Sunday Ceramics 21

Good morning viewers, today it is my absolute pleasure to welcome you to episode 21 of Sunday Ceramics.

Today, Sunday Ceramics has been slightly delayed by the LEAPING and BOUNDING of an enthusiastic puppy who needed a walk. Do NOT be fooled by this serene image of a well trained puppy sitting nicely. HA! Monty is a leaping, chewing, pooping, bundle of enthusiastic mischief. Thanks to Monty’s endless shenanigans, I was able to walk up ten flights of stairs the other day without dying, though I did need to collapse into a conveniently placed chair and puff madly for a minute or two.

My pozible is now closed and for once in my life I am a bit lost for words.

You, my dear people of the internet, have enabled me to go on a FABULOUS adventure to Kalgoorlie in October. I will endeavour to post all the photos before I die of sunstroke at the foot of a Gormley sculpture in a salt lake.

We just need to work out a properly dramatic hashtag for instagram, so you can all follow along.

Speaking of properly dramatic, I have finally stopped hyperventilating at the thought of THE LONG GALLERY, this is mostly due to the fact that my friends just roll their eyes at my theatrics and also because I have started to make all the work.

Making the work always calms me down a bit.

My friend Carolyn gave me a plastic hand mould and I have been having the most fabulous fun with it.

First, I rolled out a thin slab of clay and tried to press the clay gently into the mould, so that I had a thin shell of a hand. But patience and delicacy are not my strengths and before you could say, “slow down Kimmy”, the clay had ripped in a number of places.

I pressed the ripped up remnants of the slab, back into the mould to form a rough patchwork. For good measure I threw all the crumbs in as well and shook them about a bit.

Then I packed in some handbuilding clay and waited impatiently for hours and hours and hours for the clay to be dry enough to fall out of the mould. In the end I gave up and went to bed.

All that patient sleeping didn’t do me any good as I tore the fingers getting the hand out of the mould anyway. I could have easily repaired the fingers but the sight of the broken fingers sent me off on a tangent.

My social media channels were full of news about the missing Sri Lankan refugees and I thought the broken hand was a metaphor of sorts for our governments appalling behaviour.

I made a second patchwork hand using a JB1 porcelain. I quite like this JB1 porcelain so far, as it isn’t as pernickety as Southern Ice to work with, but I wont make my final decision until I have fired it as I do like the look of Southern Ice.

I had been thinking about making fingerbones for an installation last year, but gave up when they proved a bit harder to make than I thought. And once I looked at the fingers closely when I was editing the photos, I began to daydream about the fingerbone installation again.

So, working normally, disregarding all pretense at patience. I rolled out lots of porcelain sausages and quickly and roughly pressed them into the mould and made about twenty or so fingers in an hour.

All these photos (except the puppy) are taken inside the house with my phone camera, it is a bit too chilly to work in the studio at the moment.

The only downside to working inside is that Monty can jump up and steal any fingers that are close to the edge of the table. You think that this finger stealing would make me be more organised, HA, NO! I just spend a bit of time retrieving soggy clay fingers from nibbling puppy jaws. I am sure Monty thinks he is helping me by adding his own artistic touches.

That has been my week.

How has yours been?

Here is the link, you know what do do.