Diabolical Clay

Today I am linking up with The Mud Colony Blog

These cups are slipcast.

Slipcasting is an industrial process where by liquid clay is poured into plaster moulds, the plaster absorbs the water in the clay and a clay shell is formed inside the mould. Toilets and ceramic bathroom sinks are examples of industrial scale slipcasting.

I have some photos I took in the studio, that might better help me to explain the process. I apologise for the quality of the images as I wasn’t really concentrating on the photography, I was just pointing and shooting.

Shown below are my cup moulds. I have six moulds that I am using at the moment, which means that in winter I can make six cups a day and in Summer if I am lucky I can use the moulds twice and make about 18 cups over a two day cycle. I usually make cups for about a fortnight and then I will make bowls for a week, then cups again until I have enough work for a firing.

I am obsessive when I am working and if I find a form that I like to make, I will make heaps of them until I have worked them out of my system and then I wont make that form again for a while. This time last year I was making large platters and touchstones. At the moment I am making sclerophyll cups and textured dessert bowls. Who knows what I will be making come February.

Currently I have quite a few cups with sky blue highlights in stock. Once these are gone I wont go near the blue again for a while.

If I want to decorate the cups, I will paint some coloured slip on the inside of the mould. I use a paint brush that I made with a strand of my hair sticky taped to a wooden skewer. I will just randomly streak some slip on the inside of the mould as I like to work intuitively.

Here I have filled the mould with slip. Slip is liquid clay that has had its chemical structure altered slightly by the process of adding a deflocculant to a bucket of liquid clay, this deflocculant introduces positive electrical charges to all particles, causing them to repel one another and remain in suspension. A deflocculated suspension gives flowing consistency with less water content, meaning lower drying shrinkage—especially important in slip-casting. I use a combination of dispex and sodium silicate in my slip as that gives the slip cast clay a greater flexibility at the leather hard stage.

Just so that you don’t think that I am always so scientific, I thought I would also show you my working conditions. I call this creative chaos.

Once I am happy with the thickness of the cup I empty the slip back into the bucket. You can see that a nice clay shell has formed here and the cup is about 3-4 mms thick.

Now I leave the moulds to drain and I wander off to do other stuff in the studio. (Daydream mostly)

Sometimes I forget about the cups and they fall out of the moulds onto the table.

And then sometimes they get stuck. The cups are still very soft so if I try to prise them off the table I will squish them so I leave them for a bit and wander off again.

I managed to unstick these cups from the table, with the minimum amount of squishing.

Now I will tidy up the rims and cut in my tell tale uneven rim, which makes each cup unique. I form a relationship with my work as I am making and I believe that a piece of my spirit goes into each thing I make. The uneven rims on the cups make you, the buyer, form your own relationship with the cup as you work out how to comfortably hold and drink from it.Here are two of my medium sized unfired cups next to a third that has been fired. This shows how much the clay shrinks from start to finish. I make three sizes of cup. Small ones which hold about 150 mls, medium 250 mls and large 350 mlsAnd Tadaa, four finished large cups.

For more lovely ceramic posts you can simply click over to The Mud Colony Blog and check out a wealth of ceramic talent.

Southern Ice Porcelain is the princess of porcelain, it demands a skilled hand and care must be taken at all stages of making the work. I only use Southern Ice in the Winter as it needs to dry slowly in order to avoid the work cracking.

This piece, Lament was put together for the recent Tasmanian Ceramics Association, annual exhibition “40 years in the making”  and the description of the pieces was as follows.

“The environmental tragedy that is caused by plastic pollution has been about forty years in the making.  All the work is made from Southern Ice porcelain, the touchstones are imprinted with marks made from cigarette lighters retrieved by Dr Jennifer Lavers, from the bellies of dead Laysan Albatross on the Kure Atoll in 2009.”

“Lament” $350 + $25 postage

These tiny treasure boxes look and feel just like rocks. There is just enough space inside them to hide your wedding rings or a very small Easter egg. I enjoy making these little lidded containers very much. Available at the Off Centre in Salamanca or from the blog for $45 +$15 postage within Australia.

I use similar bowls to this one every day, I like how the uneven edges make you think about your food as you are serving it. This is quite a shallow bowl and is perfect for summery desserts.

blue bowl $35+ $15 postage

After reading your comments yesterday I am going to try and post a photo here every day in November of work that is for sale.

This jug on the left is for sale. If you are local it is in the Off Centre in Salamanca, if you would like to buy it from the blog I can post it to you.

jug $35 +$10 postage.

Today is the first of November, which means that today my daughter Veronica starts work on her novel. Veronica has joined up with other hardy souls to complete 50,000 words in the National Novel Writing Month challenge, colloquially known in blogging and writing circles as NaNoWriMo.

When my daughter makes plans for herself that involve BEING ORGANISED, these plans tend to trickle down, slowly but surely gathering their own momentum and enveloping other innocent bystanders. Veronica has decided that I should also become more ORGANISED and so the dear child has taken it upon herself to sort me out as well.

I am happy to just cruise along, writing a blog post here and making a pot there, accepting presidential nominations and gathering up triennales, taking each day as it comes.

But in the spirit of contagious organisation that permeates our respective households I have agreed to post a photo every single day of November of  my work that is currently available for sale.

I am going to post a photo, every day on my sadly neglected Frog Ponds Rock Facebook page and according to my girl, this will be good for me, my ceramics and my facebook page.

Who am I to argue?

This cup has now been sold.

I thought about posting a photo here every day but I wasn’t sure if (a) you wanted to see photos of my ceramics every day for a month and (b) if I could be bothered.

And by a happy coincidence the Mud Colony Blog link up opens today so I have joined in with that as well. How is that for organisational genius.

I was going to title this post, “Shop Talk” or “Ceramic Chat” but they both sounded a bit wanky and contrived and so I have given this post a very literal title, as it truly is a blog post about ceramic stuff. Today I have written this post specifically to link up with, The Mud Colony Blog.

Melbourne based production potter, Adriana Christianson is the creator of the “Mud Colony” blog and each week Adriana hosts a ceramic link up, which is open each week  from Thursday through to Sunday. This link up is a great resource for all potters be they professional or hobbyists and you will find a wonderful community of friendly clayworkers.

Adriana is also the Admin of the Mud Colony group on Facebook and all potters/ceramists/ceramic artists are welcome to join the group.

So, now onto my contribution.

Not a whole lot of ceramics has been happening here in the frog ponds rock studio, I have been glued to the computer for most of this week creating a new website/blog for the Tasmanian Ceramics Association. I would like to ask you to please do me a favour and add the Tasmanian Ceramic Association to your blogrolls if you could please, as the links give google a bit of a jolt and we will then show up in search engines.

In September, The Tasmanian Ceramics Association held their annual General Meeting and somehow I found myself elected to the dual roles of President and Web Master. I use the title Web Master as it amuses me to think of myself with a top hat and a whip taming unruly links and the like.

One of my first roles as President of the TCA was to attend a meeting of various ceramic representatives in Adelaide at the recent Triennale, to determine the location of the 2015 and 2018 ceramic conferences. With the support of the TCA committee and the encouragement of good friends I said that Hobart would love to host the 2018 Triennale and our proposal was accepted.

I immediately sent off a text to a friend and he replied with, “Now is not the time to panic Kim” and I think that text might just become my newest mantra. So now as well as having the titles, President and Web Master, I also am the Chair of the 2018 Tasmanian Triennale Steering committee. It is a good thing that I spend a lot of my time elbow deep playing in the mud, otherwise I might start to get a bit cocky.

Speaking of playing in the mud, Prime Minister, Julia Gillard’s speech the other week had me fist pumping the air in joyful salute and my feminist blood was surging. Finally a high powered woman has stepped up and said to the world, we are not going to take this sexist shit anymore.

Thank you Prime Minister.Thank you very much.

In honour of our Prime Minister I asked a number of high profile women on twitter, women I admire for one reason or another, to give me a tweet that captured how they felt about our Prime Ministers speech. The women who have generously given me a tweet are Jane Caro,  Dr Leslie Cannold, Destroy the Joint,  Catherine Deveny, Kim Foale ,Veronica Foale, Dee Madigan,  Dr Jennifer Wilson,  Stella Young and one anonymous tweet which represents the voice of all women.

I am in the process of making ten bowls with the tweets inscribed inside them. Once the bowls are finished I will exhibit them at the Off Centre during the month of December and then I will take the bowls to Burnie with me as part of the Fired Up 2 exhibition.

This is one of the bowls in the raw, the photo is from my instagram account and the tweet is from Dr Leslie Cannold. Dr Cannold’s tweet says,

If only we’d known the world would find a woman blowing her top about misogyny so special, we’d have done it sooner. Nice work PM #Gillard

Here are some more of the bowls drying out, again the image was taken with my phone and posted to my instagram account.

The Tasmanian Ceramics Associations annual exhibition, “Forty Years in The Making” is currently showing at the Rosny Schoolhouse Gallery and runs until the 4th of November.The Gallery is open Tuesday to Friday 11.00am – 4.00pm Saturday and Sunday 12.00pm – 4.00pm.

This is the work that I have chosen to exhibit in the show.

and this one.

And that is all the ceramic news I have for you today. Apologies to everyone who has seen these photos before.

I strongly encourage any and all potters to find and join in with Adriana Chriastainson’s Mud Colony, it is a lot of fun.

Hi internet, I don’t have a lot to say at the moment. All the words are here inside my head but it seems like that is where they have decided to stay.

Baby Evelyn is still having multiple seizures a day and her vision is intermittent at best. I don’t know if Evelyn recognises my voice, she certainly can’t see me and for someone as theatrical as I am, the not seeing me is very hard to deal with.

My stress levels are very high and when I am stressed I make grand plans and immerse myself in all manner of wild and wonderful projects, so that I don’t have to think about my broken heart.

Prime Minister, Julia Gillard’s speech the other day had me fist pumping the air in joyful salute and my feminist blood was surging. Finally a high powered woman has stepped up and said to the world, we are not going to take this sexist shit anymore.

Thank you Prime Minister.

In honour of our Prime Minister I asked a number of high profile women on twitter, women I admire for one reason or another, to give me a tweet that captured how they felt about our Prime Ministers speech.

I am in the process of making ten bowls with the tweets inscribed inside them. Once the bowls are finished I will exhibit them at the Off Centre during the month of December and then I will take the bowls to Burnie with me as part of the Fired Up 2 exhibition.

This is one of the bowls in the raw, the photo is from my instagram account and the tweet is from Dr Leslie Cannold. Dr Cannold’s tweet says,

If only we’d known the world would find a woman blowing her top about misogyny so special, we’d have done it sooner. Nice work PM #Gillard

The women who have generously given me a tweet are Jane Caro, Stella Young, Dee Madigan, Dr Jennifer Wilson, Destroy the Joint, Veronica Foale, Kim Foale, Anonymous and one  yet to be confirmed. This project wouldn’t have been possible without Social Media, and I thank the women for their sociability.

In other ceramic news, I have been playing around with sgraffito techniques on some cups. I have been thinking a lot about blindness lately and so I made the black marks on the cups with my eyes closed. I have also been walking up to the studio with my eyes closed as I try to imagine how it feels to be blind, but I keep on cheating and opening my eyes up for a quick peek.

The weather is warming up and the clay isn’t so icy cold and my hands are pleased by this. As the smell of spring is in the air my thoughts turn to making some larger works and an idea for some Ninja Ceramics is also burbling away in the back of my mind.

But always in the forefront of my mind is my worry for my youngest grand child and the blue painting is calling me, demanding to be painted.

* photos of my grandchildren blatantly stolen from here.

Next Sunday the 21st of October, the Tasmanian Ceramics Association’s annual exhibition opens at 2pm, at the Rosny School House Gallery.

You are all invited to come along to the opening and have a glass of wine and some cheese and bickies, as well as admire the diverse range of work created by the members of the Tasmanian Ceramics Association.

I have been fiddling about with various pieces of work trying to get a grouping together that I like. This is what I have come up with so far. It is also a chance for me to practice photographing my work, which is tricky as I am not a photographer and I forget what the various settings on my camera do. But I can tell you that rocks found by the river at Risdon Cove begin to melt at precisely 1260 degrees so that has to count for something.

This is my makeshift photography studio and yes it does look suspiciously like my main work table.

This work, titled “Lament” will be going into the “Forty Years in the Making” exhibition, as it has been about forty years since plastics began to take over the world. The environmental tragedy that is caused by plastic pollution has been about forty years in the making.  All the work is made from Southern Ice porcelain, the touchstones are imprinted with marks made from cigarette lighters retrieved by Dr Jennifer Lavers, from the bellies of dead Laysan Albatross on the Kure Atoll in 2009.

This work again references plastic pollution and is titled “Plastication”

This final work is titled Sclerophyll Jug and Cup. Mainly because I couldn’t think of a name and jug and cup will do. I live surrounded by dry sclerophyll forest and the marks on the jug and cup are made from a piece of bark that fell from one of the blue gums on my property. A lot of the trees here are dying a slow death and as I watch the trees die, I worry about the future of this, my country, my place.

And these final two are bowls that are not going into the exhibition but are available for sale from the Off Centre Gallery in Salamanca Arts Centre. I haven’t sold any work at all this month and the prospect of having to pay a full months rent is daunting, so if you want to buy any of my work can you please head down to Salamanca and help me out.