During the Ceramics Diploma, at City Lit, last year we learned a few of the tutors’ personal mantras. This week I have been in the studio for every free moment. I am currently making work for The Great Northern Contemporary Crafts Fair and a Sculpture & Ceramics exhibition in the Royal Opera Arcade Gallery off Pall Mall, both of which are taking place next month . There is a lot to make as I want to show as many representative pieces from my post-diploma ideas as possible. All week one of the diploma mantras has been running round my head to such an extent that I think I am now saying it in my sleep.
Ceramics diploma: Coil project, year 1.
My first hand built piece for the course was, frankly, looking back on it, an embarrassment. I think I even felt so at the time but now, two years on, it shames me. So I am doing myself a bit of cathartic good by showing it here!
If we ignore the fact that I did not know then that mixing tin oxide and chrome oxide results in a very nasty colour, I look at this piece now and hang my head – what was I thinking?
Well time has moved on. I now have two years of Annie Turner’s wise words – It’s all about the edges – running through my head. It is very true. You can get away with a multitude of sins if the eye goes straight to a good looking profile. It doesn’t matter what the edge is; it can be bevelled, flat, thik, thin, what ever you like. But if you get it wrong; uneven, thicker in some places than others, it takes away from everything else that you are trying to achieve.
Hours of work is now going into my edges.
I have sweated over my edges a great deal this week and I know they are not in any sense perfect. But I do believe they are coming. And I firmly believe that Annie is right – you can hide a lot if your edges look good. My latest pieces do look a million times better thanks to the edges. So now it is simply a case of getting everything else to match them. I only need to concentrate on the shape and balance of the piece, the surfaces, the glazing – all whilst not losing sight of the importance of the edges. So there is very little now to do before I start making masterpieces! Approximately another 10,000 hours should just about do it!
All through my ceramics diploma course I have been telling myself that it was the course, not the results which were important and I still hold to that very strongly. On the other hand when a dull, buff coloured envelope (which might have been from the Inland Revenue except that I don’t think they write addresses by hand) arrived this week I was curious. These days letters are a rarity and those addressed by hand smell of intrigue. I ripped it open and instantly recognised the format of the paper work inside. Before I could read any of the results I stopped – I wanted to remind myself of my claim. Results don’t matter. The comments on these flimsy sheets would mean much more than any percentage figures, wouldn’t they? Apparently not! Thanks to the perverse workings of my brain I could, if I wished to, tell you all of the percentages on those sheets right now. I shan’t! But I cannot tell you a single comment without reading them again.
I have bust several guts in the process of getting from one end of the course to the other. My husband has had to take over all the cooking in order not to starve . There have been weeks of sleepless nights. I have tossed and turned or, worse, got up and paced the house, because I could not resolve some problem. We in the know called it ‘Pot Anxiety’ and all of us suffered from it at one time or another. The diploma has entered not only the pores of my skin and the underneath of my finger nails but also the very fabric of my dreams. For what? To excel. To do my very best. To understand as much as I possibly could before time was ‘up’ and I had to go it alone. It really wasn’t so that I could reach for my calculator and confirm what I already knew. I would frankly have been ashamed if I had been awarded better marks – I was less pleased with my final exhibition that anyone else could have been. I knew that my ideas were only partially resolved so it should be absolutely no surprise.
As a professional teacher I have always worked to a very strict mark scheme. For a time I was a Moderator for one of the public examination boards at GCSE level and the Internal Verifier for a set of school BTEC courses. I learned, through a process of rigorous training, how to allocate marks and how certain criteria represented a particular grade. On the other hand, I have now had the luck/privilege to undertake 5 courses in Higher Education institutions and I cannot resist making a bit of a comparison.
My experience of tertiary education has been truly amazing. In addition I have long maintained that, as a teacher, it is important for me to sit on both sides of the desk and to understand how it feels to be on the receiving end of things for a while. I shall value the knowledge, understanding and personal development which I have gained from a long series of excellent tutors, whose wisdom and comments I have truly enjoyed, for ever. But I do think there is a bit of a hole in the world of Higher Education which could do with some filling. In my view, English schools are streets ahead on the topic of marking. Their schemes are scrutinised to the ‘nth’ degree. Marking is checked, peer reviewed, externally moderated and sometimes reviewed again. Those young people who are lucky enough to be awarded a particular grade in this summer’s public exams can be confident that their marks mean something very clear and they can be extremely proud of their achievements. I wish I could say the same of some of the tertiary marks which I have had the luck to obtain. I would love to see a much clearer correspondence between mark-scheme criteria achieved, comments and actual marks. Perhaps it is appropriate that those people who are gaining ‘school stage education’, and for whom a particular range of results can be life changing, it is the marking which must be particularly rigorous. Whilst, once one reaches the Higher Education level, it is the quality of the learning and the skills gained which mean so much more. Yet I wonder whether, if the two levels of institution got together, the one might learn off the other to the benefit of all.
One thing, though. I have expended so much effort on being adventurous and experimental on this course that I can see now that I lost sight of the value of the balanced proportions and clear aesthetics in a top quality piece. I rather wish that one of my tutors had pointed that out to me instead of it dawning on me once the dust had settled and I had tucked myself up in my own little studio to make under no pressure and, thanks to the knowledge gained on the course, with much more pleasing results.
I believe this is so much more pleasing to look at than anything that I made for the final show. The best idea came too late!
Bridget Macklin 