art

Another Artist’s statement.

by frogpondsrock on May 10, 2010

I have to write another Artist’s statement for a catalogue that some graphic design students are doing as a project. So my lovelies I am going to write it here and I would like your feedback. This particular artist’s statement is going to be in a catalogue with some photos of my shells which are part of the Boganvillainy installation.

I am a ceramic artist, writer, photographer and dreamer. I live in rural Tasmania, my home is surrounded by tall eucalypts and fragrant silver wattles. Wallabies eat my grass and possums raid my garden. Wedge tailed eagles soar overhead and Tasmanian devils squabble in the gullies of a night time.

As I stand outside enjoying the autumn sunlight I hear distant voices which are quickly followed by the harsh roar of a chainsaw. The crashing fall of an ancient tree destroys the silence.

This is Tasmania and I am Tasmanian.

I watch as ancient forests are destroyed and turned into woodchips. I watch as the people that protest this destruction are vilified and their reputations attacked. I watch as the young people that venture into the forests to protest against this destruction are attacked and despised

I watch and I despair.

In order to control that despair, I make. I pour that emotional energy into the clay and see where my anguish leads me.

I am a ceramic artist and when my hands are filled with clay, I am able for a short time to forget my despair and shame, that I am a silent witness to the destruction of Tasmania’s spiritual heart.

The thought of ancient forests being turned into woodchips chills me to the core of my being. What madness is this, that we have become so anaesthetised in our lives that we squander so lightly our grandchildren’s legacy?

In this beautiful island state of Tasmania so many gifts of nature are taken for granted. Native animals lie dead on the side of the road, victims of our haste. Ancient forests are turned into paper, waterways are poisoned, beauty is destroyed. All victims of our greed.

If I allow myself to think too deeply about our poisoned waterways and smoking forests, I will be paralyzed with grief. As my tears mix with the clay and the forms come to life before me, the despair loosens its grip on my soul and I allow myself to hope

The shells that are featured here were made in direct response to the proposed Gunns pulp mill. The shells are slip cast stoneware. Three shells are featured here, one pristine, one altered and one destroyed. We are attracted to beauty and once we hold that beauty in our hands we need to change that beauty to fit our own needs and ultimately we destroy that which first attracted us.

So that is what I have sent off.

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Dragon eggs, and an art swap.

by frogpondsrock on May 5, 2010

in Arty stuff..,ceramics,dragons

Time is getting away from me. It is racing away at an alarmingly fast pace and it feels like there just aren’t enough hours in the day. I have been in touch with the trustees of the Chauncy Vale wildlife sanctuary and they are still very keen for me to make great piles of dragon eggs and leave them all about the place. I have asked a couple of other ceramic artists if they would like to display their work at Chauncy Vale next year and luckily for me they have agreed. Yay.

I have to write up a brief proposal before the committee meets later on this month, so that they have something on paper and then it is really time to get serious about making.

My initial idea was to slipcast the dragon eggs but I had a bit of trouble making the model. One clay model looked like a giant pod thing, another looked like a tic tac. I was finding it quite hard to get the shape that I wanted and the fact that it is absolute chaos in the studio at the moment wasn’t doing my head space any favours. I thought about casting a football and then modifying the mould to make it more egg like but it was just all too hard.

In the end I asked David for a condom and we filled that with plaster and then I gently shaped the wet plaster until I had an egg shape that I was happy with.

I am in two minds whether to leave the imperfections in the model or not. I am not sure. I think it adds character to the piece but whether I want fifty eggs with the identical marks is another matter totally.

Once I had overcome the initial hurdle of making a prototype egg everything started to fall into place. I dug out a bag of really gutsy, grogged clay and made two hand built eggs.

I made these by making two pinch pots and then joining them together and shaping them into an egg shape. I textured the eggs by rolling a rock over them and I have also pressed a piece of bracken fern into one egg as I am experimenting with trying to get a fossilized look. These two took about forty minutes each to make and I don’t think I will be able to make more than two or three at a time as my wrist was really aching afterwards. Now that I have made the first clay eggs the ideas are racing through my head and I feel like I have a bit of forward momentum now.

On twitter yesterday I saw an interesting tweet talking about an Art Swap.So I clicked over for a bit of a look and the idea has captured my imagination. Here is the opening blurb on the web page.

Artists:

On Twitter, I am promoting an art swap as a way for artists to share with and collect from their peers.

As artists, we often appreciate other artists’ work, but do not actively collect.

This is a way for us to give to others and collect beautiful art at the same time.

This is a way to inspire others… to build our community worldwide… and encourage others to create.

I joined up immediately and here is the link to ART SWAP if any artists out there are interested.

So that is where I am at with the Dragon Eggs at the moment and as I was wandering around outside yesterday the ducks were following me hoping for a snack. This one was even smiling for the camera.

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Coming out in a small community.

by frogpondsrock on April 30, 2010

in Arty stuff..,ceramics,Ehlers Danlos Syndrome,Family,potential insanity

When my children were small I dreaded going to the local primary school. I used to have to take deep breaths as I walked through the school gates, past the icy stares of the reebok squad and the condescending nods of the glitterati girls. It really felt like I was walking through a gauntlet of disdain and disapproval because I was the one who lived an alternate lifestyle.

When David saw me at school he would launch himself at me and I used to have to brace myself so that the force of his hug didn’t knock me over. Then together, we would walk out the school gates holding hands, swinging our arms and smiling to each other. Away from the horror that was a small town primary school full of prejudices.

We were that family. When everyone around us was building McMansions and driving the latest cars. We were building our house room by room from recycled materials. The fact that we had an outside toilet was a major talking point and my children were teased mercilessly by the children of relatives as well as the children of the school establishment. People that had never been to my home would tell stories in lurid detail of the wild drug orgies we participated in and the squalor in which we lived. The fact that we had few visitors and that alcohol was the only drug I used was quite beside the point.

At a time in Australia when people were encouraged to buy buy buy and credit was king. We stayed debt free and went without. The spouse was labelled a dole bludger because he was unable to work due to the pain of his Ehlers Danlos. We didn’t know it was EDS then we just thought he was broken and that his constant pain was due to a very serious motorcycle accident he had been involved in, in 1992 and then compounded by the injuries received when he was shot in a hunting accident in 1993. The label of dole bludger is a horrible one to carry though and living below the poverty line makes you appreciate the things you have.

If people were happy to make snap judgements based on the way I looked I was also more than happy to encourage their misunderstandings by dressing differently and not explaining myself or my motives.

Now that I am a bit more grown up I am ready to start to explain myself a bit. I look at the glitterati girls and they are still desperately holding onto their fragile crowns, their makeup is getting thicker as they try to hold back the years and I find it hard to imagine that these women’s gossip and innuendo once made my life difficult.

I am ready to step out into the light of my small community and announce that here I am, I am an artist.

Members of the Greater Green Ponds branch of Tasmanian Regional Arts are building up a collection of art and craft created in the Southern Midlands area. Their plan is to acquire works and lease them for display in public and private spaces through out the Southern Midlands.

I am going to ring them up today and offer to donate Boganvillainy to their collection.

I am a bit nervous, but it certainly isn’t as daunting as walking through those school gates were a few years ago.

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A Ceramic Adventure.

by frogpondsrock on April 20, 2010

in ceramics

I am really excited, so excited in fact, that I keep on hugging myself and having a quiet, girly squeee.

I have just been accepted into the ceramic co-operative,“Off Centre”.

I was approached by one of the partners a few weeks ago and invited to join the co-op. I had to submit photographs of my work to be approved by the whole group at their monthly meeting. I didn’t realize how nervous I was until I received an email the other night saying that my submission had been successful. (Time for another girly squeee)

For those of you who don’t know your way around Hobart, Off Centre has a shop, upstairs in the Salamanca Arts Centre in Salamanca place, opposite the Long Gallery . This is right in the heart of the arty/touristy area of the waterfront. There are a lot of small galleries and specialty shops down there as well as the famous Salamanca market which is held every Saturday.

All together now Squeeeee!!!

So here I am sitting in front of the computer trying to concentrate on writing this post with my head full of ceramic dreams. I am watching the sky begin to colour up as the sun rises and it looks like it is going to be another lovely day. I spent most of the day yesterday making my slipcast tall cups, some shells and bottles as well. I will spend today finishing those off and making some more as I need to have some work together for the shop by the first of May, which is less than a fortnight away. Eeeek!

I have started work on some hand built platters as well as more rock bowls. I have a prototype of something blue with butterflies for Tiff drying out and I have started work on the four cups I promised Brenda.I am thinking of something for my chocolate fairy and I also need to make some cups for a friend in WA, as well as get some work together to display in a twitter friend’s cafe gallery here as well. Phew. The dragon eggs are simmering away in the back of my mind and I need to remember to contact the trustees of the Chauncy Vale wildlife sanctuary to confirm my outdoor exhibition there next year.

So I am a tad busy at the moment.

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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.