Fired Up

Suddenly there was an exhibition!

Well, it crept up pretty slowly for me, but from my blog’s point of view everything happens with no warning.

Fired Up was put together by my former ceramics teacher Dawn Oakford.  So I got to go on a road trip for the weekend!  Burnie was a good place for a bunch of ceramic artists to hang out.  We visited the Makers’ Workshop and Burnie Regional Art Gallery which was holding an exhibition of mezzotint prints.  I’ve recently started a printmaking course at the Polytechnic and I cannot wait to try mezzotint printing now.

Anyway, staying on topic

Fired Up was held at the Burnie Coastal Art Group‘s Studio 2 Eleven Gallery, which is adorable on the outside, and a lovely exhbition space inside:

There were eleven of us showing our work here and it worked well to have our pieces displayed together.  There were interesting similarities and differences which appeared in the arrangements.  These photos were taken by Robin Roberts, photographer/ceramicist.

Click on the pictures for full view.

I want to thank people, even though they probably wont even read this.

Many thanks to the BCAG for being so generous to us.  Thanks to Bronwyn Theobald for driving me up there, buying me food and telling great stories.  Thanks so much to Dawn Oakford for giving me such a great opportunity and always teaching me.  And lots of thanks to Kim as always for always helping me and being the only reason I could get any of my work fired!

 

 

 

 

 

Skulls, skulls, hares, skulls

I spent about an hour arguing with my ancient scanner.  Eventually I managed to convince it to scan some things that have been floating around my sketchbook for a while.

Watercolours (with ink and pencil):

Sepia ink:

White ink and black pen:

Felt-tip/fineliner/over-priced pens:

Ink pen and coloured pencil:

Making

Here are some pictures of work in progress.

These are pieces that are on display at Off Centre now.

 

Applying iron oxide and glazes:

Fired work:

Frenetica

I’m a little late with this, but here we go anyway:

My friend Kim Foale ( Frogpondsrock ) and I currently have some work in the Off-Centre Micro Gallery. It’s been there since the 12th of January and will be gone on the 8th February.  We call the exhibition Frenetia.  It was thrown together pretty fast.

Let’s Make a Monster

Sock Monsters!

  

 When I’m bored and uninspired (which is often) it’s fun to make something silly and cute out of something no-one wants: old socks.  I don’t like throwing away things that could be re-used.  I have bags of old clothes which I hope to alter some day and added to those  I’ve been given a lot of used socks since I started making these things. 

The menagerie of sock creatures has grown.  Actually they take up a lot of room and it’s getting annoying so I opened an etsy shop to get rid of them.  It didn’t work very well the first time and I only sold one (he went to San Diego).  Recently I started making them again as gifts and decided to re-open the shop and try again.  It’s here, in case you’re interested.

I thought it would be fun to show how I go about making a monster.

It starts with socks obviously.  First I go through my collection and try out combinations of colours and patterns until I find something I like.  If the socks have holes in them I cut off those parts and replace them with pieces of other socks.

  

A hideous Frankenstien of a sock.  I guess this is also a good way to keep your favorite socks when they get beyond darning.  I don’t know if anyone else still darns their socks.  Probably not anyone online anyway.

This part is horrifying for the other sock monsters.

I used to sew everything by hand, but now I’ve started using a machine.  This means I make more mistakes, but it’s still a lot faster.

Next I cut out pieces for legs and various apendages and cut out places for them to attach to the body.

   

I cut out small pieces to shape the neck and make a slit down the back to make a tail.  Then I sew along those cuts.

 

After attaching ears (in the same way as the legs) it’s time to stuff.

 

It’s not until this point that I know how big the monster will be.  Socks stretch in unpredictable ways and this can make for some interesting dimensions if I use socks with different stretchability. 

Next I hand-stich along the seams with colourful thread.  This adds some highlights and is also a good way to repair any holes or gaps in my earlier stitching.  There’s usually a lot of those.  For this one I used purple to match the legs.

Then I shape the mouth by sewing beneath the surface to draw the top, middle and bottom of the heel together to into lips.

   

Time for eyes.  I have a large collection of buttons.  Most of them came from a huge jar sent by my grandmother and I’ve added to them with buttons from secondhand shops.  I chose carefully which ones to use as eyes because these define a lot of the personality.  I like to use big buttons with smaller buttons on top to look like pupils.

 

They don’t come alive until the eyes are attached.  I find it a bit creepy to edit them once they can look at me.

 

This one is for sale here. 

I learned how to make these from a book called Stupid Sock Creatures  by John Murphy.  Here is the guy’s website where you can see some of his creatures.

It’s Been a While

I guess my last post was announcing my first exhibition. That was nearly half a year ago. 

It was at the Off-Centre Gallery and the opening was on New Years Eve.  Here is my artist statement.

It went well, I sold things, I made money and I promptly spent it all on a trip to Melbourne with some friends. Yay!

   

 

Things have slowed down a lot, but I”ll be trying to pick them up again and resolving to start updating this blog more often.

For now I’ll share some drawings I did last year.  Some of them are related to the photoshopped oddities from this post.  Click to view larger.

 

Exhibition

I’m having an exhibition!

It’s at the Off Centre Gallery, opens New Years Eve and goes for 5 days.

It’s very exciting and I’m not terrified at all.

Done for now

Well, my course has finished for the year and it’s holiday time.  Christmas usually makes me all stressed-up, but I might be having a little exhibition at the new year so I’ll try to keep all my stress focused on that instead.  Kim (frogpondsrock) is being lovely and helping me with this.

Just before the end of the year a classmate Robin Roberts took some photos of our work with his professional photography skillz.  So here’s some of the products of this year.  Click on the pictures for larger views.

 

These skulls are all hand-built:

 

These ones are slip-cast and altered (moulds)

I made the moulds from toys and ornaments and an old bottle.

 

And the rabbits are hand-built too.

 

I was surprised by how much better they all look when they’re photographed properly.

Oddities and Monsters

I’ve been playing in photoshop and making some little collages:

They’re a lot of fun to make quickly.  Maybe I’ve been watching too many Terry Gilliam cartoons.

The images I used came from here:  http://vintageprintable.com/wordpress/

I really recommend that site from anyone who loves vintage images.

Rusty Rabbit

A while ago my class was taught by Belinda Winkler.  She was teaching us large-scale coiling techniques, but I am not very good at making big things and I was having a creative block (boo-hoo).  I did end up making something a lot larger than what I usually do.

Here it is still as raw clay:

Today I painted it with iron-oxide to bring out the texture and shapes:

I then brushed on some matte glaze.  It should get fired next week so I’ll know if it’s worked then.

I was inspired by this piece by Beth Cavener Stichter:

She puts spookily human emotions into her animals sculptures.  I would love to see them in real life.