creek bed seems pretty apt to me.

The dead albatross bowls will feature prominently along with bowls like requiem for a tree and the useless residue bowls. So that is my idea in its rough draft format. What do you reckon?

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