Not sketching

This week I was supposed to sketch some shapes for vessels for my illustration buddy Jenny Cox to have a look at so she could think of some surface design concepts. It's been a weird week and now I'm nowhere near a scanner so...what to do?

I figure, I'll link her up with some other blogs, artists and such so that she can see what I think is awesome so we can come up with something super-duper mint and become prize winning artist designers. Flawless plan.

First blogs first, let's head over to Jonathan Adler, American Maximalist whose bold, sexy almost classical designs make me want to be a better person and a better potter.

Let's move along to the work of Kitty Shepherd whose blog I've only just started to read. Again we've got some classical forms here but her decoration is totally different from Adler;s work, it's that kind of cluttered, over the top Grayson-Perry-y post modern funk that totally uses the whole pot.

Something completely different? How's about the man who made me want to be a ceramicist? Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Takeshi Yasuda.

I know, I know, right? The movement, the jucie-ness of the glazes, gorge-ous. Contemplative, involving and technically breath taking.

Awh, he's lovely. I don't know if I could ever be that lovely. But I'm willing to try. And, a little out of left field is Kiki Smith, who seems to be stalking me a bit. A lecturer of mine recommended I look into her work. i nodded and smiled and had no intention of doing that. I don't like to take inspiration from the people who surround me, ownership of my work is tricky for me. Then I'm flicing through a book and see something striking and it's a Kiki Smith piece and then it happened again. She's haunting me!

Great thing about Smith beyond everything? How people react and write about this stuff, she really gets people's pulses going.

Oh- and that picture is supposed to be that way round.

Creatively Moribund

Having finished university for the year I thought I'd rest up and thenget started on some projects that I wanted to get done. Little things, like making this blog look better, photographing my work somehow, getting some none-brief work made so I can wood-fire again this summer. But I just can't get into gear.

I got some feedback that I need to do more research which is probably fair does, it didn't used to be. I used to be the research queen, I could drop names and movements and all sorts to do with my ideas but it wasn't getting me anywhere so I stopped. Last b

it of work I did I just had an idea and made the thing. I didn't sketch it out or research all that much and although aesthetically it was alright, beyond that it ended up being a bit vapid. So...hard work here we come.

I was meant to go to uni and throw today, get in a bit of practice for when I'm a penniless potter but then I thought I should go to the library first and learn from my lessons. And now it's 7:30 and all I've done is read, watch telly online and sketch. Do you own a copy of 'Making Contemporary Art; How today's artists think and work' by Linda Weintraub? You totally should. I've never read it, I've read many little bits of it because as soon as you open it you go 'Ooooh! That gets me thinking...' and rush off and well...make contemporary art! So today I opened it at the 'Sourcing Inspiration' section as I feel so empty of ideas it felt like the best place for me. And I read that inspiration is;

'the deity within us who breathes that divine fire by which we are animated.'

Spoken by Ovid, who sounds pretty smart. Considering Mr Ovid's wise, wise words that resonated with me (the idea of a little person who breathes fire would appeal to most potters who make little people and play with fire) so I started to try and imagine my muse. My little person. I did this with lots of googling and Jaime Hernandez's biography by Todd Hignite 'The Secret of Life and Death' and here she is ladies and gentleman, my lazy ass muse, Suzie.

Coffee!

Get up? Or go back to bed?

Go back to bed.

She's pretty awesome even if she's frustratingly unmotivated. Just like me.

Print North

any of you know that last year I made a series of work based on Japanese wood block printing. The great thing about being near Newcastle and being interested in print is having Northern Print on your doorstep. It's a wonderful place where curiosity can be rewarded and print appreciated. I missed one set of classes but now am the proud atendee of this course;

Relief Woodblock Printing with Jo Bourne
This course will introduce you to the variety and subtleties of woodblock. Developing images from reclaimed wood, you will use transparent layers of ink alongside stronger colours to create images that compliment and utilise the grain of the wood. Jo has been making prints for over 20 years. She has shown her work all over the world and her work can be found in many private collections.
Saturday 2 July
10am-5pm | £55 | £49.50 concession

It'll be a great chance to do something creative over the summer rather than just stagnate, which is what I did last year. Hopefully I'll come up with some images that can make good transfers. I'm working on some images with illustration budy o' mine Jenny Cox, check out her work, she's lovely. With some hard work and plenty of cups of tea I'm sure we can come up with some images that will make lovely things to sell to get up to next years fundraising aims.

Northern Clay

Yesterday whilst heavily leafleting the hamlet of Newcastle I found out that Northern Clay would be opening that night so, being a some what adventurous so and so I went along. I tried to find a budy, a wing man if you will, but other students do things on a Friday night. What. Losers.

I had thought I'd be all chatty and intelligent (whilst stealing ideas for the Dry Run opening) but instead I was a little bundle of terrified nerves. I had a quick chat to Jess Cohen who lectures at Newcastle and is a lovely lady, she's made some mothy-rocky-organic planters with really lush (lush as in vegetative growth rather than 'geet mint like') glazes.

I oggled Simon Griffiths owls.

What's not to oggle? I perused Lisa de Larny's Egon Schiele-like sculptures.

I also ate some mini-brownies and angel cakes and talked to NO ONE. I shuffled round, smiling, occasionally looking around as if I was expecting to be joined by a hip and groovy friend, looking at my phone and rolling my eyes etc. I said 'Hi' a couple of times, but only loud enough for me to hear.

Let the self-loathing commence.

Fire!

Today I had a disposable camera that I'd forgotten the contents of developed, more proof that I need a digital camera. Last year I went to a wonderful place called Soloway Ceramics Centre and wood-fired some pots. There was salt-glazing and ash-glazing and all forms of fun to be had.

The two kilns Ray keeps are lovely, when I'd been with the college there had been teams of people working on them, but this time, there were two of us, and the in-exhaustable Ray so lil' old Lil got to fire a wood firing kiln all by herself.

Observe, that's what inordinate amounts of pride and soot look like. It puts programming an electric kiln in perspective, who's afraid to play with fire? Not me!

In fact, this is me, kinda sorta breaking the kiln, I got overexcited and fired it too high with not enough time in between so that the embers built up too much and didn't get enough...oh, that's too much science for me. It went well then it went bad but then it made pots.

The pots I brought were beyond a bit rubbish, I think that unless I can get a job working a million hours a day as a production potter I'll never be sufficient on the wheel, but I'd love to see some babies salt-glazed and baptised with fire.

One Does

So this Friday is the Royal Wedding, huzzah! Nothing wrong with a bit of royalism from time to time, as long as it's put into context with some 'Off with their heads!' type thinking. As someone who hasn't lived through a royal wedding, I admit it, I'm intrigued.

Why am I supposed to watch it? How am I supposed to watch it? Am I supposed to wear a hat?

One thing's for sure, there's a range of things I could buy to get in the mood. Ceramics and the monarchy have a strange symbiotic relationship. Some big thing comes along, there's nothing we Brits like more than to slap it on a mug, and the royals like to say 'I buy such and such' which makes more people buy it too. Almost win-win. Here's some of the best commemorative tat I've seen.

The mysterious 'Loving Cup' (available from all good royal merchandisers) Linda Hancox, the creator from Stoke-on-Trent is very proud but I can't find any other work of her's so will have to judge her on the 'Loving Cup'. Feel free to research what on earth a Loving Cup is, I think it has something to do with having two handles but I'd rather keep it vague and imagine it's for pagan fertility rites.

This James Brown poster brings a bit of Vegas pizzazz to our patriotism, spangling up our Union Jack seems an odd idea, but I kinda dig it here. Plus it makes the royal wedding seem like what it is, a big show, a carnival and a circus all rolled into one massive hodge-podge of Britannia.

Of course if you wanted to go all subversive on their arses then you could get yourself an anarchists mug from Baroness Carrie von Reichardt and swig tea out of anarchist statements.

Or if you're thinking of shopping local, have a gander at work in Made in Newcastle's range of royal fancies, sugary sweet and just around the corner and buying British means your being proper patriotic.

Easter Sundae

Daniel and I have managed to wake up on Easter Sunday without any easter eggs and the prospect of having to leave the house to get some. But before we do that I thought I'd share a yummy recipe for ice cream I found in Delicious Magazine. I wish I had a camera, it's a beeyootiful colour. It's sort of an italian colour, if you get what I mean? Or a 1950's colour, like the car on the left.

Can you taste it? Ooh it's lovely. And all you need is to blitz together natural yoghurt, frozen raspberries and icing sugar to taste. You could use double cream if you wanted to be overly decadent but the yoghurt version is just as yummy. And then you can practically eat it out of the blender. Chocolate brownies are good with it, sometimes a brownie is really cloggy and makes you feel greasy, this ice cream cuts through it and lets it sing. Try to eat it all fresh rather than having to go back to the freezer and whip it, it's a dull task but otherwise it turns into a big old frozen block. So eat it fast, you have a legitimate reason.

But seeing as we don't have any left, any ingredients or easter eggs it looks like I'm gonna have to make myself presentable and buy some goodies from the corner shop.

Oh- and if you're gonna make that ice cream, eat it out of something blue, like these beautiful Latte Bowls from Anthropologie it just works.