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.

Just wanted to add an acknowledgement, that since my last post Frank Lloyd Gallery responed to my query about Cindy Kolodziejski’s work and were very helpful. So, many thanks to the staff there!

In our ceramics reading group led by Dr. Patsy Hely at the ANU SOA, we talked about a chapter from Richard Sennett’s book “The Craftsman”. I found this reading fascinating, as I thought anyone interested in the working process and the idea of craftsman- or craftswomanship might. (Sennett says that the ending -man in the title refers to human – as in our species – as opposed to denoting gender).

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.

“Yet what profoundly links Bachelard’s philosophy of knowledge to his poetics of the imagination, his scientific epistemology to his study of psychic phenomena, is his concern with how creative thought comes into being”. Joan Ockman, Harvard Design Magazine, Fall 1998, Issue 6.

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.

Hi, and many apologies for not adding anything to my blog since the end of last year. A number of things have happened.

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.

To see the latest update on what I’ve been up to in the studio as part of my MPhil work, click here.

Click here to see the latest update I have made to my site; work in progress, weeks 16 and 17.

This year the Glasgow Ceramics Studio and Parade Artists have combined for a massive Christmas Art Exhibition and Sale. It will be held over two weekends, 29th – 30th of November and 6th – 7th of December. There will also be a special preview night with free drinks on Friday 28th November from 5 till 8. So come join us! Click here to see work by other folk in the Parade Artists group.

You’ll find my MPhil work in progress in my studio album, semester 2, 2008. I add to it every two weeks.

On another note, if you are in Scotland, in the vicinity of Glasgow, please come and visit us for Open Studio weekend. The Open Studio weekend is being held across all WASPS sites all over Scotland. The Glasgow Ceramics Studio where I work, will of course be opening it’s doors alongside all the other artists’ studios.

It’ll be on Saturday 4th of October (11am till 5pm) and Sunday 5th of October (12 noon till 4pm). You’ll be able to see where we work, our work in progress, as well as finished work for sale to suit all budgets. Hope to see you there.