The sky was absolutely fabulous tonight. I was outside for nearly an hour snapping away madly. Here is the first photo and the last photo of an hour of awe.
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photography
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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And once they have escaped, I have nearly always lost them for good. A sentence or an idea will pop into my head and I will examine its beauty, entranced by the possibilities and then the words will vanish.
I am left silent and wishful. Nurturing a small regret that I hadn’t written them down, trapped them on paper or contained them here so that I could revisit them at my leisure and ponder what they meant.
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I think about making pots all the time.Everything I do somehow seems to lead back to ceramics.I will be doing the laundry and the swirl of the soap bubbles will spin me off into a daydream about decoration. When we bought my new combustion stove home last week, I was thrilled to discover it had a slidy-outy ash tray thingy. My first thought on seeing that was, “Oh yeah! Now I can really get some good, pristine ash for a glaze.”
It is the same with my photographs. I was cloud watching the other evening and as I was photographing the sky my brain was busily skipping along on ceramic tangents.”Mmm a bold orange streak on a blue background, now that would work.Why didn’t I think of that before? Look at those colours, they work beautifully together. Oh look is that a dragon,why do I see dragons all the time? The Chinese made cool dragons,I wish I could make a dragon. I must make a ceramic horse as well, I wonder if I could slipcast one? And on and on it goes. The inside of my head is a very busy place.
The spouse will see me photographing the sky and draw my attention to a cloud he thinks I will like, but he isn’t privy to the racing torrent of ideas that fill my head with ceramic dreams.He thinks I just like clouds.
I borrowed a book from the library a few weeks ago on Innuit Women Artists. I didn’t get much of a chance to do anything other than skim through the book, quickly glancing at the photographs of their work. But a thought occurred to me and it richocheted loudly around in my head for days.These women make what they see, their art is inspired by what they see everyday.
Finally everything has started to fall into place for me artistically.I have started to make some large bowls and platters that have some guts, that work, that I actually really like and enjoy making, simply because I haven’t been making against my nature. (yay)
The piece of firewood inspired the large bowl that is shown next to it.
Here is a dragon in the sky, also this is similar to the orange and blue colour combination that I mentioned earlier.
I really like this photo because it is pretty but also because it inspires me to make a bowl with wibbly edges, all curvy and roundish.
This final shot of the moon could inspire a whole series of its own.
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