Clay – Page 20 – Bridget Macklin

I spent Tuesday evening with a fabulous group of people at the Royal Opera Arcade Gallery in Pall Mall. It was the private view of a sculpture and ceramics exhibition in which I had been invited to have seven pieces. The gallery was full – of wonderful art and super people. I arrived thinking that this was it – I had arrived! In actual fact there is something horribly daunting about putting one’s work into a gallery such as this. I suppose part of the problem is that while making a piece you get to know it intimately. I spend hours and hours on each of my pieces and when they are finished I know they are not perfect. I am fully aware of each of their little foibles. I can convince myself, in the privacy of my own studio, that they will do but then I have the stupid idea that it would be good to send them off to a public space and expect everyone to think they are amazing. When did I get so smug?

The thing is, as soon as I walked into the gallery, the feeling of smugness evaporated faster than frost on a warm winter morning. There they were, crouching among some truly fantastic works. Was anyone even looking at mine? Did anyone think they were any good? Was anyone actually thinking about them at all!

As the evening wore on, my nerves settled down a bit and I could see that people were taking notice of my work and that some did appear to be appreciative rather than just curious. Later my darling daughter tried out her amateur psychology on me. Do I trust her? Yes. Does she like my work? She says so! Therefore if I have no confidence in my work I am questioning her judgement. Well . . . . . . . . I know she loves me and wants me to be happy so she is hardly likely to tell me there and then in the middle of a private view that my work is by no means the best there, is she?

The fact of the matter is that I think anyone who runs the risk of exposing themselves by putting work into the public arena is going to worry about it. These are my babies; nurtured and brought to life by me. I desperately need them to be admired and yet, until the reach the plinth I have only my judgement to go on and of course I am biased. I am told these fears are called brain weasels. Yesterday, they were eating me from the inside out!

collaboration 1 — Collaboration 1 awaiting firing

Collaboration – the action of working with someone to produce something. What a lovely idea, especially when I might otherwise be inclined to drift a bit post diploma with no specific project in mind. So just when I thought there was no life after City Lit along come two people, quite independently of each other, wishing to work with me.

Actually, if I am totally honest, the project with Trevor Ruddock Black had been on the back burner for a bit whilst I made it to the end of the course, but this week is the first time that I have begun to think seriously about it. Trevor paints in oils. He makes vibrant abstract paintings on a very large scale and with fantastic texture. A little while ago we discussed the possibility of creating complimentary three dimensional pieces and so this week I started exploring how we might do that. Of course foremost in my mind was how to get a cast of his paintings without destroying them in the first place. Funnily enough that seems to have been the easy bit! The painting has survived completely unscathed. Phew! Next came the difficulty of working with a great many undercuts which normally make it impossible to take a good cast from a mould. Lets just say that I am working on that. But the good news is that, at least on a small scale, I have almost cracked it – please excuse the awful pun! And now I have a small box which is a copy of Trevor’s painting awaiting firing. I can’t wait to see the results. The next step is to think about colour – I could pass the box over to Trevor for that bit, or I could do something which compliments his painting. The one thing I know for sure is that I am not going to copy his art!

Then, out of the blue, I was approached by a sculptor wanting help with casting porcelain. Her project sounds really interesting and we met for the first time to discuss it yesterday. I am full of hope for another interesting partnership.

Meanwhile, this week marked the first every meeting of the City Lit Ceramics Diploma Alumni 2015 reunion. More on that anon, but it is great to know that we have each other in this time of transition and the thought that we are already planning our first group exhibition post graduation fills me with excitement. Not sure where or when but we will Re-turn. Sorry, more awful puns!

I feel so lucky to be surrounded by people who are in one way or another supporting my quest to become an artist. I never realised that I needed people so much as I have over the past couple of years and I cannot end this post without saying thank you to my best friend, the person who, over the past couple of years, has demonstrated the most amazing capacity to support, understand, wait, cajole, cook supper and keep the house from becoming a health hazard.

I do not think being on your own between study and next step would be good for anyone but I certainly feel pretty blessed. Go Team!

Tag Archives: Clay

A Serious Attack of Brain Weasles

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