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.

Procrastination

procrastinationWhen I was the mother of teenage children I found myself in a regular conflict zone.  I am blessed with two wonderful offspring who have always been very different in everything they do and think.  Their attitude to revision and coursework while studying for GCSE and A level exams was at the opposite ends of the spectrum and I was stuck in the middle as they were both aiming for public exams at the same time.  I remember the daily mantra of advising one that it was time for a rest break whilst the other was constantly on the receiving end of my nagging to go and get some work done, followed several hours later by him coming downstairs to tell me that he had spent the time re-planning his schedule.  The inevitable result being that he had now got several hours fewer in which to do the actual work – and so it went, day after day!

And now, here I sit, knowing that the final semester is well under way and finding all the time in the world not to get on with the work.  I have even been contemplating cleaning the house! So it was a well deserved kick up the backside to be told in a tutorial on Thursday to ‘stop mucking about and just make’  I know, I know!  But I have been caught in a circle of indecision. So this is the week! . . .  half term from teaching gives me 3 whole, precious days in which to trawl round the V&A ceramics department, plan a schedule, get to Cornwall and gather images, clay, organic materials to add to glazes, paint the changing colours of the water, write a 4000 word essay, plan my glaze technology for this semester, visit a great looking exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, pop down to Bath and buy some more clay and oxides . . . . I think I can feel a couple of  hours planning my schedule coming on.

I really need to add Fiona Byrne-Sutton to my list for this week!

Actually I have not been completely inactive:  I have been doing some testing and I am currently waiting for the kiln to come down so that I can see whether anything good is going on at all.  That is part of the trouble with ceramics; everything takes so long before you know what to do next.  But I have collected a number of bags of vegetation from my bit of Cornwall and turned them into ash which has been sieved and tested to stoneware and I have been making a few trial pieces but the problem with ‘grunge’ is that it takes for ever before it can even enter the kiln.  I am following the instructions provided in a wonderful book by Miranda Forrest which I was given for Christmas and which I am finding very inspiring.  It gives some great ideas as to how to test natural materials.  At the back of the book there are a number of artists who work with these kinds of ideas, including Fiona Byrne-Sutton.  She is not an artist whose work I know but I need to seek her out and see her work for real because I think the images are incredible.  Perhaps I should add that to my list  . . .

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P.S. I love you, Son, and I know exactly where you were coming from!

Moving on . . .

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A huge pot to put things in!

Every time I finish a good book I find that I need a period of mourning before I can begin another one.  Sometimes it lasts for weeks and I find myself feeling completely indifferent to the idea of picking up another one, unless it happens to be relate to the one that I have just read.  At long last I have realised that this is what happens when I finish a project in ceramics too.  There is a period when I cannot make – don’t even want to make – anything for the next project.  I feel stuck!  In this particular case I have now spent a couple of weeks observing my fellow students getting cracking on their next ideas with envy.  My tutors tell me that it ought to be clear to me which way my work is going, my colleagues seem to think it is pretty obvious too.  I am in little doubt either, I just don’t really want to get going.  I need to work this thing through.  It is like waiting for a train during a rail strike.  I know one will turn up eventually but I have no idea when and I am utterly aware that it might not even be going my way when it does roll in.  This feeling sets off a sensation of considerable restlessness within me.  I want to get going but I can’t start.  I am missing the comfort of the last project and yearning for something to get my teeth into but I cannot decide what.  I feel unsettled and turbulent.  I guess that the unpredictability of almost everything else in my life does not help but I would like to think that would encourage me to immerse myself in my ceramics.  Instead of which my heart and lungs have had the benefit – I walked all the way round Richmond Park yesterday; the larder has benefitted – there are 26 jars of marmalade cooling in the kitchen as I write; the garden has benefitted – the Rambling Rector is much reduced in size, the neighbours can see out again, the flower beds are almost tidy and I can see where the gaps that need filling are because the dead stuff from last summer has finally made it to the green bin!

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The perfect clay?
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A lovely Irishman gave me this clay.

I have not been completely idle from a ceramics point of view. I know that my ‘grungy work’ is never going to be permitted to sit quietly on a shelf in any kiln at college so I have thrown a huge saggar to fire all my work in,  I have also begun to experiment with some clay which I found in Cornwall over the New Year.  It came out of the ground a delicious ochre colour with great plasticity so imagine my surprise and delight when I fired a piece to discover that it doesn’t melt at stoneware, rather it goes a rich red/brown and self-glazes.  I couldn’t believe my luck – the perfect clay????  Then I walked past a group of labourers on Kingsway who were loading clay from a foundation which they were digging into a skip.  I stopped and asked if I could have some of it and after some slightly strange looks a gorgeous young Irishman gave me as much clay as I could carry and a bag to put it in!  Grunge work coming up soon I hope . . . . . .

Wonderfully evocative work by Fred Gatley
Cup on Base, Gillian Lowndes, 1986.

I have also been looking at other artists who use found clay in their work.  I love the way that Fred Gatley uses clay from Deptford Creek to create evocative landscape pieces.  His simple use of a plinth and a contrasting bowl is incredibly effective.  Here he describes his method of  working for an exhibition at the gallery Bils and Rye in Yorkshire:

 “Within each piece, I strive to achieve a balance of form, scale, structure and texture, producing work that has an understated visual richness set against a feeling of quiet simplicity.” http://www.bilsandrye.com/

And of course, the doyenne of found objects in ceramics was Gilliam Lowndes.  What can one say about her gorgeous piece, Cup On Base except ‘Wow!’