Perfect pecs er, I mean pics

This is my style, sitting with my laptop and one of my boys, on the couch, watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, while I blog. I know as soon as the childcatcher appears in the movie, Gaelan will disappear and I can switch to VideoHits. My man is sleeping off his flight home from Singapore and the other children are either snoozing or playstationing.

I'm kiln sitting a kilnload of work destined for the Clay Feet exhibition at the Inner City Clayworkers Gallery in Glebe, Sydney next week

I have some of my slab built hanging boxes toasting in there, multifired with various print transfer images and, hopefully the decals I applied in the last few days will be fusing perfectly onto the glaze surface. Most of the decals are those I made last week, screenprinting line drawings with china paint onto decal paper. It is glorious owning a Riso Thermal Printer to make my own Riso screens - no more fretting over the cost of Gocco bulbs. It is great to be able to custom make my own decals but this was a lesson in materials for me. The laquer I used as covercoat on the decals went on perfectly but took so long to dry, I had to take the hairdryer to them, and even then, I felt they could have done with couple of days to cure into a firmer more stable plastic state. I am including a snap of what I think will be the most successful of the lot just before I fired them for the last time.

Quite a few West Australians are heading over to the Sydney Ceramics Trienniale and I am sharing an apartment there with a group of them. Apart from having work in two shows there, I should have time to do some serious catching up and networking and the conference sounds like it will be amazing. I will keep you posted.

And now .... back to the laundry ....

Beaver Gallery

When in Canberra last week I visited the Fiona Hiscock exhibition at Beaver Galleries thanks to ANU staffer James being kind enough to deliver us (Distance Ceramics Students) to the venue. Fiona's exhibition was just lovely, I'd describe it as a modern expression of colonial concepts - handmade oversized functional pieces swathed in her delicious watercolour drawings of botanical imagery. She builds up her colours with stains and oxides achieving a soft vibrant colour wash, you know, in the way I could only dream of managing.

Check it out here http://www.beavergalleries.com.au/ It made for vigorous discussion among the students. The gallery owner Susie Beaver gave us access to the stock room allowing us to see pieces by the cream of Australian ceramic artists and I was delighted to hear a friend comment that Western Australia seems to have a lot of really great ceramists. Spot on!

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.