Changes, new pages, new photos and week 10
Not too much new this week in terms of the studio. I’ve just moved in to my lovely new space at the GSA, which can still do with a bit of decorating, but as you can see, has great potential. I met the lovely Rose Reynolds, who used to have my space, and wish her best of luck with her future. If you’re interested, Wendy Kershaw has photos of Rose’s and other GSA graduating work from last year on her flikr website (Rose’s is the magnetic work on metal shelves).
The decals have been fired onto the cups. See photos from week 10 here. Apart from that I’ve updated quite a few albums. I’ve added a couple of photos to the week 7 album because I made slip again - and there was no point recording the entire process over again, but I had missed out a step.
I’ve also bought and ordered various materials and tools and things to get me started - and had quite an adventure getting about town and “discovering” the pound shops on Sauchiehall Street, as well as ‘The Forge’ retail park and shopping centre. I’ve decided to make a Scotland photo album, just to show general photos of what sort of impressions getting around Edinburgh and Glasgow leaves me with. At the moment, there isn’t much in there, but I’ll build it up over time. I’ve also added a few images to the Glasgow Ceramics Studio album.
Last but not least, I’ve made a links page (well, the start of the many headed monster links pages project). This is what most of my time has gone into this week actually.
The idea is to build a resource that I can use and also share with anyone interested, that has all the sorts of information (that can be got off the web) a student of ceramics might require, in one place.
It’s specifically for me really, so it doesn’t list every single possibility under the sun - but some things are common to us all. The list that’s there now is only a working copy, I was just thinking of all the things that have been useful for me to know so far.
This might take some time to collate, too, and probably won’t ever be complete. I’ll add the links as I need and use them. There are also already a lot of resources like this - with loads of good information, particularly the blogs of Mel Robson (Australia), Carole Epp (Canada) and Avi Amesbury (Australia) - you can see those links under blogs in the bar on the right of the page. Anne Murray, one of the distance students from GSA has suggested to me that Emily Murphy (USA) also has a very good, information rich blog.
And I would appreciate - as far as the links page is concerned - if anyone has any good advice or suggestions about some of the things on my list. A lot of information, that is needed by everyone, is spread by word of mouth. How can you tell, for instance, which gallery is good, or which supplier is reliable? - they all seem the same when you look on the internet. Some places and people don’t advertise. Often a lot of time can be saved when someone gives you a good tip on where to find something.
So much time goes into simply sourcing materials and information that could really be spent in the studio. Of course, this isn’t as evident while at art school. But once you leave into the big wide world… things change.