Upcoming Exhibition

Ceramics Victoria is celebrating its 40th birthday this year and are having a major selected exhibition at Manningham Gallery, Doncaster, Victoria (Aus). www.manningham.vic.gov.au/gallery The exhibition opens on the 14th of October ’09 and closes on the 31st of October. This is my entry, “Sycamore Set”. To give an idea of scale, the square plate is 17 cm. square. I completed it late last year while I was a student at SMB. It’s decorated with impressed patterns from Sycamore leaves picked from the garden around SMB’s ceramics studio and glazed with an Ash Celadon glaze, which uses ash from our cookstove fireplace as a major ingredient. I’m always amazed at the way that a mixture of ashes and clay “mud” can turn into a beautiful translucent glaze if you just get it hot enough.The exhibition has attracted some very good potters from all over Australia. I’m looking forward to the opening night

Small Bowls

These bowls are about 5-6 cms wide, so about right for dipping bowls, but at the moment they're looking pretty in my studio filled with matching brooches-in-waiting. I bought some tea light candles, I'd love to see how they'd look scattered along a table with a candle burning in each one.

An interesting point about cultural assumptions- in western countries we generally think of a "set" of bowls as being 4-6 identical bowls. In Japan, a standard set is five pieces, and they may be pieces that have the same form but a different glaze on each one. This appeals to me, as a compulsive experimenter. It's fun seeing how the glaze subtley changes the character of each bowl.

Days of Small Things

I love little things. As a schoolgirl I used to carry seashells and suchlike around in my pockets. Somehow I've never lost that fascination. The challenge in doing my ceramics as a business is what excuse can I find to justify the little things? Those pictured below are destined to be made into brooches or pendants. As they are they're fun to just fiddle with and rearrange, but I will have to be dilligent and get them into a saleable form. The whole idea of home based studio is to be able to live off something I'm passionate about, after all.

Yum

More of my leafy bits and pieces all laid out for morning tea. Makes me feel peckish...

Hello, it's me!

Being new to blogging, I'm using these first posts as an intro to what I like and what I do.

It's important to me that my ceramics have a sense of place, of being grounded. I take a lot of my inspiration from my local surroundings. My Wavy Bowls reflect the shape of Central Victoria's hills and valleys, although the form is something I'm constantly seeing in other natural settings eg. beach dunes or ocean waves on our family's recent holiday to Merimbula.

This bowls is decorated with leaf imprints from the huge liquidamber tree growing out the front of our house, and I've filled it with made and found beachy treasures. The glaze is an Ash Celadon, celadon being a classic Asian style glaze, with ash from our cookstove firebox acting as a flux (melting agent) and colourant (it contains small quantities of iron).