ARTISTS TALKING

# 1 [19 February 2009]

So here I am.  Recent work, large (about 50x50cm) tiles of laminated bone china & chocolate black clays sit on drying shelves in the dining room near the radiator. They weren't drying out fully in my chilly (garden) studio so I brought them in, like so many cold orphans, to warm up.

They've been sitting there since before Christmas, waiting for the public access kiln i use to have new extraction fitted.  I've tried & still am trying to source other electric kilns to fire the pieces.. a long story.  We shall see which comes first!

My work, where it's come from?  At ECA & after, the inspiration I felt came from archaic & Neolithic sites, I was drawn to them & drew my work from that experience. 

Later I realised it's the experience of space and sense of place that was & is the influence.  In a moment of solitude, the door opens, in comes peace.

Peace, existential within the large 45 degree terraced & tree topped slope of the garden, has provided inspiration for it's evolution into a sculpture garden.

The idea was confirmed for me last summer in Barbara Hepworths place in St Ives.

The garden still needs lots of work and there are always the wall based pieces to make too, they bring the outside, semi-abstract, in.

OK I have my work cut out, but I see this blog as a motivational tool!

# 2 [25 March 2009]

Much clearing & shifting, initially identifying areas for the sculptures to go.

Ist job siting old pieces. Reminded 'there is no such thing as a weed, only a plant in the wrong place'.

With much huffing & puffing up the 45degree slope, a greenhouse has now appeared at the top of the garden.

The site for the oldest pieces, originating from my degree show is close into the wild hedge outside my studio window on some uncovered ancient shelf-like terraces amongst wild strawberries, foxgloves & a rudbekia similarly transplanted from my previous life, that will grow in around the pieces as the year goes on.

The next pieces sit alongside them. Refined versions that rest & simplify the complex surfaces of the old ones.

Unearthing shards of broken pottery has inspired sculptures to be made for the garden.  Grabbing my imagination are the combination of age crackled, shiny glazed surfaces & dirty broken edges with tactile curves, historically inside the original creamy buff coloured pot. I visualise their macro cosmic gowth into large scale pieces.  Occasionally these finds miraculously fit together. An event which brings a strange joy and fits well with the necessary aspect of putting sections of sculptures together, due to the restrictions of kiln size.

'Modernist' constructivist tendencies layer found/ discovered objects, marks & previous lives inspired by & interacting with place & space.  Like the garden, offering intriguing interludes from the craziness of 21st century living. 

A start has been made! Now to get some new work fired - Crescent Arts are having the new extraction fitted this month - so at last!

# 3 [11 September 2009]

Everything leads somewhere.

Real and metaphorical or historical paths, cycles, seaonal, annual, life paths, attitudes, mindshifts; all layers and lines.

Opportunities for blog posting have been thin on the ground for sometime, but Hooray!  A conversation in June with my wonderful partner has freed me from the static magnet of sitting behind a pc for 3 days a week, not to mention the 3 hr round trip.

Don't read me wrong here, I do miss the fun, friendly banter and connecting with like minded community artists, consulting them and supporting when needed.  But as I said months ago - the time has come for me to make my own work again - at last.

Thank you Lee x

July 31st and I am full-time self employed. So, where is the work?  Good news: I have a website on the way, an e-commercial one, which will sell pieces of various sizes, off the shelf and bespoke too, also having an archive of my public work. Commercialism? I heard that thought. I am an artist designer. My inspiration at times is overwhelming and I see no contradiction with wanting to share what I do. To encourage ways to find peace in the mentally & physically binding world of other people's chaos.

I have made a down payment on a kiln(!) which comes with loads of other equipment and is single phase so i won't be putting the street lights out!

I've been making room for the shed load of kit in my wee studio space; cutting down work top for the slab roller, exciting to me as it involves power tools with being in my studio & planning for the future too.

To keep me going til the new pieces are photographed here are some  taken over the summer of developments in the garden and especially the waterfall, to which we have added a natural bio filter of gravel & reeds.

Blog postings should come much more regularly from now on!! ;)

# 4 [4 January 2010]

Change comes in many ways through the making and the firing to the light, environment and natural aging as each piece finds its place. My favourite pieces, indoors or out, feel like a breath of fresh air; that like a long view connects me to the sea or landscape.

Clays

The starting point and backbone of my work is the clay itself how it responds and reacts, its own colours, texture & surface, earth the natural environment, geology of landscape, its space & surroundings and evidence of past human habitation. Inherent qualities of the natural world are strength, beauty & fragility.

Each piece uniquely engages with its space and surroundings which are often the source of inspiration. My work aims to engage the viewer with the strength and beauty of the clay and the delicacy of its surface. Clay has a memory. In the making process it holds every print or touch of tool and hand; incidental, accidental, design deliberate or necessary. The (almost sacrificial) firing process is where this memory is finally made solid; from here is no going back.  Reactions to the building process I deliberately invoke involve the crackling of the fine surface clays through my laminating process and the more extreme cracking and breaking apart of the clay, both of which provoke a response. At times I scantily apply and wipe away stains and oxides to enhance the surfaces to make them more available.

# 5 [9 March 2010]

Bold yet simple forms frame the clay’s natural qualities; light enhances the surface flaws and the physicality of the surface. Inspired by natural environment I aim to engage the viewer with the fragility, strength and beauty of the laminated clays and the delicacy of surface, evidence of clay’s intimate memory.

# 6 [4 April 2010]

Looking at the past serves to inform the future. 

Points of reflection come when things change providing frames of reference.

The divisions, layers, cracks, joints and lines are symbols of change, 'landmarks' for evolution.

We need those boundaries and boarders, intersections and connection points, where times change and sections separate in order to evaluate beginnings and endings.

Really looking forward to North Yorkshire Open Studios as the first time anyone will be able to see the new work in action!

11th, 12th 13th, 19th & 20th June

# 7 [13 April 2010]

Clay clay clay, things are just not moving fast enough as I can't dry out the clay which I make and I then can't dry out my work in my 'summer house' studio - I've been driving heavy stuff to Crescent Arts to dry it out on their storage heaters! How I'm ever going to get enough work together at this rate I don't know... I have to sort out some sort of heating system and soon!

# 8 [19 May 2010]

So many things at once and all a priority. Taming the garden to display some pieces ready for North Yorkshire open Studios, making the work and at the same time spending lots of time working through the snags on my website that should be up soon. Sleepless nights with additional concerns about community arts projects, our bees keep trying to swarm (and today receiving a letter from the Yorkshire Bee Keepers saying that for a second year running a local apiary has American Foul Brood, a shocking disease requiring all that apiary's hives to be burned in a pit!). We started cementing the waterfall to find we had been sold rock-salted sand from the winter and the work we've done has to come out as it won't set! Oh and my daughter's graduation next month right after NYOS with her imminent move to London (proud mum tho:))

All the curves and straight lines coming together and me jumping around to try to juggle them in the right direction.

I'm not feeling negative just a bit anxious not to drop one of these balls! Ultimately I need to have a good display of my work for the show and that's about focus, BUT it's all coming at once with plinths to build!

Hope I get lots of visitors and sales!

# 9 [6 June 2010]

Passing through my thoughts lately has been the misguided statement that 'children are very resilient'.  I'm sure this refers to them simply carrying on with life because it's all they know how to do. Everything is new to a child and many things must be a shock the first time of experiencing them. Making the time to piece past responses together, from a place of safety and from a point far back in time where things were clear, with a notion of finding the right current path is why I went to art college. Clay is my medium because of my earliest experience of its slippery and dissolving tactile resonance. 

I hear often that schools around the country are getting rid of their kilns and pottery rooms (? for reasons of H&S or space) and that art colleges are closing ceramics departments.

For me there can be no substitute for engaging truly with a material to the point of understanding it's science, it's artistic potential and applications. Finding out what it intrinsically 'wants' to do. Using the hands, tools given by nature, to create something from nothing; learning through experiencing a wide ranging spectrum of media, perhaps making a thing of beauty that started off as mud, or just plain 'getting your hands dirty' has life enriching benefits important for personal development. 

# 10 [13 July 2010]

North Yorkshire Open Studios 2010 - what a worthwhile opportunity to grab. The Sculpture Garden is a perfect venue for displaying the works alongside each other but on different levels and suddenly my tiny studio seemed quite big, cleared of paper, buckets and boards. With loads of help from Lee, OS proved an ideal deadline for finally finishing the waterfall, putting up a rope handrail beside the uneven steps and the last bits of turfing (this all took 3 months!). The timing of mid-summer suited the garden planting just right. It almost felt like a show garden. Most surprisingly I found that the majority of my visitors were unknown to me - around 90 over the 5 days(!) of genuinely interested and interesting people. I had hoped for more sales but have a few potential commissions to follow up on... to those who didn't make it; contact me any time to arrange a visit because I can now show people round individually by appointment - I'm on a high!