First Week of the Artist in Residency at Fairvale High School

Here are some of the projects being undertaken at Fairvale High School.
Year 9 Visual Art class with Ms Haberecht have a 'Mechanical Thing' project. It develops their work from last year where they had built a sculptural object from found objects.  They were already up and running with their drawings and ideas. This term they will make their individual works in clay and glaze the final pieces.

To get the students thinking about surfaces, textures and imprinting, they started off rolling out their own tiles from slabs of clay with rolling pins.
They then were instructed to try out different imprints from a variety of objects collected in the classroom: i.e. left-over pieces of electronics, toys, plastic blocks, wheels, cogs and small pieces of machinery.

The Year 11 Visual Arts class with Ms Haberecht were working on a 'Nude Fruit' project. Again, they had comprehensively developed a theme around fruit - having drawn and photographed and painted fruit in a number of different mediums last term. Now they are looking at hand-building in clay an anamorphic fruit object.

And they also kicked off their ceramic work by creating their own tiles with textures and imprints. This time I asked the students to take their clay outside to try out a variety of organic surfaces - bark, leaves, stones and so on.

Here are some of the unfired tiles:

Great Workshop Held at the National Art School on Feb 14 for the Artist in Residency Program

Great launch of the fantastic Artist in Residency program involving Cabramatta High School, Merrylands High School and Fairvale High School. National Art School kindly provided their excellent art space and ceramic facilities (THANK you Merran Esson !) so we could run workshops for the students from the high schools on the day. And a special thanks to Rach Kirsten for her wonderful help rolling out the clay and cutting the tiles so professionally!

The Zentangle Tile Project:
Clay was rolled out the day before the workshop on a slab roller. Tiles were cut out to the size of half an A4 piece of paper and stored between wooden boards. Blackwattle Grogged White Raku clay was used, as well as some Keanes White Raku.
During the workshop, students were assigned two tasks: Firstly, they were given markers and a piece of tracing paper and had to draw a simple Zentangle design, using their names as the main design focus. Zentangles are a meditative way of making structured patterns. It is a very easy and effective way of building creative repetitive patterns and designs. The method was created in 2005 by calligrapher Maria Thomas and her partner, a former Buddhist monk Rick Roberts, as a meditational art form and their website is: www.zentangle.com

The next stage of the workshop was for the students to use slips (essentially coloured liquid clays) to paint their tiles. The students were told to not worry too much about how to put the slip on the clay, just select a few colours that appealed to them and brush the colours on. They were free to do whatever combination they wished. These coloured tiles will become the backdrop to the Zentangle design, which will be applied to the tiles via a Laser Toner Decal.

This next images are of some of the tiles drying with the Zentangle designs underneath them. The tiles have to be fired to 1000 deg before a clear glaze is applied.

* Updates on this project will be posted when the works are glazed and laser toner decals made.

Decals

Some of my home-made decals where I have been trying to avoid solvents and the traditional Cover-coat. The Roof of Heaven transparency I used to make a silkscreen.

This work from the Kerrie Lowe Show earlier this year was refired with the boron white glaze and added another dimension to the night scene from Newtown.

Update on works

Some are still firing in the kiln right now. I refired some of the works with decals on them, as I wasn't happy yet with how my home-made decals came out. I took it right back up to 1020 degrees and curiously enough the commercial open stock decal sank in nicely. (The lovely gold decals from J.T. McMaster Screenprinting burnt right out). I do love the boron breaking glaze over the terracotta, recipe from  an old Australian pottery book....

And this is the other side, with a laser toner decal (which I teach how to do in my workshops), which curiously enough, went a darker shade of sepia on the boron base glaze, compared with its usual lighter-brown  hue on clear glazes. (My PhD uni books in background that I've been busy on lately.)

The image is from an 1888 wood engraving published in a French book by Camille Flammarion titled the 'Roof of Heaven'. 

A work in progress...

Worked on creating a square vase form from Blackwattle's terracotta paper clay today. Still trying out the stamps and level of impression/detail possible with paper clay. Brushed some white slip over it. I put my ribs out playing soccer on Sunday and can't sit down at the wheel and throw the forms I wanted to! So decided to handbuild the form instead.

Some new works - trying out some of the stamps I've been collecting, various glazes and decal techniques.....

The Art of Seeing Exhibition

Some recent works on show at the Kerrie Lowe Gallery, Newtown, Sydney. Part of the Heads On Photography festival. The title of the show was The Art of Seeing. Photography of my platters by Greg Piper.