Monday 22 April 2013

Facebook Page

Well I have finally got round to making a Facebook page hallelujah! Not quite sure how I'm supposed to link it to this blog...there are probably far more professional ways of doing this! But if you fancy liking it then it would be much appreciated ;)

Tinderbox Ceramics Facebook Page

Saturday 20 April 2013

Ceramic Art London

Hmm so I was in London last weekend for Ceramic Art London at the Royal College of Art, which is always worth a visit as they have established names alongside newer emerging talent, and I always come home filled with inspiration and a renewed sense of enthusiasm and can't wait to get stuck back into clay again.  I took some photographs, which I don't think I was supposed to do so it probably makes me a bad person, but I wanted to share some of the highlights for me with you :)

There were lots of animals this year, however I especially love Stephanie Quayle's lifesize ones, which are sculpted from heavily grogged clay and bursting with animal quirkiness:







I also love Susan O'Byrne's patterned wildlife, which are made via a painstaking process of layers of porcelain clay stretched over a wire frame.  I also like the fact that she is also Scottish, so perhaps I am naturally biased ;)





Katharine Morling had some of her large sculptures on display too, and I love the narrative aspect of her work and the fact that the figures could have been drawn on paper, except they are lifesize and 3D:




Other highlights for me included wondrously slapdash colourful works by Elke Sada and Barry Stedman, and these beautiful vessels by Clare Conrad which evoke the kind of peeling paint and decaying surfaces I love:



Mette Maya Gregersen's work has a lovely fluid flow and movement to it, and is achieved by burning out wooden structures:



There were also gorgeous smoky vessels from the likes of Jack Docherty, Antonia Salmon and Joanna Still, stunning jewellery from Luca Tripaldi and a whole host of other wonderful works by artists too numerous to mention.  However, I would thoroughly recommend a visit if you ever get the chance.  I only went for one day this year, however I did manage to catch a talk by Adam Buick where he talked about a film he had made where he stuck one of his unfired moon jars on top of a hillside in Wales and photographed it every 33 seconds for 10 days.  The pot slowly weathered away under the onslaught of the elements, and the resulting film is quite beautiful.  Entitled Earth to Earth, here is a link to a clip of it:

Adam Buick Earth to Earth

Anyhoo thank you for reading this, and thank you to all the artists who were exhibiting for their inspirational work.  Keep it coming ;)