I was relieved that I finally had some work that I would be happy to exhibit at Ceramic Wales, we were going as a group and as such had mocked up how we wanted to lay out the stand. Cath our technician had loaned us the use of her plinths and cloths and we all decided to paint things grey to give a coordinated look to the stand. 

Rob assisted us with photographing the work and a banner was produced for us to display behind the stand.

Pricing the work was more challenging and we did a useful exercise as a group where we all wrote down what we thought the price of  each others pieces should be. This proved both amusing and interesting, as there was a wide range of ideas on value, some of which were based purely on how much a person liked the work and bore no resemblance to the value of the work as a piece of art!

We learned the importance of planning and preparation for a show, considering things like wrapping and transporting the work, the stand, any display materials as well as packing for a weekend away camping in a field! We also worked out how we would take payments and wrap work for customers and organised how we would man the stall.

Below is a picture of our stall set up, we had a right hand end pitch at the far end of the site.

More pictures of our set up including plinths.

Four out of the five of us sold a piece of work which was great, we also had a really fun time! The first evening was a small camp event where we all came together to share food, drink and music. 

The second evening we joined the majority of other potters on site at the "Sausage Club' where everyone pays a contribution and we all share a meal, this one was curry, and it was amazing.

It was a great opportunity to experience what it is like being at a show, what to expect, what to consider and have the opportunity to meet and chat with other ceramic artists. I had a really fun time but it was also absolutely exhausting. The physical work involved in setting up the show both in terms of the making of the and then transporting everything and then setting up is huge, we all shared the tasks between us this time, but as a solo artists I would be doing this mostly on my own and it is very hard work both physically and mentally and I can see how easily you could become disheartened if you then fail to sell hardly any work.  I can see the appeal of the social side of this world and the sense of community it creates, but am not sure that this offsets the amount of work involved and the toll it takes in making this set up happen 6-8 times a year. I realised that if this was something I was going to consider doing I was going to ned some help in doing it, and I needed to explore this again when I was looking at future opportunities.

I was mindful that I may not have enough work to exhibit at ceramic Wales so decided to glaze a piece I had previously finished using wax. The piece was hard to keep clean as it was and the dust had stuck to the wax surface and it looked unsightly. The piece was put through a bisque firing to burn off the wax coating and then a mixture of glazes were applied. I knew it was risky taking this approach, but it also meant that there was a potentially exciting unknown outcome as well. The glazes used were tenmoku, titanium white, satin green and a matte green. Below is the glazed piece before the glaze fire, the clay is a red stoneware body.

This is the piece after glaze firing, I was really pleased with the results, and although the colour palette was a departure  from what I have recently been using, I thought the reactions between the glaze layers created a very organic looking effect which complimented the piece.

As an MA group we are having a stall at Ceramic Wales, there were lots of things to plan and organise including transport, accommodation and preparation for the stand, but foremost in my mind was the fact that I had virtually no work that was of a good enough standard for me to take to sell. I honestly feel at this stage like focussing on making work for an event is just not what I need. Am still being plagued with cracks in work, glazes not working properly and really not feeling in any way resolved in what work I actually want to show to represent myself as an artist. I had very little work that actually had no faults in it!

I seem to find myself feeling constantly overwhelmed and  I am really struggling with organising my thoughts and ideas and find planning things hard as a consequence. I have recently requested an ADHD assessment from my GP as this is something that has been an issue for me all of my life. I have done a lot of research recently to raise my  awareness on this subject, and it has really helped me to understand numerous aspects of how I learn , process and respond to different  situations. It impacts so many aspects of my life that I am only just beginning to understand why I have had so many internal struggles emotionally and mentally. I am seeking a diagnosis with a hope that it will provide some techniques and  strategies to help me better manage my day to day life, how I approach challenges and deadlines in my practice and better understand my own thought processes.

With this in mind I decided to go back to working using thrown connections between the forms as this had worked previously and I could plan this, I also decided to focus on smaller scale pieces connected using clay pads between the ovoids. Below are images of these pieces in progress.

Still mindful of having virtually nothing to exhibit at Ceramic Wales I really pushed to get some pieces made, I had already decided I was going to use glazes and clay bodies that I knew had worked for me so despite the very short window of time I had, I got stuck in!

Given the limited time I had available to me, I had to take a risky decision about firing the work, none of it was fully dry so I used a very slow drying cycle prior to the firing and said a little prayer to the kiln gods !

Below all my damp pieces in the kiln…

Thank fully everything survived the firing! No cracks of faults which was a huge relief. I had chosen to refire a piece I had previously waxed as I planned to glaze it to take to Ceramic Wales, I liked the form but wasn’t keen on the red stoneware when it had been fully fired. 

Below are images of all the pieces I glazed, all bar one piece I had made see (end of post)went to Wales with me. 

I had used the crawl glaze I had applied previously on this place and it hadn’t worked! I later discovered that this was my fault as I had failed to double one of the quantities in the recipe when I was scaling up the volume, so frustrating but a hard lesson learned. I tried to rescue is by overlaying the crawl with a foam glaze, but that just resulted in a glaze that looked, as you can see below, awful. I was so annoyed as this type of form was the one I was keen to show in Wales and I ended up with no white stoneware pieces that I could take.

After playing around with gloop, I eventually decided that although the effects were interesting the glaze needed so much more work to get it to do what I wanted, and even if I had resolved the issues with it,  I felt it wasn't really the right 'fit' for the work so I chose to focus on using more lichen/crawl looking glazes which I felt would fit bitter with my fungi inspired forms.

I had begun to experiment with magnesium carbonate and silicon carbide in glazes and had had some success with getting sculptural effects. 

Below are pics of tests of lava style glazes using silicon carbide, but the best results were achieved when I used a finer mesh/grade of silicon carbide as this definitely impacted on how puffy and sculptural the glaze became.

Below: Red stoneware with Marilee Lava glaze from Linda Bloomfield's book on Special Effects glazes. This recipe has a 5% addition of copper carbonate.

The biggest reaction and sculptural effect achieved with silicon carbide was a recipe I found on Glazy called  Akiko's crater glaze, described by the contributor Kenneth Ibbett as a a base recipe for Volcanic glaze given to him by his teacher Akiko Hirai. This is the recipe:
Nepheline Syenite, Barium Carbonate, Kaolin, Silica, Rutile & Silicon Carbide. (I used both 200 and 4000 mesh) both puffed up really well as you can see in the test samples and the piece below.

I was pleased with the overall effect of this glaze as I felt it worked really well with the aesthetics of the pieces I was making, and decided it would be one I would use again.

I did a number of experiments on the type of connections that I could make between the clay pieces as I was still experiencing cracks and movement. 

I tried connecting ovoids directly to each other without a joining piece, I used both paper vinegar slip and just water and slipping and scoring. I kept them moist with slow drying and others just air dried, I also connected using small clay pads rather than thrown hollow joining sections like I usually do. 

All the experiments where done with grogged white stoneware and the results where interesting, the piece that was just slipped and scored and then air dried slowly  fell apart before it reached the kiln, see pic above.

The pieces connected with vinegar and paper clay slip stayed together but, despite spraying and slow drying separated at the back seams allowing cracks to develop (see above). 

The pieces joined using clay pads had more success, but I needed to be mindful not to leave any slip behind as this would enable surface cracks to develop between the seams which looked unsightly.

Below is a piece constructed using clay pads. I was really pleased with how this piece had turned out as I managed to get some lift and movement into it which offered potential for a whole range of new pieces. It was a useful experiment to do as it helped me to stop wasting time with joins that just were not going to work.

Unfortunately the piece broke in half at the midpoint after bisque firing so perhaps the join was too weak? Sadly it ended up being used for glaze testing.

See below for the resulting glaze tests, the black crawl glaze (tested) was successful but hard to get it to adhere to the clay surface. The pink was a chrome and tin crawl glaze from Linda Bloomfield’s book on special effects glazes, it goes in the kiln green (see below) and comes out pink! (see below)

Below, after firing with surface cracks at seams and crawl glaze that didn’t work.

I was still feeling unsettled about how I had felt after visiting CAL and the ceramics at the V & A and it has really made me question whether I want to pursue clay as my only material for making sculpture. My overall sense of this just not being the right fit for me had me questioning what I was doing.

I remember walking around CAL and enjoying seeing the work, but apart from a handful of makers, most of the artists I had seen before at Potfest, I had hoped for and expected to be wowed by the space, the style of the event and the range of exhibitors given that CAL is considered the top ceramics show to be in, but I just wasn't, it just felt like Potfest in the Park on a slightly bigger scale but in a more clinical setting.  I was far more excited and animated by the sculptural work I had seen in the "When Forms Come Alive" exhibition at the Hayward Gallery which I decided to go and visit whilst I was in London.

I do love the materiality and tactile nature of clay as well as it's versatility, but I am not sure whether it will end up being the only material I work with. 

Above: Eva Fabregas Installation at The Hayward Gallery. The sculpture vibrated and made sounds, it was very bodily, like intestines or giant versions of mycelium sending signals between plants and trees. 

After the trip I did feel stimulated and started to research forms and shapes that were similar to those I had seen at the Hayward Gallery. Not all of this research would necessarily  be used to inform what I would make for my MA  but it was good to charge up my brain and get the creative ideas flowing again as I had started to feel a bit stuck and definitely disillusioned.

The below piece really fascinated me, and it got me thinking about a different way that I could connect and show my ceramic forms. The piece is made of wax and is by Margaret Humeau.

I loved the way the wax pieces looked connected but were randomly layered and did remind of the way fungi grows on a host tree trunk and I began to explore ideas about how I could develop this within in my own work.

In truth I was so fed up of making circles and ovoids I needed to do something different! I had been thinking about Chicken of the Woods, this is a highly sought after species of fungi that is meaty and tastes of chicken but it's hard to find. It's often found growing on old oak trees and you have to catch it at just the right moment or it becomes too tough to eat. It's a big, bright bold bracketing fungi, so I think that this is what I was thinking about when I made this piece. It didn't get any further than being bisqued because it broke!

Below an image of chicken of the woods growing in woodland.

Above is the finished piece before firing, I had used a new clay body called Lila, it had a very interesting toasty gold colour when fired to stoneware.I had built it on a round saggar, I was trying to create the idea of fungi growing on a substrate and it was fired on the saggar. One of the fluted segments blew off in the firing, I think I had omitted to create a small hole to allow moisture to escape so it hadn't dried properly.

Despite the breakage I did quite like the overall effect but I did wonder whether I was tipping over into making fungi that was too derivative of the an actual variety so I did not continue with this piece. I wouldn't completely abandon the idea but again it needs more experimentation and I was mindful that this was another potential distraction.

After breaking the first version of this piece, I decided to remake it, this time in Black Clay. It's funny though, as I just didn't think this one was as successful, I thought I had followed the same steps, and had reference images to follow but is just didn't quite flow the same

I realised after it was fired that I hadn't got the balance right, it was off centre when it was fired resulting in a wedge being needed underneath so the piece would curl and lift.

I used a Linda Bloomfield special effects glaze on the surface called Mari Lee Lava and coloured it with cobalt carbonate. I was still experimenting with special effects glazes and this with another lava glaze I had been testing. I knew it performed well on black clay.

I think this piece does have some merit, I like aspects of it, and I think the line of the form is interesting so I will continue to experiment with the shapes I am making and see what emerges.

Form has always been paramount in the aesthetic of the sculptures I was trying to make, connected pieces are a very important part of this as it is intrinsically linked to the narrative behind my work. I still wanted shapes to emerge that were inspired by fungi without being too referential, so I decided to experiment more with form as I was seeking both a change of tone and a way of resolving the breakages that I had experienced to date.

The above is a piece that I did not feel worked, it looked too clumsy and off balance, it also did not survive in the kiln so became another piece that was discarded.

The piece below I felt was more successful, I liked the combination of spheres and ovoids in this and inserting ovoids into hemispheres was also a new way of working with the forms. Am pleased to say this did survive the firing and I decided to use a glaze that I had done a little bit of experimenting with previously. It was a lava glaze recipe on Glazy made by Akiko Hirai, In the initial tests of this glaze it had expanded a great deal so I knew I needed to be cautious in applying it.

Above is an image of the piece before the glaze had been fired, I had taken to doing this to ensure I had a record  given the high rate of kiln disasters I had had previously.

I was really pleased with the way this glaze behaved, I knew it would be too much to cover the whole piece, but I love the way it has joined up and 'grown' in the kiln, feel very relevant to the work I am making. The only thing am not really convinced by is the colour of the red clay body when fired to Cone 8. At bisque it has lovely rich red tone that is warm, but this reminds a bit of offal! Am not sure if red is the way to go anymore.

I wanted to create a form that had connected elements using the ovoids and spheres I had used previously but with some movement so that some sections were elevated away from a flat visual plain. I used a range of different props and broken kiln shelf to support the elevated parts. I realised after that I should have used clay wads between the prop supports that wouldn't shrink in the firing,  as the clay shrinkage may have caused breaking/cracks or movement I didn't want. 

As it turned out I didn't need to be concerned as it never even got to the kiln in one piece! I make most of my pieces directly on a kiln shelf and as I was loading this onto the shelf to await the kiln, I caught the edge of the shelf as I lifted it and the jolt was heavy enough to knock the supports out from underneath causing the fragile dry greenware to break off and because of the nature of the construction it was like dominos tumbling, the whole thing had to be reclaimed!!!

I retained a couple of sections of the piece to fire and use as glaze testing pieces.
This was another disastrous making day, and I had no one else to blame other than myself and my lack of coordination!!