In Situ

Well it's about that time of year again for my yearly blogpost, although one of my New Year resolutions (AGAIN!) is to try to keep this blog more up-to-date.  Maybe this year I will actually succeed ;)

Anyway it has been a busy year in the Tinderbox!  Firstly, I was very excited to be able to join a new artist's collective based in Cork called Over The Line Studios.  It is really the first studio in Cork which actually provides for ceramicists, and we have access to a range of kilns and individual spaces large enough to cope with the general chaos which seems to be generated by anyone who works with clay.

As well as ceramics we also have a mix of artists working with various media such as painting, photography, textiles and sculpture, which is great for learning new skills and bouncing ideas.

The studios are situated over a kitchen showroom where beautiful high-spec kitchens are on display.  For our opening group show it was decided we would be showing our pieces inside the kitchens, which took a while for some of us to get our heads around.  What...no white walls?  No PLINTHS???  How is our stuff going to work in a room full of shiny marble and MIRRORS?? However, once we had freed ourselves from our mental straight jackets we could see how exciting and different the possibilities were.

It was entitled In Situ, as the work was, obviously, being shown in situ, and bar the odd crash and heart-breaking smash it was a roaring success, and firmly put OverTheLineStudios on the Cork art scene.  There was lots of wine, there was music, there was dancing and it was great to discover how well we could all pull together as a team when it mattered.

Anyhoo, here are some pics of the work on display.  If any of you are ever in Cork and fancy popping in to the studios to say hi, please do! ;)

Driftwood Disc:  Saggar-Fired Stoneware, Found Chain, Driftwood

Beach Stones:  Saggar-Fired Stoneware.  Photography by Dervla Baker.

Beach Stones:  Saggar-Fired Stoneware.  Photography by Dervla Baker.

Escapades of Chickens:  Saggar-Fired Stoneware, Found Toolbox, Found tools.
We found this old toolbox our rambling one day and it took a couple of years of subconscious festering before I finally decided what to do with it. Basically a chicken escaped and laid it's eggs in a tool box.  I got the idea from a painting hanging in the Crawford Art Gallery of a basketful of eggs.  Not sure who painted it, nor am I sure how my mind managed to make a connection to the toolbox but hey ho that is what happened and here are the results ;)

By The Sea:  Black and White Stoneware, Found Chain, Driftwood.
The black ceramic beach stones with white stripes in this piece were inspired by the beautiful stones on one of my favourite beaches here in Cork.  Obsidian?  Quartz?  Geology is not my strong point but I would like to find our more ;)

Dragon Eggs and Mordor:  Saggar and Sawdust-Fired Stoneware

Black Dog: Saggar-Fired Stoneware

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 ;)

Fabric-printed pieces waiting to be fired

Fabric-printed tile

Fabric-printed tile

Fabric-printed tile

Glazed tile with Lucie Rie Gold

Stencil-print tile

Stencil-print tile

Stencil-print tile

Fabric-printed porcelain and sterling silver ring (source)

Fabric-printed porcelain and sterling silver ring (source)

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

Ship's horns

Da de dum so continuing with my obsession of all things mariner, I wanted to try and make some ship's horns out of clay.  This proved to be quite difficult, however, so they became a kind of hotch potch of clay, metal and plaster, with some spray paint thrown in for good measure ;) Originally I wanted them to speak,  maybe bellowing out sea shanties in a drunk-on-rum kind of way, but I didn't want any technology to be visible so I ended up abandoning the idea.  I took some abstract pictures of the Cork Docklands, however, and painstakingly collaged them with lasertran (not an ideal task for a person, such as myself, not too well-versed in the art of patience ;0)

This was the result, with one guy saying they reminded him of his mother-in-law and another saying they were straight out of telly tubby land ;)

However, they ended up in our third year show and on the opening night I found these guys with their ears pressed up against them, and when I asked them what they were doing they said they could hear the sea in them, which was kind of cool ;)

Anyway, since then one of them has unfortunately succumbed to a mysterious attack from an unknown source, however I suspect the culprit was my mad animal, Sputnik.  Here is he pretending to look innocent, but we all know he's not ;)

So I guess it's good to know that ceramics isn't just about plates and cups and ashtrays...clay can be whatever you want it to be, which is the fun part ;)  Thank you for reading this, until next time!  ;)

Standing Stones

I was born on an island called Arran on the West Coast of Scotland, which is a completely wild place, with nothing much there apart from sea, mountains, deer and sheep. And seals, of course.  Love seals ;)

There is a place called King's Caves on the North side of the island, which is a group of caves hidden along the shoreline.  It's where Robert the Bruce is said to have met the spider, although there are lots of caves in Scotland where he is said to have met the spider.  Maybe he just met a lot of spiders.  Anyway, there is certainly enough room to hide a few horses in these caves.  Inside the caves, mixed in with all the graffiti, are some actual ancient cave paintings which you can see if you bring a torch, which is quite exciting.  What I really love about this place, however, is that some local guy comes down and builds these stone towers all over the shoreline outside the caves (probably, admittedly, because there's not much else to do...)

Arran is a great mecca for geologists, and there are all types of rocks here, from great sculptural sea-whipped sandstone formations to hard granite.

Arran is also littered with Pagan worshipping sites, with fairy dells and standing stones all over the place.  The most famous of these are the great standing stones on Machrie Moor, which are located in a great bleak valley surrounded by mountains.  Depending on the weather and the time of day, they can either feel extremely foreboding and ominous or really sun-warmed and friendly, but it is always apparent how ancient they are, and I have long been fascinated by them.

(source)

(source)

Ireland, of course, has lots of standing stones too, and here in Cork we have the Ogham Stones, which are housed in the University College Cork. Stones like these were found all over the coast line of Ireland, as well as in Scotland, Wales and Cornwall.  The Irish ones were inscribed in ancient primitive Irish, usually with people's names and the tribes they belonged to.  They are kind of like an ancient form of Who's Who. 

(source)

I started making my own ceramic versions of standing stones, scored and textured like the Ogham stones and vertically jagged like the Arran ones.  I cut them into pieces and fired the pieces separately, then reassembled them so they were not all one colour.  They were saggar-fired in a raku kiln and mounted on slate.

I'm hoping they give off a bit of the brooding presence of the Machrie Moor standing stones. Spooky...;)