I also like to help other people tell their stories. So if you are here reading this because I offered to help you in some way please be assured that my offer was genuine. Send me an email or leave me a comment and we can work out a plan.

I am always astounded that people are interested in what I do. I keep on waiting for someone to tell me that I am stupid and useless (thanks Dad) and that what I am doing is a ridiculous waste of time but people never do. They smile when I talk and they ask me questions about my work and let me waffle on about dead albatrosses, ethical food production and dragons eggs.

I have passion in abundance. I am passionate about my work, my family, life in general and thanks to Ernesto Sirolli my newest guru I know that I am on the right track.

It was amazing to listen to a passionate speaker like Ernesto Sirolli confirm what I truly believed, that if you are doing what you love, the money will follow.

I have always told my children to do what they love and to worry about the money later and a small part of me has often wondered if I had been doing them a disservice. I look at my daughter doing what she loves passionately and I know that although her path is difficult she is happy. Once my son starts to follow his passion I know that he will be happy as well, it is just a bit hard for him at the moment because he is such a gifted child that all his teachers want him to excel in their chosen field and that is a lot of pressure for a sixteen year old to carry.

I have so many stories to tell and so little time in which to do it. So stay tuned my dear bloglings I have come back from Junction 2010 with so much energy and renewed passion that it could be dangerous.

Here are some photos from my weekend away, just mouse over the photos to get the titles.

For new readers of this blog I am not really about to indulge in a bit of fish assisted homicide, for even though he is very grumpy I am rather fond of  The Spouse.

I am talking about the film I said I was going to make during my creative concept development class.

I have discovered that there is a little bit more to making a film than grabbing a video camera, shooting some vision and sticking it all together in a watchable format.

I have discovered that the practice vision that I shot will suddenly take on a life of  its own and demand to be shown as a short film instead.

I have discovered that I really, really enjoy film making. My poor Nikon still camera has been slightly neglected in favour of a second hand video camera and I have been hoovering up vision left, right and centre.

Yesterday we all had to present our work to our teacher Glen Dunn and our colleagues. I wasn’t prepared for how nervous I felt presenting my short film to my class. I am cheerful, outgoing, opinionated, wisecracking and flippant. I am also intensely private which is a bit of a contradiction as I am a gregarious show off with theatrical tendencies. I rarely get nervous, stressed yes, nervous no.

My ceramic work is what it is.

All my emotional energy goes into the clay and afterwards I am drained. Even though my artist statements are usually quite emotional, my inner thoughts aren’t really out there on display next to my pots.

With this first film I made I was giving people a glimpse into myself. I was really sharing what I see in an unambiguous manner and I think that I was so nervous because I really wanted people to like what I had done. As opposed to my ceramic work where I just want people to respond to my work and I am not really fussed whether people like the work or not.

I am sure that I will get over it though and soon my film work will be the same as my ceramic work, where the response is enough, but it was interesting to analyse my feelings towards this first film.

Anyhow enough babble. I have uploaded the film to Vimeo. This is the first draft, is that the right terminology? Do films have drafts or edits?

This is the first version of my first film. Drive.

I am interested in what you think about it.

Drive from Kim Foale on Vimeo.

I am doing a class called creative concept development. The aim of this eleven week class is to allow us the freedom to develop an idea that is separate from our current work. An idea that will inform our future work practice beyond what we are doing now.

I have decided to make a  short film.

Initially I wanted to make a fishing film where “The Spouse” or David caught a trout. I wanted to have this film showcase the gorgeous natural beauty of Tasmania, the excitement and thrill of catching a fish and the release of the lucky fish back into the lake.

I wanted to send this film to my friends in Massachusetts as well as share it here, with you on my blog.

But…

I just couldn’t get rid of the idea that it was a little bit boring, that it was just a bit too safe. I justified it to myself by saying that it would teach me the skills that I needed to make the dragon egg film in february, learn to walk Kimmy and all that.

Whilst inside my head mutant zombie fish were lurking. Killer fish banging on my mind saying, “Let us out! Let us out!”

So on the drive home I let the killer zombie, mutant fish out to play.

“The Spouse” thinks I am mad but that is nothing new and after his sixth beer last night he agreed to star in my film and be killed by a mutant fish. YAY.

So the idea is this, a man is fishing in a beautiful seaside location when he catches a large fish, he lands the fish and as he bends down to pick the fish up it suddenly transforms into a mutant killer and goes for his throat. He tries to fight the fish off but to no avail and and he dies a gory death.

Problems kept on popping up but they were easily solved. I thought of making the killer fish out of papier-mache but Veronica thought the water might wreck the fish. I also needed an oil rig, a couple of explosions, some oily water, a soundtrack and I probably will need a bex and a good lie down.

Last night I bought four blow up dolphins, a giant sea horse and an octopus from ebay, I can make the oil rig out of lego, I am sure I can find an explosion online, though I wish I had some crackers. David has said he will compose the music for the film. If I need some scorched earth a neighbour down the road has been burning off and I will ask them if I can film their front yard.

This is going to be so much fun. What do you think? Do you want to watch my film as well? Do you have any suggestions?

Luckily for me and for you as well, I have a very clever and supremely patient daughter who talked me through the aperture and shutter speed settings on the camera. I was pressing buttons and twirling knobs and nothing was changing when voila I magically found the right combination of sideclick,press and twirl and the aperture and shutter speed revealed themselves to me.

So without further ado and a great big round of applause to Veronica, she of the sleepless nights and cloudy skies, here are my photos of the lunar eclipse over Tasmania.

and for those of you who this technical stuff means anything  I used a Nikon D90, freehand with a 200mm lens, aperture of 8 and shutter speed of 800.

The full moon just before the eclipse.

The beginnings of the eclipse.

It is all happening by now and my nose was very very cold, luckily for me I could keep on racing back inside to thaw out.

This last shot was the moon just before sunrise at about 6.30 am on a frosty Sunday morning.

Because with the amount of giggling and talking I was doing last night at the Hobart tweetup there was a very real possibilty that my teeth could have shot right out of my mouth and flown across the room and that, just isnt a good look. It is one of the tricky little downsides to shiny false teeth, the other downside is not being able to eat really crunchy things but that is a story for another day.

Last night a group of tweeters? Twitterers? People who tweet, met up for drinks and nibbles at Remi de Provence in South Hobart and it was great fun. I wish that I had though to ask where the brie was from as it was divine, the blue was gorgeous and the pate was very good.

I had been a bit nervous beforehand, I hoped that I would like everyone and more importantly I hoped that they would like me as well. As Veronica and I walked across the road to the restaurant my nerves were  forgotten as I recognized people by their photos. Once inside we were guided to our seats in the corner of a small room and immediately we all started talking and laughing and exchanging our proper names.

The group was @Samaramc , also found at Samara McIlroy @StephenEstcourt,also found at Reminiscence of a Food Tragic,  @MaryEstcourt, also found at The constant gardener, @utsicafe,also found at ut si, @SleeplessNights also found at Sleepless Nights and the blogless ones, The Prof ,@quinnal, @JoHCook and of course there was me @frogpondsrock.

We did have a camera but as the light was very flattering the photos are very blurry, so you will just have to imagine us all in our sparkly glory, eyes glowing, hair shiny, free of children and stable of tooth.

I would like to organise another tweet up in Hobart very, very soon and everyone is invited. We need a venue that has a bit more space than Remi’s, though I am happy to  go back there just for the cheese alone. So any suggestions from Hobart people on a venue is more than welcome. We need to consider the ease of parking as well as somewhere that we can talk and be heard easily but they wont mind if we are a bit noisy and the food needs to be decent.

In the spring time I would like to organise a tweetup at the gardens so that children can come as well. That will be fun.

In other blog meeting news I am meeting up with Watershedd tomorrow at Salamanca market and I am looking forward to that very much. I must remember to glue my teeth in for that one as well. hehe.

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.

They are building a bypass down the road from us and as I drive down the Midlands Highway every day, I have been amazed by the amount of fill they are trucking in. The fill has mostly been rock but in the past couple of weeks, sections of the new highway have been covered with this glorious red clay. It has taken all my self control to not pull over to the side of the road and start frantically filling the boot of the car up with clay. I am busily plotting ways to get my hands on a bucket load of the stuff.

Yesterday we stopped at the Midlands fruit market and whilst I was inside the shop buying potatoes, The Spouse walked across the busy highway and came back with two clods of this yummy clay. I will process this raw clay in the next few days and experiment with it as a clay body, as a slip and as a glaze ingredient.

I have been busily making work to be sent out hither and yon all over the blogosphere and had been eagerly waiting for the kiln to cool down enough to see the finished results. As so often happens in ceramics some pieces that came out of the kiln were fantastic and some were crap.

Here are some pieces that didn’t work. The first cup on the left has cracked because I accidentally knocked the cup as I was glazing it. The glaze has pinholed at the rim because the glaze was too thick there. The middle cup is a total disaster because the glaze has run and crazed. I first thought this was because I had applied the glaze too thickly but I knew that I hadn’t, so after some thought I realized that it was probably because I had been using a new clay body. The crazing of a normally very reliable and forgiving glaze gives me a clue that the clay and the glaze don’t fit. The third cup is poorly glazed with pinholing on the rim due to me being careless.

The crazing and running on this piece are most probably because the glaze and clay body aren’t compatable. Even though I am not unhappy with how the piece looks it certainly isn’t fit for sale in the shop. It does feel gorgeous in my hands and the inside is lovely but it is destined for the seconds box.

This next piece will be winging its way off to a secret location in America on Wednesday. I made this for the ART SWAP and I am really pleased with it.

This Southern Boobook Owl was in the yard on Friday night and I am really happy that I was able to get a half decent photo of it. Yay. I could have stayed out there snapping away for ages as she didn’t seem fussed that I was there. But I already felt guilty that I had buggered up her night vision with my flash So I left her alone.

The idea originally came from Jodie Ansted at Mummy Mayhem.

My gorgeous American friend Kristin wrote that, if you believe that beauty comes from within and would like to support this movement, put up a post on Friday and show us your beautiful self, sans makeup.

It is Saturday here in Tasmania but better late than never.

I don’t wear makeup unless it is a special occasion and this photo is how I generally look every day. Except that in this photo I am remarkably clean. Normally I have clay on me somewhere.