To date I have been using either commercial brush on glazes mainly Mayco or Amaco brand, or the glazes already mixed in the ceramics department. I knew I needed to have a go at making my own, it made sense for lots of reasons and I also know it’s an important step in my learning and development as a ceramic artist. 

Making glazes has always felt quite daunting to me, but having gone through the process of actually making a base glaze and adding different colourants, I realised how much it could teach me about understanding what the different materials involved in ceramics do. I referred back to what we had been taught in the glaze session, and had forgotten about how much maths was involved in getting the right mixture of ingredients. I have noted in my Blue Glaze note Book the recipe I used a simple white base glaze by Linda Bloomfield, then I added different oxides in varying percentages. 

I have added some images of the glaze test just for reference, it’s fair to say some worked better than others, some were boring and some just very lacking in character and interest. I did layer a couple together to see what would happen as well. I need to repeat the ones I liked and look more consistency in how they are applied in order to try and establish a body of glazes I can use in my work. Still lots to learn and a long way to go but I really enjoyed the process and even managed to operate the triple beam balance scales too!

As I had experienced problems with Black Clay body and glaze I thought it would be a good idea to test the glazes with black clay to see how they reacted, I also had applied white slip to one side of the black clay testers so I could get a sense of what the colour would look like when the Manganese in the black clay wasn’t dominating the reaction to the glaze.

I am part of a group of artists all working out of the same creative space each have our own studio spaces but we do collaborate for shows and open studio events. Before deciding to enrol on the MA I had already committed to being in a group exhibition titled “Visions of Landscape”, it’s an exhibition we had started to develop in early 2022 after lockdown and had already had one smaller scale but relatively successful show. Long story short, we booked a more ambitious large scale exhibition space at The Storey Gallery in Lancaster and agreed a date for a two week exhibition in April 2023 and committed ourselves financially and collaboratively to the planned event.

I will try and keep this brief as there is a lot to cover so will do it as bullet points

• I learned in the in’s and outs of what is needed to pull together an exhibition on this scale, I undertook all of the below and more
  • Liaising with artists
  • Recruiting guest artists
  • Developing publicity materials
  • Appointing a third party to create digital content, then being responsible for over seeing this content.
  • Ensuring participants had clear and explicit information as to what they could expect and what we needed.
  • Developing ideas and implementing fringe activities to support the promotion and publicity for the exhibition.
  • Creating important documentation for dissemination to artists and to the gallery owners.
  • Designing and purchasing new business cards.
  • Creating an artist statement that would be shared with visitors to the show
  • Organising delivery and collection of art work
  • Designing and commissioning bespoke plinths to be made to display my work on.
  • Curating a variety of different 2D & 3D art works in collaboration with other artists to create a cohesive looking exhibition
• The fact that I was in a show gave me a deadline and really sharpened my thinking about developing a  body of work that would fit the theme of the exhibition..
• I created  a cohesive body of quality work that I felt reflected my interests and aesthetic and remained within the parameters of what I felt was important. These were that this would be a new style of work and not like anything I had made before, it would not be literal in it’s style or aesthetic, it would be interesting and have a strong degree of tactility and texture building on the ideas I had started to develop on my MA, it would be finished to a quality to make it suitable to be shown to the public and sold and I felt on the whole I had achieved most of this.
• The show was very well attended with over 2000 visitors
• I sold more art work than any other artist in the show  and this was the first time I had ever sold work on this scale or in this quantity.
• This is the biggest exhibition I had ever been part of and the quality of work overall was excellent.

Below are images of the works I submitted for the exhibition, of all these pieces had been made during my MA and the practice and process involved in creating these works  is described in more detail within posts on this blog.

I had lots of thoughts about being part of this show, before, during and after it happened so I will try and summarise these here.

• The commitment - I had promised my fellow artists, (the people I see on a weekly basis when I am working in my studio) that I would be part of this show, I knew even before I was anywhere near the deadline for finishing work that it was going to affect my MA practice, but I honestly felt like I couldn’t withdraw, it would have been too big of an impact and I didn’t want to let them down.
• I ended up doing more of the practical behind the scenes work to get the exhibition to opening than I had planned too, working with other artists can be a bit like herding cats, I spent a lot of time dealing with and managing issues that I hadn’t expected or anticipated so overall my stress load was greater than I would have liked and at times it affected both my mental health and my capacity to be emotionally and physically available for my MA work.
• I came onto the MA to carve out some space to work on my own practice, am n journey to discover the kind of work I want to make. Although I ensured that what I made related to and reflected the interests and ideas I was exploring at the time,  I was working to an outcome, because  I needed finished pieces of work for the show, I felt that at times this agenda stifled my ability to be freer and more open ended in my making and I think if I am an honest with myself I could have pushed the work I made and been braver in my choices if I hadn’t always had it in the back of my mind that some of the work needed to be in an exhibition.

In conclusion I would argue that it is, as the title suggests a double edged sword, I gained valuable knowledge and experience of putting an exhibition together and creating a body of work that reflected the textures, forms and colours of the landscape but I think the cost to my time, energy and thought processes was too high. Despite the successful sales, which were fantastic to have and realy helped me to feel validated as an artist, I will not be rushing to commit myself again to such a big undertaking whilst am studying. I feel like I am in danger of getting in the way of my own development, my aim of being on the MA in the first place is to research, experiment and discover and I need to re-focus my energies towards this now.

Below are images taken of the exhibition showing the range of work being exhibited, these images include work by other artists. 
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This is the link to the Higherford Mill Artists Page which shows posts and development of the exhibition

I took slabs of terracotta earthenware claybody in a wheeled cart along Pendle Water towards the water meetings near my home and studio. I wanted to capture the beautiful textures of different tree barks, roots and any other tree related textures that took my fancy.

This was a lovely way to capture natural texture, it was wonderful to be outside in the landscape working with clay. It’s a really simple process but the effects are really beautiful, interesting and inspirational. I need to repeat the experiment using a lighter stone ware clay to create texture plates that can be used to develop more textures/stamps/sprigs etc. as the bisque fired terracotta was quite fragile and shed clay crumbs onto the soft clay when it was pressed into the terracotta plate.

Here are some images of me capturing the texture from trees with the clay.

As I plan to repeat this experiment again, I chose to apply copper oxide and a clear glaze on these texture plates as I thought they could look interesting if they were hung together as a group on a wall or board. Below are some images of these pieces.