Axeheads and Driftwood

Cor well I am limping to the end of this year...only one and a half weeks to go before assessments and I still have quite a few sculptures to make when the pieces come out of the kiln eek!  Still, I am really going to miss this college as it has been an amazing time, and I just hope I can find a way to keep making after I finish.

I thought I would share some of the pieces which will be going into the final exhibition ( I hope!)  There is still more to come but these are a few that are actually finished ahem...;)

I became somewhat fascinated by axeheads last term.  There is something lovely about their swooping shapes and once saggar-fired they look lovely with the silver birch.

This term took me on a hunt for more seasoned wood and I ended up on the beach hunting for driftwood.  I found some lovely pieces of wood and an old washed up frame, so I decided to try and do something with them.

A friend of mine also hauled these two pieces off the beach for me...they are massive and were very wet and soft, but I have scooped them out and dried them off and sanded them, so hopefully will be able to use them for something ;)

All the plastic I found on the beach will be made into wall pieces with the ceramic discs, and I have made hanging discs with ceramic versions of the plastic to highlight their colours.

And I made a couple more with some driftwood and shells...

And a dish, for good measure ;)

Anyhoo, hopefully it will all come together in the end and not look like a complete dog's dinner...there could well be more culling to come before the final cut, but I've enjoyed the journey I've been on this year and there are elements of the work here which I would like to expand upon in the future.

If any of you are in Cork and would be interested in coming to the exhibition, feel free, as it is free and there will also be free booze available ;) It is on the 7th June in the Crawford College of Art, and more information can be found here...

http://www.crawfordexhibitions.com/liminal2013/index.html

It'll be great craic ;)

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 ;)

Beach Combing Rambles

Hmm well I started this blog in order to share my love of all things earthy.  I'm in the final year of a ceramics degree at the Crawford School of Art in Cork, Ireland, and I'd like to be able to share some of the things which inspire me, and hopefully be inspired. I will also no doubt go off on a complete tangent at times as am quite prone to pointless ramblings, but hey ho ;)  I'm completely new to blogging, so will see how it goes, but I think it will be fun ;)

Recently I've been doing a lot of beach combing (which is where I met this lovely horse)...it's amazing what you can find washed up on the beach. Quite baffling too...how do giant tyres get there?? However I found some lovely pieces of driftwood, which I took home and washed, dried and sanded, and then finished off with beeswax.  They look lovely...can get gorgeous colours in driftwood, but not sure what I will do with them yet!If I had the power of ten men and maybe access to a shire horse I could have hauled this home, but I don't, so I couldn't ha ;)

It does look a bit like a person who's been on the sauce and toppled over, but it did have some lovely speckly patterns in it:

I also picked up some stones, which I think might be a little bit illegal but nevermind ;)  I'm a little bit addicted to stones...especially really smooth, sea-polished ones because they feel really comforting in your hand, and ones with mad shapes and stripes.  

I decided to make some ceramic versions from a mould of a stone. They were made from porcelain and sanded until they were very smooth.

These ones were covered in slip and then scratched through before being fired.

These ones were saggar-fired in aluminium in a gas kiln, with seaweed, sawdust, copper wire, steel wool, salt and copper carbonate. I love the way the fire plays over the surface to give these effects.  

Anyhoo, that's it for now as am feeling the need for caffeine.  Hope you've enjoyed reading this, and any comments, discussions or suggestions are most welcome ;)