Diabolical Clay

I am really excited, so excited in fact, that I keep on hugging myself and having a quiet, girly squeee.

I have just been accepted into the ceramic co-operative,“Off Centre”.

I was approached by one of the partners a few weeks ago and invited to join the co-op. I had to submit photographs of my work to be approved by the whole group at their monthly meeting. I didn’t realize how nervous I was until I received an email the other night saying that my submission had been successful. (Time for another girly squeee)

For those of you who don’t know your way around Hobart, Off Centre has a shop, upstairs in the Salamanca Arts Centre in Salamanca place, opposite the Long Gallery . This is right in the heart of the arty/touristy area of the waterfront. There are a lot of small galleries and specialty shops down there as well as the famous Salamanca market which is held every Saturday.

All together now Squeeeee!!!

So here I am sitting  in front of the computer trying to concentrate on writing this post with my head full of ceramic dreams. I am watching the sky begin to colour up as the sun rises and it looks like it is going to be another lovely day. I spent most of the day yesterday making my slipcast  tall cups, some shells and bottles as well. I will spend today finishing those off and making some more as I need to have some work together for the shop by the first of May, which is less than a fortnight away. Eeeek!

I have started work on some hand built platters as well as more rock bowls. I have a prototype of something blue with butterflies for Tiff drying out and I have started work on the four cups I promised Brenda.I am thinking of something for my chocolate fairy and I also need to make some cups for a friend in WA, as well as get some work together to display in a twitter friend’s cafe gallery here as well. Phew. The dragon eggs are simmering away in the back of my mind and I need to remember to contact the trustees of the Chauncy Vale wildlife sanctuary to confirm my outdoor exhibition there next year.

So I am a tad busy at the moment.

My ancestors were boat people. Irish convicts transported unwillingly to Australia. I grew up in a working class suburb full of immigrants. New Australians they were called then. My father was casually racist and his language was the language of his peers. I was taught to be wary of wogs, wops, krauts and coons. The New Australian kids were different and their sandwiches at lunch time smelled funny. So of course we teased them. Australia’s national food was the meat pie and everyone had a roast for Sunday lunch.

Then I grew up and so did Australia. I grow bok choy in my garden and make sushi for my grandchildren. Sunday lunch might be a Thai green curry or Moroccan lamb. Australia has benefitted greatly from our multiculturalism and there is a lot of hope for the future.

But I feel that there is a black cloud of doom lurking just over the horizon and it has to do with our politicians and the popular media’s attitude to this generation of boat people. If our leaders demonstrate intolerance and the media reports in a frenzy of protectionist nationalism what hope is there for ordinary people to be heard?

I was down at the market last year and my son and his mate where looking at tshirts with humourous quotes printed on them. Deeper into the rack of t-shits were some with, not quite racist but certainly horrible slogans such as, This is Australia we drink beer, play cricket and speak English and other such small minded intolerant shit written on them.

My son’s friend wanted to buy a t-shirt that said, piss off we’re full.

Anyone that knows me in real life knows that when something pisses me off I get loud and  *Hmmphy*.  I explained to my son and his mate exactly why I found the t-shirts so distasteful. The salesman enthusiastically pushed his view that the t-shirts were just a joke and I pushed my view that they were crap. I reminded the stallholder that we are all boat people here mate and he would do well to remember it.

I huffed off from the stall and loudly lectured the boys on tolerance, well aware that I was being extremely intolerant of the bogan twat selling the shirts.

The experience left a sour taste in my mouth and I have been meaning to write about racism and intolerance for a while now. But I really don’t have the words other than to remind those that cry the loudest about the perils of the boat people to remember where you came from.

To remember that except for the Koori people we are all descended from immigrants here in Australia.

To remember that we are all the same under our skins and that hate begets hate.

Fe photographed two opposing protests at the Villawood detention centre and the APP have been commenting on her blog post, The face of Racism

My friend Anne,also writes eloquently here in her piece, aptly titled the lucky country and I would recommend that you go and read both blog pieces and then tell me what you think.

The sky was absolutely fabulous tonight. I was outside for nearly an hour snapping away madly. Here is the first photo and the last photo of an hour of  awe.

On the last day of class before the Easter break our tutor Ben Richardson organised a field trip for us near Clifton beach. One of  the aims of this trip was to see where Ben gathers his raw clay so as to get a feel for our chosen material in its natural state.

We all met up at Ben and his lovely partner Peta’s home, where Peta had cooked us hot cross buns for morning tea. Then it was off down to the foreshore to walk to the clay fields.

The group split into factions, as groups do. There were the power walkers who strode briskly off into the distance, the balance of the group who walked along at a normal pace, the dawdlers and then there was me.

I had warned Ben that I wasn’t much of a walker and that I would whinge and moan and carry on. I could tell that he wasn’t sure if I was serious or not and I was happy to leave him wondering. Heh. I knew that I wouldn’t whinge too much as I enjoy walking but I am seriously unfit and my knee generally gives me heaps of trouble.

Ben set a cracking pace, as we needed to get to the clay field  before the tide came in and I was reminded of a sheepdog trying to round up and hurry along a mob of recalcitrant sheep. He hid his frustrations well and politely told me on more than one occasion, that there would be plenty of opportunities for photography once we got to our destination.

Of course I didn’t listen as I know that a photograph lost is never found again. But I did try and limit myself to only taking a few shots as we walked along the beach.

At about the halfway mark the terrain started to change and the sand flats gave way to a rockier shore. I wished that I had thought to bring a wheelbarrow with me as there were Dragon eggs galore on the ground, but of course it isn’t everyday that you have a wheelbarrow lurking in the boot of your car *sigh*

As I was walking along the beach I looked at the tyre tracks in the sand, the occasional piece of plastic rubbish and other evidence of human occupation and environmental degradation and my mind began to wander. I thought about my planet and the fact that a lot of people don’t seem to realise that it is a closed unit. That my lifestyle here in Tasmania, the products that I use can affect someone in the North pole. I thought vague thoughts of extinction and apocalypse, I pondered the implications of the end of the Mayan calender in 2012 and I wondered what had really happened to the dinosaurs.I was thinking about the fossils that were being  formed today and as I thought about this Earth in a million years time, a geological blink of an eyelid, I started to feel depressed.

When we reached our destination Ben wanted us to make a transient art work. A piece of work that we would leave in situ, we could use the materials at hand however we liked and we had approximately an hour to play around.

These next series of photos are some of the sculptures that some of my fellow students made.

I wandered off from the group a bit and started to set up my own transient work of art. As I threw rocks into the water I photographed the splash, the ripples and then the calmness as the ocean smoothed herself back out. As I photographed the results of my effort I thought that it was an apt metaphor for the transience of human life and endeavour. As a species we disturb the environment around us but at the end of the day when we are gone The earth will still be here and eventually she will erase the more obvious traces of our habitation.

As I wandered back to the group, one of the first year students, a recent arrival from the mainland, asked me if I had fun playing. I responded rather heatedly that I hadn’t been playing and I tried to explain what I had been doing but as per usual when I am feeling vulnerable I reverted to flippancy and I could tell that I had lost her. So in the spirit of continued flippancy I made another small work of art, which I called Look at what we do.

I have been writing this post for a few days now and I will stop here for the moment. Today is my Mother’s birthday and I am starting to have a sad day. So instead of finishing this post properly, I am just going to leave you with another photo.

I took this the other day and I really think the male grasshopper is telling me to piss off and leave them to it.

Just a quick couple of photos that I took this afternoon. I have had to go to town every day this week for one reason or another and this afternoon I finally managed to have a bit of a play with my new camera. I still have no idea what on earth I am doing but half the fun is in the trying.

Hello out there my lovelies. I am sitting here perched on the edge of the couch tapping away at Mum’s laptop, I am trying to get a rhythm together to write something about the past week but it is hard when I am not at my desk. Confused? I will try and explain but before I do, if one more person smugly tells me to get a Mac just remember that I know where the zombies lurk, and I will give them your address.

I have needed a new desktop for a long time now, the one I was using was ex council stock that Mum and I bought on tender three or so years ago and it was very very slow. The spouse’s views on computers are unprintable, he sees them as an extravagant waste of time and money. Where as I, on the other hand plan to take over the world via the internet and so I need a new computer dammit.

After lots of angst serious thinking both Vonnie and I decided to not make the change to Macs. As much as we lusted after a Mac we just couldn’t afford them as well as shiny new lenses for our cameras.

And now my brand new computer is broken aaargh and before you say anything, remember the zombies.

I am going to take it back into the shop today and hopefully they will just replace it.

But, my lovelies the computer is the least of my worries, today is the appointment with the head honcho at the paediatric unit of the hospital. The fact that the most senior doctor there wants to discuss Amy and Isaac’s blood test results scares me witless. Veronica wrote about it here if you are interested.

I had been hoping to do some work over the Easter break but time is just racing away from me. I will update this post when I get home from the hospital this afternoon. Fingers crossed it isn’t horrible news.

Updated: The paediatric appointment was just a formality, there is nothing to worry about at all. I am sure Vonnie will write about it soon. Thank you very much for your kind comments. I am sorry if I worried you.

The lovely people at Harvey Norman replaced my computer. So now I will be able to continue on with my plans for world domination muawahahaha…….

Last year, Easter Sunday was Mum’s birthday, We had a barbie and then Mum and I went down to the hospital for Mum’s chemo. Mum wrote in her diary…

Easter Sunday, back to the hospital for another session of chemo, made sure I left with plenty of anti-nausea tabs, they provided a roast lunch this time and surprise I was able to eat most of it, made Kim feel a bit teary poor baby, I didn’t realise that my not eating was causing her so much worry.

Tomorrow we are having a barbie at Vonnies and it will be another first, another milestone to be gotten through in this first year of living without Mum.

When Mum was having treatment at the hospital, quite often we would have an hour or so between appointments and so we would hang around in town as it was too far to go back home. Often we would browse away some time  in camera shops together, drooling over the latest DSLR’s. Mum wanted to buy me a DSLR but we decided to wait until we went to Sydney together. Mum died three weeks before we were due to leave.

So it was with mixed emotions that Vonnie and I went camera shopping  a couple of days ago. If I hadn’t had Veronica there to explain the lenses and give me a gentle push, I think I would have kept on dithering and not bought a camera at all. It has been very hard emotionally to spend some of my inheritance on such an extravagence as a new camera. But I could also feel Mum telling me that It was now or never Kimmy.

So I leaped off the cliff and bought a Nikon D90 with a very good 200mm lens.

Time to step it up a notch I think and take my photography to the next level.

Look what arrived in the mail today.

I am feeling a little bit stunned by Mrs Oh’s amazing generosity. Well maybe stunned isn’t the proper word to use. How does totally gobsmacked, overwhelmed,thrilled to bits, and giddy with excitement sound instead?

Every time I pour my heart out, here on my blog, you my lovely internetz always hold me up and give me solace. Mrs Oh is a motherless woman as well and her thoughtful comments on my saddest posts always make me feel that is okay to miss Mum. Even though my grief causes Mrs Oh to be reminded of her own, she still takes the time to console me and because of that care and compassion I know that I am  not quite so alone.

This is the beautiful joy of blogging, the fabulous sense of friendship and community shared by bloggers who have never met in person but are privy to each others hopes and dreams, heartaches and despair.

And I thank each and every one of you for being my dearest internetz.

Now back to the chocolate. mmm.

I squealed with excitement when I saw these Almond joys.

I don’t know how to accurately describe the excitement of receiving a chocolate that I had only read about or seen in the movies. so you will just have to imagine me jumping up and down going SQUEEEE!

Then there were all these little treasures.Turtles and Watchamacallits and Hershey bars and Hershey kisses and and and…

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Thank you so much Mrs Oh. I am in chocolate heaven.

When I returned to ceramics after a break of nearly twenty years, I became obsessed with perfectly formed objects. I lusted after Korean celadon tea cups and Japanese woodfired tea bowls. The perfection of Les Blakeborough’s porcelain made my soul shiver and Gwyn Hannsen Piggot’s still life arrangements were to die for.

In my first year of ceramic study I only kept one piece of work and I was incredibly hard on myself. I set my standards so high that I was destined to fail. I don’t know if this was a subconsciuos act of sabatoge or not, though I suspect it probably was. At the end of my second year of study I had relaxed a bit and was starting to produce work that had potential.

The last three years have been incredibly difficult as well as incredibly rewarding. I have learned to relax and  I have stopped being so hyper critical of my own work. Stopping drinking has been the catalyst for this new kindness to myself as has the support of you my internetz.Through your eyes I have been able to view myself as a bonafide artist, though I still have moments when I am sure someone is going to look at my work and say that isn’t good enough you aren’t an artist at all.

I have come to a place where I am happy with myself and with my work. I have stopped fighting my nature and my ceramics have improved because of it.

So instead of trying to make delicate teacups that look capable of floating off the table. I am making work that soothes my soul. The dead albatross bowls and handbuilt platters make my heart sing. My slipcast work satisfies my longing for beauty and elegance though they will never be perfectly formed and will always look very hand made. My catch cry of late has become if you want perfection go and buy it from the kitchen section of a large department store.

Now I am making ceramic rocks. These rock bowls are a beginning of a ceramic exploration of ideas. I am trying to get an earthy, natural feel balanced with a crisp inner beauty. The outside surface will remain matte and rock-like whilst the inside should be lovely and shiny and crystalline.

These bowls are in the kiln at the moment and I will get to see whether they have worked or not on Wednesday. They are very heavy and I will have to work on that as they will cost a fortune to ship. It would be like I was trying to post a brick.

So this is where I am at, at the moment. I still haven’t started on the dragon eggs yet, though I have started an extensive programme of glaze testing. I am planning on using the Easter break to make the dragon egg mould as well as a number of other projects I have on the go.