Hello and welcome to the inaugural edition of Sunday Ceramics, a ceramic blog link up in the grand tradition of Adriana Christianson’s Mud Colony Blog.
I have been blogging now for over seven years and during that time I have been a part of, as well as host of, a number of blog link ups or memes as they used to be called back when blogging was shiny and new. Blog links are beneficial for a number of technical reasons, but the main reason I am concerned with today is the link of friendship and conversation.
As a ceramic artist I work in isolation, I think that most of us do. I go up to the studio and throw some mud around and when I come down to the house there is no one to talk to about the days work. My husband thinks that I am wonderful but he doesn’t understand what I am trying to do, his eyes glaze over when I talk about the joy of making rocks or the stories behind the dead sea birds. The Spouse is much more comfortable with talk of production pots made for sale rather than art pieces made to fill a hole in my soul.
Over the years I have used the blog successfully to “Think in Public” as I have an interested and engaged audience of readers who have become my friends, together we have planned new work and ceramic adventures. I take great comfort in the fact that my “Dear Internets” are always here ready to hold my hand when things go pear shaped. The conversations that start on the blog often move onto other platforms like facebook and twitter and I find I am having a multi layered conversation on multiple levels, which is just wonderful.
My readers like my NEW MINION give me much more than I give them and I am very grateful.
The rules for Sunday Ceramics are simple.
Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky below.
Using the “Sunday Ceramics” title and photo I provided is OPTIONAL it is up to you.
Link back here to me.
And then we can all go forth and CONQUER THE WORLD, I mean go forth and visit all the other lovely mudslingers who have joined in.
Easy Peasy.
If you take the photo you can “right click and save as” or I can give you the html code, either way is fine.
Now for my ceramic doings this week.
I have been cleaning and reorganising my studio because in case you didn’t notice the words in all caps earlier. I HAVE A MINION. Oh the plots we can plot and the plans we can plan, the theme song to pinky and the brain has been playing on loop in my head all week.
On Tuesday I am going to be mentoring a ceramic student here in my home studio, I asked Molly if she minded me talking about my NEW MINION on the blog and Molly said that was fine. So yay an agreeable minion is even more fabulous.
But seriously it will be very good for me because if there is another artist here it means I actually have to go and do some work, as well as exercise the ceramic technical bits of my brain. Our first session will be spent working out a ceramic plan for Molly and then we shall spend the rest of the afternoon chatting and making test tiles ready for some glaze theory later on.
I am still trying to shake of the holiday lethargy and so work has been slow but I am not in a race and so if I make at least one thing a day I can call that winning.
I am enjoying making these little houses very much. My clay kids taught me that not everything I make has to be serious, that I am allowed to have fun.
These birds are serious though with a serious message but that is a story for another Sunday. In this image below, the bird on the left has a wonky eye, which I fixed after I published the photo on instagram. 
I am using BRT clay and these two have been painted with Southern Ice Porcelain slip. I plan on making 50 birds for an installation later on in the year and I shall be interested to see where they take me.
There always seems to be a conversation about breasts happening somewhere on the internet and I am thinking of making some shark boobies, the breasts that bite back.
I am also making textured cups again, the last of my Sclerophyll cups are up at the Three Windows Gallery in Oatlands. I am having some cracking issues that I think are because the textured strips are too thin and so are drying out too fast even when wrapped in plastic. This fish hasn’t cracked as yet so that counts as a win.
I think that is it for me for the week. Welcome to the first Sunday Ceramics of 2014. Please add your blog post to the link below if you would like to join in.
Comments on this entry are closed.
I’m not an artist of any kind, so I won’t join the bloglist….but I do love those little houses very much. Are you making any to sell and how big are they? I think a few of those would make a wonderful fairy village in my garden here.
I shall make you some River, they are only small though and so maybe a village in a pot plant might work better 🙂
What a wonderful idea! Lovely work. I haven’t done anything with clay since school, but when I do, you’ll be the first to know. 😀
Cool bananas miss. xox
Thanks Kim, I really benefit from the communal incentive thing!
oh and PS your work looks great – I particularly love the last pic, it reminds me of a beautiful fossil I saw once and have attempted to recreate in various media ever since!
I am fascinated by fossils and I take your comment as a great compliment, thank you Georgia 🙂 And yes, I like the community aspect of blogging, partly because I am a natural over sharer but also partly because I am a natural teacher and I adore sharing any knowledge I have about anything, whether it be disability, survival cooking, ceramics or the best place to buy fish and chips in Hobart (flippers fish punt on the wharf)
Hi Kim
thanks for getting the community thing going again for us all. Will be sharing my post around Facebook.
Love your sea birds and your houses too…
Hi Kim,
Thanks for starting this space up. Those are wonderful little house and I love the idea of shark boobies!
It was my pleasure girls and thank you for joining in 🙂
I love having a new pottery blogging community…thanks for doing this. (Can’t say I like having to fill in my name, email and website before making a comment. Anyway to get around that? I avoid commenting on Wordpress blogs just because of it) And I love your breast shark pots…so funny. The birds are gorgeous too.
You can choose any name you like Bart it doesn’t have to be your own name 🙂 I normally use Kim @frogpondsrock when I am commenting on a blog and my blogging email address. A lot of bloggers just use their blog names instead of their given names.
The only person to see your email address is me and I won’t disclose that. Putting in your website URL is so that if people find your comments interesting enough they will click back through to your blog and with any luck leave an interesting comment on your blog as well. That is how blogging communities are formed, or used to be before the advent of smart phone technology made commenting tricksy.
But honestly Bart in the scheme of how much information is out there on the web leaving your blog details on a blog is only small. As nothing is private these days anyway.
It’s not that I mind being public, even my typo on my own name which I didn’t notice till your kindly wrote me a reply…but blogger doesn’t require me to fill in anything, and WordPress does. It’s a software thing. Do you get to comment on other WordPress blogs without having to fill in all the info about your address? Thanks so much for having a new potter’s blog, or as SmartCat suggested, a Plogger.
I need to fill in the information on the forms only once as the wp sites remember or maybe that is just the settings on my computer. I don’t normally comment on google blogs for the same reason as you the forms are a giant pain and I dislike capthchas on principle. But the main reason is because I can’t remember my blogspot password. So the blogs like yours who do not offer an anon/url option in their comment forms I have to click away without saying anything.
Thank you for creating a space to share thoughts and ideas with others. I found you through Smartcat.
I too am fighting the holiday lethargy, but there are orders to fill and must get my butt back in gear THIS week.
… your birds are lovely and full of life.
It is hard to get into work mode in the summer heat as well, I just want to sit on my verandah and photograph lizards and beetles BUT if I am going to have any work to take to Warrandyte next month I had better get cracking. 🙂
Excited about participating in Sunday Ceramics! However, I do have a question. I’m not familiar with the Linksy thing… To participate, do I write a blog post and title it “Sunday Ceramics”, and then follow the other instructions mentioned above??
Shawna
jsbarts.blogspot.com
Yes, that is all you need to do. Then just type your name or your blog name into the space in the Mr Linky and then add the permalink to your blog post in underneath. I post a new Sunday Ceramics every week and they are numbered.