Diabolical Clay

I have a worldwide network of Artists that I engage with via twitter, a lot of these artists have also migrated to Google plus. A friend shared a post asking artists to add their names to a list. I added my name and now my google plus stream has exploded with circle requests from all these seriously interesting people from all over the world.

I thought that I had better add a couple of photos of my work to show that I wasn’t all talk and that I actually do make stuff. I added these next lot of photos to an album on my google plus account and I was quite surprised by the response.

If you click on these images they will open in a new window and you can have a bit of a better look.

People responded to my work and left me complimentary comments.

Hi Kim, I live in a region in France where I see potters work nearly every day, but I do have to say, your work is beautiful.

I didn’t realise how flat I was feeling until I started to feel better.

Thank you internet for helping me believe in myself.

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.

Easy Peasy.

The Photos

It has been slow going in the studio, the recent south westerly weather has brought flurries of snow to the frog ponds rock household and it has been cold, very cold. I don’t have any heating in my studio and you can imagine how cold it gets inside a tin shed in the middle of a Tasmanian winter.

The clay is icy cold and my hands start to ache after a while but I crank the music up and throw the clay around the room to the beat of an eclectic mix of classical violin concertos, old punk and newer rock.  My current style of vigorous hand building where I throw the slabs of clay onto the floor and punch them into shape is a combination of my artistic expression as well as an attempt to warm myself up.

I am halfway through a sculpture class and we have just finished making a traditional clay bust from a life model. The level of finesse and patience needed to put in the delicate details like an eyelid were incredibly challenging for me to maintain, as my current working method is not delicate at all. I enjoyed getting the bones of the sculpture in place, the plane of the cheek bones and the angle of the jaw were satisfyingly easy to achieve. I can see some angular figurative sculptures in my near future.

There is balance in all things and I was completely at a loss as to know how to even begin to make the lips and as for the eyelids, wow what fiddly little fuckers they are. Surprisingly though, I thoroughly enjoyed making the ears, I think that is because even though the ears are very complex they are not quite as delicate as the eyes. I will make some more ears in the future. I don’t know what I will do with them or how they will work but I will make some.

Next week we move onto contemporary sculpture and we will be given the task of creating a site specific installation in a public space using only reclaimed cardboard. Did you see those four little words, “in a public space”  It will be fun but it will also be nervewracking. I know that I am going to be pushed out of my comfort zone again because we will be making a model of the site and our work before we do the installation.

I HATE making models, I seriously dislike fiddling about with little fiddly fucking bits of paper. I dislike measuring stuff so it all fits together and I really dislike having to pay attention to small details.

So it will be good for me.

I will get the moaning and whining and the don’t wannas out of my head here and then next week I will knuckle down and glue little fiddly bits of paper together to make a scale model *shudder* of the site. I will pay attention to the small details and I will take notice of those extra millimetres on the ruler instead of going she’ll be right and just trying to bang it together haphazardly.

And it will be good for me.

And only you and I, my dear internet, will know how difficult it will be for me.

It has nearly warmed up enough for me to go up to the studio and do some more work.

Just to be completely perverse after I have been moaning about not wanting to have to fiddle about with tiny details, here are some photos of my newest works in progress.

And yes, this work is incredibly fiddly.

The simple pleasure of a nice cup of tea was ruined for me when I was pregnant with my first child Veronica.

The experience of vomiting the remains of a cup of china black, all over the roses in a handy garden as I was walking to work, made me determined to avoid that particular trigger and for years afterwards even the smell of freshly brewed tea made me feel slightly queasy.

So when I found a sample of She Tea in my conference bag, I quickly gave it away to the now grown up Veronica without a second thought.

A conversation with Veronica a few weeks later about how pleased she was with the lusciousness of She Tea’s blends had me intrigued. So I borrowed enough of the Happy Hippie blend for a couple of pots of tea and I was pleasantly surprised. Very pleasantly surprised.

The tea was very nice. So nice in fact that I left a message on She Teas website enquiring about their product and before you could say, “whats your credit card number,” Jodie had called me at home to discuss my preferences and I ordered some tins of their tea.

So this is NOT a sponsored post or a review.

This is just me saying you should check out She Tea because it is bloody nice tea.

I was impressed by Jodies warm and friendly manner on the phone.

I was impressed by the little added extras in my parcel.

I paid $50 for three tins of tea and when I opened the box I found some small samples of other types of tea, as well as one of those silver mesh ball thingies that you use to brew a single cup of tea and some cool postcards as well.

I was very happy.

You can find She Tea’s website here

Or like them on facebook here

Happy tea drinking.

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.

Easy Peasy.

The Photos

For a long time, when my children were small I didn’t have a voice. Sure I was loud and opinionated and I talked a lot but nobody actually heard what I was saying.

And that was because nobody cared about my words, or the thoughts behind my words.

I was anonymous.

Voiceless.

Blogging has changed that.

You have changed that.

I remember once I was on a pub crawl with a group of friends and we had landed in a country pub. After an hour the girls were ready to leave but they couldn’t find me. I had slipped into the saloon bar and I was talking with an old couple who were telling me what it had been like to harvest trees using bullocks and horses and describing to me the closeness of a  community that was so isolated that a trip to the city was only an annual or even biennial event.

I related very strongly to the old woman’s tales of isolation and resilience and I could have happily sat there with them all afternoon listening to their stories. As my exasperated friend found me she said, “I should have known that you would be with the oldest people in the bar Kimmy, sitting and picking their brains.”

This is what blogging does for me, it is a sharing of stories, a collective picking of your brains.

I enjoy the glimpses into other peoples lives, the sharing of stories. It relieves my frustrations and takes away the loneliness.

The Spouse, is my best friend and he adores me, which is as it should be. He is my enabler, I ask him for things and he makes them for me. He holds my hand when I am feeling wobbly and he puts a hot water bottle in my bed on the nights I am out late.

Things are very black and white for The Spouse, where as I operate within a zillion shades of grey, we are living very separate lives at the same time that we live our life together.

I have three very separate lives, my blogging life, my artistic life and my homelife.

Are your lives like this? Do you live separate but together lives?

Compartmentalised lives?

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.

Easy Peasy.

The Photos this week are from a mix of cameras and my phone.

This is a Green Rosella, these are also known colloquially as Mountain Parrots. They are ground feeders and seed eaters. I don’t like to feed native birds because they become dependent on us for food and can quite often starve to death when we stop feeding them because they have forgotten how to forage, it only takes one generation of birds to teach their young that the bird feeder is the primary food source. These parrots eat the wheat that I feed to my ducks so I am feeding them by proxy, it is a big responsibility.

This calf wandered into my yard a year or so ago with its mother. The more damage they did to my fruit trees the tastier they started to look. Luckily I managed to track down their owner so the calves were safe. If they come back it might be a different story as I was not compensated for the damage they did to my fruit trees. So much for being a responsible neighbour.

A frog, so cute.

Taken while driving home after a long day. I was tired.

What do you think about this shot?

It is winter and my hands are cold.

I am sad and tired.

I miss my Mother more than I could ever have imagined and I am fighting off a bout of self pity.

I don’t ask the question

Who is going to comfort me

Because I know the answer.

I am tired

Tired of the cold.

Tired of never being asked how I am

Tired of people.

Tired of shallowness.

I am tired of being nice and tired of being polite

I think I should just go out and get smashed and run amok

And I would,

Except I don’t want the hangover and the sore head and the blackness of spirit that comes from all that negative energy.

But

At the end of the day I am truly an optimist,

And even in my bleakest moments I can go outside and see something that lifts my spirit.

A tiny abandoned nest in the raspberry canes made me smile.

The thought that small birds had been nesting so close to the house makes me inordinately happy.

Some days it is the smallest things that keep me going.

We have been doing Sunday Selections for 25 weeks now. Some Sundays I really cant be bothered and just whack up any old photo that I find in my archives.

Other Sundays, like today, I become seduced by the infinite possibilities of light and line and light and shade and find myself losing time as I compare edits, and I happily wander off into my otherworld, of daydreams and shadows.

Thank you for joining in with Sunday Selections, because if it wasn’t for your participation I know that I would have very quickly become bored with this photo meme and it would have just faded away.

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.

Easy Peasy.

Here are my photos for this week.