AUSTRALIAN POTTERY

I tripped upon a blog focussing on Aussie ceramists lately – by Judith Pearce and now can’t wait to tell several collector friends about all the pots remarked upon therein. The enormous gaps in my knowledge of Australian potters are being filled in. There are images of such covetable ceramics included in the blog, it is pretty much eye candy and so much more for the likes of me. http://australianpottery.wordpress.com/

Karen Millar

Next week I head off across Oz to Canberra to attend my ANU ceramics course. I can't wait to reconnect with the teachers and my 'distance' friends, many of us stay in touch via email, Facebook and SMS. Now, for the first time in my experience there will be another West Australian artist coming along too. To my great delight Karen Miller, http://www.sodaresidency.com/Karen_Millar.php who has studio space at Fleur Schell's SODA will be there too and has already been'chatting' and making pals on ANU's WebCT webspace. Now you've checked Karen out, go back to the site and have a good look around at what fantastic work Fleur makes and the opportunities she creates for residencies at SODA.
http://www.sodaresidency.com while Fleur's own website is being upgraded http://www.fleurschell.com/
Last Christmas at SODA's 'Gift' Sale I bought a Fleur Schell bowl for special pal (who is lucky I managed to part with it), and something lovely for me ... one of Karen's ceramic wallpieces of a Moroccan style Hand of Fatima full of decorative motifs and scrummy deep turquoise glaze. The symbol is said is to ward off the evil eye - five fingers in the eye to blind the jealous or malevolent person. I find it more friendly than actually threatening mmmm. With three sons, hand signs and symbols are 'big' in my house - though not always appropriate. Here is Gaelan posing with Karen's work ..... Gaelan has Down Syndrome, and with that came hypotonia (low muscle tone) in his hands, fortunately his favourite activity clay work is a brilliant therapy with this. We are home sick with 'bad tolds'.
Karen is a great experimenter and driven to 'make' whether it is her lovely ceramic work or her fused glass work - something else I have in common with her. We cross paths often, most recently at a Curry Night at Fleur's when Somchai Charoen came from the Eastern States to Perth Studio Potters, to teach an enormously popular mould making workshop. http://www.ceramicartswa.asn.au/pottery_groups.php
I am certain Karen is going to have a total blast in Canberra. It is an immersion in all things clay, with likeminded folk, and feels like a working holiday. When I'm there I often can't sleep as my mind is buzzing with what I've learnt, ideas forming from slideshows, demos and the people I meet. Maybe it is the clang of pennies 'dropping' in terms of what I am researching and learning that keeps me awake. I don't mind that this reads like an infomercial for the ANU Distance Diploma Course - it is precisely what I need and delivered in a way I can access -flexibly. Karen I hope it works for you too ;-D

Anna Chicos

Anna uses the simplest form of tissue transfer to make drawings to be transferred to the leatherhard clay surface - in Anna's case onto white porcelain. After firing or glazing she uses additions of gold lustre to highlight some areas as in the following pictures of her work.

The process uses few materials and tools

• Dip a wet hake brush into water then into into a pot of powdered underglaze (usually black but any colour works)
• Brush this onto a smooth tile or glass sheet to a uniform deposit of pigment on the tile
• Allow this to dry
• Tape tissue paper over the pigment without touching the paper
• Draw with various thicknesses and hardnesses of pencils and implements over the tissue.
  
• The pigment is transferred from the pencil lines onto the underside of the tissue
• Trim off the tissue and transfer to the clay surface, sweep with a rubber kidney to complete the transfer of pigment.

My Print on Clay workshops

In March at Perth Studio Potters, Cottesloe and in May at Central TAFE, Perth I taught my workshop 'Introduction to Print On Clay Techniques'. I put this together to share some of the skills I learnt from Paul Scott (link) and Professor Suzanne Wolfe of Univ. of Hawaii in my time at ANU, Canberra.

The people who attended were so keen and interesting, now I see how rewarding teaching can be but it wouldn't have gone so smoothly at either venue without behind the scenes backup from kind supportive potters doing the admin and finance side, setting up tables, photocopying handouts, putting kettles on all that stuff I hadn't time to consider. Potters are wonderful people.

I used the time to explain several techniques like ...
Underglaze tissue transfer
Ungerglaze / slip transfer
Silk-screened underglaze tissue transfers
On-glaze waterslide decals
Laser decals
and ordering digital ones from your own images

The photo above is of my friend Anna Chicos using the simplest of underglaze transfer techniques , well a post is boring without something to look at, and I will be posting images of her beautiful work here soon, with her permission. Her final project for our ANU course is based on tissue transfer onto porcelain. What makes her work special is her affinity for the drawn line and howe well she uses it. Be excited in anticipation.

I lost my Mojo

What happened? Several busy months have passed since I last wrote here and so much has happened but I'll fill in those gaps later. Right now I want to tell the world or anyone who happens to look in here that the Clay Feet website is about to be launched and I think it is looking pretty darn good, thanks to the massive efforts of Clay Footer Alyson Hayes in Sydney www.clayfeet.com.au

I am working on my ANU projects and on making work for the forthcoming Clay Feet show at The Inner City Clayworkers Gallery in Glebe, Sydney and the CAAWA show too. These are two of the most recent works .... small hanging wall porcelain boxes with laser decals. The ones I am working on today are all glazed and different sizes with underglaze prints and laser decals and hopefully onglaze too.




And that is all for today, more soon.