Week ending 25.05.07

Monday:
The morning was spent in a meeting at CIA to discuss the setting up of a Craft Research Centre. Vicky and I had been invited along with Paul Scott [of Ceramics and Print etc.] and the Cox’s {Potfest organisers].
Jude Stoll has recently completed a survey of craft in Cumbria and along with Ian Farren, the head of the School of Art & Design wished to hear our views.
I started off by raising the thorny question of ‘craft’, a word full of connotations and ‘baggage’. Both Paul and I thought the term ‘applied art’ is a title that covers the range of current practice. I agreed with Paul that there should be an academic tier to the centre to give it stature, and for something for undergraduates to make use of & aspire to.
To support current practitioners and emerging new makers I suggested the setting up of a Hidden Art franchise based at the centre. Jude mentioned that there is interest from a group of makers around Kendal, but she has asked them to hold on until the CIA has looked into it. My feeling is that a Hidden Art franchise is too big an operation to set up amongst a group of practitioners unless they have enough funding to employ an organiser.
The Cox’s seemed mostly concerned about their kiln site at the Newton Rigg College site at Penrith and made very little positive contributions to the wider discussions. My other suggestions were for the inclusion of a digital manufacturing centre or bureau along the lines of Metropolitan Works. This all seems very ambitious for a centre in Carlisle, but later this year it will become part of the newly formed University of Cumbria and an ideal opportunity to aim high whilst there is investment going in.
The next step for me is to attend a meeting to discuss the Hidden Art franchise.

Tuesday:
Back to the RCA and set about producing a model and mould of flat cone 01.
I am looking to produce a one sided piece that would work equally well on a flat surface or wall. Additionally there is the advantage that the piece is far simpler to produce than the two ended cones and allows me to test variations fairly quickly. By the end of the afternoon I had the mould drying in the cabinet and it was off to The Gate restaurant in Hammersmith to help Jeannette celebrate her birthday. Ray and Jeannette are the couple who kindly have allowed me to use their spare room 3 nights a week whist I’m at College. They are keen collectors of ceramics and have a large eclectic collection.

Wednesday:
Nervous preparations for tomorrow’s Interim Examination; I had thought that I was ready, but having looked at Steve’s Summary of Work to Date, I thought mine needed improving.
Had hoped to produce a cast from the new flat cone mould but it is still too wet.

Thursday:
The morning was spent printing off copies of my written work, selecting and cleaning practical work and a bit of last minute panic! As Martin Smith is both my supervisor and Head of Department Hans Stofer, head of G,S,M & J was brought in to act as chair. Heike Brachlow, one of my fellow students came out of her examination saying that he had asked some difficult questions, so my nervous anticipation went up a notch or two. Alongside Hans Stofer and Martin, Alison Britton and Liz Aylieff interviewed me. Luckily, I felt comfortable with the questions and afterwards was told by Martin that I had passed. Next week there will be a feedback session that I am quite looking forward to in the hope that constructive advice will be given.
I have asked to see Liz next week as she raised an interesting observation that the internal space in my pieces appears to her as a passage. It’s not something that had occurred to me as I see them as containers of light.
Finished early so that I could cook Jeannette and Ray a Surprise Tatin. Jeannette’s partial to root vegetables [which Ray puts down to her Irish ancestry!] and the surprise in this recipe is the potatoes!

Friday:
Spent some time thinking about and discussing Martin’s advice on the alteration of the press moulds with Stephan. Having tried to marry the inner and outer cones decided that it would be more efficient to start again with a really precise model. Having rescued 2 large vinyl display boards from the clear up of the fashion show I thought I could laser cut them or use the plotter to print out the surfaces of my new cone 07 form. So went down to the laser cuter/vacuum forming workshop and had some very good advice from Ian, the technician. He suggested making the model on the CNC milling machine in the Darwin workshops, so it was back upstairs to see Neil the technician. No problem with the design, just have to see Gordon in Vehicle Design about a block of material out of which I can have the model milled. That’s the job for first thing Tuesday afternoon.

Sunday:
Went up to Blackwell, the Arts and Craft house near Bowness-on-Windermere with Vicky as Emmanuel Cooper has asked me to write a review of the Gareth Mason exhibition for Ceramic Review. On the few occasions that I have seen his work I have always found it difficult to understand what he’s aiming at, but this time was really enlightening.

Week ending 18.05.07 -The Centrality of Clay

Monday:
Teaching at CIA in Carlisle.

Tuesday:
Back to the RCA and upstairs for a chat with Tomek Rygalik, an ex-RCA product designer, who seems to be based in college, partly engaged in his own practice partly as a researcher. We discussed vacuum forming specifically & materials generally. He has offered to take me through vacuum forming next Friday, when he returns from his trip to New York. Meanwhile I set about producing the mould of the outside cone.

Wednesday:
Finished the cone mould.
Our Taiwanese artist friend, Chun Chao sent me some titles from his PhD bibliography that he thought might be relevant to my project. One particular recommendation – The Art of Light + Space was in stock in the library and looks very interesting.

Thursday:
Took the small cone mould down to the large vacuum forming machine in the basement. The third attempt was successful, but doesn’t bear close inspection as the styrene is of uneven thickness. My first impression is that it will appear insubstantial, though with the inclusion of a light source this could be an advantage.

Friday:
Made another attempt to put together the ceramic cone, but the thickness of the clay walls is preventing the pieces from fitting. I then took a ‘cast’ of the inner cones, which after firing will be about 10% smaller and from which I can make new moulds.
The process is slow & frustrating, however it’s partly due to learning new techniques and partly that practical works takes longer in the college than in the workshop at home.
Continued to muse about the centrality of clay to my project on the evening train journey home. It's usually a good opportunity to write without too many distractions.
My thoughts about the use of clay are still not fully resolved, but are being aired in the Centrality of Clay essay in the Writing section of the website.

Week ending 11.05.07

Monday:
It was the May Day Bank Holiday here in the UK, so no teaching at Carlisle. Instead, continued with written work for College and spent some enjoyable time with my family.

Tuesday:
Busy train journey back to College, then straight into the plaster shop for the afternoon to complete the outer cone mould











I was a little concerned that it would be difficult to remove the inner clay & wood model, but it came out surprisingly easily.
They are all now drying in the heated cabinet, hopefuly I'l be able to start using them tomorrow.
Made a semi-matt cream glaze which I'm managing to test fire later today. I'm looking for a neutral, non ceramic surface treatment, this may be the answer.
In an effort to compare materials and techniques I have emailed Corian© looking for contacts & information about thermoforming and including LED into the surface of my pieces.

Friday:
Started the day by rolling out a slab to wrap around the small inner cone as the clay applied to it yesterday stuck very firmly to the surface.
I had to break off to have a tutorial with Jonathan Miles in the Humanities Department. He had been recommended as someone to discuss perception with, and after describing the aims of my project he gave me a brief history of philosophy of perception since Descartes!
The most relevant thing we discussed was the ‘autonomous object’. Jonathan Miles defined it as an object that can speculate on its own condition, rather than being a comment or statement. I find this relevant to my questioning of the centrality of ceramics to the project. But how does an object become autonomous? Surely any contrived object is autobiographical whether it is functional or sculpture? I can imagine a series of objects collectively being ‘autonomous’, each being part of an act of speculation.
I must ask Jonathan Miles for specific texts that discuss this notion.
His general suggestions were:
HIEDEGGER: ‘Being and Time’ and the essays ‘The Question of Technology’ & ‘The Thing’.
ROSALIND KRAUSS: ‘Sculpture and the Extended Field’
MERLAU—PONTY: suggested first reading a commentary or Aesthetic reader. ‘Eye of the Mind’ and ‘Cezanne’s Doubt’.

I came away from the tutorial aware that I have 20+ years of ingrained thinking habits which must be questioned in order for me to truly engage with this project.

My feeling is that my past practice as a functional potter led me to this point and the ceramic container should remain the core of the project. If I abandon the ceramic element I am then moving into territory that I have little knowledge or experience of. However, my investigation of the digital has brought me into contact with making techniques and materials that could well be part of the future of ceramics. This is one of the reasons for undertaking this project and could be part of my post-RCA life.


The rest of the day was spent wrestling with the moulds. I tried to fit the smaller end cone into the outer cone and though I had carefully worked out the dimensions, the thickness of the clay walls was a problem that made assembly impossible. So my plans to have assembled a piece by this evening went completely out of the window. I will have to make scaled down versions of the inner cones by taking and firing clay ‘casts’ from which new moulds can be made. In theory this should work, but I won’t have a fired piece in time for my interim examination on the 24th.

Week ending 04.05.07

Monday:
Teaching at CIA- started with tutorials, focusing on the development of ideas. In the afternoon gave a 2-hour Rhino 3D introductory demonstration. It was a hands on session, which I think went quite well.

Tuesday:
Back at the RCA to a busy week making the moulds for press-moulding and looking into rapid prototyping a model to produce a vacuum forming mould from. First of all I had to explore whether the cone pieces use true cones. Martin suspected they aren’t so I spent a few hours on the train & in the afternoon testing whether it’s possible to bring 2 truncated cones together with an even 2cm gap separating their ‘sharp’ ends. In the end I came to the conclusion that it’s not possible, the centre must be started from 2 circles, each lofted to the outer ends of the cones, then those lofted to each other.

Wednesday:
Started the day with a meeting with Nick Grace up in Rapidform. They are under pressure installing new machines and helping 2nd years prepare work for their final shows. Still, he gave me time to discuss preparing a Rhino model for production on the ZCorp machine. The cost is huge – 25p/cc doesn’t sound much but when my model is 1.34 litres we’re looking at £300! However, my models need scaling down to fit within the 250X200X200 bed size. So that will bring about a reduction in cost. Meanwhile, I returned to the analogue!

I had some plywood discs cut, based on Cone 6 dimensions. Angled lengths of 2X2 connected them. The space between the discs was then filled with clay.

Thursday:
Woke early so was in college by 8.00am. Continued with the moulds
< These are the inner cone moulds over which I'll form the clay.








This is the outer cone made on Friday, with an extra disc on top. This one is to have the plaster applied directly onto the surface, building it out in line with the discs. When the former is removed & the plaster is dry, it can be used as a press mould for the outer cone.


At lunchtime we had another of our research cluster get togethers. They are an opportunity for one of us to discuss an aspect of their project. I set up the first meeting to help me define the core of my project. The perspective of my fellow students is extremely helpful, though our projects are quite different to each others, we have enough overlaps and shared interests to make our group very supportive.
Today, I had invited Alison Britton to discuss her new work on show at Barrett Marsden Gallery.
At the opening night Alison used phrases like "taking risks", "loosening up" and "relaxing", and it was these aspects of moving towards a new body that I thought were relevant to some of us. One of the most interesting parts was her description of how a piece of work can initiallly be inspired by a theme, such as a place, a piece of writing, personal views and that it may loose it's link to it's original starting point as the piece progresses. The title always comes last and generally doesn't have a relationship with the original theme.
The question I would like to ask Alison is "How does a viewer then interpret the piece? What are the criteria and how much are we expected to understand of the context in which the the work is made?" These may seem like naive questions, but for me that are worth pursuing.

Friday:
I was in two minds about staying in London this coming wekend to complete my moulds and visit some galleries. However, my eldest daughter, Rowan wil be home from Manchester, the garden and the surrounding countryside are so beautiful at this particular time of year and the fact that I can have some time to relax has made it an easy decision to go for the 18.45 train north. I'll also be able to prepare the written parts for the interim examination scheduled for the 24th.

From the backdoor, looking across the side garden towards the woods

Week ending 27.04.07

Monday
2nd session at CIA, in the afternoon had a demo of SolidWorks 3D modelling software. Pretty refined in comparison to Rhino, but costs a lot more.

Tuesday
Back to the RCA and started to prepare the fired cone pieces for Thursday’s tutorial. The firing cracks were filled with Plastic Padding, sanded smooth then taken upstairs to be sprayed with cellulose paint. The finish is not bad, 2 are a satin white and one is black.

Wednesday
I had forgotten that I had signed up for a FuelRCA presentation skills day focusing on ‘meeting the client’. The day was of limited use as we were guinea pigs; generally I think my day could have been better spent. The mind map exercise was the most valuable as my partner thought that ‘research’ is the core of my practice, not ‘ceramics’ as it seemed to initially suggest. This has a bearing on how I prepare for my post-RCA life.
After this I continued to finish my cone pieces then assembled the LED’s & installed them successfully in one of the cones. They illuminate the piece with a blue glowing light, no colour or intensity changes as yet.

Thursday
The tutorial with Martin was very productive. I showed him the cone pieces; they are less successful than the cone 05 test piece in terms of the illusion created. However, they have served their purpose in demonstrating that LED lighting is worth pursuing, but mostly that throwing and assembly is definitely not a suitable technique for these pieces. The chance of cracking is high, grogged clay is difficult to smooth and though my throwing skills are pretty good it’s still difficult to produce a cone with a perfectly straight profile. Martin brought up the choice of making technique and exploration of alternative materials. It was decided that a model should be made that could be used to produce a mould for press moulding and for vacuum forming. This is exactly what I was hoping to hear as I have questioned the need for this work to be made of clay. I wish to remove all traces of the hand and any connotations with studio ceramics.
I also showed Martin the new website, which he thinks will make a valuable contribution to the interim examination coming up in May.
After the tutorial Martin, Alison and I discussed the last two research applications, one was rejected, one accepted, which should be interesting as his project is almost a glass version of mine. It looks like the ‘research cluster’ is going to increase to 7.

Friday
Bit of a frustrating day as I hoped to start on making the rest of the moulds for the cube glass cast first thing in the morning, but couldn’t find any clay! It brings it home that I must prepare in advance, it’s not like the workshop at home where everything is under my control. I did complete one more, but had hoped to make the remaining three.
I popped upstairs to the Darwin workshops to learn about vacuum forming where the French technician Fred was pretty negative. I need to find others to ask, maybe visit a specialist company.
Stephan came to give me some advice about producing a model for press moulding; it should be straightforward but will need to be planned carefully. I continued to produce a Rhino model that can be used then went to see Martin Watmough in RapidForm to talk about Rapid prototyping a model. He thinks it will be possible on the ZCorp machine, but is likely to cost over £200. I’m meeting Nick Grace up there on Wednesday to discuss the details. The advantage is that the model would be absolutely accurate and could be used to produce a model for vacuum forming. Martin also told me about a powerful new laser cutter that’s been installed recently. Apparently it’s capable of cutting much heavier duty material, so I will need to check it out to find whether I can use it to produce a strong accurate model.

Week ending 20.04.07

Monday-
Teaching my first session of a new ceramics project at Cumbria Institute of the Arts.

Tuesday-
Back to London, the focus of this week is to finish my test pieces in preparation for next week’s tutorial with Martin Smith. I have four cone pieces to fire, one of which cracked during drying, highlighting the hazardous complexity of traditional making techniques on forms where internal access is impossible. I have discussed attempting to press mould a similar cube form, however I suspect that will not overcome the technical difficulties. Slip casting and the post-firing assembly of parts are some of the other ceramic techniques to consider, before investigating alternative materials and RM.
I sprayed both the biscuit fired and dry pieces with a white Hyplas 71 ball clay terra sigillata slip and a leftover demo piece I made at Ceramic Art London with a black terra sigillata made from our standard black slip recipe.

Wednesday-
Packed the kiln and started the firing.

Thursday-
Unpacked the kiln in the afternoon. Mixed results- the black slip worked very well, but I suspected it would do because of the sheen it developed on application. The white slip is smooth, but very little sheen, it doesn’t look any different from before the firing.
The packet of LED’s, controllers, and transformer arrived from my brother in Austria. I now have the means to put together a simple circuit to produce either white or coloured lights and with further experimentation [and assistance] I should be able to incorporate a proximity sensor to control effects.
In the evening there was an excellent presentation on biomimetics by MADE [the Material And Design Exchange]. The first part was by Julian George, a material scientist from Imperial College looking into producing synthetic bone structures. He showed examples of biomimetic developments from spider’s webs, lotus flowers etc. Geoff Hollington, a product designer and member of MADE talked about how biomimetics may impact on our lives in the future. Materials that will react in the same way as our senses allow us to are in development and will be part of the not too distant future.

Friday-
I started to prepare a mould for casting cube 4 in glass. The form was designed on Rhino; I then produced Illustrator files of all its surfaces. These were printed onto adhesive vinyl by plotter/cutter, stuck onto 5mm foamboard and cut out with a craft knife. The internal corners needed to be mitred before assembly. Once assembled, they were used as a model from which to take a plaster/quartz cast.
At lunchtime the research cluster met at Heike’s request to discuss her project. It is always a fruitful experience, the similarities and differences of our projects allowing some fresh perspectives and new information to follow up. For instance, Heike showed a photograph of a piece of glass by Richard Whitely which looks very similar to part of cube 4!

Saturday-
Catching up with things at home- domestic duties, mowing the lawn, checking seedlings etc. All a healthy contrast to London, allowing me some important time to reflect on the week.

Sunday-
The rain has returned after 3 or 4 weeks of gorgeous weather, however I’m packing some of the figures that I made during Easter. My youngest daughter, Grace has an interview at Midddlesex University on Tuesday for a place on the Fashion & Textiles course and Vicky is helping her to complete a Yamamoto top. The pattern was downloaded from the Showstudio website with very few instructions, so assembly has been a challenge. She is really keen to get a place, however students are asked to leave their portfolios, and after inspection some of the applicants are invited to interview. She’ll be pretty devastated if she doesn’t get an interview, as that is where she will excel.