Tag Archives: Landscape

The creative Vibe is alive and well.

It is wonderful what a calming effect this aquatic life is giving me.  I have managed to make a load of work this week, despite the heat in my studio, which in August is normally enough to drive me out.  It is just as well really.  The pressure on me to create was growing exponentially.  I had 4 more works to make for an exhibition in Cornwall at Tregony Gallery which starts in early September; I have a lot to do to prepare for Kew Gardens in October – it might seem ages away but I shall be in Canada throughout September; I had a commission to finish for a 70th birthday present and I need to restock my shelves at Klay London.  So a wee bit of making was always going to be a good thing.

IMG_20160804_121725However, the desire to create is also an ephemeral thing – here one minute, vanished the next so it is always a huge relief to me when I turn up at the studio and find that I can get right on with it.  The days when I seem to need to spend an hour or more on Facebook, wash the floor, tidy the shelves and still the urge to make does not come are really very difficult.  Does anyone else have this problem I wonder?

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Finished works – one a commission, one destined for Tregony Gallery
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I suddenly wanted to make big!
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Please form an orderly queue for the kiln

 

Anyway, this week I have been churning it out.  The kiln has been fired 3 times and the shelves are groaning under the weight of drying works.  Phew, what a relief!  But the best thing?  At the end of the day, covered in dust and feeling tired, I can sit on the pontoon beside the boat with a glass in my hand and my feet in the water and watch the cygnets practicing their one footed swimming – and BREATHE.

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One legged swimming will take place after a rest in the sun.

Once More to the Dump, Dear Friends.

Moving house is proving very traumatic.  It is not so much the sorting, tidying and packing that is getting me down.  It is more the trips to the dump.  How on earth did I accumulate so much rubbish in the short time that I have lived in London?

The scary thing is that so much of what I have taken down to add to landfill is as a result of my ceramical activity; not something about which I feel terribly clever.

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Oh dear!

The problem with ceramics is that, once fired, they last for ever which is why they are so useful historically.  I wonder if, in the millennia to come some poor archaeologist is going to be subjected to sifting through a deep hole in south east England and will happen upon the efforts of my ceramics misadventures!

 

Fair enough, you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs but when I think about the number of trips that I have done with car loads of experiments and errors over the past few weeks it drives home the responsibility that we all have to think before we fire.  I realise that the fact that much of this work was created as a part of my Diploma and from which I learned a huge amount mitigates this waste to some extent but at what cost?  I suppose there are a number of questions that we should ask ourselves each time we load a kiln.

  • What do I expect to achieve in this firing?
  • What is the likelihood of achieving it?
  • Which pieces already look like a triumph of hope over expectation?article-1104741-017C6CA2000004B0-617_468x286[1]http://www.dailymail.co.uk

     

I am not suggesting that we should not experiment, Heaven forbid!  Indeed I adhere to the view that every firing should include some kind of experimental piece.  I am simply suggesting that all of us have a responsibility to care for our planet and that as ceramic artists we are sending the planet a double whammy which makes it even more important that we examine our consciences on a regular basis:  We plunder our natural resources in order to make work which, if we are not happy with, we throw away where it adds to the problems of landfill.