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.

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.

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.