Showing posts with label gerry wedd paperclay tafe CIT Perth POTOBER CAAWA handbuilt clay pottery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gerry wedd paperclay tafe CIT Perth POTOBER CAAWA handbuilt clay pottery. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

POTober in Perth - GERRY WEDD

The weekend is over, the school hols are over, and reviewing my stash of photos from CAAWA's FABULOUS POTober - I have a lot to share in the coming posts.  CAAWA is the Ceramic Arts Association of Western Australia.  They are on Facebook, so check that out too.
Gerry Wedd attended POTober in Perth last weekend as a demonstrator.  http://weddwould.blogspot.com/  I met him as he unpacked work for the Showcase Exhibition in the smaller Gallery attached to the Central Institute of Technology (formerly TAFE Central).  He was unwrapping large handbuilt elements of The Willow Pattern, with cobalt decorations, and looking despondent but still, kind of sanguine about what he beheld.
They had suffered in transit - blowing the chances of folk in Perth acquiring a Wedd work - at least this time round.  He mended and displayed them, but marked them as sold, rather than sell damaged work - and I witnessed many buyers walk away from his plinths a tad wretched at being pipped by other sellers (they thought). 
Gerry gets blogged quite a bit, here is one link - though it is not fully representational of the range of his work http://www.boardcollector.com/2008/04/gerry-wedd.html
 
In my work I spend extra time removing evidence of my fingerprints from the porcelain surface.  Here, in a weeping willow tree, Gerry's fingerprints are integral to the feeling of the piece, followed later by sensitive brushwork in cobalt carbonate.
 

Gradually, and slowly, Gerry built up layers of paperclay spheres to echo the trees of the English Willow Pattern. Art imitating craft, imitating art.  A few years ago my friend Ceramist Anna Chicos assisted Gerry at the Gulgong ceramics event, now I see why she enjoyed that so much. 
Roo, drawn on with ceramic pencil

group of some of Gerry Wedd's work