Ceramics week 1 - postscript

One of the functions of my blog posts on each class is that they function as my "self reflective journal", the log book that everyone on the course is keeping, like it or not; the SRJs need to be seen at each assessment. As the assessment lasts for only 20 minutes for each student, there's no time for the examiners to read the SRJs, and of course some people say "why do we have to do this when no-one reads them anyway". The other thing that happens is you don't do the SRJ entry immediately and then you end up doing them all at once, which negates the purpose of the exercise - for it does have a purpose -- to get us thinking critically about our own practice.
The examination board gave a list of topics to use when thinking about the day's work:
1. Research (visual and contextual)
2. Sources
3. Form
4. Content
5. Process
6. Conclusion (the final product)
7. Analytical
8. Evaluative
9. Projective

[As an editor, I do wish they'd stuck to using nouns throughout -- but that's exactly the kind of thinking I'm trying to break away from!]

So, I'm looking at my summary of the ceramics class and wondering how many of these areas are covered, even implicitly. (If the process of making art is so synthetic, why is thinking about it so analytical?) [Ah, "synthetic" - there's a tricky little word!]

And why is it so hard to stay on this topic? This thinking-and-writing thing isn't easy....
Research - done after the fact, by searching out the links in the previous post. Sources - previous research on houses, doorways, interiors, and my own thoughts about "imagined interiors". Form - corners and boxes with "doorways", sometimes decorated, made in clay. Content - the theme of inside & outside; aspects of the built environment. Process - joining slabs; molding; painted, impressed and pierced surface decoration. Conclusion/product - clay models that can be held in one hand.

Analytical - these arose from the need to do something with my hands while thinking, and also from a hope that during the making "something would happen" - I'd notice an effect, or think "what if" - and that would lead to a chain of events, to surprises that would move the idea forward (to paraphrase the famous "I know what I think when I hear myself talk" -- I know where it's going when I realise what's happening). Evaluative - these are still experiments, I still don't know where it's going, I still don't have a plan, even a vague one; though there's an intention and a theme, these aren't clear on looking at the work produced today. Projective - some of these will be discarded as irrelevant (though they might be glazed as part of the learning about the ceramic medium); others could be assembled for an installation.
The second reason for all this text with so few pictures (apart from forcing myself to write a "proper" SRJ entry for once) is to hear myself talk about the previous day's excursion into an area that's not strictly On Topic. I was tempted to narrow my topic to the theme of safety and danger .... there's a point where suddenly you're in the one condition and no longer the other, and I'm interested in what that point is, how you know, what happens next, what's gone before - and how to show all that [and whether it's a dumb thing to do "art" about, or just too difficult for me] -- but safety/danger is just one pair of opposites, and there are many others that I can use more easily and effectively in this project. One tutor advised, "stick with the really basic things, the simple things" - did he mean rough vs smooth, big vs small ... making that interesting is a challenge too, but it's not the brief I've set myself [which would be ... what, exactly?].

At the start of the day the four of us who were able to get in, given the snow and disrupted transport, had a long discussion about our projected projects - and I wittered on like in the paragraph above. However when Robert came back and asked, what has everyone decided, I announced that I'd be sticking with doorways and thresholds, rather than veering off into safety and danger. If it's not a passing phase, it'll be something for "later". So: doors, thresholds it is, for the next wee while.

These final pictures are some bags from Madeira that Robert will be using in his ceramic work.
You know how it is with embroidery - you always have to see the back...