Friday, May 17, 2013

YAY FOR DRUGS!


I find it handy to be an optimist, it saves so much down time working through the negatives and hurdles life can toss your way.  My man was thrown from his motorbike and hospitalized for several weeks.  It was scary, he lived and is healing – all good.  I came down with flu after my flu jabs – felt lousy for days, got through it, all good.  Tore two fingers up on a tiny shard stuck on a pot I was glazing, copped seven stitches -  oh God that was nasty, lived, and will heal.  That was very traumatic but my co-workers took great care of me at the time, they had my back. Now, all good.  It’s amazing how much you want to make stuff, knit, crochet and throw when your fingers say no.  We learnt that our sons will kick in and help if we remember to ask them to.  It is good; the team is there when needed.
commons wikimedia.com
Today I took one of my infrequent saunters through my town, Fremantle.  I figured the bad hand is useless, might as well get some new winter boots sorted and new shoes for a wedding we’re going to.  The morning was cool but warmed up nicely.  A sunny, pleasant day in Freo, watching folk do their stuff.  I was drawn by unusual choral sounds.  Outside the town hall large gaggles of serious schoolgirls in expensive private school uniforms congregated, going through their scales for an Eisteddfod.  It brought back memories of my school days and being in choir competitions.  It reminded me of being 15 again, which, while fun, is not something I’d wish to relive with the angst and insecurity that goes with it.  Better to be fifty and confident and in control of my life, even with the grey and the curves. 

An excellent busker stood outside a surf gear shop belting rock gems out with a passion.  My pal Ger’s husband used busk in Grafton Street, Dublin when we were 17, when U2 were just another Dublin band.  Happy days.  Ger and Hughie are both stars on the Irish folk circuit in Boston now.  I wished they were here.  

People sat at cafes relishing their coffees all along the Cappuccino Strip.  You could tell the tourists by their purposeful strides.  We don’t do purposeful strides much in laidback Freo darl!  We amble and saunter and ponder and relish.  Freo doesn’t do mainstream High Street stores too much, thank goodness. 


 I scanned some massively cool boutiques along South Terrace and scored a divine printed velvet tunic in Hypnosis and some ‘to die for’ tangerine suede sandals found among the silks and velvet desirable wearables in Love In Tokyo. (photo: http://www.triposo.com/loc/Fremantle/sightseeing). That reminded me of my Cerise velvet coat I’d bought from the owner years ago, must dig it out, the kids of strangers hug me just to snuggle that coat and I have been asked to leave it in my will to my great pal Marion.  I usually detest shopping!  This way of finding gear works best for me and the stars were truly aligned, they must have heard about the stitches.

I called Marianna who works in Notre Dame University in Freo for coffee, she declined as she has the flu.  We laughed at our being such crocks after both enduring several stressful weeks and we planned a great dinner out in Freo with our guys once she’s well again.
Deep inside New Edition, the best book shop in Perth, down Fremantle High Street in what once was a huge old bank, the kind that can scare you – I tracked down my designer pal Deb McKendrick whose lush label is Velvet Sushi.  



New Edition has a cafĂ©, a thrilling, eclectic selection of book titles and Deb’s boudoir like atelier, boutique.  I’m telling you – Freo can be heaven.  Look at this website here if you want to get an idea of where I live, the photo below is from that site.  It documents our City and environs very well.  




I treated myself to Olivier Dupon’s book The New Artisans, a hardback survey of contemporary makers, like myself, whose creativity drives us to immerse ourselves in our processes to make all manner of desirable gems in clay, cloth, wood and metal.  Oh boy I can't wait to devour that book.  


So, I came home feeling fortified and buoyant ready to clear the decks and start making again.  Twenty-four hours ago I was pressing my face into a quilt and crying in pain from neuralgia, exhaustion and misery, I’m not embarrassed to admit that.  Fortunately I found empathetic professionals and drugs that worked.  Yay for drugs -  the legal kind!  I wonder if I’ve turned a corner and instead of a bus about to hit me, there’s a flower garden instead.  I bet you I’m right.  It pays to be an optimist.  What do you think?  OK finished reading my mind?  Over to the Mud Colony to see what the potters are thinking.  

Sunday, April 28, 2013

THE WEIRD AND THE WONDERFUL

While my fellow lucky potters are gathering and immersing themselves in all things ceramic way over at the big Gulgong clay event - I am home in Western Australia pondering the weird and the wonderful. in my own clay realm.  Take a look ....these are just out of the kiln.



First the weird - something very odd is showing up in a kiln load of student laser decal work.  What is this crazy, crispy, bubbly substance that is appearing on these mugs?  I suspect there was some kind of 'dressing' on the mugs over the glaze, perhaps some layer of low temp. ceramic gloss laquer, but that is just a guess.  They were fired to over 1060C - nothing in that kiln load is fusing properly and the work is all store-bought whiteware from various sources onto which we applied our laser decals from our own photos, drawings and sources.  They are being re-fired a tad higher.  Have you had this experience too?  I'd love to know your take on it please.


The wonderful?  I taught a holiday class of children last week at Central Inst. of Tech. Ceramics.  They had just been to see the Picturing New York photographic exhibition at the Art Gallery of Western Australia  (AGWA), then walked to TAFE for lunch in the grassy courtyard, then taken downstairs to the big ceramics studio to build their own skyscrapers with me.  They aged from 7 - 12 and were the best kind of kids, tuned in, interested and ready to express themselves in clay.  Architectural schools in WA watch out, in about twelve years some of these guys will be coming to turn your ideas on their heads.  In their concepts there were fairytale influences, one or two balconies, a few references to medieval buildings, some bunker like structures that seemed to reference either James Bond landscapes or a post apocalyptic cityscape - who knows.  My favourite was by a gorgeous chap whose roof on his round building sank a bit, so we called it a rooftop swimming pool to which he later added a large sphere - not a beach ball, just a big solid outside ball of clay.  I know I'd like a rooftop pool just like that.  He will be the founder of the WhyTheHell Not school of Design. There was a slide on another structure too, with SLIDE scratched into it just in case you missed its purpose, a tall building with a slide from the upper storeys - hell yeah, I'd like to live in their imaginary buildings alright.  
A Medieval air about this gem. 
Love the gargoyle sticking its tongue out at all and sundry.
Spectacular formal roof garden with trees!
Packing with newspaper to support a sagging roof on one's bunker style home.
Sunken rooftop pool with large sphere as focal point.  
The small building is to house the staff!
Scout the airdale terrier created after the first two skyscrapers were completed.
He called it a Shoe House and we decided the lower part was an underground room with skylights.
I had to agree that every tall building needs its own slide.  Well the lifts might be out!
A 'block' of skyscrapers on way to the drying room, I reckon there's a really cool bar just round the corner to the right!. See you there! 



I'd have liked to make proper straight sided, tall buildings from slabs but that would have taken massive preparation and I had no idea of what abilities would be coming to the class.  We went with rolled slabs curved around cardboard cylinders which had been wrapped in newspaper to allow it to slide off and release.  We also cut some lengths of freshly pugged cylinders of clay (they liked the imagery of a clay sausage machine) into which we pushed large blocks of wood to form the interior space, then peeled chunks off the outside with wire.  Boys seem to love stuff like that, especially the wiggle wires.  I'd been apprehensive really, I feared getting a class load of very demanding young folk but each one was a delight, as was their work.  

The photographic exhibition ends on the 12th May so you still have time to get in and catch it!  Stop prevaricating around the bush and just do it.  Come now to Mud Colony (click on the link to get there) bloggers to see what they are all up to, some of whom are in Gulgong, having a blast no doubt. 

But Wait!!  There's MORE!  Check out the new Facebook page for my workplace at Central Institute of Technology, Ceramics Studio.      Ciao, Elaine


Friday, April 19, 2013

Lost, Found and Wiser

Lost - one set of blogging Mojo, due to huge stress when my man came off his motorbike at Easter and suffered nasty injuries.  I am a coper but that kind of 'fried me' energywise.  I kept thinking I'd throw together a paragraph or two, a quick snap of something clay related to share but no, it was long gone.  I couldn't trust myself to make anything new either because the heart was not in it.  I did lots of teaching in High School though.  Teenagers are so funny with clay, especially boys.  I think I have found my Mojo again though so I must be feeling more rested and optimistic.

Found - an explanation for why my new kiln is overfiring.  This kiln is the old one I bought from the local primary school when former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd decided to provide a new kiln and art and music room.  The casing was rusting from the inside out so I had it refurbished and recased by Kilns West in stainless steel and unlike any other I've owned, it has elements set into the door.

Wiser - do you know that classic bit of kiln wisdom where you do a test firing to work out your cool and hot spots? You set a cone pack on every corner of every kiln shelf to gather intelligence on what is actually happening in the kiln.  That's what I've been taught by potters who are top of their games why ignore such well informed advice?  People baulk at using up all those cones because of the cost but cones aren't that expensive and they provide so much accurate invaluable information.
So I set cone packs on each shelf in a lightly packed kiln.  I only had a few bisque bowls, glaze tests and boxes I was prepared to risk in a test firing, we all know a tightly packed kiln gets the best distribution of temperature.  It was getting much hotter inside than the temperature gauge indicated or the Harco programmer was set for ie 1280C.  I noted that the kiln took a lot longer to cool down after the firing cycle than I expected - an indication of a well insulated kiln.  My previous kiln had so much rust it got pretty hot on the exterior painted casing and the orange glow around the door gap was pretty obvious too, I could observe it down in the studio from my kitchen window.   One door hinge had broken off the main casing, my God how I nursed that thing along for years.

I consulted Kilns West by email and showed them my firing schedule and photos of the cones.  I reckon it is the heatwork within the kiln being greater than I'd anticipated and I will modify with my firing schedule a little to get to 1280 and not 1300C+ as I seemed to have achieved.  I had items in Southern Ice Porcelain in there and they became very translucent, glassy and vitrified, almost like Depression Milk Glass though I also got some bloating in the bowls.  It wasn't recycled clay.  So ... on to the next thing.
Come with me now to the Mud Colony group of Bloggers to see what the others have been up to.  

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Closure ... coming soon to a place near me.

I am pleased.  I got the Joan Campbell tiles completed - first set of 17 tiles delivered with the spare set ready bar three refires.  You might remember I blogged about this a long time ago here.  You know kilns, stuff happens in them, some of the tiles in the second kiln developed a yellowish tinge around the text in chocolate brown print in the firing.  Some others developed a weird white halo on the tiles close to the peephole in the door or the vents on the kiln roof but they resolved in a retire.  I will refire these ones and hope for a better result.  I had trouble printing my own decals, the china paint was a bit more coarse than I expected and I ended up arranging professionally printed digital decals.  So I am looking forward to closure on that project and seeing them installed to replace Joan Campbell's original set which have suffered badly in the twenty years since they were installed.  On delivery Corine (the person doing the commissioning) said the nicest thing - 'Joan would be proud of you'.  I'll post pix when the new installation is made public.

Not much to tell you this week, working hard, loving it, teching in TAFE, about to complete our evenign class of Print on Clay and surface treatments on Wednesday nights at TAFE, repeating that next term, teaching in a high school, making some clay tools for making slabbed boxes.  I'll tell you about that next week .. I want to go to see what they are saying at the Mud Colony first.

Actually I prepared this post about a month ago, lots has happened since then, big stuff, not clay related at all, but such is life as an Aussie bloke once said.  There is a link there, if you follow it you'll be led to a little bit of Australian history and folklore.  I like to throw in a cultural allusion every now and then.  

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Kilns - moving them, the EPIC - Part 2

Last week when we tried to move the new kiln from the lawn and down the sloping grassy driveway about two metres onto the paved area in front of the garage I tried to help but in fact I totally lost my bottle.  Husband Henry and two of our sons joined in with the A frame Hen'd rigged up to hop the kiln forward a little at a time into its destination.  Engineer's are pretty smart, this wasn't about just grunt work, there was a lot of lifting and planning involved.  I was hopeful but remained unconvinced that we could all do this safely and said so, and Hen to give him credit, promptly abandoned the attempt.  He said he'd wait for our friend and neighbour to be available to give some extra help, muscle and wisdom.  Relieved, I dashed off to the shop for the makings of dinner but in Woolworths car park I threw up - that's how anxious I'd become over the kiln issue.  It isn't elegant but it is my body's alarm for when my blood pressure is soaring and I'm ignoring my stress signals.  

A week later, and a massive rainfall later, we 'put the band back together' and with very good communication and teamwork we hopped the kiln gradually into place (we?  I lie, I kept really busy in the vicinity so I could avoid being too involved and chuck up again).  Neighbour Gary and Henry were brilliant blokes and our young guys were very valuable too in doing their bit with the ropes, the block and tackle, the A Frame and generally shuffling things slowly in a very safety conscious manner.   The soil is nothing but grassy sand and very inhospitable to top heavy items such as a kiln ... yes we all wore tough shoes and minded our fingers. 




My two beauties a Kilnswest and a  German WELTE Prins KS 35 brought in from the Netherlands.  
 So then I proceeded to 'christen' the new kilns in the traditional manner where I come from.  It seemed like a good way to mark St Patrick's Day and that sometimes life feels very good indeed, I didn't even break a nail - moving the kiln or opening the can of draft Guinness.  Now Hen's gone back to making his new 'old' motorbike work and I cannot say a word can I?  And I have to Google Translate the manual for the WELTE.