There’s some damn fine ceramics being made in Australia, and I thought I might start showing you some if it, starting with one of my all time favourites Kirsten Coelho. She’s right up there near the top of my Favourite Australian Ceramicists list. This might sound weird (and I hope she doesn’t mind me saying this!) but whenever I see her work I want to hold it to my cheek! It’s the surfaces…those cool, beautiful glazes...simple, refined, contemporary and just downright beautiful! She's one clever lady. I've been having huge urges lately to get back on the wheel and throw me some pots (its been a while!), and work like this (and this) inspires me.
If you’re interested in finding out a bit more about Australian ceramics here’s a couple of links that might get you started - Craft Culture, Journal of Australian Ceramics, Australian Ceramics Blog (via Shannon). 
I have long been a fan of Robert Dickerson’s work. From a very young age his charcoals and paintings have moved me. He has an incredible ability to capture both the strengths and the frailties of human existence, especially in his charcoals. His works can be melancholic, dark and moving, but also joyful and humorous. My Dad and I share a love of one particular Robert Dickerson work called The Dancers (pictured), a beautiful charcoal of two women dancing together. From what we have been able to gather it was based on dances held out at the Brookfield Community Hall, a beautiful little country community just outside of Brisbane. At a time when there were not a lot of men around (Second World War perhaps?) the women often had to dance with each other at these gatherings. There is something so sad yet so comforting and beautiful about that scenario.
Girl in the Paddock, 2007
Patsy Hely vases 
I’ve been feeling a little uninspired of late. Normally brimful of ideas and bursting at the seams to make them all, I can’t help but get a little anxious when these moments creep up on me and I can’t seem to shake them. So I’m taking a little break and have spent the week looking at and thinking about other people’s work instead of my own. It’s been a veritable feast of yummy art work here in Brisvegas, with the Howard Arkley retrospective at GOMA, Robert Dickerson at Phillip Bacon, and Blast! out at Redcliffe Art Gallery. Blast! is a little gem of a show that looks at the influence of manga and contemporary Japanese culture on Australian artists. It includes work by Michael Doolan (image above, Big Boo Who, 2005), Patricia Piccinini and Alasdair Macintyre, to name just a few. Bum Crane and I made the trek out there today to catch it before it closes, and it was well worth it.
Rebuilding Babylonian Edifice, Alasdair Macintyre, 2004 (miniature tableaux of storm troopers examining Picasso's Geurnica) 
I am thinking of doing a regular update of Dolly, the mannequin from our local charity shop. I know it has very little to do with ceramics, but funny little things like this inspire me, and just give me a good laugh! And I think that's really important! The manager is very excited about the prospect of having his weekly efforts documented, and is putting in a whole lot of effort, as is evidenced by this latest get up! I have never seen a blanket look quite so elegant! And that headpiece...
And seeing as today is Friday the 13th, Dolly has taken a little walk over to the dark side....
Darth Vader Dolly! The headset even has a little electric box attached to it that booms out Darth's voice! I'm thinking of buying it. One can never have too many outfits in the dress-up box. And it's all for a good cause...
There is a wonderful piece of theatre starting next week in Melbourne that all of you Melbournians really should get along to. It's moving, it's funny, it's thought provoking, it raises all kinds of philosophical questions, it will have you laughing your head off and crying your eyes out all at the same time. But best of all...you'll get to see my incredibly talented sister doing her thing! (Oh shameless plug!)
I’m a chronic list writer. Every morning I start my day by writing a list. Unfinished things from the previous day get moved to the new list each morning. I’m one of those people. There is nothing more satisfying to me than scrawling big lines through items on my list (hanging out with me is always a lot of fun), and today is one of those special days when I get to scrawl a few of those nice big lines. Public art install finally finished yesterday (I sank into a relief and exhaustion induced coma about 4pm yesterday afternoon, not to stir until 7am this morning), a big box of work sent off to a beautiful shop in the USA called FINCH, and some (very late) orders and commissions posted off.
Every morning we wander down to our local coffee shop for a kickstart coffee before heading off (well, home, in my case) to our respective jobs. Next door to the coffee shop is the Life Line charity store, and the manager takes great pride in his weekly window displays. They have become somewhat of a local attraction and Dolly, the mannequin, is a bit of local celebrity. We look forward to the weekly changes with such anticipation! Last week the manager was looking particularly happy with himself when we arrived for our morning coffee. I glanced next door and immediately understood why. He had really outdone himself with this little get up!
Kenji, Pru and I bundled up our work this morning and sent it off to Marks and Gardner Gallery up on Mt. Tambourine for the Ceramics and Glass 2007 exhibition, opening this weekend. Other exhibitors include Amanda Joe-Assare, Joanna Bone, Mollie Bosworth, Chris Pantano, Michaela Klockner, Jonathon Westacott and Cathy Keys. It should be a lovely show, and is a good excuse to get out of town and spend a day on the mountain! It opens July 8th (this Sunday) at 3pm. We'll all be there with bells - and a warm cardy - on. It gets cold up on that there mountain!
Well not much blogging going on of late. It’s been a hectic few weeks with lots of deadlines looming all at once and a few new (super exciting) projects getting underway. I feel like a whirling dervish as I spin around in circles flying from one thing to the next. But me no complain. It’s all good. In fact, I kind of thrive on that frenetic pace, and twiddle my thumbs and don’t know what to do with myself when it eases.
The project itself is part of the Art Built-In Policy we have here in QLD, where 2% of the cost of public buildings is spent on artworks. We like that policy! I have had a fairly nice, easy introduction into this world, with this first commission being part of a series of “integrated showcases” (architect speak for a display case built into the wall!) throughout the fancy new Southbank Institute of Technology complex . But the whole process has given me a great insight into what else is possible in this area, and I’d love to get into something a little juicier next time. 
I was looking forward to having the whole thing done and dusted on Friday. But after 5 hours of installing (most of which involved sitting around waiting on a plastic covered chair wearing a hard hat in a half-finished library with a freezing wind blowing a gale through an unfinished doorway) a little oversight in the cleaning of the roof of the showcase was discovered…as the last piece of glass was being fitted, as we all had one foot out the door ready to go to the pub, down came a shower of sawdust all over my work. Not a good look! So back I go tomorrow to take it all out, wait for it to be cleaned properly and all the glass to be re-installed, and put it back in again! But I didn’t really mind. I had such a fun day sitting in there just listening to the hilarious banter between all the tradies. What a bunch of sweet lovely hilarious characters they were. I kept getting Village People songs stuck in my head! And watching their reaction to my work was an added bonus - these big macho fellas going all wide-eyed at my fragile little pieces, working so softly and carefully around them!
I was giving the house a bit of a spruce up, as I am want to do on a Sunday morning, vacuuming away and humming along merrily, when a quick flick of the vaccuum cleaner cord brought my world crashing down on me…literally. It was like one of those slow motion shots in a movie as, realising the cord had somehow flicked up onto the bench and knocked my all-time favourite teapot off, I threw myself across the room to try and save it. I sailed through the air - it was one of those super human moves people do in times of emergency, desperation and stress - and did manage to grasp the bottom of it, but alas, not in time to save it from smashing into a million (well ok,about 9) pieces on the floor.
THE teapot, on the left...back in the glory days...
After my talk at GoMA yesterday (which despite my nerves and jitters went really well and was actually lots of fun!), I got chatting to a man who had bought a few of my pieces. A lover and collector of glass and ceramics I was excited to discover that he owned my all time favourite piece!! I made this little tape measure vessel (pictured above, about 4cm high) a couple of years ago and it still remains one of my favs. I like the way the imagery works with the form, how it wraps around the cylindrical shape. But there is also an element of nostalgia for me in this piece, memories of being a teenager in the 80s learning how to sew drop waist dresses (oh yes, I was very fashionable) with my mum, most of them ending up half-finished, shoved in my sewing box never to be seen again! My mum remembers me having a very short attention span for sewing and she can’t quite believe I have the patience to make the work I make now! But even though I may not be very good at sewing and I may not have a lot of patience for it, I absolutely love it. I’m a total sucker for anything to do with textiles and this is reflected in a lot of my work. I use old sewing patterns as imagery on some of my pieces, pattern wheels to make lines of perforations in my vessels and wall pieces, old crochet patterns and knitting instructions.
Just a reminder that I'm going to be speaking at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) this Sunday at 1.30pm so if anyone is in the Brisvegas area feel free to come along for a chat! More details here and here.
Last night Kenji, Pru and I went to listen to Julie Patterson of CLOTH (images above) give an artist talk in at Deka Furniture . Great talk, great work and a great find in a rubbish bin on the way home...we love bubble wrap we do! So all in all a very successful mission!
Well the list of ceramic artists blogging is slowly but surely getting longer and longer. The more the merrier I say, especially when they are of the ilk of Carol Epp and Pru Morrison! And yes, perhaps I am just a little biased because they are both very good friends of mine, but I like to think that I can still make objective judgements regardless of that! These two covergirls wow me with their work, their ideas and their sense of humour and compassion. All rolled up together it makes for two super artists whose brand new blogs will no doubt be good reading! Make sure you go and visit and pop them on your little lists of bumper blogs.
I made these little uns last year. I was inspired after a trip to Korea and thought I’d experiment with a technique called inlay, which I had never done much of. And might not do much of again! Talk about time consuming and finicky! Each little dot was drilled in and then filled with a different coloured clay. It then gets scraped back and sanded before being fired. A glutton for punishment I was (still am?). Each little cup is just 4cm high. I held on to these. There's very few pieces of my work i absolutely refuse to part with. But there was just something about these ones that i really loved. So now they all live on a sunny little window ledge in my sleepout.
It is the most beautiful day here today! Cool, crisp, clear and so so blue....with just a little splash of red!
Well it's been a while in the coming but I have finally started my ETSY shop. Gosh, I'm feeling so high-tec! And after setting it up I don't care if I never sit in front of a computer again for as long as I live!! I tell ya, it seems so long since I've had a day in the studio, a full, uninterrupted day of making....it's been a good learning curve though, muddling my way through all of this, so I won't complain! I am only selling a few ranges of work through the etsy shop, but feel free to email me if you're interested in any other pieces that aren't up there.
“The Gallery formerly known as Craft QLD” is having another Meet the Artists session Friday June 1 from 10:30am till 12pm. Local ceramicist Cathy Keys is going to be speaking about her work, along with jewellers Roz Fenson and Emily Burke, and knitter/quilter/cushion maker/jeweller Leigh Hamilton Park. Worth dropping in if you're around. 
Yesterday was a big day for me. After I shook off my nasty dream of broken pots, I headed off to GOMA to have a cup of tea and a chat and a wander around the gallery with someone whose work I really admire and who has had a huge influence on me, particularly when I first started out in ceramics. I have wanted to meet her for so long, so it was pretty special to spend the afternoon sipping coffee with Gwyn Hanssen Pigott (image above and below left) chatting about this and that and having a fine old dandy time!.jpg)
The reason we hooked up is that I’ve been asked by GOMA to give a talk on some work from their collection. Yep, can you hear my knees knocking from wherever you are?? Yikes, nothing like a bit of public speaking to make me wanna go and hurl in the nearest bathroom! But nerves, random muscle spasms and inferiority complexes aside, the gallery is running a great program where artists are invited to choose works from the collection to speak about - a favourite work, how they might have influenced their practice etc - the idea being that people might get a different insight or a new perspective on the works on display or in the collection. So of course, there was never any question as to whose work I would choose. But I’m also going to be talking about another amazing work (conveniently located right next to Gwyn’s) by LIU Xiao Xian (brother of Ah) called The Way We Eat, (image below) a series of 33 incredible porcelain cutlery pieces. Yep, right up my alley!
Gwyn was very gracious and generous to come in and talk to me about the piece I’ve chosen. I'm feeling pretty inspired after that. The talk is on Sunday June 17th at 1:30pm. Up on the second floor of GOMA. And I’m totally cool about it……absolutely relaxed…..can’t wait……only 22 more sleeps…..
When I woke up this morning a huge wave of relief washed over me as I realised it had only been a dream! More like a nightmare actually. I’ve been working on a public art project for the last 18 months and it’s due to be installed sometime over the next couple of months. The closer the installation gets, the more horrible the dreams I have….smashed pieces, no time to make any more, angry architects….you get the idea! Last night I dreamed that I picked up one of the pieces only to see that it had a big crack down the side. And then, when I went to pick up the others I suddenly realised I had forgotten to fire them and they just crumbled in my hands! My 18 months of work was a pile of shards! It’s been a great project to work on - a huge long learning curve – but I will be very VERY glad when it is finally installed and out of my studio!!
