Knowledge and a Barrel of Monkeys

I have happily come to the conclusion that I am the most unsuccessful blogger in the bloggisphere and this opens a great door to freedom from scrutiny. You can look over my shoulder if you like and watch me while I am thinking but your continued non input is a companionable way for us to sit.

A journey began for me several weeks ago with a master course in Art Practice and Research with Ruth Hadlow. It came at a time when I was flailing with this incessant drive to be more visible and commercial which was like a loud  flapping noise stopping me from thinking. As soon as a pirouetting child absorbed in a fantasy of ballerinas and princesses feels the adult gaze, she also becomes her own audience and she constantly watches out of the corner of her eye for approval and adulation and loses the rhythm that prompted her dance.

Ruth’s course was a wonderful antidote for that but at the same time is difficult to describe. It was if anything, like being cloistered in a contemplative order for a week with five other earnest and gifted artists. Personal attributes and biographies were irrelevant to the tasks at hand. We talked of cabbages and kings, as my father used to say, when we sat long hours talking around the subject of his impending death without ever touching on it. Understanding was found in the sopped up tears and and pearls of wisdom  that could be retrieved from the tangled threads we wove around that tender wound. 

Knowledge is an obstacle to Knowledge.(Thich Nhat Hahn, Buddha Mind Buddha Body)

There were enlightening readings which were not about their content but more about their style. There were oddments from pockets along with skilfully made artifacts and emotionally charged talismans all rubbed up against each other which were available for us to meditate on and practice some of the thinking skills Ruth presented us with. Disparate objects hooked our attention and drew threads of passion and accumulated experiences from our brains as we fashioned our own interpretations of what it was we were dealing with.

Synchronicity and  serendipity seemed to magically influence our responses but in reality the objects that hooked our attention were simply touchstones for lived experiences that had resonated in our lives and were our driving forces.

 Our analysis involved unwrapping information embedded in art forms and objects and then using those techniques as a lense through which to approach an artistic task. 

Barnacles and hibiscus caught my eye

Sometimes language traps an idea like a bug in amber and prevents it from growing but it can also liberate ideas especially if it is circumspect and dances around the edges like children poking at a dead bird . Language can be direct and descriptive, it can list physical attributes, it can allude to romantic notions or emotional ideas elicited from an object, it can talk in circles around a subject without ever putting a finger on it. Language can approach an object and wander off into nostalgic musings and then attention can be drawn again to the object with new questions in the mind. Language tends to be a linear description, except if you are speaking in sign language, which can be a multidimensional expression of emotion and action attached simultaneously to information.

I could for instance tell you the boring fact that every morning (almost) I walk around the oval a minimum of 3 times to begin my day. I walk in an anticlockwise direction and expect to see certain individuals also taking their morning constitutional and it gives me a sense of solidarity with all those who are walking. Michael Moore the documentary maker started a movement about walking in solidarity with others who are walking. His simple act motivated thousands of people simultaneously around the globe. I used to feel a certain solidarity with women who were up feeding babies at 4am.

I could also represent my walk with a list

Flock of corellas lifting off,

 newly mown turf,

 dew,

 long shafts of sunlight,

 silhouette of park bench,

  ant holes,

   feathers,

    lorikeet chatter,

     hot air balloons,

   empty drink bottle on the war memorial,

  drifts of  spent gum blossom,

     increasing numbers of coloured eucalypt leaves,

            old man peeing behind the cricket shed,

    golfers exuding early morning smugness,

  magpie keeping one metre distance with sideways glances,

 pinging kneecap,

      new hole dug on walking path by bored child,

 fallen sticks,

           streaking flash of an exuberant dog…etc

I could represent it mathematically

440metres x 3 = 1520 metres or 3 laps x 5mins= 15mins = time for 2 more laps or 2 laps x5 minutes + 1x slow lap because of THAT couple… don’t they know how slow they are. 78 breaths =I gm of fat processed and deleted.

with a reference;

The Superior vena-cava collects de-oxygenated blood to the heart aided by heart suction. This vein carries blood from left to right. Centrifugal force due to anticlockwise running helps this suction. If we run clockwise, the centrifugal force impedes suction. That is why, in olden days, health officers ensured that all carnival merry-go-rounds were run only in the anti-clockwise direction. As the heart is on the left side, for humans and animals, running anticlockwise makes the centrifugal force in the body to act from left to right. Whereas it is from right to left for clockwise running. Racing tracks, animal shows in circuses, bullock-drawn pelt on wheels, all mostly have only left turns. Stairways in temple towers have only left turns for going up. Clockwise running tires people. http://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-1416,00.html

or with an image

the walk - Jo Quirk

I could of course share the work fragments from the course but it may not lead you any closer to understanding what it was. I was introduced to the art of Agnes Martin which corresponded to my own  drawing exploration and illustrated pulse and breath.

I was once again charmed by Ursula Le Guin’s writing and can now go back and explore where her femininst ideas resonate with me. Everything I see has taken on a new light 

A spoon has been poked into my head and the fragments have been stirred around. Just like the game Barrel of Monkeys, you can’t pull out things that weren’t there before but monkeys that come up may be in a different order.

 When you view art and it confuses you, revolts you, intrigues you or fails to engage you, instead of making a quality judgement about it, sit with it a while and think what did the artist have in the barrel to draw on. Describing what you see and what you feel using categorical lists, similes, poetry or other manners of communication may throw open revelations to you about why you have had a particular response. Your barrel of monkeys and the artist’s barrel of monkeys could have something in common after all.

Stephen Benwell and Cerebral Accretions

I have had a little break in my writing to accommodate some other cerebral activity. Our bodies don’t grow evenly but a little bit on one side and a little bit on the other so at some stage we might be in sync but at many times we are striving for that balance.

My mind has had to take on some new learnings, of the IT kind because my regular band of clever helpers were not available at the precise moments of my crises. It meant I had to nut things out alone and that was a good thing because I now know how to use some new applications and with more practice I will look experienced by comparison. It took me longer than a digital native but I am happy to say my mind is still able to take on new things which means my mind grows a little more on one side or other and that is a good thing.

When hand building with clay especially fine porcelain, it is a matter of constantly adding even weights and thicknesses of clay and giving the clay time to consolidate before adding another piece just like adding new learnings to a brain. An expert in this field is Stephen Benwell who is exhibiting at Heide Gallery. http://www.heide.com.au/exhibitions/future/exhibition/stephen-benwell-beauty-anarchy-desire-a-retrospective/edate/2013-08-08/eid/448

His forms are outrageously large and finely built and a mystery of construction if you have ever tried it yourself.

His earlier works are quite muted colours because of the clay he used and the fact that in Australia in the seventies there was not much advice about firing coloured work which he discovered was better in an oxidation firing than reduction. I made the same mistakes at the beginning of my course. In those days he decorated with geometric forms on quite classical shapes. There are legs and feet on many vessels and at one stage he goes through quite a zoomorphic phase based on Pre Columbian figures. You will have to visit the exhibition to see those forms because my camera hiccupped at that point.

Here is one with feet though.

 

 

 

Being a pioneer of a form is a hard road to hoe but it is also free of rules and Stephen Benwell has used that lack of guidelines to his advantage. He has learned like a child whose default mode is to always be a learner and discoverer. Firing stoneware to earthenware temperatures and firing pieces up to 30 times to see what happens is a true adventurer's spirit. He is so closely involved with the clay but at the same time detaches himself from the object by exposing it to a gamble.
As he acquired more understanding of clay and firing and how glazes work in different firings his colours gradually come to life. The stiffness of his forms loosens and the surface also loosens and sings with colour and texture. The white surfaces become canvasses for luscious colour while the classic influence is directed more at the imagery on the vessels in repetition of classical tiled Roman walls.

Eventually the sketches of forms on the surface metamorphose into the actual figures without the vessels and have the quality almost of porridge which he accomplishes with layers of slip and glaze over the already slipped and glazed surface with just hints and smudges of the underglazed colour showing through the misty surface. A kinder way to describe them is to say that they are made of cloud material but if I said that I would feel pangs of jealousy because that is what I have always wanted to achieve! A couple of the pieces worked this way remind me of Cy Twombly paintings.

 

While viewing this exhibition someone asked me how one person can make a figure out of clay and for it to be a success and yet another person cannot. My answer in Stephen Benwell’s case is by adding a touch of tenderness. It reminds me of the old Milton the Monster song where the mad professor adds” just a tincture  of tenderness ..but not too much” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gJAm1BA6Fg

 

 

The expressions drawn out  in the facial expressions or bodily gestures have a magical quality that can only be put there by transferring a bit of one’s own soul into the creation. Many years ago I interviewed Melbourne naive artist Anne Marie Graham and she not only kindly tolerated the presence of my four children in her tiny apartment but she directed half of the interview to them in order to pass on her secrets. One of the most important gems was that no matter what you are painting or creating whether it be a rock or a bird, you need to inhabit that thing for that moment of creation, so that if you are a rock you know its heaviness on the earth and its drape of muscles and if you are a bird you know the flightiness of its perch. When you work like that you leave a part of yourself in the work. Stephen Benwell’s works breathe with a part of him.

 

 

 

Designing holes

There is a famous Australian film called The Castle in which the son of an extremely ordinary family develops a sense of achievement in the world of DIY by digging a hole . This is followed by another  bland statement a few days later that he dug another hole. The droll nature of the statement has become a bit of an icon in our family, at least, since DIY has been quite a past time.  Digging a hole is actually quite hard work and digging a deep hole is extremely strenuous but when it is finished it doesn't jump out as a significant achievement.
So it is with ceramics. Essentially the potter is capturing a hole that didn't exist before. And a hole can make such a difference to the outer skin that holds it.
We seem to have an innate sense of proportion and pre determined calculation of mass that should accompany certain proportions so that when we come upon this magical combination our minds  then  immediately click other programs into action to assess surface, colour and feel. If we are drawn first to the visual colour, we might forgo mass or feel, because in our minds it has already become a decorative item and if our calculations don't add up about weight for volume we can overlook that. These intuitions probably go back to our survival skills of picking the juiciest fruit or heaviest coconut, that would repay the energy expended in climbing for it.

It is with all these seemingly intuitive judgments that the experienced ceramicist develops a form.

Is that hole going to contain just air for the rest of its existence, hot beverages, fat ice blocks, a chunky stew or a special little treat? Do spoons or chopsticks have to wrestle with its interior? Are the contents going to extend beyond the top of the opening and therefore change the centre of gravity.

So many times when selling things at markets we ceramicists are bemused by the question "What would you use it for?" I don't know if this is because buyers want to know if they are committing a sacrilege to feed the beloved kitten milk from it or whether they think there is some secret code in the ceramics world tied to notions of value that ascertain whether a piece is going into the "good" room. Heavens to Betsy if you "use" the Wedgewood!

 

 

Sometimes I can't believe that people have so little imagination, or are so bound with convention.  The idea of a container that can be used for one tim tam and also for wasabi  or dukkah at  a dinner table is a revealation to them. Our job is not just to provide the object but also the vision to go with it. I can't believe our audience want to be dictated to.

When I make vessels I use a printed guide of the Golden Mean. It was used by artists of the classical eras and is sometimes attributed to Euclid.
1:618..... it occurs in nature through the Fibonacci spiral and it is what dictates our seemingly innate sense of proportion.

I don't use it religiously but when I have developed something new and want to make a decision about its proportion, I might just put it up against the guide. When I have made something I don't feel comfortable about it usually doesn't fulfil the proportions of the golden ratio and sometimes the addition of a higher foot ring might make all the difference or  the addition of a darker colour in one part might give a sense of grounding and balance.

I haven't got it all worked out. I struggle with every little hole I make. I fight a mind that constantly seeks novelty over pursuit of perfect form. If my work becomes too perfect I whack it or bend it or draw on it left handed. I want my pieces to resemble humanity and none of us conforms to the golden mean entirely. I fight the machine made look that comes with constant practice. I know that if I spend a week in the studio at my wheel my pieces dance off the wheel as perfect little replicas but my urge is to fight that because the gesture and nuance is lost. Regular and matching is what the buyer wants but I have always been a rebel and I am my own worst enemy. We want to choose the puppy from the litter that we feel most connected to and a bowl or beaker that fits our hand and heart.

 So bad luck if you want any of my pieces fitted neatly on your shelf and perfectly lined up. It's not going to happen and if that is what you want you are best to go to Ikea.

                                           POST SCRIPT
A beautiful video on Fibonacci sent to me by Mirta
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0tLbl5LrJ8&feature=youtu.be

Blessing of the Colours

I was a weird little kid I suppose, but there are little habits I had then that I still get pleasure from now in the same childish way.

One of the exciting  excursions we used to take in our 2 tone blue Holden would be a trip into town, maybe to see a visiting ballet such as the Bolshoi. We would be dressed in our best scratchy lace and satin prettiness and impossibly uncomfortable pretty shoes (Is that where we learn it from?) and then because the treat was so expensive and only we 3 girls could participate , my mother would  park down near St Patrick’s cathedral and we would walk the rest of the way into the theatre area for the matinee session.  It would require the obligatory ducking into the cathedral to give thanks for our extreme good fortune.

The most pleasurable part of this was the not the funky  ghost smell of hundreds of people’s body odours clinging forever into the stonework, ( I thought it was the holy dignitaries in their resting places!) but the walk under the flickering light glinting through  the stain glass windows.

To have a stamp of rainbow concentrated on my bare arm or on my face felt like a very powerful and special blessing. It was not a religious zeal or even anything I think would have been countenanced in conversation about that holy place and so I kept the magic feeling to myself.

 

 

I keep a crystal  prism on my eastern window and it casts its spectrum in varying stamps across my wall and down the stairwell.

It just makes me happy! It heightens the sense of awareness about a beautiful moment into an extraordinary moment if just for a fleeting time and sometimes I just stand there and get  a rainbow stamp for fun.

 

 

And sometimes it helps to cast a positive light on something from the kiln that at first seems to be a bit disappointing!

 

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What Was I Thinking?

This bowl has been sitting as a looming presence in my studio for a l.o.n.g....time.

 

I made it in a great fervour of activity nearly 3 years ago, while on holidays 100km away. It is made of paper porcelain in which I had placed all my hopes because of its amazing structural properties. It is about 300mm wide and 190mm high but only .5mm thick. Now amazingly this has travelled the hundred km back to Melbourne in a seatbelt on the backseat without having been fired at all. While I was making it it had some little disasters and stuck to the board I was making it on. The bottom fell out and so it had a new base put on many weeks after I had started it. It has been treated very roughly and so even though I couldn't face the thought of smashing it up and recycling the clay again I couldn't bring myself to bisque it either. It has just been a niggling worry that I have wasted precious energy on and so last week I bit the bullet and bisqued it in the gas kiln.

I don't believe it! It hasn't got a smidgeon of cracking and is as light as can be with a lovely ring to it when you ping it with your finger.

But, I have completely lost my vision of what it was going to look like on completion and don't know where to go now. I think I was going to cover it with detailed drawings but I am not sure if I trust the structure enough to invest that much time and emotional energy into it. What to do what to do??

Support group

At certain times of the year for ceramicists, in fact most artists there is an air of industry and extra striving. Competitions and exhibitions are a time to excel and push yourself to prove something. We get caught up in the pressure and the constant disastrous failures and completely lose focus on what it is we are trying to prove and to whom.

Normally every kiln firing has a few disappointments but if there is no deadline, we just put that down to a learning experience, pull ourselves up and have another go or put the idea in the cranial incubator for a while to see if any solution gels there. 

 Sometimes the problems seem insurmountable!

 

During competition time, it feels like a dog eat dog world. The kiln is against you, time is against you, and the family seems to need you more or seems to be more critical of your need to escape to the studio.  Your brain takes a holiday and suddenly you are incapable of doing any of the things you have managed to do at every other time with the computer, the camera, the kiln program...blah, blah, blah.  You feel like the only failure in the world.

Just when you are treading that fine line between total capitulation to failure and glorious victory in completion it’s nice to take time out and get a bit of perspective.

  I love my circle of clay mates! To meet up with them and share our war stories and then laugh like drains is one of the most nurturing experiences.  You see that you want success for all of them because that makes them an even stronger support group.  You feel happy to go out of your way to help out with something, to get them over the hump because happiness and success are contagious.  An interesting study that came out of Framingham Mass. Heart study this week was that the health and happiness of your friend’s friends impacts on your own health.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97848789

So it made my morning to see this on my messages on my phone this morning

<<You May Steal This

 

So I didn't!

 

And look! It wasn't the end of the world.

 

Thanks for the support ! Hope your project is going well too.

 

Treasure Haunts

 

My favourite fossicking place on the planet is going!  Proprietor Eli has been running Coastal Trader on the Geelong  Rd at Portarlington and it has been the haunt of artists, hipsters and home decorators  for many years and a mainstay of business on the Bellarine peninsula. Its rambling junkyard was full of promise and potential  but is now sadly all cleaned up. The main shop area is a  dimly lit shed and used to be chock full of nostalgic treasures of mid 20^th century design but is reduced to about 25% of its former stock. The treasures in there have always had that special something that appeals to me –the mark of craftsmanship,beauty, good design and possibility for reuse or resurrection. I don’t recall ever seeing plastic stuff, though I could be mistaken.  The recycled clothing was lush and beautiful  and I am sure I saw some of it on some ABC programs. Every other item evoked some sort of emotional response including the special aroma of shed dust and linseed oil that just reassured you that you were in your grandpa’s shed where good things were taken care of.

Now stocks are depleting rapidly in a count down to eviction in June. There are still some beautiful items to be found and I really don’t know what can ever replace this treasure trove if new premises cannot be found. Sigh!

Do you have any treasure haunts?

It was a great photo shoot site for my grafitti stuff.

 

Happy Easter

Good Friday Sky

No matter what date Good Friday falls on the sky backdrop never disappoints. Big and dramatic,sombre, wistful.A good thinking sky.

 

Last Supper

 

I sure as heck hope not!     Take care out on the roads this Easter and come back safe and sound.

Maybe This Is Where It All Began

 

When I was a child this cabinet contained all the worldly goods and assets that could be redeemed for money. It took pride of place in our living room and every special cup and saucer had a story connected to it about its mythical value. The cabinet had a special aroma from the mahogany timber and collected staleness which added to the awe and reverence as incense does in a church.

I don’t think it is entirely why I began ceramics but my exploration over the last few years has definitely hearkened back to these objects. They represented beauty and aspiration in an impoverished household and now the image seems so pathetic because you do not see the stories and dreams there. I heard Waleed Ali today discussing the haute couture of the fifties in Melbourne after the War and Depression years as a way of re stratifying the social classes. Maybe that is what acquisition of fine objects also represented to our parents but for me they were eye candy that made my fingers itchy to handle.

They were not objects that were handled frequently and as visitors were infrequent, there never seemed an appropriate time to use them. In the end the kitchen objects were imbued with the greatest nostalgia through their frequent and favoured use.

 Beautiful objects teach our senses something. They grow on us through muscle memory and their memory can be recalled long after the objects are gone. What are our children going to look back on with fondness-plastic cutlery, polystyrene and cardboard upsized food and drink buckets? Whoever thought to use the word bucket and food in the same sentence?

Nifty Photo Booth

I always seem to be walking around the place with something in one hand because I can't let go of one idea before latching onto another. I was in such a state the other day while holding  and contemplating a couple of pieces in my studio when I remembered that I was going to take toilet paper to the upstairs bathroom. Before I forgot for the 10th time I opened the linen cupboard (where we keep the toilet paper stash) put the beakers on a higher shelf and grabbed a couple of toilet rolls to leave on the stairs for my next trip up there. I saw my camera on the stairs which is where I left it when I came in from the garden and proceded back to the studio camera in hand but had to shut the linen closet door which I had failed to do before. There were the beakers and the idea for a photo booth. I had a roll of muslin in there from a sewing project and simply shoved stuff aside on one shelf and covered the bulges with the muslin which made a lovely backdrop.
Lighting changes can be made in Picasa or Photoshop or Gimp as you please. So while some people like to work with one complete idea before the next is started I kind of move in a fluid that sometimes threatens to drown me!
Now I really ought to tidy that closet a bit.