Beyond The Ha-Ha

Cor well I can't believe I haven't been near this blog for almost a year.  So much has happened!  Since I finished college I have been pretty busy trying to learn how to be a proper artist ha.  I was awarded a three month graduate residency in the National Sculpture Factory here in Cork, which was really exciting.  I have just finished my stint there and am currently showing work in a group show called Beyond the Ha-Ha, so I thought I would share a little bit of my new work with you.

We had a wild winter, so the beaches were awash with all sorts of rubbish.  This was good news for a bin-raking beachcomber like me, so I filled my poor groaning car with sackfuls of crap and loads of interesting driftwood and hauled it all home to Tinderbox HQ, i.e our shed ;)

My good friend Amy and I spent about a week making loads of plaster moulds of beach stones so that I could make a whole heap of ceramic stones.  Some of them I saggar-fired, and some were made of terracotta and sawdust-fired, and I also discovered black porcelain for the first time which is gorgeous stuff to work with. I had fun trying to balance the stones of top of one another in  different formations;

One of my favourite finds was a stove top which was all rusted.  I fell in love with the shape of it and would have been quite happy to just show it on its own as I think it is beautiful, however it was further enhanced by the addition of some of the black and red stones:

One glorious evening I decided to take some of the new stuff down to the beach and do a photoshoot.  The light was wonderful and luckily I managed to get loads of pictures just before the tide came in oof that would have been a disaster ha ;)

I also wanted to get some driftwood in there, so I made a saggar-fired hanging piece with a particularly lovely flat piece:

Anyway the show is running until the 4th of May in the Wandesford Quay Gallery, so if any of you are around Cork please do pop in. There are also more ceramics on display, as well as paintings and sculpture.  In the meantime I shall be keeping busy with my first solo show in October (eek!) and trying to keep a lid on the panic ;) Your comments are, as always, most welcome ;)

Buoys

I live near the Cork Docklands and I love watching the huge ships   go past my bedroom window on their way in and out of the port.  I have taken probably thousands of photographs of the Docklands, partly because the area is prime real estate and all the old warehouses and grain stores are in danger of being demolished to make way for riverside apartments and swanky hotels, but also because there is just so much cool stuff there. There is a wealth   of inspiration for textures, colours and shapes to be found.  For a start, there is all this mad machinery.  I am always more interested in a machine if I can't immediately guess what it's for...

There is also an abundance of rotting paint, rust and graffiti which I am also always drawn to...

However, what I really love about the Docklands is the atmosphere, especially as the light changes in the evenings, and this is what I tried to convey in my ceramics.

I was also inspired by Betty Blandino's gorgeous textured vessels, and the dreamy quality of Adam Buick's moon jars.

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I started making buoys of various sizes and using different coloured clays in an attempt to capture the haunting feeling and the changing moods of the Docklands.  Some of these were glazed, some saggar-fired in a raku kiln, some smoke-fired in a beer barrel which had had the top cut off ;):

Some of them definitely proved more successful than others, however ceramics are always a case of trial and error, I think ;)Anyhoo, if you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me.  Thank you!  ;)