Diabolical Clay

I may as well get the UFO out of the way. I am a tad peeved because the bloody thing buggered up a half decent sunset shot by hovering and being all beamy and reflective. It is also quite annoying that I now have the Startrekking song song stuck in my head as well. Bloody Aliens…

Can you see the rectanglular beam of light? That is my accidental Alien spaceship. You can right click on the photo and click view image for a better look.

Now back to the Zombies.

Once I started to have a proper look for evidence of zombies lurking in the hospital, the signs were everywhere. Zombie hunting is a bit like being pregnant. You don’t notice pregnant women until you are pregnant yourself and then it seems like every second woman is preggers as well.

Scratch marks on the walls where a zombie has dragged away a protesting victim.

In every lift the floors and levels were clearly labelled. Except for  the one that we used….

I crept out of the lift and very carefully continued on my way.

I didn’t want to go down this hallway but I knew that If I wanted proof positive I had to continue…

Finally I was nearing the end of my search. I was feeling a bit dizzy by now and I wondered if it was some sort of anti-zombie spray…

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK I had found them…

TO BE CONTINUED……………

We are off to an appointment at the hospital today.I doubt that I will be able to get any photographs of lurking zombies though. Our appointment is in the newer, pastel coloured part of the hospital and everyone knows that zombies can’t stand pastels.

Updated: The appointment was yesterday and I actually managed to get photographic evidence that there are zombies in the hospital. The signs were everywhere if you knew what you were looking for. I will post them later on…

Right now back to the original post. Focus.Focus.Focus!

I am really quite excited about this year in Ceramics. I am doing an advanced diploma and that basically means that I get to choose what work I want to do, without being restricted by all the extra course requirements that were superfluous to my needs as a ceramic artist, like Occupational Health and Safety and that sort of crap…

I had to write a proposal outlining what I wanted to achieve this year and this next bit is a paragraph from that proposal..

I intend to develop a wholistic approach to my ceramic work, fully embracing both thrown and slipcast forms as integral to my artistic practice. At the moment I see my thrown work and my slipcast work as two very separate bodies of work. I am interested to see whether or not this changes during the course of the year. If it does change it will be interesting to see, how and when the lines begin to blur and my work develops into a distinct and recognizable style of its own..

My keywords for this year are, FOCUS AND RESOLUTION.

I sometimes think that I have undiagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder because, by jingies it is incredibly hard for me to stay focused on one thing at a time. For example I will see something that inspires me  and my brain whizzes off on a zillion tangents, all filled with unlimited possibilities for future work.  I will have spent half an hour or so thinking about all the lovely things that could be made and not actually doing any real work.  One consolation is that my ‘ideas book’  is filled with enough ideas to keep me going for the next ten years.

I will be having a mini exhibition in a small space at Tafe in July for a week. I am going to exhibit thrown plates and slipcast porcelain tumblers with some of my photos that were the inspitration for the decoration of the work. I am going to include Jientje’s tumblers that she won in my “cheering myself up” contest.

This mini exhibition is a very good way for me to focus on a body of work and prepare myself for a small no pressure exhibition, that should have a lot of positive outcomes for me personally as an artist.

It will be the first time I have shown my photos, (apart from here on the internets) and I am shit scared of very keen to get feedback from the photographic students and teachers on the quality of my photos.

I am also interested to see how the images and ceramic forms work together and I hope the whole thing isn’t a total disaster because My friend Sue and I are planning on having a joint exhibition together in September or October. I have based my half of the application for exhibition space on the idea of needing wall space as well as floor space and I just hope my photos look good enough to show, eeeek..

Cheers Kim..

It feels like  time is travelling at an impossibly fast rate. The days seem to be sneakily getting shorter (and not just because it is Autumn either.) I am sure that some days are conspiring with each other and managing to just vanish.

Pfffffttt!!!! Gone in a blaze of almostness.

Like Hello, it is Tuesday already. What happened to Monday? I only just published my weekly winners a minute ago and now it is Tuesday?

Gah!!!! Something is going on but, mind you if I was a day of the week, I would probably try to vanish as well if I had to be a Monday.

I mean honestly what sort of a name is  Monday? Munnday? At least Wednesday has  tricky spelling to trip the unwary and Sunday has the promise of a good lie in even when it isn’t sunny..

Enough of that drivel. I need to get my internal dialogue under control. Thinking about that sort of stuff is probably why my days sneak off  anyway. Now Monday has probably gone and gotten all huffy with me, just because  I wanted to know what a Munn was?

You watch, next week it will be Thursday all of a sudden and then I will be really confused. *sigh*

Ceramics! Yay!

I had to type that in order to control myself and get back on track.

This year is all about Focus. Focus and Resolution.

But it is hard to focus on earthly things like housework and making pots, when I am so close to discovering where they keep the Zombies..

I am pretty sure there are Zombies at the Royal Hobart hospital. Mum and I have been traipsing all through the hospital lately. Up corridors and down elevators.There are lots of places in the hospital where you could stash a few Zombies and no-one would ever notice.

Ever.

Unless of course they escaped.

There are lots of closed off sections, with crumbling plaster ceilings and faded yellow tile walls, that look like they could have been used as a set for a Frances Farmer movie.

The last time that Veronica was with us we had to venture down into the dank depths of the hospital to make an appointment for a bone-scan. We had travelled deeper and deeper into the bowels of the hospital, passing locked rooms with innocent looking labels on the doors. Hmmm? Camera room? I wonder if that is where they filmed bits of Shawn of the dead?

We were getting further and further away from the modern section of the hospital. There wasn’t a pastel coloured wall in sight. Veronica and I were loudly discussing discreetly pondering the possibility of Zombies, when we suddenly came to an abrupt halt at a reception cubicle.  The receptionist (who looked uncannily similar to Norman Bate’s Mother, btw)  didn’t look pleased to see us at all. She was barely civil as she made Mum’s appointment and you could tell,that she knew, that we knew about the zombies. It was a good thing there were three of us,(and a baby) or we mightn’t have gotten out of there quite so easily…

I will try and get some photographic evidence next week when we go in for Mum’s chemo..

Ceramics Yay..

This year is going to be an exciting year in the Ceramic Studio.Very Exciting. But the zombies have exhausted my supply of words and I need to get off my bum and actually do some work..

Cheers Kim

This week has just raced by and once again it is my pleasure to share some of my winners for the week. Brought to you as per usual by Lotus our hostess with the mostest… Yay!!!

Lets get the sour grapes out of the way first. Shall we?

The winners of The Bloggies were announced last week and the winner of the Best Australian Weblog was, Girl With a Satchel. Congratulations to  the writers of GWAS but if this webmag  is representative of an Australian blog then Australian blogging is in very bad shape.  We may as well all give up now and  go home and read out of date ‘New Ideas’ and drool over the celebrities of the moment.*sigh*

Girl With a Satchel is very slick and professionally put together but that is nothing less, than what I would expect from an ezine with this as its blurb.

If you want information on celebrities, or need help finding just the right shade of pretty pink lipstick, then Girl With a Satchel is the place to be.

But if you want to read stories written by real Australians. Stories that will make you cry, nod  your head in recognition or laugh so much that you snort coffee out your nose. Then go and read these ladies, the other finalists in the best Australian categories..

Kelley from Magneto Bold Too

Tiff from My Three Ring Circus

Veronica from Sleepless Nights.

Tokyo Girl Down Under was a finalist as well..

Ok now for the Chemotherapy. Mum had her second infusion of chemotherapy drugs yesterday. Mum’s cancer has decided that it doesnt want to be confined to her lungs. Oh no. This cancer has decided to go out and colonise the world and fuck things up, much like the British did in centuries past.

I just keep on getting images of a teenage skinhead in ‘bovva boots’ stomping about the place. *sigh* Except that it is a toxic cocktail of chemicals that is doing all the stomping. Laying waste to my Mother’s immune system, in the hope of shrinking the tumours so that we can have just a little bit more time.

Oh and the bad back, well that would be me. I have spent the past week or so hobbling and shuffling around like an old woman. But I am much better now and if anything it has made me empathise a bit more with how Mum must be feeling. Because there is nothing quite like a touch of serious pain now and then to make you apreciate the joys of  walking about pain free..

There are two photos of an orb spider in this week’s winners. This spider lives just outside my front door. Every night her web gets totally destroyed by large moths and every night she repairs her web. I took these photos with a flash at night and I like how they have turned out. Once again if you scroll past her really fast you might not notice her at all… cheers  Kim.

ps. there is a photo of a baby in here somewhere as well…

Here is a photo that my Mum sent me last night. Apparently Amy thought it was great fun to jump into her Great Grandmother’s freshly made bed.

This week is a spider free edition of Weekly Winners. There were clear skies all week and the full moon was amazing. To see more weekly winners just go on over to Lotus and say hello…