Tag Archives: found clay

Its Right In Front of You, Stoopid!

Well, if you talk like that, of course you can’t!

Weeks and weeks of apparent brain ache are about to be over.  I have the distinct feeling that part of my problem since the beginning of this final semester has been my attitude to my tutors.  I had practically made up my mind – and so, I think had they – that the road to the decision on what to make for the final work was likely to be fairly tortuous and so, as is the nature of a self fulfilling prophesy, it has proved to be just that!  All the time, the answer has actually been staring me in the face.  I have been gaily making and making but I have made the fundamental error of telling my tutors that I didn’t know what I was doing.  I really should know better!  I know perfectly well from being on the “other side of the desk”, as a teacher for many years, that if a child says they don’t get it or cant do it, they don’t!  They cant!  And the teacher believes them!  But if you say to a child ‘yes, you can, I know you can’, they find that it is suddenly so much easier than they thought.  Its all about attitude.  Because my tutors have been asking me things such as ‘So are we going to have the same tortuous route as usual?’ that is precisely what I have been presenting them with.  Timely reminder to self – never, ever, for any reason, be negative with a child who is vulnerable – it will end in tears!

So, just in case anyone is the least bit interested in the aching of my potty mind,  I am creating an eclectic range of work for the final show.  It is based loosely on my love of Cornwall and my fascination with relationships within and between objects and people.  I have not decided yet how it will be exhibited, that will depend on how it speaks to me as the body of work develops.  I shall use local materials, mud larking finds and natural glaze materials.  I shall make and then abuse moulds and my work will reflect my thoughts.  The way it develops will depend on how I am feeling and the ideas that strike me and, no, I am not the least bit concerned that nothing is finished yet – the best is clearly yet to come.

The best is yet to come . . .
The best is yet to come . . .

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!