I am continuing with the coiled forms, I have chosen to build one to a larger scale, and after discussions with Rob decided to cut the tops off at an angle as this echoed the top of another coiled from I had put a slab on the top of. There is still no specific outcome here, it's just about construction, refining the techniques, using a variety of tools to coax and paddle the clay into shape, Rob was keen on concealing evidence of how the piece had been made, working to refine the surface to remove any joins between coiled sections, am not sure how important this is to me overall but am happy to learn and develop techniques in how to do this as I still feel like I have no direction for my work but also that this is probably as it should be for this stage in my MA journey. It's interesting though that despite the more intuitive approach I am making the forms are becoming body likeand organic in nature, am enjoying the making but need to be more patient and be prepared to invest more time in refining the forms. I can’t think about colour yet, I have been using B17C which isn’t the best clay to use for unglazed work  as it’s such an uninspiring colour as a raw high fired stoneware. As these are experimental forms I will explore different clay bodies as the forms develop. I am not even sure if `i want to use glaze in my work.

Below are some images of the forms developing, am using lots of foam and different formers to encourage them to retain there shapes whilst they firm up, am working on multiple pieces at once as managing the moisture is key to building up the shapes, especially with coiling as the downward force applied to attach coils can easily cause soft clay walls to buckle and collapse in. 

I know that I need to look at how to express some of the thoughts and ideas I began to delve into in my sketch book. My mind whizzes between the body, nature, funghi, organic shapes, colour no colour, texture no texture, it's all a bit of a muddle. 

I discussed this impasse with Rob explaining that despite the recommendations from my assessment, I felt I couldn't sustain the textured pieces at this stage. After discussing  what I felt I needed to explore, Rob advised me to stop thinking about texture and focus on forms. I felt encouraged to start thinking about ways to create these ideas so I chose to use coiling. Rather than focusing too much on outcomes, I would look at construction methods using coils, what methods work best to create organic, curved shapes and see what would happen.

I used a variety of different methods, coiling over a plaster former. coiling into a plaster slump mould, coiling onto a clay base and coiling over a line drawn on a piece of paper. I had no specific shapes in mind and would just see what came out of this.

​Below are images of the start of these different techniques 

I was pleased with the overall look of the body of work I had submitted for this assessment, it was the first time that I felt that I had made a group of pieces that sat together really well and looked cohesive. I was encouraged by the marks I received and the overall feedback and initially felt spurred on to continue to explore textured pieces and see where that would take me. However, about a week later I began to have a lot of doubts about this course of action and felt that it was going against the things I was interested in expressing and that I would end up continuing along a vein of exploration that I wasn't invested in enough to sustain me. A lot of the work I had made was textured and my motivation for making this work had primarily been to fulfil the requirements of an exhibition theme, as such I had not approached it in an exploratory, investigative way but rather in an outcome driven, make a completed piece way. I recognised that I had fallen back into old patterns of behaviour, reactive making rather than intuitive, the work she have begun from the point of exploration, borne out of my own personal curiosity and interests. Don't get me wrong I loved doing it, texture is great, clay is a perfect medium to express a multitude of different styles and types of texture, the possibilities are endless but I realised I needed to let it go for now.

Above is an image of my work displayed ready for assessment.

Below is the very first attempt at making curved stacked forms, the response at assessment to this piece wasn't particularly positive. The feedback was fair in as much as they lacked the quality and presence that I was aiming for (in the way I had achieved in my plaster pieces), but this was my first attempt and perhaps I should have left it out as it was such a stark contrast to the rest of the work submitted, it didn't work in the way I wanted it to, it was only the first attempt and I hadn't got near to resolving the construction process. I was disappointed with it but also that it felt like the beginning of something new. Unfortunately my lack of confidence and persistent feelings of not being good enough as a maker sidetracked me into a corner where I got really stuck and didn't know what to do next so I ended up not doing anything for a few weeks.

Please see my blog post about this exhibition here

This work is in the very early stages of development, I don’t really know what will happen with it or where I want to take it, I just know I need to make these forms, they are in my head and I need to get them out. 

As I have mentioned before on this blog, I love abstracted organic forms and am a huge fan of Barbara Hepworth,  Jean Arp, Brancusi, Constantin Brancusi, Henry Moore, Tony Cragg and many others. I am also a great admirer of renaissance figurative sculptures, in particular the work of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, his ability to capture the flesh, the curves of the body the fluidity of line and form is just spectacular, to sculpt marble that looks so soft and sumptuous is just remarkable and I am inspired by his work. 

These pieces have a long way to go, I need to work out construction processes, experiment with scale, make both solid and hollow forms, sketch out more shapes and explore ideas for developing the work.

Below are some images of the pieces in progress, I used both slabs and coils and pinch pots to construct these, I over scraped the one in the centre top which resulted in an uneven thickness of walls and stress cracks at a vulnerable point in the piece where the extended piece juts out.

The pieces were single fired to 1260 C and I requested that they were kept on a separate shelf from other work as they were to remain unglazed and are a white clay body when fired. Unfortunately for reasons I haven’t been able to understand yet, they have yellow marks on one side, and the overall surface has gone a tinged yellow colour, however it was fired with glazed items so I believe that this may have caused the yellowing to occur. Below are some images of the pieces.

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. 
​
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.

Further forays into how to create textured vessels led to be the potters wheel and decided to have a go at throwing bowls and the altering the surface using a combination of coloured slips, sodium silicate and heat to stretch and alter the surfaces. Overall I was really pleased with the results, it isn’t something I had done before using the wheel, and the only thing I had to reference from previous experience was the hand stretched vessels I had made inspired the techniques used by Patricia Shone. Below are images of the vessels from green ware to fully glazed. I used oxides as well as clear glaze on the external surfaces and layered lot sof green tone commercial glazes inside the bowls, the overall aesthetic effect was really good I felt, so I decided that they were interesting enough to take to the Visions of Landscape Exhibition. The blue vessel in the images sold at the show.

Continuing with the focus of these pieces being all about the texture and surface finish, I had lots of opportunity to experiment with making work in new ways and at a larger scales than I had done previously. 

I chose three different clay bodies, a grogged red stoneware, a heavily grogged black stoneware and buff body crank stoneware to create a series of shallow, wide bowls that would feature lots of different textures in them.

I used a large shallow plaster former as a slump mould and wanted the exterior surface of each bowl to be really unique, and planned to incorporate some additions to the clay body both on the inside and the outside to explore ways to generate different textures. 

I added china ball clay powder to slabs of black and buff clay and rolled this into the surface, I then dried the slabs with a heat gun and slammed and stretched the slabs onto a board so that the surface would crack and break,  stretching the surface covered in white ball clay and creating fissures in the clay body that created contrasts between the white and the coloured clay.

I then tore up these lsabs into large chunks of slabs and laid them overlapping inside the slump form, blending the surface to create a smooth internal wall and a layered and cracked external wall.

I chose a different technique with the red clay, choosing to press and roll texture into the clay and then drying and stretching as above. Instead of using white ball clay powder on the outside I applied a paste of ball clay powder, molochite, grogg and porcelain slip into the centre of the bowl to create a textured uneven centre area in the vessel.

All were bisque fired, and then various commercial glazes were applied in earth tones, unfortunately the red bowl cracked into several pieces and this was thought to be down to glaze tension as the outside was unglazed. The buff crank glazed side was really interesting with lots of nice reactions between the glaze and the oxide on the inside, the outside walls didn’t quite work for me, not the aesthetic I had hoped for and it would benefit from a further glazing using oxides. The black bowl had to be glazed twice, the colour having just disappeared on first glazing leaving very little behind other than an uninspiring brown! Even on second firing I struggled to lift the ones of the bowl, though the aesthetics of the piece had improved. 

In future I will apply a white slip to black clay at the greenware stage in order to try and manage the application  of glazes and enable the possibility of more predictable results. I will be making some glaze test tiles for black clay to test out different glazes for colour and fit.