North of here, south of there

2006-9

atmosphere 2009:1

light+porcelain 2009:1

Heatwave conditions have hit the Woonjeegaribay highlands over the past four days. Now, a temperature plunge of more than 20 degrees C with a southerly change bringing cloud, wind and rain. Firing a gas kiln in outside temperatures in the high 30's seems as ludicrous as it is difficult to reach high stoneware temperatures. It takes more time, burns more gas, emits more CO2 and other gases, and is exhausting in the heat. I have never owned an electric kiln, and never will; one does not need be concerned by the ambient world: program it, turn it on and head for the cool. Daily I am challenged to think about making ceramics, and how I do it in the context of the 21st century.

Shards of the present

austral porcelain 2006-09

Welcome 2009. The run of time to jump into.

Round Table

Round table postcard, Moher cliffs, Eire. Family correspondence sent from Liscannor, Clare to Townsville, Queensland, early 1900's.

Round table place, Cliffs of Moher, Clare, May 2008. 

Metal ties of the table are still in the flagstone platform. 

Cumulus 2008, 100 porcelain beakers on a round table. 

Work in progress, September 2008.

Woonjeegaribay Highlands, New South Wales; 

paddock to peat wetland and dam.

Why so soon, Dorothy?

Dorothy Porter, eminent Australian poet, 1954 - 2008.

"Let's talk death, can't we be friends?"

Too soon, Dorothy.  

Thanks for your 

lucid courage. 

Fluid time +

Liscannor five, 2008

Translucent porcelain, glazes, including an ash glaze made from the wood of wind and wombat-felled eucalypts in home paddocks, and burnt over the 2008 winter in a wood-burner for warmth in the house. Wombats are brilliant excavators and their burrowed home tunnels undercut the root sysytems of old gum and bloodwood trees. With strong winds to gales on the Woonjeegaribay highlands, these fall in paddock and remnant forest. One large old paddock gum has provided years of firewood after falling, and its root base is still the scaffolding of a burrow system. It has, in turn, provided natural re-seeding of its immediate area, and a new ash glaze, which over the last few months has begun to reveal itself. 

Lightbox

light tools five, 2005-8

wheel thrown porcelain

Savannah 1

Mary E, Woodlands, Woodstock, between Townsville and Charters Towers, Northern Queensland. Termites, jodphurs, spirit.

fracture

fracture 1, 2007-8 Inlaid, translucent porcelain

fluid time

winter ash flow in november 2008