porcelain workshop

We had a busy afternoon in Ballina last Saturday demonstrating decorative techniques in porcelain. Ruth Park showed how to carve porcelain at leatherhard stage and Sue Fraser demonstrated modelling and tissue transfer of oxide designs. I showed how to use linocuts for embossing and sprigs for surface decoration.

swallowing clouds

Our group show in Ballina opens this Saturday 4th September. Still waiting on the catalogue printrun but everything else has come together. Ruth has ordered 3 kilos of baclava just in case the scones, jam and cream isn't enough.
The sculpture is from a series of four twins. Ovulation induction with IVF often leads to multiple pregnancy. I was reading about a surgeon who was performing selective termination on siamese twins in utero. He published a paper about aborting the conjoined twins while preserving the other foetus.

won ton wrapping

I've been working into the wee hours getting work ready for our next group show with Sue Fraser and Ruth Park at Northern Rivers Community Gallery. Nothing seems to be coming out of the kiln quite how I imagined. The decals on the siamese twins have burnt off and the rich red of terracotta has turned into kak brown. Fingers crossed for the next kiln load.

Aphrodite has been patiently sitting on an empty nest for two weeks now. With no rooster in sight, it's going to be a long wait. She gets up each morning when I give the chickens some special treats from the kitchen but then it's back to brooding.

objects of the dead

I made a sculpture for Julie Barratt's 'Hankie Project' which opens tomorrow night at the gallery. Some of the hankies in the show are full of pathos, some charming, some chilling. You can see it at objectsofthedead.blogspot.com I made a deep upholstered work in black with a spirit level attached to represent the carpenters in my family.

pale pink camellias

I stopped outside the cemetery yesterday and picked some pale pink camellias from the roadside hedge. Their perfume was subtle but filled the car. They are sitting on my kitchen bench now in one of my female vases. This is a drawing from a series based on twins and evolution.

chicken footprints

I walked into my studio this afternoon and knew immediately that one of my chickens was out. I followed the footprints coming out of the wet pile of clay that I had left slaking down on the concrete floor. The footprints went under the car, over the vacuum cleaner, and around the veranda back to the chicken coop and straight to Parvati, the undeniable culprit with white feet. What body language can you read in a chicken's face?
This work is called 'Blanketed'. When I was making it, I was thinking about the incredible diversity of life on earth and how each species is so precious.

going, going, gulgong

Heading off this morning to Clay Energy Gulgong. The drive should take about eleven hours. I'm looking forward to a coffee already. It's been six years since I've been to Gulgong and I would really love to sit in a window seat in Janet Mansfield's library again. What a treat. I'm taking this large 60cm platter for the participants show. It's an image of Darwin touching Man complete with slimy protazoa from the benthos.

burringbar chicane

We whizzed up and down the hills around Murwillumbah after visiting Marc Renshaw and Karlee Rawkins show at Tweed River Art Gallery, slowing down only for the speed camera. My favourite work was Karlee's 'Pelting', a tiger, tiger burning bright orange and black stripes. I have this thing for hot orange, I have a burnt orange shirt for golf, and various other shades of orange for various other occasions.
I finished a new series of wall pieces recently. I used coffee grounds in the clay to lighten the weight. The clay was nauseatingly smelly for a few weeks, it then grew maggots and I had to use gloves when I pressed it into the plaster moulds. The iron in the coffee migrated towards the surface of the clay, leaving an efflorescene on the surface. You can see on the work, the mark of the ceramic barista.