Getting ready - a commission.

Some of my earliest memories of living here in Fremantle include taking our lads as toddlers down to Bather's Beach, a small beach on the edge of Fishing Boat Harbour .  This is a short walk from Arthurs Head, the J Shed where Jenny Dawson, ceramic artist, Photographer Peter Zuvela and Greg James, Scuptor have studios.  Just as close are Freo's Cappucino Strip and the cafe's, bars and businesses in town.  The arrival of Notre Dame University has gentrified the once tatty working class corner of town nearby, given employment to some friends, and educated their offspring.  How would you like to go to a Uni where you can loll on a beach within two minutes of attending a lecture?  There used to be a MacDonalds on the beach too, and many happy hours have been passed and happy meals consumed by WA families here.
Twenty years ago Joan Campbell who is remembered as a 'pioneering potter' of WA had her studio in the old Kerosene Store, right on Bather's Beach facing the Indian Ocean.  Joan instigated the installation of a large wooden jetty formed from the old timbers of Busselton Jetty if I am to understand correctly, as homage to the history of the area and on which people climb, lol, and lie under the glow of the sun or the moon, according to their whim.  Joan screen printed, artwork, text and maps illustrating the place in former times, onto tiles which were installed into a horizontal beam.  As you can see, the tiles have suffered in the two decades, from the very harsh climate or from vandalism.

I have been asked, by Fremantle Council's Public Art Coordinator, to replicate the tiles, as faithfully as I can.  This week, I have done a fair bit of ground work in testing mesh sizes of silkscreens for the job.  The true test will be after lacquering the prints, applying them to test tiles and firing them.  Then I will know which mesh type gives the best print with the china paint.  The green ones here are Riso Screens which use a thermal printer to process, and the pink ones are Stencil Pro which can use sunlight to expose the image onto the mesh.  So there is a bit of local history, culture and some print on clay info to boot for you.  I will post again as the work progresses.  

What else have I been doing?

What else?   I've been doing some clay shrinkage and glaze tests at Central TAFE (CIT) dry colourful ones, mostly in oxidation and am very keen to see the reduced glaze tests below which will come out of the gas kiln tomorrow.  I've been wanting to do those ones based on Anne Hirondelle's earlier work for years but my own gas kiln had not been installed.  Fingers crossed for an exciting result with these tests.  

My large platters have been drying out slowly and are finally in the bisque kiln.  Just allowing myself to be loose and to play with ideas I'd been too busy for has allowed a whole new style to evolve - I didn't see that coming.  I've been hand building the platters with Walkers BRT clay with is nice and groggy and robust, but cracks if left in a draught, guess how I know that.

I had some rubber stamps I had carved to hand and pressed the stamps into the soft crunchy clay around the rim to see what happened.  I liked it, so I printed into the clay surface too.  These are about 60cm wide.  Quite a contrast from my usual uptight porcelain nest forms aren't they?  

The motifs are a bit folksy and reminiscent of European wood carvings, which makes sense given they were carved from rubber blocks, a lovely task on which to spend time.  

In fact the platters were designed to receive certain glazes - dry and textural and I have to keep reminding myself of this to stay on task a little.  It is hard to stop carving rubber blocks when you get started.  

What have I been doing?

What have I been doing?  

I was prepping a batch of my laser decal'd nest forms for the kiln when the Kerrie Lowe Gallery in Sydney invited me to take part in their  Print show 'Transferring the Image', opening on 22nd June till 17 July,  'Printmaking in all its forms; limited edition books, works on paper, ceramics, 3D, jewellery and fabric'.  Oh, I would SO like to be there, to see the whole show and to see my own work in that context  - but it is almost 4,000 km away.  I had fun explaining to the CIT ceramics students in the studio how I make the nests and what I do to create and apply the decals.  It seems like a lot of work, but I feel it is worth it all.  

These are the works hot from the kiln, some were TMK stoneware clay and some were in Southern Ice Porcelain, both great clays by Clayworks.

I know, its boring - MORE of my laser decals nests!  I do a lot of these forms, I enjoy them and they mean something to me.  I constantly collect twigs, leaves and feathers to photograph, even my friends present me with them sometimes, it is like collecting shells or pebbles, in taking time for such things you are rewarded with a sense of their beauty and a respect for nature.  I've observed how people impose their own narrative onto a piece and I love to see this happen. If there are no eggs printed or physical clay ones on a nest then it becomes either a childless home or an empty nest, a whole new chapter opens in the imagination of the backstory of this little nest.  If there are two eggs, people with two children light up and relate to it, it becomes somehow more meaningful to their personal story.  An empty nest with a single feather can be about waiting, or loss, the feather representing the prepared home or the evidence of the emptiness.  

3-D - COMING TO YOUR SCREENS SOON!

What comes in a box and takes weeks for two grown men to assemble?  Answer? A 3D printer and it is soooooo exciting.  It feels like Christmas has arrived in the Central Institute of Technology in Perth in the Ceramics Dept. as the hotly anticipated piece of equipment has been slowly, carefully unpacked and so methodically assembled you would think that we had a bomb disposal team in the tech room.  In fact the team is Engineering student Robert Vinkovic and the renowned artist Graham Hay - he of the Paper Clay Guru title and pretty famously (among potters) of the encyclopaedic website on the subject.  Graham is good fun, very smart and he brings in fabulous cake - obviously he is very welcome.  CIT Ceramics Dept is a pretty exciting place to be right now.  This is a topic I will revisit regularly on this blog from here on.

To be honest, there is a sense of boys with Meccano kind of glee about the place but underlying that is a serious intent to get the 3D printer up and running as soon as we can.  I know I haven't shared much about my own experience as the current Artist In Residence there - honestly, I am just having too good a time trying out and testing stuff and getting things off my to do list!  Very soon Graham will be heading off to the US to teach a series of sell-out workshops and, on his return he will be the Artist in Residence at CIT Ceramics Department in about August 2012 and using a 3D printer the topic he will be exploring.

Andrea and Robert Vinkovic

 Robert Vinkovic and Graham Hay making a brilliant team. 

This printer will have the capability of printing its own 3D spare parts.  I have read a bit about 3D printers, particularly on sites like Design Boom and the like, and I think I understand the general concept, have seen videos demonstrating the principles and it is a tad well, mind-blowing.  I mentioned all of this to Gosia, at a party last night, having just explained that I am a potter, and she said 'Oh my dentist uses that kind of technology'.  WOW.  It seems her Perth dentist can generate veneers in a matter of an hour using a 3D printer of some kind.  How great to hear of such a useful application for the technology.
Excited?  We are!  As the daughter of an electronics engineer and wife of a mechanical engineer I am really enjoying the buzz of being in on all of this.  I'd love to be able to call my Dad if he was still alive and tell him about what is going on, and he'd understand every aspect and be avid for updates.

If you are interested, the details of the brand and build of the 3D printer we have at CIT is here ...

Now please hop on over to http://mudcolony.blogspot.com.au/ to find out more of what is happening in the clay world in general via several other clay bloggers.

ELAINE BRADLEY REVEALS SHE’S PREGNANT

Ha!! Gotcha!  NOT ME!  The full byline is NEON TREES DRUMMER ELAINE BRADLEY REVEALS SHE’S PREGNANT
and good on her she is young, a rocker and pretty darn cool.  I am very happy to have my name aligned with hers.  If you google my name, and we all google ourselves every now and then, something I used to think was the height of vanity - well google me and you will find a few versions of Elaine Bradley.  There is the Elaine Bradley who is a drummer in Rock band Neon Trees in the US, a Mormon (like there is a rule Mormons can't be hot chicks and drum?) and she is pregnant to boot.  There is also the Elaine Bradley in Gaza who has just started documenting her life and observations by blogging on Bearing Witness In Palestine, I read a lot of blogs and this one looks to be very human and raw.  Then there is me, we'll skip over the pornstar I found once I think, not sure I will ever quite forget some of those images but it certainly wasn't me.  There is also an Elaine Bradley in Ireland, Dublin I think, my own hometown - and she, bless her, is involved in rights for the disabled.  God!  I just belong to the most awesome club of impressive chicks - well apart from the sleazy one, and even then, she was exceptionally good at being that!!