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.

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I’ve received an email about an international conference on the Crafts and Modernity, being held in Canada soon, which sounds really good.

Here is some of the text from the email:

“NSCAD University (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design) is pleased to be hosting NeoCraft, an international, interdisciplinary conference on the crafts November 23-25, 2007.

A diverse range of speakers from fields such as craft, design, art history, anthropology, architecture and philosophy will be debating and discussing the role of craft in relation to modernity. It is the intention of Neocraft to not only acknowledge the vital role the crafts play in our culture and economy, but to challenge the position of craft by creating a forum for lively exchange. The five central conference themes are: Political Economy; Cultural Redundancy; Invention of Tradition/Utopian Ideals; New Technologies; Global Craft. Internationally recognized speakers including Jonathan Woodham, Penny Sparke, Christopher Breward, Grace Cochrane and Paul Greenhalgh will be featured along with bus tours to eleven craft exhibitions, round tables on graduate studies in craft history and theory, and a special feature on innovation and tradition in Aboriginal craft.”

Click here for a link to their website.