A good day

How do you get going when starting new work?

David found this on some blog he was following (must find out which). Painter Richard Diebenkorn had left this list among his papers before he died in 1993. I assume it is fairly well-known amongst painters; for me as a ceramicist it is new and fresh and very instructive.

I was chatting with glassmaker Colin Reid about starting new work and the difficulty in getting going after a break. How easy it is to fall into patterns, to launch into making, because that is what we do. So I gave myself a day without clay, starting in the workshop with thoughts about layering, texture, balance and the practical details of hanging things on walls, then up and out onto Carlton Moor, where I found a Christmas Tree plantation among the heather and bog. I find myself drawn to places and events that signify renewal, hope and regeneration.

I also unpacked the first kiln of the season, containing stock for Oxford Ceramics Fair in October, and some trial plates. This one has some new elements – suggestions of birches and scrubby hedge in the moorland colours.

To finish, here’s one of Richard Diebenkorn’s glorious landscapes, ‘Berkeley No 52’, 1955, oil on canvas.

 

Blackberries

Last weekend we picked blackberries.

A friend had phoned – his son had taken his own life.

Up on the hill, I was searching for a way to comprehend why this had happened, what the utter despair of that moment might have been like, and my hands were twisting between the brambles and nettles, eyes sharp for the glisten of fruit, feet akimbo to avoid ditches and spikes.

Total absorption in the smallest of movements, eyes and thoughts everywhere and also pinpoint focused.

black plate (Stefan Bang, 2013) with blackberries.

3 platters made by contemporary ceramicists

Danish potter Hans Vangsø makes, among other things, plates and platters. He lives and produces work in the scandinavian tradition of bold simplicity. Pieces undergo many firings, building up a rich and wildly complex surface in the Japanese tradition: “the finished pieces have a compelling rawness and immediacy” (Lindsay Brown, Ceramic Review 266)

This image was taken from the artist’s website,  Gallery April2014. The set of photos show recent production of dishes, all 20-30 cm wide and 30-40 cm high; a few 40-60 high. No titles! Hans Vangsø recently had an exhibition at Oxford Ceramics Gallery

Paul Scott is a ceramicist who has eschewed studio ceramics traditions and built his reputation on the production of printed plates: ‘In Paul Scott’s hands domestic ceramics mutate into subversive comments on our life and times. His manipulation of the established vocabularies of printed motifs and patterns, and his use of the traditional blue and white, gives his work a particular resonance that leans on our recognition of its roots”. (Dr Jo Dahn in Remember Me catalogue essay for exhibition held at the University of Wales 2001).

Scott’s Cumbrian Blue(s) Hedgerow No:6, In glaze decal collage and gold lustre on old earthenware plate (c.1930) marked Copeland Late Spode. 38 x 28 cms. Image from Scottish Gallery 2012 exhibition ‘Blue and White Horizons’

Marit Tingleff is the Norwegian ceramicist who really fired me up to start this project. Her vast earthenware pieces are given the form of dishes but the intensity, tension and depth of surface works like a painting. The pieces are both weighty and delicate, almost dream like with suggestions of remembered landscape.

Marit Tingleff, Panorama 1, earthenware painted with colored slips, transparent glaze, 168 w x 90 h centimeters. Photograph by Thomas Tveter. Image courtesy of the artist. This piece was exhibited at Copenhagen Ceramics. in 2012

The three platters here each represent a form of romantic landscape, traditionally a subject for plates. The size of Marit Tingleff’s platter defies the possibility of function; Paul Scott’s plate is a comment on the vulnerability of landscape and Hans Vangsø responds to his landscape in a joyful way.The formal qualities of these three platters are constant – a central area with a rim, visual interest in the design or surface, light reflecting from the surface which reinforces the 3 dimensional qualities. They all address the concerns of painters – searching for a way to interpret the world – and all have the physicality of a pot. But all three, it appears, are made with the intention of being seen on the wall, or at least displayed vertically. They each take into account the world beyond themselves – the space where they are, light, function.