Frankie's biggest idea to date!

Ever since I began working in clay I have wanted the opportunity to be able to create things at any time of the day or night.  I dream of pieces I am making.  I lie awake at night thinking about how a piece might look.  At times my thoughts of clay consume me. 

If I was a painter I could creep up to a little study on the top floor of the house, squeeze a few tubes of paint onto a palette and get going.  But the trouble with being a ceramicist is that I need so much equipment.  Kilns do not fit easily into small houses and they cost loads of money.  I find myself lying there fretting and wishing.

Not long ago a cunning plan was hatched to solve this problem.  Surfing on a property website I discovered a derelict garage workshop less than 3 miles from my house.  An idea was hatched .... buy it, redevelop it as a ceramics workshop for serious amateurs and invite about 10 other artists to join me in having almost unlimited access to a space with clay and wheels and kilns and and and .....

Planning to make the entire front face
 of glass to allow loads of natural light.

I think it needs a bit of work!

So I have made an offer for the building and had it accepted and am incredibly excited about the future.  No more sleepless nights will be wasted.  I will get up and make the piece that I was dreaming about and then crawl back to bed and sleep of all the efforts - long into the morning if necessary - I cannot wait!

So if you live in South West London and think you might like to join me or know someone who might, email me for more information. 

Oh happy days!!!

Images of recent work.

These are images of the experimental work that I have done this summer.  This bowl is incredibly thin and the surface is intentionally distorted and folded.  If I had more time with the studio I would want to begin to develop this concept by gradually trying to make larger and larger bowls of the same thickness but sadly time is up and the space is now needed by other people.  I can just be grateful for the opportunity and hope for another one soon!

Here I have been using Saggar firing on porcelain.  This was not easy as I had made the bowl so thin that it had to be fired before I could Saggar it.  I also had to create a Saggar specifically for it and fire that separately.  The effect is of clouds on the pure white of the porcelain.  The bowl has had bees wax worked into its warm surface to give it a sheen.

The patterns in the smoke have been made by the bracken used in the Saggar.  I am not sure whether this is because the bracken was put in green and left to dry out in the container but I definitely like it and am longing to have another go.  It is like an image of my childhood in Richmond Park!

  A simple little vase.  It is only 10cm tall and incredibly fine.  I have glazed the inside with transparent glaze so that it is water tight.  I would love to see this with snowdrops or violets crammed into it.

Stacked bowls.  How high can I pile a stack of containers before the whole stack collapses under the strain?

Here I have mixed glaze into the porcelain which has then bubbled in the kiln.  I would like to work on this effect too, if only I had more time in the studio!

Carapace.  Now this is paper thin!  It reminds me of some kind of arthropod with a tough exoskeleton protecting is soft inner organs.  In this case, puncturing the shell would only take a sharp needle and then the entire creation would collapse!

 

While You Were Resting

Art wise it has a been a gloriously long summer for me.  Admittedly the weather has been a bit uninspiring from time to time but I was lucky enough to be permitted practically unlimited use of a studio and electric kiln for about six weeks and have had a wonderful time experimenting with porcelain.  Just HOW thin can you get it and still have something to show for your efforts?  OK I admit that there have been failures but there have also been tremendous successes.  I have largely been focusing on the idea of the container again - thinking still about the concept of containers for peoples emotions.  These containers have become thinner and thinner and gradually more brittle over the summer until I am left with structures that are so thin you can see through them.  I am almost afraid to pick them up to get them out of the kiln!  The works are, of course, completely useless but that is slightly the point: if the container becomes too stretched, what use is it to anyone?  I shall be adding some pictures soon so that all can see my attempts.
Another exciting development is the fact that through the use of the studio I struck up a connection between the education department and the psychology department of Roehampton University.  I find this very exciting.  Having recently completed my first youe placement for my MA in Art Psychotherapy in an Academy within a large city and given my background as a teacher of children with special educational needs I found my placement very difficult.  There seemed to be such a huge disconnect between the young teachers and the students.  It appeared that all that mattered was results.  NO-one had time to consider whether there was a link between a child's failure to thrive in the classroom and their emotional state because of what was going on in the rest of their live.  I have always believed that children cannot learn until certain basic needs have been satisfied,  Maslow's hierachy of needs, and it positively grieved me to know that children who I was working with on an emotional level and who were going through Hell at home were almost being punished for being unable to achieve satisfactory results in class and no-one was putting two and two together.  Basic maths, people, basic maths!  So I am wondering if I can foster the link between the two departments and maybe, just maybe the teachers who are currently in training at the University of Roehampton will graduate with at least some thoughts on the importance of emotional well being.

A Possible New Work Ethic For Me

This was sent from Sol Le Witt to Eva Hesse in 1964 but I think this should probably be the way froward.  So no more Facebook procrastination, no more 'I can't', this is it..... creative production here I come!

'You seem the same as always, and being you, hate every minute of it.  Don't!  Learn to say 'Fuck You' to the world once in a while.  You have every right to.  Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder, wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, gasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, rumbling, rambling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss-trickling, nose-sticking, ass-gouging, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, alleyway-sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eying, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding, grinding, grinding away at yourself.  Stop it and just DO.'



Hesse's art is often viewed in light of all the painful struggles of her life including escaping the Nazis, her parents' divorce, the suicide of her mother when she was ten, her failed marriage and the death of her father.  She also always felt she was fighting for recognition in a male dominated art world.  Given the contrast between my life and hers, what am I complaining about?  What is stopping me?  Or is it that the struggle feeds the artistic process - just another excuse for procrastination, I fear!

So all that is left now is for me to read Foulkes, Bion and Nitsun by the end of this weekend, understand group psychotherapy sufficiently to write 1500 words on my experiences within a process group and plan my clinical study report - Stop it!  Just DO......

So where have I been?

It is a very long time since I wrote on my blog and I really think it is high time that I got my act together.  I began an MA in Art Psychotherapy at Roehampton University in the autumn and that has really informed my work as time has gone on.  I am still creating quite fragile, layered pieces but the emphasis has shifted from the landscape to the container.  A reference to Bion's theory of Projective Identification. 

For Bion containing is not passive. It is a complicated partnership with a variety of interactions between the partners in this dynamic, mutually influencing relationship.  The main idea behind Bion's theory is one of 'Balance of Mind'.  In different relationship the dynamics  vary.  In one in which the container is too rigid, refusing to respond to what it has in it.  Here the contained will lose both form and meaning.  In a more flexible relationship, the contained enters the container and impacts with it, modifying its shape and function whilst also altering the contained, each mutually influencing the other.  A third type of relationship is one where the contained is so powerful that the container is completely overwhelmed, losing its own form and function. If you relate this to the relationship between mother and infant, a rigid mother takes in information from the infant and and utters responses which give no clear understanding of the infants trouble.  A fragile mother will go to pieces and panic. In either case the infant receives back its own projection with the implicit message that after all, as it feared, its state of mind is not tolerable. It suffers, in Bion's terms, a 'nameless dread' - i.e. a state of mind that is not thinkable.  These are the sorts of relationships that I am trying to represent in my containers.