Author Archives: Bridget Macklin

I am an artist working in the field of ceramics creating fragile porcelain pieces which are inspired by the environment or by peoples relationships with the environment and with each other and which often incorporate finds to support their narrative.

A little bit of a Muse

I picked up The Muse by Jessica Burton the other day.  I bought it because it was in the Sunday Times best sellers list and I needed to read something by somebody new.  It is different to many books that I have read in the past and I am enjoying it greatly.  What I had not expected was that it might resonate with my own thoughts quite so much.

I am left with little choice this week but to quote from it:

When I began receiving public acknowledgement for a private act, something was essentially lost.  My writing became an axis upon which all my identity and happiness hinged.  It was now outward looking, a self-conscious performance.  I was asked to repeat the pleasure again and again, until the facsimile of my act became the act itself.

I know exactly how this character is feeling!  A friend spotted it in me a couple of weeks back and asked what I was planning to do about it.  The truth is that I have no idea.

 

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Whilst it is hugely flattering that people like my work, I am easily bored and I fear it will soon be time to move on.

I am hugely excited and flattered that people like my current work but success brings some weird emotions.  I want to make for myself!  I miss the devil-may-care attitude and I feel cramped by the prescriptiveness of what I am making.  I broke my New Year’s resolution to include something experimental in each firing within about 3 weeks because I was working so hard to satisfy the demand for my work.

 

I am dreadfully aware of how ungrateful this sounds and I am sorry for that but I confess to being scared at the moment that this is who I am.  I have come up with an idea that people seem to like and now I am stuck on a production line.

To miss-quote Jessica Burton,

I have forgotten the genesis of my impulse; unbothered, pure creation, existing outside the parameters of success and failure.

I appreciate that this must seem rather conceited but I am easily bored and I have a feeling that it might be almost time to beat a retreat and start again before I forget why I make things.   Who am I?

New Friends

One of the very first things that I did when I moved the studio to Cornwall was to join the Cornwall ceramics and Glass Group.  It seemed to me to be really important to be involved with what is happening locally when I am no longer working in a large group studio with all the benefits that come with being part of a close knit team.  Having joined I signed up for a masterclass with Richard Phethean.  I was eager to meet other members of the group and to try and make some new friends.

In a way it was an odd event for me to sign up for.  Richard works in Terra Cotta, I use porcelain.  He throws, I build by hand.  He decorates with slips, I do not. His work is completely different, stunningly beautiful and fabulously exciting.

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Richard makes thrown, altered and thrown pieces in terra cotta.

Yet I am confident in my belief that you always learn something from demonstrations exhibitions and visits even if you think there is no connection between your practice and the one on show and I was certainly not disappointed by this day.  Richard shared a number of his tricks of the trade during the day, including tips on joining, cutting on an angle and application of slip each of which got me thinking about what I do in terms of joining and cutting.  Why don’t I alter my pieces?  What would happen if I fired my work to a different temperature?  How about making slips and washes from my found materials and applying them to the surfaces of my work?  And if I do, what would it look like if I combined the tricks shown by Richard for using newsprint to mask areas off with the tricks that I was taught by Annie Turner?  One day I definitely think I need to start cutting into my work and overlapping things.

 

But it was some of his more ‘general’ remarks which will stay with me, two of which struck a particular chord.

 

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Slip decoration using newsprint masking.

 

When he was talking about the way that his work changes and develops over time he said that ‘you know when you are getting tired with it because you can’t be bothered to open the kiln.’  That very morning I had popped into the studio to collect something and walked straight past the kiln without opening it.  I suspect that it is time for a shift!

Later, when he was summing up, he began to talk about the need to walk through the world with your eyes open and of having the freedom to follow a path.  He described how visual stimuli tend to ‘go in through your head and out through your hands’.  I like that.  I just hope that my work reflects it.

 

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For sale – I now have my very own piece.

The entire day was fascinating and I even bought my very own Richard Phethean piece home with me as a prompt for all the things it made me think about.

 

I think membership of the group is going to be a really good experience for me.  I am hugely looking forward to the next masterclass, which features The Japanese artist Taja who makes hand built porcelain pieces, from which I anticipate gaining more insight into the way others think about their practice.   Oh and I would also like to thank the lovely man who shared his lunch with me when I discovered that I had left my sandwiches lying on the kitchen work surface at home!