studio visit

Sunday Studio Visit : Odds n Ends

Today in the studio I am firing the kiln – a bisque firing of student works.

In between that I have been working on a blog post for a fashion show I have been involved in here in Ballarat. The show was a collaboration between local artists and designers, and I made some jewellery for one of the outfits. I hope to have that post published by Tuesday at the latest. I won’t say any more about that as I don’t want to spoil the surprise!

I’ve also discovered today that I have been featured on fellow blogger Claudia Anderson’s blog Humouring the Goddess. Claudia has a regular post on Sunday nights where she features art stuff – and this week it was me! Check it out HERE.

Apart from that I have been making Plum Chutney, which isn’t really studio related, but it is summer here in Victoria, Australia, and I have so much summer fruit I have been going crazy making sauces, jams, chutneys, dehydrating and bottling fruit! It is very time consuming, but it means we will have lots of yummy organic home grown fruit during the winter months.

Well that’s about it for todays visit…. keep an eye out for my next blog post about the fashion show!

Have a great week 🙂

Sunday Studio Visit: An Actual Studio Visit!

Today I am recovering from an actual visit to my studio by approximately thirty people yesterday, many of whom are artists themselves.

My studio was part of a studio bus tour organised by Ballarat Arts Alive as a launch into a continuing program of bus tours to galleries and artist studios. There were three studios on the agenda – Paul Blizzard, Liz Blizzard and moi!

I was the last studio visit, and as with all pilot programs the timeline ran a bit behind. But, although a bit rushed, everyone seemed very interested and engaged, and appeared to have had a great day.

It was very relaxed and casual – I served some fresh organic plums off the tree, and a few people took up the challenge of playing with a bit off clay, and we just wandered around looking at things, like the pit firing pit, and after a short introduction I simply spent time answering questions. This suited me – I am good at answering questions, not so good at speeches!!

Anyway, enjoy the slideshow of the visit 🙂

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Sunday Studio Visit – Hectic Days

Today in the studio I am firing the kiln, and tomorrow and the next day I’ll be firing it too!

As the end of the year approaches I am trying to get all of the student works through before the term finishes – this combined with some custom Christmas orders and some firing I am doing for others makes it a very hectic time of year.

So to finish off the day and relax a little I drew a pastel picture for my latest poem and published them on my Poetry and Drawing blog.

Here is the pic, check out the blog for the poem 🙂

©Dawn Whitehand 2014

Sunday Studio Visit: Exploring Texture

This weeks Sunday Studio Visit is all about creating texture on the clay surface.

Yesterday – Saturday – my partner & I went down to the back of our property, which is a land for wildlife area, to do some cleaning up…. we have had some severe winds lately and quite a few tree limbs had been blown down. There are also a few dead trees from the years of drought we had a while back. And…. we are running low on firewood!!

So it was an afternoon of chainsawing and wood stacking…. what has this got to do with todays studio visit?? Well, I am one of those crazy types that examines everything in nature to look for shapes and textures, and came across a piece of tree limb which, when the bark was pulled away, had the most amazing patterns and textures eaten into the wooded surface…and it was the ideal shape for a rolling pin!!

Obviously, today in the studio I have been playing with my new pottery tool which was ‘made by nature’.

I have made a small group of vessels and a few rings to experiment with, and this – i feel sure – will be inspiring a new range of tableware which will be called the “Made by Nature” series…. stay tuned!!

Enjoy the pics 🙂

Sunday Studio Visit: Preparing for Exhibitions

This afternoon it is all about preparing for exhibitions – filling in application forms, writing artist statements, taking photos, getting measurements, recording catalogue details…phew!

One exhibition is a juried exhibition, so I may not even get selected – but it is free to enter (lots of competitions charge an administration fee) so worth the effort. I have been in this show in the past, but that is no guarantee. So I have to fill out the application form, write and artist statement and sort out some good images, since this is what they judge from…. also dimensions need to be supplied. This application is due tomorrow, so I better get myself organised!! Luckily, though, I can email all the info. The barbed wire work is for this application.

The second show is a local group exhibition here in Ballarat which I was invited to participate in. It is in celebration a of a local arts radio show called Accessing Arts which has been running for 10 years – so its an anniversary exhibition. The host, Dave Knowles has guests on every week – usually local artists, curators and the like –  and I have been on the show several times, so am included in the exhibition along with many other artists who have been on the show. I am putting three works in this show, depending on space – a wall work, a plinth piece and a floor piece. These works have to be delivered to the Gallery tomorrow for the show to start Thursday with the official opening on Saturday – which I won’t be able to go to because I am running a pit firing workshop this weekend…. oh well! Still to do for this exhibition is catalogue information and a statement about my memories of being on the radio show….

So thats it for this afternoon….. now i’d better get organising myself 🙂

Sunday Studio Visit: New Sculpture

I have been thinking about how I can be more regular with my postings on this blog instead of being a bit random, and have decided to start a themed weekly post, and if I do other posts in between all the better.

The theme I have decided on is a visit to my studio and they will be on Sunday afternoons. The posts will be about what is (or is not) happening in my studio on any given Sunday. So without further ado…..

Welcome to my studio…..

I am currently working on a sculpture which is as yet untitled. Made from handbuilt porcelain and barbed wire, the sculpture is a development evolving from my recent Human Gridlock exhibition. In that exhibition I had some ceramic spheres snuggled into barbed wire nests.

“Space for Memories” $610.00 – POA for individual components of this installation or custom sculpture orders

I particularly like the inherent tension between the purity and fineness of porcelain and the harshness of barbed wire, so I thought I would experiment with developing this idea further.

The sculpture is almost finished…. I just need to do a final wrap around of barbed wire to give the entire structure more strength and think up a title…

I hope to then enter the sculpture in an upcoming competition… but that can wait for another post 🙂

Ceramic and Barbed Wire