My second ever blog post....

Well, it's only been 10months since my first posting on this blog. Life just got too busy for me, what with it being my final year at uni and all. But here I am, with a degree in ceramics, and now a full time job, I find I need to get my arse into gear and start promoting myself, or I'll never my career started.

So what's happened apart from graduation? Well, I've done New Designers, which was an experience, that's for sure. Then there was the joint exhibition I did with some classmates, One Step Beyond that was hard work but fun and very nice learning experience. Also, I was selected for Art in Woodstock (Woodstock Oxfordshire), that was a real buzz, especially when I discovered they had used an image of my work on the promotional posters and banners all over Woodstock. I managed to get my hands on some of the posters as part of my hard copy resume.

And yesterday was the launch day for The Graduate Show at the Bevere Gallery http://beveregallery.com/exhibitions. THAT was totally awsome. They saw me at New Designers along with a fellow graduate by the name of Jeremiah Allman, spoke to both of us there, then followed up with a solid invitation to exhibit with them a few weeks later. So I'm a very happy bunny right now.

Artistically, I've been very busy as well, with 3 projects in the pipeline despite the fact I have no studio at this time which isn't such a bad thing really, as I can often get sidetracked if I just play with the clay and don't get on with the drawings/paintings/designs.

Project 1 A little bit steampunk, I've been exploring the old Victorian inventions etc. One of the bestest sources being Leonard De Vries' 'Victorian Inventions'. Also a lazy afternoon taking over 200 pics in the Science Museum in London gave me masses of fuel for the project, however it seems to have shifted into explorations of ink stains like this....

..... however, I do have pans of taking this project into the 3rd Dimension, with some floaty flying things and some unusual picture frames.

Project 2 is a past the knee crocheted cardigan. This has been fuelled as much by my disgust at the poor excuses for fashion this winter with 'warm winter clothing' that doesn't button or zip up but just hang due to the, uh, 'fashionable' hanky hem as by my finally settling on what to use the Rowan yarn I've been hoarding for the last 6years. How is this an art project you ask? I'm an artist and nothing is never simple! This won't be an affair of rows of trebles, or granny squares. It will be made in purples and greens, the starting point is 100% pure wool Magpie Aran(now discontinued) by Rowan in Teal. It will be made from side to side, not boring old bottom to top, the stitches will be varied, as well as the textures and yarns. I'm also including lace and ribbons as well as a ball of Noro Kureyon and skeins of awfully gorgeous Collinette yarns. I'm also planning to patchwork the lining, I happen to have some nice fat quarters and off-cuts in greens that look amazing with everything else. Obviously this project is going to progress a lot faster than the other 2, but that's ok, I want it finished for next winter and it will stop me climbing up the walls while I can't work with clay. Here are some of my samples....

I'm not ready to talk about my 3rd project yet as it's still in the very early stages but it involves furniture fringeing in super boring old fashioned colours and fabric dyes and a needle and thread.

The main reason the latter 2 projects are both in textiles is due to the fact that I now have a full time job at Sew 'N' Sew in the Bath Guildhall Market. So 5 days a week I'm totally immersed in everything crafty and non-ceramic, and me being who I am, I'm looking at all that gorgeous wool and ribbons and so on and thinking of what I can do with them. Before you ask, no, we don't sell Rowan and Colinette -I WISH!!!!!- We stock Sirdar and they do some very nice yarns too, such as Flirt, Baby Bamboo, Escape and Indie an amazing super chunky that practically flies off the shelves, it takes a 12mm needle and knits up a treat, but Sirdar haven't done the colour combinations this year that I'm needing for my cardy.

So this is me, 10 months on from my last post, I just hope that I manage to keep with this now

Here goes nuthin!

Hi everyone, this is my first blog, and I would never had considered doing this except I'm going to graduate from Bath Spa University with a degree in '3D Design: Ceramics BA(Hons)', and this is one of the tools for self-promotion that's been suggested to us( me and my classmates). Having seen a few artist blogs, I have to agree, I'm just not the extrovert type. I never even had a facebook account until a few months ago, when I thought it might be a good idea to try it out knowing I would have to start one of these (a blog) in the near future(now). It was my way of testing the water I guess, as from my start with the internet over 10years ago, I have always been very security concious and have never ever used my real name online.... till now and I'm still not using it, well, an abbreviation of my name and how I mark/sign my work.

Well, the purpose of my blog is to promote my work, so here goes.....

This is my final year, my degree show is in only about 10 weeks away, the pressure is on and I'm still developing my body of work. The inspiration for this work is wind turbines. Have you ever seen the Australian movie 'The Castle'? Well, one of the main protagonists is Darryl Kerrigan, a true optimist. When he looks at the electricity pylons marching across the airfield over his back fence he doesn't see an eyesore, he sees progress, they remind him of 'Man's ability to generate electricity'. Well, wind turbines remind me of man's ability to generate clean(er) electricity. They are also an inescapable part of our landscape now. Regardless of how hard some will fight against them, they are here to stay. I'm not a NIMBY, and if I lived in the right area for them, I would lay down the red carpet and beg to be allowed to help put them up. But, I live at the bottom of a basin in Bath (Somerset, UK), and I rent.

How do wind turbines influence my work? Well, initially, I wanted to build working turbines from found objects, but it didn't happen that way, partly because of lack of funds and the right stuff didn't come my way, but also, I sort of let it happen, I had my dissertation, my hubby was working away from home during the week and didn't want to drive me anywhere on the weekends, and I didn't try hard enough to make it happen. In the end I had the artist's version of writer's block in regards to that aspect of the project. In a way, I'm sort of glad of that as I don't think my project would have ended up taking the direction it has. As while I was suffering this block, I was throwing. I've learned that if I struggle with a task, working on a different project helps me solve the problems with the first project. What I kept going back to was the turning motion. And the turbulence the blades cause, regardless of the design.

Well, it all worked itself out after a workshop with Tanya Gomez and then a chance to do Simon Hulbert's workshop again a couple weeks later. So now I'm using the Japanese technique Tanya showed us to throw big(like half a bag of clay or more), combined with Simon's exploration of non-conventional throwing to make these...

This pic was taken moments after I took it out of a reduction kiln the piece was still warm enough I needed gloves to handle it. No two are the same, and some have taken a vessel type form which is leading me to a potentially satisfactory resolution for my functional ware, I just have to hop onto the CAD pcs at Uni to fine tune. But also this has taken a 2nd direction which has possibilities, but I'm not going to mention any further details until I have some prototypes.

So, this was my first posting on my first blog, and one of my first steps in self-promotion. I just hope it all goes well.