Diabolical Clay

I am sure my days are speeding up, as it seems like it was only Friday yesterday.

Thank you so much, the comments from you on my previous post have made me feel like a normal human being again, rather than some giant dark monster with gnashing teeth and a sour outlook.

So give yourselves a giant gold star. Give yourselves two.

I should be up in the studio glazing the last of this kiln load of work but my nose is cold and every good procrastinator knows that you can’t go to work with a cold nose.

Have I mentioned that I am going to Adelaide soon?

It is going to be a giant adventure. The Australian Ceramics Triennale is being held from the 28th of September to the 1st of October and the theme is Subversive Clay. How exciting does that sound? Subversive Clay for a Subversive Ceramist.

In keeping with my idea of life being a true adventure, I am catching a train from Melbourne to Adelaide. I would love to hear from any of you that have caught this train, as I haven’t caught a train since I was 12 years old and I know that my  hazy recollections of red leather seats and lots of girlish squealing, is not modern day train catching reality. I am seriously looking forward to the train trip and  I have been poring over the map trying to get an idea of the country I will be travelling through.

I will be in Adelaide madly dashing from venue to venue for the four days of the conference and I fully expect that I will be off on an wonderful giant daydream for the whole time.There will also be a suitcase market somewhere on the Sunday and I will be selling some of my work.

So my lovely South Australian readers, where are the best places to eat in the CBD? And by best I don’t meant the Michelin hatted best, I mean the best yummy food at decent prices. How easy is it to get around Adelaide if I decide to skip a couple of talks and do a bit of sight seeing? What is the public transport system like? And what is the one truly must see thing in Adelaide that I will regret not visiting while I am there?

In other travelling induced ditheriness I am undecided about which lenses to pack and what clothes to take. How hot is Adelaide at that time of year? I am truly a Tasmanian girl who is best suited to the cold weather and lots of layers of clothing. Will I need a hat? As the Tasmanian sun will burn you to a cinder in five minutes flat but  Melbourne sunshine isn’t nearly as fierce.

Questions, I have them. Also my Tuesday morning is free if any of you want to catch up for a coffee.

For the moon lovers amongst you I took some photos of the full moon the other night, it was bitterly cold but I needed to absorb some of the moons energy and I will finish up with these photos. Thank you for being such lovely friends.

My son David turned 18 on Saturday. In the blink of an eye he went from this gorgeous, gorgeous child.

To this six foot five eating, sleeping and mess making machine. David, whilst still totally gorgeous, is now legally allowed to drink in front of his mother as evidenced by the stubbie in his hand. Though he still has a bit to learn about building a proper fire. For the record the fire did actually go very well, once the tripod/teepee structure fell over.

Where has that time gone internet? I am now the mother of two adult children, both of whom have their own firm opinions and ideas about things. There is a wonderful freedom mixed with a great deal of sadness to know that I have successfully made myself redundant.

The title of this post is “A Galloping case of Inertia” A serious dose of the can’t be bothereds would also be an apt description of how I had been feeling all last week. June is a difficult month for me in that my children find June difficult. In 2009 we buried my mother on my son David’s birthday, it is a measure of how stressed I was by the behaviour of two family members that I agreed to bury Mum on that day. I should have waited, I should have hurried, I should have done a lot of things internet but what’s done is done and if wishes were horses I would own a circus.

With the emotional hangover of June still nipping at my heels, I have decided to focus on the other reason for my current sadness and inertia.

Character assassination.

It has been brought to my attention that someone out there who  happily swims  in the crazy soup of internet nutters and like minded loonies has been busily emailing people warning them that “@frogpondsrock” is dangerous.

I understand that to some people, questioning the status quo could be a dangerous thing to do. I will freely admit to poking  peoples sore spots on the internet. I will honestly say that naming a group of bloggers as remarkable, leaves the creator of that brandname open to mockery. I will loudly question the promotion of  Nestle at bloggers brunches. I will state clearly and for the record that Manifestos in handy dandy graphic form make me roll my eyes so far back in my head that I fear for my eyesight.

I am not afraid to stand up and very publicly speak my mind. I am also contrary enough to take the opposite side of an argument just to see what happens.

What this anonymous emailer fails to understand, is that I do not have anything to gain by promoting the truth as I see it and I also do not have anything to lose. Maybe this combination does make me a tad dangerous to certain fragile souls, as it means I can stand on my soapbox in my corner of the internet and say whatever I damn well please.

I am only one opinion amongst the zillions of opinions in this crazy online world I inhabit and if you feel so threatened by my opinions then I feel very, very sorry for you.

I learned at the fist of my father to never stay down and to never shut up.

I have opinions and in a quirky twist of fate my opinions belong only to me and I honestly fail to see how my opinion can impact on any one else other than me.

I will repeat that one more time for emphasis, My opinions belong only to me.

And now I will move along to other more interesting subjects, like my ceramics and my photography.

I was trying to photograph my work, I am not a technically minded photographer. I forget what f-stop I am supposed to use and I get my DOFs mixed up with my apertures and I honestly do not know what shutter speed goes with what. But I can tell you the exact temperature that small river rocks gathered from the banks of the Derwent river will begin to fuse with ceramic bowls (1260 degrees)

But sometimes, internet, sometimes I capture a beautiful photo and this is one that I particularly like. The work has been stained with a red iron wash and is waiting to be fired to stoneware temperature. But it is the background of this photo that particularly appeals to me, the reflection in the door of the kiln is like a soft pastel still life and it pleases me deep within my soul.

The texture on the rim of this bowl also pleases my eye.

Another pot waiting to be fired is this gift for a friend. The grey that you can see is a glaze which should turn out to be a deep blue/green gloss which I am hoping will work against the red/black matteness of the iron wash.

And yet more work waiting for me to turn off the computer and turn on the kiln. These are tiny little shallow pots that fit nicely in the palm of my hand. The daisy pattern was made by pressing a doorknob into a ball of soft clay, the other marks on the rim, come from bits of coral and other bits and bobs.

I would be lying if I said that the hate campaign directed at me didn’t hurt. But writing this post has helped me to see that one persons mud is another persons art and I have to ask myself how sad and insecure must this person be to be so obsessed by a middle-aged, mouthy mudslinger from Tasmania.

If I spent any significant time worrying about others opinions I would surely stop publishing so many blurry photos and start taking proper photos of proper things.

In 1993 I smashed my knee in a serious drinking accident. I put up with floaty bits of bone and recurring spontaneous dislocations of my patella until 1998 when I had major reconstructive surgery. I am not a squeamish person but some things do make me nauseous. Watching someone dislocate any part of their body, would have to be top of my vomit inducing list of things to avoid at all costs.

Last night I was quietly minding my own business and faffing about on the internet, when my son David asked me to help him relocate his hip. He was having problems with a subluxation (partial dislocation) of his hip and needed me to put my hand on his hip so that he could wriggle his hip joint back into its socket. Once his hip was successfully back where it should have been, I was visibly shuddering and David cheekily grinned at me, as teenage boys are wont to do when they know they have  successfully “grossed their mothers out”

Oh my word internet it  is a terribly creepy sensation, to feel your own child’s joints popping in and out of place.

We have found that whilst the Celebrex (anti inflammatory) have reduced Davids joint pain quite a bit, they have also had the unwanted side effect of making his joints very loose and floppy.We are between a rock and a hard place here. The subluxations and dislocations cause heaps of pain, Celebrex eases the pain but increases the laxness of his joints and so around and around in circles we go.

There is no such thing as a magic bullet with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, though Veronica and I are still looking.

On the upside, taking the proton pump inhibitor pantoprazole of a night time instead of in the mornings has reduced David’s nausea to a manageable level, where he can actually manage to eat some breakfast. It was also lovely to kiss my son good bye this morning and only smell toothpaste on his breath rather than dead things. So three cheers for pantoprazole.

On the weekend David was off with his friends, doing teenagery type things involving steep hills and long skateboards. On Monday morning David could not walk and stayed in bed all day. Normally I would view these stay in bed days with suspicion as it is very easy to assume malingering when a disability isn’t obvious, even when it is my own child who has the disability. If I am honest, especially when it is my own child who has the disability, as I expect the kids to push through and keep on doing even when it hurts.

I was grumpy with David for missing school yesterday as all the days he has missed, oh so many days, are piling up and piling up like so many red Xs on a calendar. I was grumpy with him Internet, until I felt the grinding of his hip joint slipping in and out of its socket and then I was ill for him and oh so sad.

He is 18 in four days time and he should be riding his skateboard furiously down all of the steep hills all of the time, not asking his mother to relocate his hips.

Grief is a funny thing I can be travelling along nicely doing all the things that I do and then bam, the missing will hit me in the heart and I will be crying like a child with a skun knee.

My Mother died three years ago on the 24th of June 2009 and today I cant be bothered with Sunday Selections.

Well I can be bothered otherwise the post and the link wouldn’t be up. I cant be bothered summoning the energy to comment on your photos today or to reply to comments, sorry about that, just talk amongst yourselves.

Online friendships are a wonderful thing though. Even as I cant be bothered, I am looking forward to seeing your photos and reading your comments here. Last night on twitter  I said, I am sad tonight I want some new music, something lyrical and melodic. Rose responded and sent me off to you tube where I spent an hour with Tom Waits who perfectly captured how I felt.

This week mining billionaire Gina Rinehart became the largest shareholder in Fairfax, having already bought a stake in Channel Ten. But this new video reveals this move is bigger than one woman’s ambition — it’s part of a coordinated and very deliberate strategy, with climate skeptic ‘Lord’ Monckton seen here advising a room full of mining executives on how the industry must gain control of Australia’s media.

Monckton, an avowed climate skeptic and darling of the right wing says that in Australia we need to keep the news straight and fair and balanced as they do in the US with Fox news.  Anyone with even a smidgeon of intelligence, knows that Fox news is anything BUT straight or fair or balanced when it comes to the interests of ordinary people or the planet as opposed to interests of the mighty corporations.

I ask that you watch this three minute video uploaded to youtube by Get Up and that you think about the implications for our media in Australia. If Gina Rinehart has Fairfax and Rupert Murdoch has New Limited, what do we, the people of Australia have?

Good morning my lovelies, it is still bloody freezing down here in Tassie and all I want to do is sit by the fire drinking cups of tea, thinking deep thoughts about life, the universe and everything. But the Ravens keep on calling outside my window at first light and I keep on trying to capture them on camera. Oh they are elusive birds and so, so wary of us. I have a gorgeous new 400mm lens that should make my bird snapping easier but a new lens always means a new way of thinking. The heaviness of this lens means it isn’t that suited to the kind of freehand shooting I do, where I hear a bird outside and I just grab the camera and run, often I only have about 5 seconds grace in which  to focus and shoot. There is a point and shoot canon that I have my eye on that has a 36x zoom and I am wondering if that would be better for charging through the bush than the Nikon with a heavy lens. Or I could just buy a mono-pod. Decisions decisions. I just bought a mono pod. Yay for e-bay.

Now down to the serious business of  THE PHOTOS.

I am grumpy with this youngest child of mine, he and I are far too alike for his own good. It is like being grumpy with myself when I am grumpy with him. Damn child.

I am not grumpy at all with this gorgeous grand child of mine, though I am sure that will change in another 13 years or so.

Two more from the dead tulip series of images, I am not sure which of these I like the best.

I will finish with a moth

The Blurb

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

Is cold, it is very,very cold.

Icy buckets full of slip need to be stirred and sieved, lifted and poured. Freezing cold lumps of clay need to be cut and wedged and thumped into shape. My hands are in and out of water all day and the electric kettle, my only source of hot water, is currently working overtime.

As the cold winter chill seeps into my bones I find that I want to spend time inside my warm house, cooking and eating and faffing about on the internet talking to people, rather than working in the cold studio. My procrastination levels are the highest they have been for a while and the days are slipping by at an alarming rate.

I am thankful for the beanies that you, my lovely internets sent to me when I shaved off my hair, as it was so cold up there the other day I was getting an ice cream headache. The front wall of my studio has a large roller door which I use as my main door. I don’t particularly like closed spaces, so even when it is bitter and an icy wind is blowing from the southwest, I keep the roller door partially open so that I can watch the world working around me, as well as keep my eyes peeled for those elusive crows.

I had left a bar of chocolate on my work table and the next morning I found that the mice had been nibbling away merrily overnight. I admired the texture marks their teeth had made in the chocolate and daydreamed about hyper mice full of sugar and caffeine having a party in my studio. Instead of throwing the chocolate away I left it there for the mice to finish off, as the thought of them coming back  to finish off the chocolate and finding it gone, made me feel a bit sad. I empathised with those poor cold mice, struggling through the cold with only a bit of chocolate for sustenance.

My empathy for the mice only lasted another day as there was mice shit absolutely everywhere and I could see that their little mousey party had turned into a full blown sugar and caffeine fueled mousey rage, so into the bin it went.

I have been working on a series of textured bowls and this photo shows a bowl  in its raw unfired state. I am planning on staining the outside of this bowl with a red iron oxide wash and glazing the inside a pretty green or blue gloss. It will either work or it wont.

I have been thinking about lots of things, even as my making has slowed down and ideas for new work pop into my head, as I allow myself the time to daydream and paint song lyrics onto the inside of my roller door.

The large purple vase that belonged to my mother is still full of dead tulips and every time I look at the flowers they whisper to me and I wander off into another head space where I use my camera intuitively, only thinking in terms of light and shade.

I hear the Ravens calling as I am working and through the half open studio door I follow their flight with my eyes, checking the sky for Eagles at the same time, as often the first sign of an Eagle in the vicinity is the raucous caw of the Ravens as they harass the larger birds. I haven’t had any Eagles in my yard since I gave away my chickens and I am thinking of getting some more hens to see if they entice the Eagles in closer to my camera.

Away from thoughts of chickens and eggs and eagles and back to the cold. The work isn’t drying and so I have been bringing armloads down into the warmth of the house and arranging small pieces in lines next to my wood stove. There is a danger with this faster drying that the work will crack but it is a risk I need to take as July is my turn to display my work in half of the large retail window frontage of the Off Centre Gallery.

My life is busy at the same time as my life is slow. It is winter and I am cold but I am happy. To see what other mudslingers are up to you should check out Adriana’s blog at Mud Colony

Only one photo from me today, The Spouse teaching our Grandson Isaac how to swing himself. I don’t know who was having the most fun, Jeff or Isaac. I do know that I love this image.

The Blurb

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

I am not a photographer. I am passionate about image making but I would never in a million years have the cheek to call myself a photographer.I don’t know what half the buttons on my camera actually do and that suits me very well because it means that I am not about to outgrow my trusty D90 anytime soon.

There is only so much room in my head for technical information and that space is crammed full of chemical formulae, ceramic jargon and the exact melting point of certain rocks.

My camera helps me to daydream, the tantalising curve of a distant hill morphs into the rim of a free form platter. Clouds turn into Dragons and Valkyries and the patterning of light and shade through the trees lends itself  to thoughts of mottled glazes on feminine vase forms.

There is beauty in death, my mothers dead hands were the most beautiful shade of pale ivory. When I remember the day my mother died, I don’t remember all the details but I do  remember the colour of mums hands and how soft they were.

These tulips were glorious in full bloom.

They are also equally beautiful in death.