New paintings and regular art updates.
What to do when you are watching TV and you want to draw? Wait for the ad break and draw something quickly.
I’m watching something called the Great Pottery Throw down where twelve potters compete each week to make the best ceramics. This week the challenge is to make a six piece coffee set with a caffitierre, two expresso cups and saucers and a toast rack. Really enjoying watching people design, make and fire pots. Watching clay dry and drawing… Fun!
My hand painted jug. I chose to paint it with a tortoise shell cat (black white and ginger). With added daisy type flowers. I gave it as a Christmas gift last year. I like keeping my hand in by decorating pottery. I don’t get the chance to do this very often. It came up on my Facebook memories page. I think I did it on a visit to the Emma Bridgewater factory in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent.
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I had already hollowed this head out a bit but I was able to carve out more today. I came across several bubbles so at least it’s less likely to explode if it does get fired. The grey pile is the scraped out clay. X
Photo of Middleport pottery. The walls are stained with pottery clay. These buildings are now artisan studios. Make do and mend. Reusing old buildings rather than knocking them down. But it costs money to do that. Historical buildings are getting demolished, history is being destroyed. Old buildings that could be refurbished are sometimes left to rot. There is a place in Dudley, in the West Midlands, called the black Country museum. They have demolished old buildings, then rebuilt them on the site. Maybe my city should do the same. X
Finished off my take on an Easter island head this week by hollowing it out and adding texture to the surface. It now needs to dry out so it can be fired. If the clay is wet the water in it will expand and may cause the pottery to blow up. It may not be an accurate representation of these wonderful statues, but I hope it is not disrespectful to model it?
We have started to meet on Thursday mornings at Etruria rather than in the evenings, this means we are there at the warehouse on the Trent and Mersey canal by summit lock 40. From 10am to 12 noon.
* note, we are meeting on an ad hoc basis at the moment dependant on the weather.
One thing that did happen was that there were great clouds of smoke drifting across the road just up from the waiting room gallery. I went to look what was happening, fire was burning in a big pile of rubbish and palettes just across the canal from me. This was at the rear of the Price and Kensington pottery factory in Longport next to the bottle kiln there.
The fire was burning rapidly so I rang the fire brigade. They said they had already had a call and were on the way…
A funny thing, I posted this to Facebook and had a strange response, apparently there are fires there all the time, they are just burning rubbish. Why had I bothered to call? My answer. The fire was quite big, the smoke drifting across the road was as thick as gig. I drive up there quite a lot now at weekends and I’ve never seen this. Finally it was burning next to a caravan and a car.. It needed reporting.
Four of us visited the Warehouse at Etruria today, its by the summit lock 40 on the Trent and Mersey canal, near Etruria Industrial museum, Stoke-on-Trent.
The subject was Easter Island heads, and I decided to try and work out how to slab build it, which is why I did a drawing of it first. Then because we decided to do smaller statues we decided to carve the clay instead. The results are shown in the middle pictures. Finally I talked to my friend Robert, who is a Potter and leader of the group. He explained that we should have glued bits on with slip if we wanted the pieces firing.
The final photo is one of my hubby’s drawings in response to the ideas. I liked what he was doing and took a photo. He explained he was working on ideas from Barbara Hepworth.
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I’ve been asked to maybe do some pottery with a group at the warehouse at Etruria Industrial museum this morning. I’ve tried to do a digital sketch of one and I will look at photos of them. I can see how to make a slab built pot by rolling sheets of clay out and sticking them together with a bit of slip (clay and water). The only problem will be to get the air out of the clay so if it is fired it doesn’t explode in the kiln my friend has. Wish me luck. I think we will try and draw it first.
Does the white cat look realistic enough? The others are OK, I think. I’m just thinking if calling these done and moving on to something new. Got to get organised…
These little animals are by my friend Rie. She’s also made pumpkins, and they are for sale at the Waiting room gallery in Longport, Stoke-on-Trent. Some of them are based on Egyptian gods, others look like cats, dogs and foxes.
I’ve already got a few of Rie’s pieces and I bought an animal from this collection. I think she might be making a chess set soon.
Mallaband-Brown