ceramic art – Page 39 – Bridget Macklin

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!

028 — 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

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!’

My instant response to the above question is yes, of course it does! But hang on a second, if that is the case how do we explain the success of Du Champ’s Read Mades, or Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes. Surely there is not a lot of skill there – anyone can plonk a box of cleaning materials on a plinth or screw a urinal to the wall. And yet these pieces are universally recognised as great, much talked about and very well known pieces of art. So maybe skill does not matter at all. If that is the case then, why does going to art college seem so important? Why am I spending every free moment working on technique and glaze chemistry?

Anish Kapoor Marsyas 2002 07 — Anish Kapoor, Marsyas. 2002

Artists like Damien Hurst and Anish Kapoor employ a workshop full of artists to make for them. I remember having a fierce argument with a fellow student when studying at Bath Spa where I maintained that it was cheating if, as an artist, you did not actually make the work. Several years on I have changed my point of view. I find myself appreciating that there is skill in the idea and that it might be better if someone with more technical acumen actually executed that idea according to your instructions. If, as an artist, your piece requires a considerable degree of careful mould making or engineering then perhaps there is justification in getting a skilled technician to follow your design brief. Does this mean that the work is yours or theirs? If the work of art is about the idea and the semiotics within that idea are yours, then isn’t that a high level artistic skill?

I suppose that as a ceramic artist, much of the “art” is in the tactile nature of the material and in the making. In which case, surely ceramics requires the artist to be the maker. yet, on reflection, maybe that also rather depends. An artist who relies on their skill on the wheel to throw vessels must surely get their hands dirty and ‘feel the clay’. But even here, they might only be the ideas person who, having given shape to the idea , would chose to pass it on to others to follow instructions. Who, then, is the artist?

As I get drawn further into my course I become more and more aware of what I can’t do! What of the skills which I lack – do they matter? Or am I going to reach a point when I decide that I know what I want but it would be best; more successful; less wasteful of time and resources if my staff made the work for me?

My gut feeling is that I will never tire of getting my arms sunk to the elbows in buckets of mud, nor of exploring its behaviour for myself and that, for me, the ideas belong to the artist but, in my case at least, so does the clay!

Tag Archives: ceramic art

Moving on . . .

Does Skill Matter?