Tinderbox Ceramics: Glasgow Ceramics Studio Residency

Well one of my New Year resolutions is to keep this blog more up to date, and as it has only taken me a year to write this post I feel I am not doing too badly so far ;) In 2013 I was offered a graduate residency in the Glasgow Ceramics Studio for six months by the wonderful Susan O'Byrne, so after I had got the solo show out of the way and had been kindly funded by the Arts Council I stuffed my life into the back of my birdshit green car and hotfooted it back to my native Scotland.

Glasgow looking cold ;)

Glasgow in January is cooooollllld. So cold in fact that the first person I met when I arrived at the WASPS studios was a snowman, leaning drunkenly over and wearing a rather fetching beanie hat. However I was warmly greeted by Emilke, one of the studio members, and shown around. Located just to the East of the centre in Dennistoun, the WASPS building is an old tobacco factory which has been converted into studios for more than 140 artists. Home was a cosy flat above the studios which I shared with two painters (both whisky drinkers, which was good ;)). The ceramics studio is home to 18 ceramicists and has a wealth of facilities including six different kilns and a range of wheels. Everyone was lovely and very supportive and I was given my own space and free rein to do what I wanted, which after all the pressures of the previous year was exactly what I needed.

Happy chaos in the studio

The first couple of weeks I spent just reacquainting myself with the city. I used to live in Glasgow but it had been several years since I had been back for any length of time, and I was more familiar with the West side than the East. I visited several museums and galleries, ate a lot of macaroni cheese ( a Glasgow staple...you will find it on every menu in every restaurant) and did a lot of street pounding, muffled up against the wind. Down past the soot-blackened buildings of the Saltmarket, the Barrowlands, the Gallowgate, the old Fruitmarket, Rottenrow, Merchant City...wonderful names that beat like drums in your brain... the views from the Necropolis, following the River Clyde through Glasgow Green and over the bridge into the Gorbals.

Piece from an Alasdair Gray exhibition at GOMA

I was also given the opportunity to visit the Glasgow School of Art post-fire as my friend Christabel Geary (wonderful stuff - check her out ;)) had an exhibition on while I was there as part of her Masters degree. My father studied there, a well as a good few of my friends, and it had been extremely saddening to hear of the fire and the loss of the library in particular. It still smelled a bit smoky, but it was great to see art still being produced and the determination of the students to carry on. There was a great sense of everyone pulling together which was encouraging.

I also started revisiting artists who I love, one of whom is Joan Eardley, a firm family favourite. She studied at the Glasgow School of Art and in the 1950's produced colourful collaged paintings of Glasgow street children, highlighting inner city poverty at that time. She had a wonderfully free expressive style which charged the canvas with life, and later she moved to Catterline which is a small fishing village near to where I grew up, and painted the force of the storms on the landscape there.

Joan Eardley 'Little Girl with a Squint''

Joan Eardley 'Little Glasgow Girl'

Joan Eardley 'Sea and Snow'

I wanted to take some of this energy and apply it to ceramics. Usually I love smoke-firing and shy away from glazing, as I find Nature usually does a far better job of decorating than I do, and glazing is so often a disappointment (in my case, anyway ;)). However, I thought I would take advantage of the fact that for once I wasn't under any pressure to produce anything to a deadline and that I was free to play and experiment, and I had great facilities at my disposal, so I began to muck about with different printing processes and glazes and just had fun. Most of the work I produced while in Glasgow was flat so that I could transport it easily, and some of it ended up being jewellery (which can be seen on the facebook page...etsy shop to follow!). Mainly, however, the work was about trying to shake myself out of the shackles of college and what I thought I was expected to produce. For me, art is about pushing the boundaries and exploring as much as possible. I don't want to have to keep producing the same kind of stuff all the time. That might gain me a measure of success but to my mind it doesn't make me an artist, and I don't measure my worth in the number of pots I sell. You can spend a lifetime learning about clay. There are any number of techniques and processes which invite experimentation, and therein lies the excitement and joy of it for me.

Having said all of that, you will no doubt find me covered again with sawdust and copper carbonate before too long ;) Happy mudding ;)