Diabolical Clay

Or I would be if I could actually juggle.

But that is a story for another day.

Look at these bowls internet, aren’t they just wonderful.

These are the Ten Women on Twitter bowls that I have decided to exhibit in April

I had made ten with the same tweets but with different glaze and whilst I am also happy with them, I like the coloured ones better. I think I will stick with the oxides and the textures for my environmental and urban decay series of work.

I recently attended a two day workshop with Sandy Brown a fabulous UK based ceramist. From this workshop I received permission to be myself.

As a ceramist I am learning and growing all the time. I have shaken off the shackles of my teachers and I am finding my own way and instead of hearing Ben Richardson’s strong ceramic voice when I view my work, I now hear my own.

And this is as it should be.

I have also sold my share in the Off Centre Gallery in Salamanca

I am not interested in money, I never have been interested in money or things. The pressure of having to make enough work to cover my share of the gallery rent each month had finally become too much like work and less like fun and so I sold my share.

And of course once I thought I was free from deadlines, the universe stepped in and threw a heap of opportunities my way and so there is no chance of me having a rest at all.

Which is also as it should be.

I am linking up this week with Mud Colony Blog (or I will be tomorrow when the link opens)

If you are interested in joining up with a group of like minded ceramists you should look us up in Mud Colony, I will even include a photo of some of us to show you how normal we are.

Can I finish being sad now?

No! You will never finish being sad.

And that is the awful truth.

Some days I am fine and other days the sadness forms itself into a solid lump in my chest that will not shift.

I miss my mother.

Every day, multiple times a day, multiple times a minute.

Constant, the sadness is constant.

Hi everyone, today I am over at The Shake, writing about “that site”

It seems like every time I turn around these days some one is telling me what to do or what not to do.

And now Facebook is doing it as well.

I was innocently dreaming about cumquat marmalade on muffins, when facebook told me to STOP.

Gah everyone has opinions these days, even Social Media Sites.

This photo was taken with permission from my friend Colette’s UtSi Cafe page on facebook. If ever you are driving from Hobart to Launceston, I highly recommend that you stop at the wonderful UtSi cafe for one of the best food experiences you will have on your travels around this state of ours.

Now Facebook! STOP BEING SO BOSSY!

Last night was the launch of “The Shake”. We had a twitter party, there were prizes and drinks and fun.

It was good.

I will be writing articles for The Shake and so I ask that you pop The Shake into your reader or bookmarks or whatever it is these days that people use to keep track of their online favourites.

Zoey Martin has written a cracker of an article, titled, “The Luxury Of Not Being Feminist”,as per usual Zoey manages to articulate beautifully, the thoughts I only manage to stumble over as I wave my hands about going, “it is the vibe”

In other slightly less exciting news but STILL AWESOME nonetheless. Today is my birthday. I clicked over to google and saw this cute Happy Birthday graphic and thought Oh Wow I can pretend that is just for me, When in fact it was.

I TOLD you I was the QUEEN of the Internet!

So Happy birthday to me. Congratulations to Zoey Martin and Kate Young on the fantastically successful launch of the Shake last night and Happy Birthday to me, again because I adore birthdays. Especially when they are mine.

Here is a self portrait I published on instagram last night when I was in shake launch party mode. I think this image also captures how I feel today.

Hi Internet, my days have somehow managed to merge into each other and the momentum of this merging has caused them to speed up to buggery.

Will you look at the date for a minute. It is the 29th of January, how the hell did that happen? Only yesterday I was in a pavlova induced sugar coma surrounded by ripped up wrapping paper and now it is nearly my birthday.

I am sure it is a conspiracy, or science, or a melting of the space/time contiunuum, or it could just be that I am getting old and the older I get the busier I seem to be.

Speaking of busy…

This week I will be the voice behind the We Tasmania Twitter Account so if you use twitter come on over and ask me stuff about Tasmania. Just don’t ask me if Tasmanians really do have two heads because that makes some of us a bit stabby. Also please don’t start moaning about the weather in Tassie because that will also make some of us politely suggest that you fuck back off to the mainland.

I don’t know if I am allowed to say fuck while I am steering the account but we shall soon find out.

I live in the Southern Midlands of Tasmania. I have heard it described as that boring middle bit that you drive really fast through on your way from Launceston to Hobart. Well you would drive fast through it if the highway was an actual highway, but that is a story for another day.

I think I live in a nice bit of Tasmania. If you disregard the fact that this time of year I live in constant fear of some idiot starting an accidental bushfire, it really is very nice here surrounded by all these trees, nevermind that a lot of them are dying. Also ignore the fact that it is so dry here at the moment that my dam has dried up and the grass is all yellow and crunchy. If you also ignore the poisonous snakes, the huge spiders,the large lizards with funny coloured tongues, the scorpions in the bathtub and the all destroying possums in the fruit trees. Then yes my bit of Tasmania is really rather nice.

I don’t actually know what I am going to do with the We Tasmania Twitter account this week other than some vague idea of posting some bird photos.The currawongs are proving to be completely distracting at the moment as they cheekily tromp all over my roof as they eye off the ripening fruit on the plum trees. I was thinking of using the account to talk about my bit of Tasmania to my sometimes bed ridden bendy friends Achelois and Rusty Hoe, so that these two women could come on a bit of a virtual tour with me. But other than that I do not have a plan at all.

 Thoughts Internet? What would you like to see?

Mona Foma is an annual music and art festival with a twist. The theatre and fun of #MOFO2013 mostly plays out in a shed on Hobart’s waterfront, with added arty wonders also popping up randomly all over Hobart.

If you want all the details of all the  fun, you can find the full Mona Foma programme here.

This year I had a dose of the “couldn’t be bothereds.” This inertia, coupled with a very sad bank balance ended up with me declaring publicly that I was going to give MONAFOMA a miss this year.

“Not bloody likely Kim” said you, my loveliest of Internets. Emails were sent and half the ticket price was transferred into my account.

Go forth and have fun so we can live vicariously through you, was the imperial internet command.

Who am I to deny a command of a blogling? Who am I to deny you vicarious fun?

So last night I went forth and HAD FUN. Lots of it in fact.

Using only my phone, I photographed the things I saw and posted them on my instagram account which also auto posts to my facebook and twitter accounts

I posted this with the caption, “I think it is cooked”

I had no idea what this was but it looks like fun. A friend then tweeted at me that it is in fact POUAW! The noises of Luigi Russolo.

: an ensemble of six noise machines based on his original sound families will be accompanied by power tools, heavy machinery, domestic white goods, spoken word, and forklift trucks. WOW, it sounds way cool. It is on again tonight at PW1 at 6.30 pm, I hope it doesn’t make my ears bleed too much.

I shared this photo of hipster shadows.

And Oh My Word, internet, it was hipsters on parade last night. As a twitter friend, Imogen Birley cheekily quipped, it was a good thing there wasn’t also a cruise ship docked in Hobart, otherwise we would have had, a gripping showdown between matching name brand track suits and beards wearing spray-on jeans.

Is there anything more bizarre than seeing a grown woman staring at her phone in a public place and giggling merrily?

Well that was me last night, I went to MONAFOMA on my own, as my partner in fun is at home with a baby. But I wasnt really on my own because (a) it is Hobart and I know heaps of people and (b) I had my internets safely tucked into my phone making me laugh.

I took photos of people’s shoes. Oh my, the shoes. *sigh*

I filmed the flashing lights and added my own commentary.

“And as the Pretty Lights explode the bass makes my vocal chords vibrate.” The music for this show was so loud I felt like I was inside a speaker. It was wonderful, the feeling of being part of the sound makes me enormously happy.

As a woman of a certain age and a certain weight I am often invisible. A few years ago as I was pondering this fact, I came across a quote that released me from the sadness that my invisibility had cloaked me with. I can’t remember the actual words at the moment but the gist of the quote was that great things can be done when you are invisible.

I tried this last night and I had heaps of fun exploiting my invisibility, by photographing people being young and hip. It amuses me enormously that the kids these days are wearing the same clothes that I wore at their age. I saw a tall thin young man with a giant bleached blonde mohawk  and I remembered my friends in 1982 who had the exact same hairstyles. The only difference being that in Hobart in 1982 a Mohawk was incredibly shocking and was enough to stop traffic.

Heh in 2013, I look at the mohawks and I think, “It has all been done before.”

Thank you Jebaru, for helping me to have such FUN.

Before the bushfires arrived here and distracted me, I found a dead frog floating in a container of water.

Poor dead frog.

I wondered how it died, did it drown or was there a less apparent cause of death? I took photos of the dead frog and then put the frog into the birdbath, so it looked like it was still alive.

I was hoping that a bird would come down and eat the frog, it was a rather large and juicy frog and so by becoming a meal its death would have had a purpose.

The next morning the dead frog was still in the same spot. Obviously the native birds like their froggy snacks to be a bit more wriggly and alive.

I photographed the frog again and then put it out into the sun so that it would dry out. A part of me was still hoping that a Joe Whitty would fly down for an opportunistic snack.

The next day was the day of the bushfires and searing 42 degree heat. Lots of small creatures died that day, spiders, lizards, grasshoppers but it was too hot and smoky to do anything other than to note their passing. Poor small creatures.

After I had photographed the dead skink, I put it into the sun with the frog and photographed them as they dried out.

Life is hard when you are a small creature. Here are these small creatures, I give them to you internet so that you too can mark their passing and I ask you to wonder how many small creatures vanish without us ever giving them a second thought.

I am sitting here with all the doors and windows closed trying to keep my house as cool and as smoke free as I possibly can. The air is thick with smoke from the many bushfires currently burning around Tasmania. My eyes are stinging slightly and I am thankful that I have good lungs, I am also thankful that there aren’t any  fires burning close to us.

Friday was a horror day for Tasmania. It was over 42 degrees up here in the midlands, my temperature gauge is in a shady spot on the front verandah so I have no idea what the temperature was out in the full sun. But it was hot, very, very hot.

The wind was blowing a gale, the tops of some of the dying eucalypts were snapped off by the wind, turning them from potential firewood into widow makers.

Some other trees simply snapped in half.

My raspberries, shrivelled on the canes.

Spiders succumbed to the searing heat and fell, dead onto the concrete path. Poor black house spiders killed by the heat radiating from their own house. I also found dead lizards, beetles and other insects. It was a hard day for everyone.

I stayed inside and tried to distract myself with the cricket, but of course there was no distraction large enough to work, as Tasmania burned.

This was the view from my front door, looking towards the west. The smoke is from the large bushfire at Lake Repulse in the Derwent Valley.

This was the view from the balcony, looking south east towards the large fire at Forcett.

On the Friday night, the wind finally dropped a bit and I took this photo, which ended up on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald.

Tasmania is still burning.

The Red Cross has set up an appeal and you can donate by clicking onto the image below.

Thank you for all your facebook messages, emails, tweets and DM’s enquiring about Veronica and myself. We are safe for the moment, though it is heartbreaking to see the devastation of my small island state.

Once the weather settles down a bit and the scale of the catastrophe has become apparent, I will be organising a fundraiser for the Primary school at Dunally, as I know first hand how traumatic it is when your child’s school burns down.

Pray for some rain for us internet, lots and lots of rain.