Ceramics and carbon dioxide 1

Carbon accounting and accountability: a rolling theme for a ceramicist making the 'non essential' and 'more than the essential'. Not a new consideration for a maker by any stretch, but one that might now be regarded as integral to making as any other material use in 2009. What one does each year - those reduction and offset actions, local, immediate and geographically removed - needs refining and enhancing. At the minimum, can one's total studio practice, integrated with the rest of daily life, be truly carbon neutral?

. A New Zealand perspective

. Emissions calculation: one assessment amongst many: Greenfleet

. UK: Carbon Trust

. One of the most erudite pieces of recent Australian writing on the broader subject, with much useful background explanation: Tim Flannery

Copperhead and ash

Highlands Copperhead, crossing lane, Feb 23, mid-afternoon

Porcelain beaker, Woonjeegaribay, January, photographed February

Light rain

Light and heavy falls have visited for the past 10 days. It is cool - 11, 13, 14 C. Very unlike February, and very like seasonal change. I wonder. All has gone from bush fire edge to soggy ground. Mud wasps have disappeared, Gang-Gang cockatoos are conspicuously silent in their recent absence, and close-up bird life very subdued. I have returned the horse to our neighbour; the tall flowering grasses have been grazed and wettened beyond house threat. The news from the north is of controlling mildew after weeks of monsoonal rain. 

 

light+porcelain 2

porcelain two: 2006 and 2009

inlaid porcelain detail

With ongoing thoughts of those who lived through the fire storms of Victoria, February 7, 2009.

Liscannor five

Liscannor five, 2008

Southern Ice porcelain

Mauro Baranzini

Mauro Baranzini 2008

Mauro Baranzini, Chair of the Economics Faculty, University of Lugano, Switzerland.