This week has been a very intensive week for me, so I only really managed one day in the studio. I’ve added new images mainly documenting my bisque firing, click here to see those.
Monday, Tuesday and Thursday I spent all day at the Glasgow School of Art. This was the second week of the summer Residential School for some of the part-time Distance BA (Hons) students.
Shortly I’ll be starting as an exchange student at the Glasgow School of Art Ceramics Department. Bill Brown is currently head of Ceramics there. I’m extremely excited about it and feel really privileged at the opportunity. I’m starting to build an album of photos taken there. Click here to see the photos so far.
We have a working electric kiln at the Glasgow Ceramics Studio that we need to find a home for. It’s 20kW, 3 phase, 18 cubic feet and includes an old controller. Click here to see photos and our contact phone number. You’ll find our address on the about me page. The kiln is free to anyone who is willing to pick it up.
I’ve added a new album for week 7. There are 18 new images which include my working process while making porcelain slip, casting tests in conventional moulds and storing them afterwards.
My slip recipe is:
clay 100
water 50
deflocculant 0.2 - 0.5
The deflocculant I’ve used is Darvan 811.
There will be an open weekend at the Glasgow Ceramics Studio on Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th October! The open days are part of the national WASPS open studios weekend.
Come in and say hello if you are in the area - there will be loads of original hand made work for sale from all the residents, and we would love to meet you! You can tour our studio, meet the artists, see demos and visit all the other studios as well. The cafe is open for a spot of coffee and cake or sandwiches and soup in the sunshine (well, we’ll keep our fingers crossed for the sunshine). Our address is: 77 Hanson Street, Dennistoun, Glasgow, G31 2HF, off Alexandra Pde. Call the WASPS office for directions and opening times on 0141 554 8299. Hope to see you there!
As you can see from my studio photos, the last few weeks I’ve been concentrating on making one piece moulds. I’ve been making traditional block moulds, because the objects I’ve been casting (tiles) are small and angular.
As part of this process, I began to wonder about how to calculate the amount of plaster I needed to use for each particular mould. I want to conserve my resources, to be economical and to avoid being needlessly wasteful of materials.
Hi, just a quick word to say I’ve updated the photos taken at my studio. Click here for a quick link to see images of the WASPS Hanson Street Artists’ Studios building, the Glasgow Ceramics Studio, and of my working process and work in progress until the end of week 6. There are also photos of the artists I share with and of their work. More are on their way too!
Working in my space at the Glasgow Ceramics Studio
The first few weeks after getting back from my field trips have been spent largely in the studio, particularly after I finished my last day of full time work at the National Museums, Scotland on Monday the 14th of August. So since then, I’m officially a full time student.
My studio’s located in the Glasgow Ceramics Studio, which, in turn, is part of the WASPS artists’ studios complex on Hanson Street, in Glasgow, Scotland.
The front entrance of the International Museum of Ceramics in Faenza, Italy
The Premio Faenza is a biannual international competition of contemporary ceramic art held at The International Museum of Ceramics (Fondazione Museo Internazionalle delle Ceramiche) or MIC, in Faenza, Italy. (Faenza is about 3 hours south-west of Venice by train and about 1/2 hour south of Bologna). Read the rest of this entry »
In front of The International Museum of Ceramics,
Faenza, Italy on July 17th 2007
I’m a uni student yet again, this time an MPhil candidate at the School of Art, Australian National University. My first year has started with a few field trips, intended to provide additional context for my own research.
Firstly, from 4th to 6th of July, I attended the “New Craft - Future Voices” conference at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in Dundee, Scotland. After that, in search of more inspiration and to get an eye-witness overview of the international contemporary art scene, my lovely friend Sharnie and I decided to embark on a whirlwind art trip to Italy and Germany. Our first stop was the 55th Premio Faenza (Faenza, Italy, of majolica fame), followed by The Venice Biennale (La Biennale di Venezia, the 52nd International Art Exhibition, Venice, Italy) and Documenta 12 (an international art exhibition held in Kassel, Germany). We rounded it all off with a couple of days in Berlin, however by then, we had reached saturation point on the art scale, and decided cocktails might be in order.