Plastic Soup

Hmm so I have been woefully neglecting this blog lately as have been bogged down with thesis, work and college stuff and sometimes it doesn't seem to matter how fast you go you never seem to be able to catch up.  However, I thought I could share some of the stuff I've been working on lately with you.  I have been indulging in a spot of beachcombing, again, recently and I have been horrified by the amount of plastic to be found.  The beaches in East Cork are covered in the stuff.  The plastic lies like bright pops of colour amongst the seaweed, bottles, old ropes and fishing nets that also litter our beaches.  They are sea-worn and very smooth, and strangely beautiful even though the presence of it in such large amounts is extremely disturbing.

Whilst googling the possible causes of all this plastic, I came across this guy Jurga Rakau, who has recently spent six months photographing plastic on Irish beaches that apparantly originates from all the immense masses of crap floating around our oceans. (Source)

I have started making pieces which I hope will bring some attention to how shocking the existence of all this plastic is.  They are not finished yet, but I think I am going to suspend some of them in a Calderesque manner, and some I will make into wall pieces.  In the meantime, every time I go to the beach now I take a big sack which I stuff with as much plastic and faded old bleach bottles as I can, and I take them home and recycle them.  It's not much, but it feels like a start ;)

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!  ;)

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!  ;)

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.

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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. 

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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...;)