Porcelain fox by Susan O'Byrne

I made a really quick flying visit to London to see Ceramic Art London this weekend. It was a little crazy because it involved getting up very early to get the only available cheap flight from Glasgow, and as a result I was walking around all day in a bit of a haze. Oh, to be young again, when sleep deprivation didn’t affect me…

My friend Susan O’Byrne was one of the exhibitors this year and I was really happy to see how excellent her work looked when installed. It was definitely different to every one else’s. Susan is inspired by dreams, dreaming, story books and story telling. The creatures she creates populate our imagination and the memories of our childhood. It is also an incredible technical feat – to create such large porcelain work. The sculptures are composed of thousands of pieces of individually mono-printed porcelain paper clay.  To see more of her work check out her website.  I’ve also been putting some images of Susan’s work in progress on this site for a while now, in the Glasgow Ceramics Studio album.

Susan O'Byrne, porcelain sculpture, about 90cm high

I’m really looking forward to going to Ceramic Art London this coming weekend. Although I’m not showing any work personally, my lovely friend from the Glasgow Ceramics Studio, Susan O’Byrne, is exhibiting her life-size lyrical printed porcelain sculptures. This work has to be seen to be believed, both in its scale, virtuosity and emotional impact. We’ve been watching Susan’s narrative sculptures take shape at the studio for many months now and are very excited to see them nearing completion. It is definitely promising to be a stand-out stall at the event.

Ceramic Art London is on in London (obviously) on the 26th, 27th and 28th of February.

"Clapping Monkey", 2000 by Cindy Kolodziejski

The image of this piece is a link from the “Contemporaries” part of the California Community Foundation website. Kolodziejski was one of their grant recipients. I love this piece because of the trompe l’oeil reflection – it creates a notional space for the object to exist in – and the viewer becomes a clapping monkey in this alternate universe(!)

What I’m curious about though is what is on the other side? Does anyone know? Kolodziejski often sets up a narrative in her work by painting two seperate but conceptually linked images on each face of her piece. The handle and spout would serve as a dividing line. I can’t find an image of the other side of this piece on the internet and I can’t get in touch with the artist. She doesn’t have a website. At the moment she’s represented by Frank Lloyd Gallery, but they haven’t responded as yet to my enquiry and it’s been a while since I asked.

I’m thinking maybe I should call them… Anyway, if anyone can enlighten me, I would be most greatful.

Here it is, now available in paperback on Amazon UK.

Sennett is a sociologist and as such refers to many sociological studies in the text, but also to philosophical and psychological sources. He was a student of the philosopher Hannah Arendt, who in turn was a student of Martin Heidegger.

“The Craftsman” is written in a very clear, flowing and readable format, maybe due to the author also being a public intellectual, and well practiced in speaking and presenting concepts without being needlessly obscure or verbose. In the book Sennett explores what it means to be a craftsperson.  As examples he cites not just artists but people from across all fields (including computer programming and the NHS) who like to do work well for its own sake and who combine – in his words -  “hand and head” and “problem solving with problem finding”. He leads an insightful discussion about what inspires people to take pride in their work and how this affects the economy as well as the individual’s feeling of self worth, what shapes larger society’s views and reactions to craftspersonship, and why this type of work is unique and valuable to society.

Richard Sennett has a very good website which you will find a link to here. He also was interviewed on BBC4, together with Turner Prize winning ceramic artist Grayson Perry on a program titled “Thinking Allowed”. The interview aired in February 2008 and is no longer available on the BBC4 website, but here is a link to it on Richard Sennett’s website.

I’ve been reading “The Poetics of Space” as part of my theory research. Yesterday I came across this book review for it, which I think is one of the best book reviews I’ve ever seen, for any book. At the time of writing (1998), Joan Ockman was a teacher of history and theory at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, so it’s written from an architectural perspective. It downloads as a PDF.

I’ve previously travelled very far to go to ceramics conferences. This one, ironically, is right on my old door step. It promises to be a good one. Marek Cecula, one of my favourite artists is a speaker.

Firstly I’ve been closeted away working on my theory. This is quite a challenge to me, since it’s the first time in my life that I’ve been required to write such long essays. The MPhil at the ANU SoA requires two 6000 word essays and one 10000 word studio report. This might not seem like much to the average student who is used to essay writing, but believe me, it is a personal challenge to the art student who hasn’t written an essay since the year 2000.

I think the biggest hurdle has been to come up with a coherent and focused question actually, as my interests range far and wide. Space is a wide field (no pun intended). In honour of this undertaking, I have set up a new theory page, and you will notice the permalink in the top bar of this blog. My essay is not there, but links to my research resources are, and I talk a bit about my thought processes. It might be of interest to someone else looking at issues of spacial representation in ceramics, and its only a beginning, so I’ll add to it as I have time.

Secondly, I’ve added a couple of new links to the side bar. One for an excellent online resource for ceramic artists called Ceramics Today . Ceramics today is site run and edited by Australian ceramic artist Steven Goldate – although at this stage I’m not entirely certain whether he is still involved in pursuing new articles. Nether-the-less, the articles already there are really fantastic. The other is a link to James Steele’s blog. James is a PhD student at the ANU SoA and is working on a project to do with mapping space with user generated images, ie photographs taken by members of the public. I find this fascinating because of the cross-over between two dimensional and three dimensional space that such a project examines.

And last but not least. I wanted to ask advice/ opinions from anyone who might read this. Last year I gave a talk at the ANU as part of my work in progress seminar. In that paper, I talked about my influences and one of them was a particular American ceramic artist, whose work I had seen at the last NCECA conference I attended in the USA.

During the conference I took a photograph of a piece of hers in the gallery space where it was exhibited. I made sure that photography was allowed in the gallery. Then I wrote an abstract for my talk and published it on this blog. I included the photograph.

After quite a few months I got an email from her telling me that the piece is under copyright and she wants me to remove the photograph. I removed the photo and wrote to the artist apologizing, but also explained that I thought that since I was the photographer, I had honestly thought that the copyright for that image was mine. I also explained that this blog was being used for educational purposes, to document my studies. I asked if she had any other images of her work I could use in my abstract without breaching copyright.

She didn’t get back to me.

Now, I realize that I probably should have asked her permission before I used the photo on my blog. I did contact her a while before this incident asking for images of her work and she told me to look in a book. There was only one image in the book and it was quite dated, and I think that using images scanned from a book on a blog would be more likely to breach copyright than using images I took with my own camera.

What should I have done? Do I own copyright on photos I took, or is the copyright to those images owned by the person who made the work? This blog is not commercial, I don’t make money from advertising. Is copyright different for blogs like this? Does anyone know the laws/ rights for the artist and the blogger in such a case? What do other bloggers do when they use images of work by other people? Do you ask every single person before you use an image of their work?

Many thanks to anyone who is willing to discuss this issue.