Adriana Christianson from the Mud Colony Blog has a weekly link up of ceramic posts on her website.

I thought that It would be nice to do a weekly what has, or hasn’t been happening in my studio and link these posts up with the Mud Colony Blog.

When I decided to get serious about clay in 2006, I knew deep in my heart that I was a thrower, in fact I knew that I had been born to throw. In my first year of study, I spent hours and hours on the wheel and with each pot that I cut in half and threw into my recycle bucket, my conviction dimmed.

It took me three years of serious effort on the wheel to finally realise that I don’t actually like throwing all that much. I don’t like the time it takes to get set up, I don’t like sitting still and I really don’t like coming back to the work and turning  yesterdays pots.

I was taught by Dawn Oakford a slip casting maestro with a love of colour who fires in oxidation and Ben Richardson a woodfiring, production potter with a passion for digging his own clay and glaze materials.

Both of my teachers influences are strongly evident in my work and I have learned to balance my love of delicate slip cast pieces with my need to create rustic earthy slab formed platters.

For first time visitors there is a bit more about me  on my ceramic gallery page.

So this week in the studio I have been distracted by crows (or Forest Ravens for the pedants) I have been trying to photograph the Ravens without much success as they are sneaky buggers, who well remember that one time, 20 odd years ago when I blasted a  few shots into the air to scare them away from my day old chickens. The Ravens have the most gorgeous blue eyes but this is as close as I am able to get to them. So Far.

Also I have been nagging (I asked him twice) The Spouse the cut off the tops of some tree stumps in my new orchard so I can plonk some sculptures onto the stumps.

I opened the kiln recently and was shocked by how very, very, very blue some of my work was. As I was staring blankly at the blueness of some pieces, I had a terrible thought. I thought, “Kimmy you added 5.0 g of Cobalt Oxide to 1 kilo of dry weight instead of .05 g didn’t you?”

Oh dear, oh deary dear. A quick check of my glazing notes confirmed my suspicion, that I had indeed made such a mistake. I have no idea where my head was that day but it certainly wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

The blue isn’t too bad on this bowl as the texture breaks it up but oh my word the blue is hideously measled on some of my slipcast peices.

The blueness of the cobalt mistake glaze, luckily also works here on my barnacle platter. So the whole firing wasn’t a total waste of time

And just for a bit of reality in the studio. I have been asked to make some slipcast cups for a friend. It has been a bit chilly down here in Tassie. So chilly in fact that I have been loathe to stick my hands into a bucket full of cold, cold clay.This is the chaos of my slipcasting area as it looked this morning. I will be cleaning this space up today in preparation for destroying it all over again with a quick burst of slipcasting. Or I might be chasing Ravens.

Recipes.

Blue Mistake glaze

Potash Feldspar 60. Whiting 20. Silica 10. Kaolin 10.  ( I added 5% Cobalt Oxide)  instead of .05%

The glaze on the Dragon Eggs is VSAG (Vitreous Slip as Glaze) one of Ben Richardson’s recipes

Nepheline Syenite 35. Silica 20. Kaolin 25. Dolomite 20 for the black colour I added Red iron oxide 5% Cobalt Oxide 2% Manganese dioxide 2%

I didn’t have any Dolomite so I substituted Talc 10 and Whiting 10. The glaze was almost the same as the original VSAG glaze that I have been used to but it is a touch shinier and inclined to run a bit if thick

For the red flash on the dragon eggs I added 2 level teaspoons of fire engine red stain to one cup of VSAG base Glaze.

Iron Wash on Barnacle Bowl

Red Iron Oxide 60. Rutile 20. Nepheline Syenite 20.

Happy Mothers Day everyone.I am going out to see my daughter Veronica and we will be having scones with jam and cream. I am going to dig out my Great Aunt Joan’s, Royal Doulton tea cups and we will sip cups of tea from proper tea cups.

It will be nice.

I am seriously pushed for time this morning, so without further ado here is this weeks Sunday Selections.

The Blurb

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

The Photos

There was much talk about the “super moon” on twitter the other night, I couldn’t see that this full moon was any different from any of the other full moons I have seen before. Now I know that this moon was closer to earth, yada yada yada but because I live in the country and don’t suffer from adverse light pollution, I have a wonderful clear view of the night sky every night.

I absolutely adore the full moon but I can’t be bothered dragging out the tripod and taking photos like a proper photographer. I just run around the house snapping away madly freehand, and hoping like hell I don’t trip over anything in the dark.

I get very bored with my own images very quickly, I mean how many photos of the full moon does one woman need? And the moon does end up looking like a speckly peeled orange with all those segments after a while. So I have lots of photos like these ones as well, where I am endlessly fascinated by the patterns the branches make.

I am more interested in the texture of the branches and the circle of light bleeding into the clouds than the actual moon itself. I have just used the moon as a handy source of light.

Anyway enough with the moon, last week we went fishing for a bit and this photo shows young players how not to hold their rod when targeting Tassie Black Bream. David was rolling a smoke and if a bream had taken his bait he would have lost his rod as well as a tooth or two.

I think I have Titler’s block.

The title of my blog post is generally the first half of a sentence, with the opening sentence of the blog post completing the thought that was started in the heading, with the post then following along in a semi-orderly direction.

But not today.

Today I have Titler’s block and so this post will be all over the place, completely without any structure.

It is 12 noon and I have done sweet eff all this morning.

Apart from drive the totally unplanned hour long round trip to get David onto a metro bus because he missed his school bus this morning.

And seeing the suburban bus stop is next to a supermarket, I did a quick ninja shop and bought ingredients for three different meal options for tonights dinner.

Tip for young players. Do not go to the supermarket before breakfast.

I came home with canneloni and couscous, ricotta and red snakes and now that I have had breakfast I don’t feel like cooking a bloody thing.

David read my blog post , “When Magic Kisses and Wiggles Bandaids Don’t Work Anymore.”

He kissed me on the top of my head and told me he loved me, I then pushed my advantage in the mum-needs-a-love stakes and also scored a giant hug and a kiss on the eyebrow for luck.

The proton pump inhibitor (40mg pantoprazole) has taken the edge of David’s nausea so he only feels terribly seedy each morning rather than constantly on the verge of throwing up. So that is a win, sort of. We also came away with lots and lots of Panadol-Osteo, some Celebrex and a small supply of Pramin (10mg Metoclopramide) for when he is really feeling like shit.

The paracetamol seemed to take the edge of David pain levels a tiny bit, but he complained it was making him feel ill so he stopped after 2 days. We still have the big guns of the anti inflammatory Celebrex to keep as breakthrough pain relief when he is having a big flare up.

One of the difficulties in dealing with an incurable, degenerative and rare genetic condition is that the medical profession are always constantly on the back foot and being reactive rather than proactive and it is disheartening to realise that all we can really do is muddle along as best we can.

I don’t like being reactive, I am a doer, I like to be prepared and to have a plan. I am a great believer in preventative strategies and I am sure I was a glorious boy scout in a previous life.

But Ehlers Danlos Syndrome doesn’t allow for plans and preparations. Veronica managed one of her most hideous and painful dislocations while she was sitting down being still. *sigh*

So we are taking each day as it comes and our next visit to the Doctor will be to get David a referral to a psych who specialises in talking with people who are dealing with chronic pain, it would be nice if this psych was also experienced with teenagers but I am not holding my breath.

In the meantime with winter fast approaching we took advantage of a glorious autumn day last weekend to do a spot of fishing down at the river.

I like to make rocks. I get a great deal of personal satisfaction from making ceramic rocks. As I am making rocks I go elsewhere in my mind and I find a place of beautiful stillness and in this space I am working at my most intuitive.

I enjoy making all the work that I make, otherwise I wouldn’t make it BUT it is these rocks that give me the most pleasure.

So without further ado here is the Ceramic edition of this weeks Sunday Selections. There are some rules to this meme but I am fluid, follow them or not, it is up to you. I do ask that you link back to me though.

The Blurb

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

The Photos

These little lidded vessels are about the size of a squished tennis ball. I call them puzzle boxes because it takes a few twists and turns of the lid to make it sit correctly. I had heaps of fun making these.

This is a candlestick and incense holder. We had a power failure recently and I didn’t have anything to stick any candles into.

This is the side view of the same candlestick and incense holder.

This is part of the first platter that I made in response to my recent trip up to Burnie. I can still feel the psychic impact of driving over the hill into Devonport and being smacked in the soul by the ocean.

This platter is available in the Off Centre Gallery in Salamanca Arts Centre

And then we leave my rocks and travel to the other side of my artistic brain and have this work, which I also adore making. These three pieces are part of the Rose Exhibition, which is showing now at the Lady Franklin Gallery in Lenah Valley. I have donated all of the sale price of this work to the Cancer Council.

But you do have to come back and have another Colonoscopy next year.

Inside my mind, the imaginary fist pumping and the “Fuck Yeah” thoughts are quickly replaced by the sinking feeling of, “Oh No not another colonoscopy.” *Gulps*

But it could always be much, much worse and so today I am pleased to announce that I don’t have cancer. YAY!

To celebrate my own cancer free status, I will be eating cake tomorrow at a fundraising afternoon tea at the lady Franklin Gallery in Lenah Valley.You can all come along as well and help to raise a little bit of money for the Cancer Council of Tasmania by buying some cool art and eating some cake as well.

The Rose exhibition is the brainchild of my friend, acclaimed Ceramist, Dawn Oakford.

The premise of the Rose exhibition was for invited artists to make some work in response to Picasso’s Rose period, with paintings by members of the Art Society of Tasmania and ceramics by members of the Tasmanian Ceramics Association.

This is the work that I have made and I have donated the sale price of this set to the Cancer council. So please tell your friends to go along and buy it.

I would be delighted if you could all come along to the Lady Franklin Gallery tomorrow as my guests and we can all eat cake together.

Three cheers for cake.

There was a time when a magic kiss fixed everything and what magic kisses wouldn’t fix, a wiggles band-aid certainly could. It is a sad day in a mothers life, when she realises that the one sure fire cure in her arsenal, just doesn’t work any more. That the magic has faded from her kisses and that wiggles band aids are made for little chubby fingers, not almost man hands.

I don’t often think of myself as the mother of disabled children, I certainly don’t think of my husband and children as disabled.When I think of disabled children, I think of the stereotypical image of a brain damaged child in a motorised wheelchair.

But I am, the mother of disabled children. My children are broken, betrayed by their broken gene and dislocating joints.

In my broken family Veronica and The Spouse are two of a kind, they both have a strong work ethic and they both treat their disabilities with a nonchalant disdain. They battle furiously on, until they collapse in their various heaps, gathering their breath, marshaling their strength and poking their respective ribs, shoulders and hips back into place.

David and I are of the same ilk, we both coast along doing just enough to pass, whilst also giving of ourselves to all that need a hand. We are the ones with the ready ear and the solutions, the broken naturally gravitate towards us. Or more especially the broken gravitate to my son. I learned a long time ago how to ration myself so that the psychic junkies didn’t drain me dry. This is a skill my son needs to master, but it is also a skill that only comes with growing up.

My son, my youngest child David, will be eighteen next month and somedays he is so broken it hurts me to watch. It is hard enough navigating the minefield of young adulthood with out having to deal with a broken body as well. I often wonder if I am in some sort of denial about the extent of David’s Ehlers Danlos or if it is just that I am so used to my husband and daughter being broken that I don’t think too deeply about it anymore.

My refrain in the mornings as David complains of feeling sick has always been, “You will be fine once you get to school.” As I pushed him into the shower, into the car, onto the school bus, out into his life.

Pushing him to push through himself.

David is in bed as I write this. He is having his first Ehlers Danlos Crash, he has pushed himself for so long that his body has pushed back and said STOP. I have a thick lamb stew on the stove and I am letting my son sleep. We have a Doctors appointment on Monday and then I will begin to push again. This time I will be pushing the Doctors to do what I want. I fought for seven years to find out what was wrong with my girl. Veronica has cleared the path for her father and her brother and armed with the knowledge and the support of my daughter I will try and make things a bit easier this year for my son.

April was very hard this year and I spent an awful lot of time being very, very sad. Next April I am not going to make any plans or commit myself to any exhibitions or anything. I am just going to eat cake and be kind to myself for the whole month.

I often wonder what impression of myself I give to people who read this blog.

The ceramics that fulfill me are made using pieces of plastic that have been inside dead birds. This plastic came out of the stomachs of only three Flesh Footed Shearwaters on Lord Howe Island.

And so using this plastic I made this work.

These cigarette lighters came out of the stomachs of Laysan Albatrosses on the Kure Atoll in Hawaii in 2009.

Using these lighters to make marks in the clay, I made these porcelain touchstones.

I take photographs of roadkill and I cry for my mother a lot .

The ceramic cooperative that I am a part of, has a shop in the Salamanca Arts Centre in Hobart. On my days in the shop, some time is always spent chatting to the other shop owners and members of similar cooperatives. One of these people is Viv, a lovely bubbly woman,with busy hands, always pricking a piece of felt or sewing bits of something together as we chat away each week. Viv was quite shocked by my ceramic touchstones and dead bird bowls. “But you are the most irrepressibly cheerful person I know,” exclaimed Viv in horror when I told her what I used to make the marks in the touchstones.

Viv’s bafflement has stayed with me in the back of my mind and I bring the thoughts out every so often and examine them.

I am also the most irrepressibly cheerful person I know as well and even though I make such sad, sad work, the work makes me happy.

I think this next photo is the woman that Viv sees. I didn’t have my teeth in when David took this photo and I am far far too vain to be photographed sans teeth. So that is why parts of my cat hat is artfully draped across my face. *grins*

So I really hope that I don’t give the impression that I am eternally gloomy, because honestly, inside my head it is a never ending Monty Python skit.

Beware of Rabbits.

Good Morning everyone, the weather has turned decidedly chilly down here in Tasmania and winter is definitely on its way. Think of me today as I am up in my chilly studio, glazing, wearing a hat and warm jumper and wishing I had gloves as well. But gloves are not the most practical items in a pottery studio as I will have my hands in and out of buckets of cold,wet glazes.

Feel free to download this image and use it in your Sunday Selections post if you like.

The Blurb

I take a lot of photos and most of them are just sitting around in folders on my desktop not doing anything. I thought that a dedicated post once a week would be a good way to share some of these photos that otherwise wouldn’t be seen by anyone other than me.

I am also remarkably absent minded and I put photos into folders and think that I will publish them later on and then then I never do.

So I have started a photo meme that anyone can join in and play as well. The rules are so simple as to be virtually non existent.

Just add your name and URL to the Mr Linky.

Publish your photos on your blog using the “Sunday Selections” title.

Link back here to me.

The Photos

I love this photo, it puts me in mind of the sword fighting scenes in old Errol Flynn movies, where the hero always has the advantage of being on the top of the stone stairs in the castle.

I know I published this photo the other day but it is such a happy photo it deserves to be published again.

We often see a solitary Sea Eagle perched in a tree above our regular fishing spot. I have been trying to photograph this bird for a few years now without much success. Imagine my absolute delight the other day when I noticed that there were a pair of Eagles. YAY how fantastic to see a pair, when for years I had only ever seen the one bird.

I didn’t get any decent photos as the Eagles were just too far away but I now have a new lens for my camera and I think that with any luck I might get some clearer images sooner rather than later.

This photo shows how far away the tree is, you can just barely see the dead tree inside the black circle.

Here are the eagles.

But it is my refrain.

I want my Mother, my Mother is Dead.

Months ago I was listening to Pamela Stephenson in conversation with Richard Fidler, or someone similar. Stephenson was talking about her latest book Sex Life: How Our Sexual Experiences Define Who We Are  By asking the audience how many times a day they thought about sex, and confiding that she thought about sex at least ten times before she even got out of bed, Stephenson encouraged her audience to really concentrate of those fleeting sexual thoughts and to be honest with their response to her question. Not surprisingly we think about sex an awful lot through out the course of the day.

Of course by then, I was thinking about sex as well, as that was where the conversation had led me. As I was trying to work out just how many times a day I thought about throwing “The Spouse” to the ground and having my evil way with him, my internal dialogue drifted down a different path and I started to think about how many times a day I thought about my Mother.

Thoughts of my mother and the constant ache that is her loss, play in the back of my psyche like a quiet soundtrack of grief, with occasional loud cymbal clashes of hurt,  punctuating the song with sharp flashes of pain.

I want my Mother, my Mother is Dead.

My daughter rang me last night to talk about Amy. Veronica told me that she had written a post sharing her frustrations at just how difficult Amy is to parent at the moment. Mum is the person Veronica needs to talk to about Amy, not me. Veronica needs the practical advice that only her grandmother can give her, as Mum successfully parented a stubbornly defiant, girl child of her own.

This excerpt from Veronica’s latest blog post describes the challenges she is facing now with her wonderfully feisty daughter.

TIME OUT is my other weapon in my ever decreasing arsenal, as she shouts at me that she WILL NOT GO and YOU CAN’T MAKE ME and YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME.

It’s frustrating and admirable how defiant she is in the face of two parents staring her down. Even as I march her to time out, with, if I’m being honest, the help of her ear because there was no other option short of bodily lifting her, I am proud of her spirit and of her anger, and her ability to decide what she wants and aim for it no matter what.

I can not give my daughter what she needs. I am next to useless to her in situations like these because all I can do is glory in the fact that my grand daughter so like me. As I make sympathetic sounds and offer useless advice, inside I am secretly thrilled to bits with this evidence of my grand daughters spirit. Veronica knows this and it breaks my heart a little bit more.

I want my Mother, my Mother is Dead.

We are not allowed to grieve in Australia. We are certainly not allowed to grieve for the inappropriately long time that I have been grieving for my mother. It is coming up to three years, surely you must be over it by now, this grief of yours Kim is a tired refrain.

It might well be a tired refrain, but it is my refrain.

I want my Mother, my Mother is Dead.

The writing of this post was triggered by reading  this article, The Love of my Life by Cheryl Strayed

I am okay at the same time as I am not okay. I am supported by my close friends, as well as good online friends, but that support doesn’t stop me from wanting my Mother and being broken by the fact that my Mother is dead. Again and again and again.

I want my Mother, my Mother is Dead.

I was going to update my last post where I showed you, the total destruction that is my studio at the end of a making phase, with a photo of the tidy and sparkly clean studio.

BUT.

I think this level of studio cleanliness deserves its very own blog post.

This is the carefully labelled chaos of one of my worktables. Do you see the doorknob in the lower left corner? That doorknob makes the best flower patterns when pressed into the clay.It makes the most wonderful daisy shaped dent in a ball of clay and I have had lots of fun experimenting with the impressons. The daisy making door knob is sitting on top of a pile of  tablecloths that were used for Veronica’s wedding, the lace of the tablecloth makes nice patterns in the clay as well.

Another photo of the previous chaos

Tadaa! Look at this! Look how sparkly and clean and home beautiful this is. There is even a bunch of flowers in the middle of my tablescape. Admittedly there isn’t a polished floorboard in sight but a photo of a clear table complete with vase of artfully arranged flowers should make the cut for this months edition of bland magazine. Yes?

I digress, I should be talking about studios and work and art and stuff and I was momentarily distracted by thoughts of all the Home beautiful type blogs I have seen popping up all over the place but I suppose it could be worse, we could have a plague of Rolf Harrisses to contend with instead.

I adore tulips and I came home from visiting a friend with an armload of tulips. I have some in the house but the majority are in the studio making me smile.