I think that may appear on my gravestone …
Waiting to be white!
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks thinking, dreaming, and fussing about the show coming up at the Colborne Art Gallery in March — “Three Degrees of Separation”. I had such grand plans! Was going to make a wall of test tiles … started a batch, did all of the things you’re supposed to do to tiles (to keep them flat) and even bisque fired them. Then had an “Ah hah” moment in that space between wakefulness and sleep one morning … I had used the wrong clay. I had planned on using a mid-fire bright white porcelain, and used a high fire stoneware instead! That clay wasn’t going to work for the experimentation I wanted to do. Giant rethink!!!
Well, who bloody-well said that’s what I needed to do that anyway? ME. And, who decided that heading into a show with two other terrific clay artists was the time to experiment with Watercolor on Porcelain? ME. Sometimes I want to listen to some other voice in my head besides mine!
I couldn’t help it. I was inspired. I saw some fabulous work by Arne Ase working with water-soluble colorants. Wouldn’t just want to muck about with them in the studio with no expectations … oh, no, not me … I turn it into a performance piece. What’s that a sign of? Megalomania?
Another journey has begun … what was going to be a meriad of wall tiles is now some floating platters that can be hung on
Waiting for them to dry!
the wall or used on the table. And, some teapots of course. What would I be doing in a show without some teapots? Some in porcelain, some not … and the great experiment will be the white glaze and seeing whether the colorants will actually work on glaze as Ase proposes (the pictures in his book don’t actually show the colorants on top of a white glaze so we’ll see). This way, we will all have a surprise! If they don’t turn out, I’ll be doing a retrospective instead … and to quote the Animals, “my intentions were
good …”.
