Diabolical Clay

I need to write a three or four thousand word essay/research project in the next few weeks. I have known about this project since the beginning of the year and up until now I haven’t really given it much more than the occassional passing thought.

My initial idea was to research a specific type of glaze and then write about various tests etc. that I had done with that glaze, as well as put together a glossary of glaze terms. But with this year being what it has been, I have only had unbroken blocks of time in the studio since the middle of July. The kilns aren’t firing properly and so any sort of glaze testing on my part has been cursory to say the least.

So with only a few weeks to go before my assessment I had no idea at all of what I was going to do, until a fellow student said she was in the same situation as me (phew). We brainstormed with our tutors and I think that I have a sort of an idea of what I am going to do.

I am going to… and here I stop. My brain just shuts down with the ernormity of the possibilities in front of me. I want to explore  the use of text in art and why text isn’t valued as an artform in itself. I want to try and express the impact that the destruction of Tasmania’s ancient forests has on me and why it is important that my art work expresses my despair.

So yesterday, instead of continuing on with this post I emailed my tutors and asked for their help again. My slipcast tutor Dawn Oakford replied and spun me off into yet another wonderful tangent with this idea.

Example 2: Create several ceramic objects (functional or non-functional) and place them along a forest track where they can be readily seen,handled and most importantly their “anti-destruction of forests messages read.

whatever occassion you decide to create, you could photograph people engaging with your ceramics and reacting to your messages – the documentation could then be your research/work

With this suggestion of Dawn’s all thought of my research project happily flew right out of my head and I was left mentally organising an outdoor exhibition and bushwalk. I started to squee with excitement as the possibilities coalesced in my mind. I need to get in touch with the trustees of a local wildlife sanctuary and see if Dawn’s idea would be possible.The images of future work are tumbling through my mind at a rate of knots and and and…

I will keep you posted.

You might remember I made a small sculpture called ‘Silence’  I have been wanting to make her some sisters for a long time now but I have always had the excuse, that I don’t have anywhere to make larger sculptures stopping me from starting. Now I know that I don’t need to make large sculptures at all. Silence’s sisters can be now be made because they only need to be about  tweve inches or so high. YAY.

Could you imagine just walking along and finding Silence and her sister “The despair of the Goddess” just sitting there underneath a tree. When you walk further along the bush track there is a bowl with the words useless residue inscribed into it. Or a shell covered with graffiti. Squeeee!

I still need to write my research project but I will think about that tomorrow. Right now I am off to make some phonecalls.

National foods has decided it is only going to pay Tasmanian Dairy farmers less than 21 cents a litre for their milk. While it costs a dairy farmer about 39 cents a litre to produce a litre of milk.

Documents tendered at the senate inquiry in Canberra showed that National foods was increasing prices to wholesale consumers of it’s milk using the excuse that farm gate prices were rising, when in fact National foods was cutting the price it pays to farmers.

Now normally farmers don’t go out and physically protest about poor working conditions, they just get on with the job and do the best they can. Our farmers must be terribly desperate to ask consumers to boycott Pura Milk. So as a sign of solidarity I certainly will stop buying Pura milk.

Try saying that title without any teeth,heh. My mouth is healing up nicely and I have been able to wear my teeth for 3-4 hours at a time now. The small steps are working for me and my natural confidence is slowly returning, as is my tendency to make fun of myself. I didn’t realize how much I had missed those two qualities of mine, until I had to face the world toothless without them.

The date for the exhibition has been set, yay. It will be held at Eco Haven’s Gallery 71, which is in Murray street, near the corner of Liverpool street, right in the middle of Hobart. The opening will be on Wednesday the 25th of November. I will publish a copy of the invite closer to the date and of course you are all invited to the opening.

I should be well and truly used to my teeth by then, so I dont think my sleep will be too disturbed by nightmare visions of me trying to intelligently discuss my work and my teeth flying out mid sentence.I don’t think I could really disguise something like that as performance art either, do you?

Two words have been going around and around in my head for a couple of days now and they are Useless Residue. These words were used to describe some leatherwood trees and other minor species that were recently logged on Bruny island. Leatherwoods only grow in Tasmania and are responsible for the state’s iconic leatherwood honey. I am sure the beekeepers wouldn’t describe them as useless residue.*sigh*

Useless residue, useless residue, I just cant get them out of my head as those two words seem to me, to epitomise, the slash and burn attitude that is prevalent here in Tasmania. It is a crime against humanity that magnificent, pristine ancient forests are woodchipped and the obviously not useless residue is then set on fire by helicopters dropping napalm in a so-called regeneration burn.

The total devastation of vast tracts of native Tasmanian bush makes my soul bleed and I fully support these young people who are protesting against the destruction on my behalf and on behalf of my grandchildren.

So with the words useless residue spinning around in my head I made another large bowl yesterday and wrote on it. I think my handbuilt work that I exhibit in November will have a very strong environmental theme. It wont be as “in your face” as Boganvillainy was last year, but there will be a strong environmental message in there nevertheless.

I think about making pots all the time.Everything I do somehow seems to lead back to ceramics.I will be doing the laundry and the swirl of the soap bubbles will spin me off into a daydream about decoration. When we bought my new combustion stove home last week, I was thrilled to discover it had a slidy-outy ash tray thingy. My first thought on seeing that was, “Oh yeah! Now I can really get some good, pristine ash for a glaze.”

It is the same with my photographs. I was cloud watching the other evening and as I was photographing the sky my brain was busily skipping along on ceramic tangents.”Mmm a bold orange streak on a blue background, now that would work.Why didn’t I think of that before? Look at those colours, they work beautifully together. Oh look is that a dragon,why do I see dragons all the time? The Chinese made cool dragons,I wish I could make a dragon. I must make a ceramic horse as well, I wonder if I could slipcast one? And on and on it goes. The inside of my head is a very busy place.

The spouse will see me photographing the sky and draw my attention to a cloud he thinks I will like, but he isn’t privy to the racing torrent of ideas that fill my head with ceramic dreams.He thinks I just like clouds.

I borrowed a book from the library a few weeks ago on Innuit Women Artists. I didn’t get much of a chance to do anything other than skim through the book, quickly glancing at the photographs of their work. But a thought occurred to me and it richocheted loudly around in my head for days.These women make what they see, their art is inspired by what they see everyday.

Finally everything has started to fall into place for me artistically.I have started to make some large bowls and platters that have some guts, that work, that I actually really like and enjoy making, simply because I haven’t been making against my nature. (yay)

The piece of firewood inspired the large bowl that is shown next to it.

Here is a dragon in the sky, also this is similar to the orange and blue colour combination that I mentioned earlier.

I really like this photo because it is pretty but also because it inspires me to make a bowl with wibbly edges, all curvy and roundish.

This final shot of the moon could inspire a whole series of its own.

The weather is always a nice safe subject. A slightly bland or even somewhat boring topic of conversation, but definitely a safe subject. On the other hand if I was to talk about cholesterol and my husband I might venture away from safe and start frothing at the mouth and twitching.

Just a little bit, mind you.

I wrote on my about me page, that ‘The Spouse’ and I have been together for 22 years and I love him very much, he is my best friend. BUT, I do have my alibi prepared for the day that he finally pushes me over the edge.

Well that edge is a lot closer today than it has been for a while and I can’t decide whether to finish ‘his royal stubbornness’ off myself, or just give up and let him eat all the food that he likes and his heart will just go pop anyway. Death by deep fried fish seems a much simpler way to go.

Hmmm decisions, decisions.

Now back to the nice safe topic of the weather.

Wild weather lashes Tassie.

I can’t remember the last time I cooked two proper evening meals in a row. By proper I mean healthy and balanced.

In the last few months of Mum’s illness I was stretched really, really thinly as Mum had become less able to do all the stuff healthy people take for granted. Simple things like changing the sheets on her bed had become akin to climbing Everest.

Everything fell by the wayside, as the physical demands of caring for my Mum didn’t leave any time left over for secondary shit like my own housework or cooking. I am an indifferent housekeeper at the best of times and indifferent quickly turned to non-existent.

After Mum died everything became a major effort and for a couple of weeks I suffered a massive case of the couldn’t be bothereds.Cooking? Bleh. Housework? Who gives a fuck, shut the door. I just could not be bothered doing much of anything.

And then it started to rain and it rained and rained and rained. The dreadful grey wetness of winter nearly did my head in. Please remind me of that, when I have to buy water this summer and I am stressing out about bushfire.

Last week The Spouse was splitting wood and he developed a painful tightness in his chest. To cut a long story short, it wasn’t a heart attack as there wasn’t any of the hormone blah blah blah in his blood which indicates damage to the heart muscle,phew.

The Spouse is off to the cardiologists tomorrow for a stress test which will give us a clearer picture of what exactly is going on. His cholesterol levels were high at 7.8, which is enough to statistically give him the chances of  1 in 50 of suffering a fatal heart attack.

So now my control freak tendencies can really be let loose up on my family. The Spouse needs to lower his cholesterol and all the food choices he makes from now on will be supervised by yours truly.It is well past time that I dusted off the pots and pans and started cooking again. As soon as I hit publish I am going to make a large pot of  fish soup for tea.

If the tooth be told having multiple extractions wasn’t too bad.Dentists today are much nicer than the evil butchers that were about when I was a child. We stopped for a bit of a rest halfway through and I only needed stitches in a couple of spots.

My shiny plastic choppers were placed in my mouth and after about 15 minutes of face washing, deep breathing and generally getting my shit together,I was able to drive myself home.The Spouse rode shotgun though, just in case.

We made it safely home and I have been getting a little bit better every day.The false teeth are incredibly painful to wear for long but I was able to keep them in for two and a half hours yesterday and I keep on thinking small steps Kimmy. Small steps.

The first time I looked in the mirror at my toothless reflection I began to cry. I looked so different.Old and ugly and alien.I wanted to ring my mother and have Mum make it all better.*sigh*

I have been feeling as vulnerable and grief stricken as I was in the first few days following the funeral and I don’t like it. I don’t like crying, I don’t like feeling vulnerable and I certainly don’t like the bathroom mirror at the moment.

Small steps Kimmy. Small steps.

Mum’s house is definitely on the market now, it was advertised in Thursday’s paper. The real estate agent has been showing people through the house all week and it is impossible to pretend that it isn’t happening any more. All I can do is hope that a nice young couple buy it and are happy there.

So this week has been a huge week emotionally for me and I am desperately seeking positives to cling to so that my head doesn’t explode, because that just wouldn’t be pretty.

Here I sit trying to think of something to say. But the words, mashed banana mashed banana are going around and around in my head. Damn those Wiggles

Thankyou for your kind wishes, stories and smart arse comments.

I am fine. A bit ‘spinny-outy’ from the pain meds but remarkably lisp-free.

More later. xox

The end is nigh. The point of no return. The grand finale.

This is where you, the reader can feel free to insert whatever dramatic quote you like. I was thinking of a bit of Dylan Thomas myself. Or even a bit of Shakespeare, the bard is always handy for a descriptive word or two.

Not into poetic quotes? What about a Doors song then? ‘ The End’ seems remarkably apt.

Scratching your head yet? Wondering what on earth I am blathering on about this time?

Sorry.

Fear makes me a little more scatterbrained than usual.

Today, in approximately three hours I am having all my teeth taken out. The whole twelve of them that I have left that is. All my teeth will be unceremoniously yanked out. One by painful one. Then I will be sent home with a brand new set of shiny plastic choppers.

So what are you doing today my lovelies?

Tell me a story to cheer me up. Come out of lurkerdom and say “Hello Kimmy”

It would be very nice to come home from the dentist and be totally distracted from the pain and the dreadful lisp by your fantastic comments. It would be especially nice to see where some of my lurkers come from.

If you need me in the next two hours or so, I will be hiding under the bed.Shhhh.