wrapped up...

wow yesterday started out so promising and then down it came! luckily i've learned to bring extra things to wear on stirling market sundays... Rose managed to put a smile on quite a few faces with her bubble wrap apparel - and then made me something equally fetching and dry with a hood... nice!! As the day progressed most of our work filled up with water..our cover is not 100% waterproof but hopefully next month we'll have an extra covering for our canopy generously offered by Mrs Honey....

and onto today..I headed to town with a box full of work for the Helpman Academy's Mystros and Apprentices Silent Auction.. 4 of the 6 works were selected...yey..

and this evening I've just finished the coil and throw pot, remember that one?
...added some slip and some marks and now for the rapid slow dry i have only two weeks to dry and fire these pieces now for the Campbelltown Exhibition..just a bit tight but I think I'll make it..
and a few warm up bowls from today also..

Well that's a catch up, happy week all....off to check in on the webcam for

NCECA pre-conference.. ciao

1001 uses for bubblewrap...

and there's plenty more where this came from rose posted some modelling shots on facebook...more wet pics to come soon!

ahhh the wood firing....i'm hooked..

so here we go, roasted toasted smoked and burned and that's just me!!

a lil vid from todays action, thanks massively to anna i think she did all the hard work!! only realised when i was looking at the vids....whoopsie!

and thanks jess for the images they're nicely integrated and also hey trace i think this was your raku glaze the one on the right at the end and the other was anna's possibly needs to be a bit thicker app. but lovely all the same..




so on naming the new kiln i'd like your votes we so far have...

1. the leachenberg - as the kiln is modelled on a raku kiln by simon leach
2. the red baron - possibly more to do with charlie brown than any aircraft
3. the stefan-ang - after the kiln maker that annas kiln is designed by

and of course any suggestions for naming the lil-rocket are welcome...


and just a little ad on with some firing details,

i had about 15 pieces in there.. and used a wooden crate that was lying around in the car park for fuel, I used just the planks cut length ways plus a couple of hand fulls of twigs and branches that created quite a bit of smoke although that could have been my over zealous stoking.. the crate wood burned more efficiently..the firing was 2 1/2 hours and was prob done in about 2hrs though, a lot of my shell glaze had come off creating some very black work, a bit over baked perhaps.. the pyro read 950C when we decided to crack the kiln..

wood raku..le test

and here she is, my new wood fire raku kiln and testing today so a video will follow later...

it's an excellent record keeping tool too so next time i'll have my 'notes' to check on..

yesterday i completed the fibre lining with what we call the zicon layer it's the hire fire fibre that we use in the gas kiln so it would be able to reach around 1300 deg C, i fully intend on testing that ability at a later date and doing some sagar tests with soda firing...

later...

the same but different...'rosebud'.

ah some tiles from today....some of the deco layering slips carving and mark making on the same landscape theme of close up..middle distance and long distance...some ideas i picked up during the film course i took a few years ago and one very famous film Citizen Kane,...Orson Welles was well known for his long shot a frame of vision that include the immediate distance and into the long distance with great detail...long live 'Rosebud'...

it was quite strange film in the way that scenes were established and collated finishing with the sled of his childhood burning in a furnace and CK whispering 'Rosebud' on his deathbed, supposedly longing for the simpler days of his childhood... these tiles are a long way from the concept of the film but engage the idea of vision in clear detail through into the distance with there visual use of recognizable themes and content relating to our asian neighbours and images of mountains and food crops..also relating the quest of a journey long travelled... i'll leave the rest to your imagination, there's a few more details and layers to add with the cobalt tissue and glaze additions, firing monday if all dries out well....

shelac attack...

I found this guy in my mums cupboard, it's a lil favourite of mine despite it's glaze issues and probably for them...

So i got inspired the lil 12 before 6 last sunday needed something and out came fishy again who by the end looked like a shark rather than a goldfish rather cool...

Jim your influence is contagious!!

and head over to michael klines for a quick poll...

dedicated |ˈdediˌkātid|...

well here we go...a project completed that is dedicated to John and Leona,
'Tuscan Inspired Abstraction'
by angela walford..
2 tables that needed a facelift after the fire..and pretty they now are..

completed and delivered part 2 today and very shortly part 2 video after i complete the editing.. if you wish to see part 1 tableeer no.1 click here..

it has been an incredible project and i'd like to thank not only John Monahan and his brilliant idea of a gift for his wife Leona, hi and for the lovely reception you gave today on delivery of part 2 but also the peeps that helped make this happen, Kevin Capaldi my very good friend for being mr motivation and his son Leigh - he can lift things!!! thanks for being mr delivery too... thanks also to the 'club' tea tree gully craft workshop for the space to work in and the encouragement at every step from the team..and also you guys my fellow bloggers for the cheers along the way...TA!

on the tiles...

howdy all, i spent last night at the club playing around with the newly discovered feature on my phone cam - the self timer.. so i figure out the 10 second feature was what i needed to set the cam focus and make a mad dash in front of the lense...heheh pretty funny the blurrr is me!

and a breezy view of the beach, a job took me to glenelg so i thought while i'm 200mtrs from the sea i'll stop by...it was very windy and choppy but still folks down there in the cafe enjoying the sun..

and a few tiles with some porcelain slip on them, i'm layering the slips and working on the spaces to tell stories of movement across the surfaces with decals, glazes slips and textures created with tools i've accumulated from lots of different spaces themselves some from sunny devon and mr doug fitch's workshop itself.

It was a great journey to experience the countryside and the things that inspire dougs work, the tradition and his passion for michael cardew the traditional english slipware potter..
I watched doug work his stuff at a workshop at nics place where he threw a large jug, joined it and attached a groovy chunky handle and slip decorated it all in one session.
Truly an amazing thing to watch as the slip was worked with finger marks and a truly tasty tool with a rubber end that i'm using on these very tiles...

These pieces i'm creating are some new works to photograph for the grant i'm applying for to send my work to the Clay and Blogs: Telling a Story Show.. You may remember a print workshop i organised for the club last year and our friend simone who brought her silkscreens and expertise and took the group through the processes of printing and I followed that one up with a design workshop where we looked at creating imagery and balance on the forms we were using. Most of that workshop i spent playing with some tiles i'd made and the result of that workshop is the tiles i'm working on now...

Have i lost you??.. hopefully some of the inspiration for this body of work is coming through and you can see the journey it's taken and i plan to develop these into this year to be well ready for parceling up and sending some pieces to the show Meredith from Whynot Pottery is organizing, it's going to be a mammoth show not only in its locale but online too and i'm looking forward to participating and seeing the works online... anyhoo that's it i'll keep some shots happening as this is a work in progress.. cheers all have a great week..

happy as larry!!!

the pic says it all!! le tabler no.2 all done and a big thankyou to kevin....you da man!

pots a progress...

so a big yey for the long wkd!! YEY, womad friday night, a lil work on sat followed by some potting YEY!! sunday a good day in clay some new throwing and i managed 12 by 6pm i'm getting closer mr kline YEY!!! and a bit more work today followed by trimming the bowls from yesterday some more additions to the coil and throw pot and some tile making for this months deadline on the grant for the blogs and stories show YEY!!!!!

It was really great to sit down and make individual bowls just playing with shapes and lines and to come back today and trim them, i really enjoyed only having 12 to work on it enabled me the time to move on to something else and yet be in the same space of individual attention which i could then give to the tiles. The clay was still quite soft and slipping at that stage has made the surface really fresh.. i'll come back tomorrow to add colour and textures and some more slip..the idea again is in response to the surface of the clay - it's a raku type that has great plasticity and coarseness to which i can add illustrations, cuts and lines suggestive of landscape and journey..

hope you enjoy the vid, it's a long one so grab a cuppa and feel free to comment on the forms.....happy fresh clay week all...

womadelaided.....

hey this ones way off my usual topic but everybody should have a night off eh...
off my sis and i went to womad on friday night and as it turns out we may have had the best weather it rained again this afternoon and is going to be a fairly cool wkd, we got plenty of sprinkles on fri night and glad i packed a hoody! we did find shelter under a couple of trees but wasn't too bad...

a great night it was with the opening around 6pm with the Kaurna welcome followed by the Yamato dummers now that was some routine! a lil spanish fare with Ojos de Brujo and some yummy organic curry for tea.. i did the usual rounds of all the foodies asking my usual allergy ?'s luckily they had some great dishes..and sorry about the sound and quality in the vids these were taken on my phone...

and wow the bar got a workout.. then we caught up with Ethiopiques followed by Le Copagnie Transe Express performing in the rain way up in the air! and finally The Skatelites now those guys brought out the crazy I wish i could have got a shot of the guy dancing around us with the enormous water bottle you know the size you'd have in your kitchen or office he was having so much fun dancin around and beating that bottle kind-of in time..hehehhe..it was just too dark i did try!! and then there was the wedding! i def saw a wedding dress, a catering platter, a wedding cake all cut up.... and lots of guys in white pants and tee shirts with groom, bridesmaid dresses- not the one up in the tree! brother of the bride shirt, brother in law of the bride on the back....it was a fun night, back to pots tomorrow my biggies have been sitting under damp towels and tonnes of placky so they'll be fine for tomorrow...ciao for now

cruzing with mr moon...

howdy all, a lil hooky was played today, rose, ali and myself took a trip to stirling to a lil fancy gallery called Aptos Cruz - Milton Moon renoun adelaide potter now in his 80's is there demoing this week, this intrigued me as i've never met the guy and my only claim to fame is that he gave me 1st prize at the campbelltown art show a few years ago...thank you mr moon!

We did a glaze class at Uni a few years ago with his son Daimon Moon now a dr so i hear.. a very clever guy indeed and just listening to MM today took me back to a class i went to with Greg Daly who quoted from the book of the dead before each session... entertaining none the least and also an incredible thrower..

MM speaks in slower sylables than I and a sentence could be said to be ambling...you just never know where it will end up!! It was interesting, informative and perhaps bordering on mesmerising as we watched him spin his wheel, his home made version of a kick wheel without kicking.. the whole mechanism is soundless other than a stick winding in into momentum, the wheel itself is made of concrete and supported on a metal tripod and some wiz bang engineering i suspect!

After listening and watching and craning our necks to see exactly what he was doing with which part of each hand we wandered into the upper part of the gallery where his show was..MM is quite the writer and has published 4 books in as many years and i suspect would prefer to amble the day away in piece and quiet in his own studio than chat to the likes of us asking questions of the most simple kind...he spoke of his pots becoming something other than craft and the otherness that happens.. after destroying several forms a few squeaks of despair could be heard but not from me, a rather characteristic chuckle at the performance of destroying ones work instead!

hope you enjoy the slideshow, the video is made on my phone device so the sound isn't great but you get the idea as he talks to one of the crowd about S cracks..and thankfully the wind storms have passed by and all is quiet again....back to pots sometime tomorrow blended in with work too..

just too lucky....

so hows this... just too lucky! this bad boy is on the roof at the club and yep just above the area i'm working in and our kiln space...

he fell directly over the skylight which has the tiniest of cracks in it just over the small gas kiln.

it came from up there somewhere, it's a big ghost gum they tower way into the sky all around our road and the reserve and not a lot of other damage so we're incredibly lucky considering the winds, the 'southeasterlies ripped through the hills and gullies, exceeding 100km/h at times last night and this morning'....

so after reporting the damage to the council, 'it's their building'... i got on with finishing the cementing and edging and worked into tonight, i just got home, had some munchies and now off for some catchup snooze me thinks...

catchya tomorrow, hopefully i'll have some clay time then..

it'swindyMAN!!!!!...

wow...talk about windswept for the last 2 nights its been ripping through the neighborhood and just about smacking the inside of my head around!
so WHAT the!!! when's it going to stop i need some sleep! right got that out of my system..

market yesterday was fairly uneventful unless you count the showering of hot chocolate that Ali blessed me with! hehehehe cheers Ali it all washed out ok.... Ali was 'stand in' Rose..after doing fill in shifts at the cafe Rose took a well deserved break and she was massively missed by all the stallies... it was an ok day with our usual lul across lunchtime i'm thinking we should have a big break at the pub or a siesta, whatcha reckon?? so the world was re-organised during this break and my week planned out for visits to town shows and shops shuffling my work here and there..

so i'm off to get some work done on the table and back to the studio tonight, hopefully all that blowing around is over now it's starting to sound calm again... this morning i've stayed inside doing tax work and generally trying to get my head around numbers and such, i think the ATO should have an assistant to us art types who's heads don't generally run in those circles an sort all this stuff out!!!!

right i'm outta here here's a few pics from yesterday... i've also noticed the vids are getting lots of hits, i'm glad you're enjoying them as they are helpful for feedback too, catch later...