Week ending 22.06.07 -Sensing the Container

Since my brother’s wedding, I have continued to work with the flat cone 01 mould that had dried out well whilst I was away. Martin worked with me, demonstrating how to smear the surface of the mould with soft clay then build up another couple of layers until it is the correct thickness. We added a coil around the inside of the base to strengthen and stop it from distorting. When the piece was taken from the mould it needed relatively little fettling and appears crisp. However, I was a bit disappointed that the lower, internal rim is higher than I had anticipated, so I threw an insert with a smaller diameter to form a false base.

Later I had a meeting with Martin to discuss the preparation for starting the thesis. I had prepared a draft Contents page that Martin has now asked me to flesh out to abstract length. Since then I have spent some time working on the Introduction and the beginning of the first section dealing with the perception of the ceramic container. I have tried to make it engaging and straightforward, but writing doesn’t come easy to me, so it’s not the easiest part of this project. Having said that it does focus the mind on what the practical work is designed to articulate. I’ll include some of the first draft below, if anyone actually reads it with interest please let me know!

Sensing the Container:

I have made thousands of mugs, cups and saucers, bowls of different sizes- ceramic containers of all sorts of shapes and sizes. Function and aesthetics were the main concerns in their gestation. The mug for instance, is a humble, everyday pot but one of the most difficult for a potter to successfully make. Being practiced and attuned to subtle differences will determine its success. Fingers should fit the handle comfortably, there should be a sense of balance when lifting it, it should hold the preferred amount of liquid and the mug is almost unique as it is often in intimate contact with one of our most sensitive organs- the lips.
So we use sight and touch to perceive the mug, sight, touch and smell to perceive the contents. Hearing plays a part in the experience when the tea is poured [and my youngest daughter hates anyone to slurp his or her tea].
We analyse and respond to all that sensory information just to have a cup of tea and we are barely conscious of the complex processes involved. If we stop awhile to look again, what do we see? Firstly, the fabric- decorated red earthenware if I made it, yours may be stoneware or porcelain. Each of these materials has a particular quality that will affect your experience. Then there is the form- it could look like a small bucket, a barrel or a can. It has an interior and an exterior surface, is that one surface or two? A barrel shaped mug will make you think of two surfaces, an open form will be more ambiguous. The rim is the dividing line, but pour a cappuccino and the rim doesn’t restrain the contents, it foams outwards to the ‘exterior’. So where is the dividing line between the inside and outside space?
I like to drink Darjeeling tea, it is a golden translucent liquid and if the interior surface of my mug is pale I can still see its form. If I was to fill the cup with water, I can have the best of both worlds, something to drink and I can still apprehend the interior.
The empty mug is actually full; air is made of matter and energy in the same way as tea, but our perception of it is liminal. However, looking at my empty mug isn’t a lot different than my experience of looking at it when filled with water.
The container actively frames and shapes the matter around it.

That’s as far as I’ve got for the time being, I’m hoping to add to it over the weekend before my next meeting with Martin on Tuesday.

Going back to the mould- it is made of 2 sections, the outer cone and the inner, which is removable. This allows me to make variations of the inner cone, enabling me to produce a series of related forms. I made a second inner cone, deeper than the first and dried it overnight. Since then I have made 2 variations from it, in the first the cones are joined, whereas the second has a gap between the inner and outer cone. I plan to raise it of the surface so that when it is filled with light all three rims will be defined.

We have 2 Swedish post-graduate students on an exchange from Kontsfach in the department. They haven’t been around much, but I spoke to them for the first time last week and they described how they collaborate on installation projects that deal with material, space and object. I asked them if they would make a presentation to the research students so at lunchtime with cakes provided by Heike they showed some photographs of their recent graduation installation in Sweden. It was comprised of a series of ‘rooms’, some bright, white and airy, others very dark with scorched wooden walls and polished concrete floors. The objects ranged from a group of white porcelain teabowls to glazed earthenware ‘mirrors’ and free blown glass container suspended from the ceiling slowly leaking water onto the floor. They describe their work as a desire to connect the viewer with a calm contemplative environment, something that is in short supply for most people in the busy modern world.

The Great Exhibition 2007

Royal College of Art Summer Show

Kensington Gardens and the RCA Galleries

15–28 June


2007 is the 150th birthday of all the great South Kensington cultural and educational institutions, from the Victoria and Albert Museum to Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, all of which were born in the wake of the Great Exhibition of 1851.
To celebrate this birthday in style, the RCA is holding an even more spectacular Summer Show than usual. In homage to the original Great Exhibition itself, we have erected a huge, custom-designed tent in Kensington Gardens located near the site of the original exposition.

Across the road, the College galleries will be open as usual, meaning that for the first time in living memory we are showing the work of all our graduating students at the same time. Fine Art and Applied Art postgraduate students are exhibiting with Design, Architecture, Humanities, Communications and Fashion and Textiles – the art and design of the 21st century coming together in a radically contemporary take on the spirit of 1851.

Previous Shows have been described in the press as showcases for ‘the cream of young artists’ and a chance to ‘discover big names of the future’. With 385 students from over 36 countries and 20 courses exhibiting their work, this year promises no less.

Week ending 01.06.07

Monday:
It was a Bank Holiday so didn’t teach at Cumbria Institute of the Arts.

Tuesday:
An extremely busy train took me back to London, and more or les immediately into an interim exam feedback session with Martin Smith. All appears well, so now I have to concentrate on putting together the Contents page of my thesis. Martin gave me a couple of recent ones to look at. We also discussed the prospects of upgrading to Ph.D. Does the project have “wheels”, as they say, which means will it make “a unique contribution to knowledge”? There is also the major question of funding, etc. etc.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday:
The rest of a tiring week was spent re-making my flat cone 01 mould, as my first attempt wasn’t accurate enough. I had rushed the preparation & making in the hope that I would have had a piece ready for my interim examination. That will teach me a lesson.

This time the discs for the model were made from acrylic, cut out on a router then the edge sanded smooth. When it came to mating the two sections of the mould together, Stephan, our patient plaster workshop technician pointed out that they weren’t perfectly round and should have been turned on the lathe! However, this mould is a great improvement on the previous one, I have learnt some valuable lessons so next time things should be easier.



Meanwhile, preparations for the Great Exhibition of 2007 are well underway; the second years are putting in the hours and it’s good to see some exciting finished work being moved around. The show should be spectacular, so if anyone reads this and can get to London it will be well worth it. See the RCA website for details.
There will probably not be an entry next week as I’m going with my youngest daughter Grace to my brother’s wedding in Austria.

Week ending 25.05.07

Monday:
The morning was spent in a meeting at CIA to discuss the setting up of a Craft Research Centre. Vicky and I had been invited along with Paul Scott [of Ceramics and Print etc.] and the Cox’s {Potfest organisers].
Jude Stoll has recently completed a survey of craft in Cumbria and along with Ian Farren, the head of the School of Art & Design wished to hear our views.
I started off by raising the thorny question of ‘craft’, a word full of connotations and ‘baggage’. Both Paul and I thought the term ‘applied art’ is a title that covers the range of current practice. I agreed with Paul that there should be an academic tier to the centre to give it stature, and for something for undergraduates to make use of & aspire to.
To support current practitioners and emerging new makers I suggested the setting up of a Hidden Art franchise based at the centre. Jude mentioned that there is interest from a group of makers around Kendal, but she has asked them to hold on until the CIA has looked into it. My feeling is that a Hidden Art franchise is too big an operation to set up amongst a group of practitioners unless they have enough funding to employ an organiser.
The Cox’s seemed mostly concerned about their kiln site at the Newton Rigg College site at Penrith and made very little positive contributions to the wider discussions. My other suggestions were for the inclusion of a digital manufacturing centre or bureau along the lines of Metropolitan Works. This all seems very ambitious for a centre in Carlisle, but later this year it will become part of the newly formed University of Cumbria and an ideal opportunity to aim high whilst there is investment going in.
The next step for me is to attend a meeting to discuss the Hidden Art franchise.

Tuesday:
Back to the RCA and set about producing a model and mould of flat cone 01.
I am looking to produce a one sided piece that would work equally well on a flat surface or wall. Additionally there is the advantage that the piece is far simpler to produce than the two ended cones and allows me to test variations fairly quickly. By the end of the afternoon I had the mould drying in the cabinet and it was off to The Gate restaurant in Hammersmith to help Jeannette celebrate her birthday. Ray and Jeannette are the couple who kindly have allowed me to use their spare room 3 nights a week whist I’m at College. They are keen collectors of ceramics and have a large eclectic collection.

Wednesday:
Nervous preparations for tomorrow’s Interim Examination; I had thought that I was ready, but having looked at Steve’s Summary of Work to Date, I thought mine needed improving.
Had hoped to produce a cast from the new flat cone mould but it is still too wet.

Thursday:
The morning was spent printing off copies of my written work, selecting and cleaning practical work and a bit of last minute panic! As Martin Smith is both my supervisor and Head of Department Hans Stofer, head of G,S,M & J was brought in to act as chair. Heike Brachlow, one of my fellow students came out of her examination saying that he had asked some difficult questions, so my nervous anticipation went up a notch or two. Alongside Hans Stofer and Martin, Alison Britton and Liz Aylieff interviewed me. Luckily, I felt comfortable with the questions and afterwards was told by Martin that I had passed. Next week there will be a feedback session that I am quite looking forward to in the hope that constructive advice will be given.
I have asked to see Liz next week as she raised an interesting observation that the internal space in my pieces appears to her as a passage. It’s not something that had occurred to me as I see them as containers of light.
Finished early so that I could cook Jeannette and Ray a Surprise Tatin. Jeannette’s partial to root vegetables [which Ray puts down to her Irish ancestry!] and the surprise in this recipe is the potatoes!

Friday:
Spent some time thinking about and discussing Martin’s advice on the alteration of the press moulds with Stephan. Having tried to marry the inner and outer cones decided that it would be more efficient to start again with a really precise model. Having rescued 2 large vinyl display boards from the clear up of the fashion show I thought I could laser cut them or use the plotter to print out the surfaces of my new cone 07 form. So went down to the laser cuter/vacuum forming workshop and had some very good advice from Ian, the technician. He suggested making the model on the CNC milling machine in the Darwin workshops, so it was back upstairs to see Neil the technician. No problem with the design, just have to see Gordon in Vehicle Design about a block of material out of which I can have the model milled. That’s the job for first thing Tuesday afternoon.

Sunday:
Went up to Blackwell, the Arts and Craft house near Bowness-on-Windermere with Vicky as Emmanuel Cooper has asked me to write a review of the Gareth Mason exhibition for Ceramic Review. On the few occasions that I have seen his work I have always found it difficult to understand what he’s aiming at, but this time was really enlightening.

Week ending 18.05.07 -The Centrality of Clay

Monday:
Teaching at CIA in Carlisle.

Tuesday:
Back to the RCA and upstairs for a chat with Tomek Rygalik, an ex-RCA product designer, who seems to be based in college, partly engaged in his own practice partly as a researcher. We discussed vacuum forming specifically & materials generally. He has offered to take me through vacuum forming next Friday, when he returns from his trip to New York. Meanwhile I set about producing the mould of the outside cone.

Wednesday:
Finished the cone mould.
Our Taiwanese artist friend, Chun Chao sent me some titles from his PhD bibliography that he thought might be relevant to my project. One particular recommendation – The Art of Light + Space was in stock in the library and looks very interesting.

Thursday:
Took the small cone mould down to the large vacuum forming machine in the basement. The third attempt was successful, but doesn’t bear close inspection as the styrene is of uneven thickness. My first impression is that it will appear insubstantial, though with the inclusion of a light source this could be an advantage.

Friday:
Made another attempt to put together the ceramic cone, but the thickness of the clay walls is preventing the pieces from fitting. I then took a ‘cast’ of the inner cones, which after firing will be about 10% smaller and from which I can make new moulds.
The process is slow & frustrating, however it’s partly due to learning new techniques and partly that practical works takes longer in the college than in the workshop at home.
Continued to muse about the centrality of clay to my project on the evening train journey home. It's usually a good opportunity to write without too many distractions.
My thoughts about the use of clay are still not fully resolved, but are being aired in the Centrality of Clay essay in the Writing section of the website.