The 'C' Word Supplement

'How To Eat a Pomegranate,' broadcasts to Iran and the diaspora

2011-12-09T15:47:00.000-08:00

The earliest posts on this blog are about the work I did that was destined for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Esfahan, Iran. That was in 2009. Now, two and half years later, that same group of work, which fell foul of the coup d'etat in Iran in June 2009, and therefore did not go to Esfahan, has shown in three different venues: in London, Oldham, and York and has now been filmed by Manoto TV, a diaspora TV station based in the UK. The story and images of the work have been broadcast around the world on satellite TV, reaching a wide audience in Iran and the diapsora here in the UK. Here is the link to the programme which is a general cultural, magazine style programme with the film of me in my studio and at home and some of the pots at 14:36. It is about 10 minutes long. It is all in Farsi and there are no subtitles, so apologies, in advance to English readers but I hope some of you will enjoy it anyway.
Manoto TV arts: Claudia Clare, English potter.

Remembering Atefeh

2011-08-25T15:07:00.000-07:00

A ceremony of remembrance for Atefeh Rajabi Sahaaleh, (b. 1988 – d. 15th August 2004) who was executed, aged sixteen, for ‘crimes against chastity,’ in Neka, Mazandaran, in Northern Iran on August 15th 2004.

The ceremony was held at Derakht e Neda ye Iran, (Neda’s Tree,) in Hyde Park, Monday 15th August 2011.

The Context

The purpose of the ceremony was to remember Atefeh and also to set her life and the events leading to her execution in the wider social context in which so many girls and young women in Iran have been and still are imprisoned and executed for, ‘crimes against chastity,’ or ‘zena.’ This is a colossal human rights abuse, and the numbers are growing year on year, but it is also one which falls below the radar of most human rights activism. These girls do not set out to be political activists, they are not heroes of the revolution, nor are they saints or martyrs. They are ordinary, anonymous girls and women from villages, small towns and big cities alike, whose behaviour and whose very existence is criminalised.

Nasrine Satoudeh, a human rights lawyer currently serving an eleven-year prison sentence in Iran makes the following observation on Atefeh’s case and the countless others like hers:

The courts somehow deal much more rigorously with the women than with the men. The weakest point in our downfall is that this is happening right in front of our eyes but, sadly, we pretend that we just don’t see it.

Atefeh’s Pot

The pot was made about a year ago to memorialise the lives and deaths of these women. It was handbuilt, (using the coil method), and the inside painted yellow. The outside is painted with lilies and roses – iconic flowers associated with love and innocence – but they are entwined with wild flowers, suggesting neglect but still a certain beauty and innocence.

The plan was to smash the pot after the first firing and then, on the yellow, inner surface of the shards, write the names or numbers of the girls and women who had been executed for ‘zena.’

I’ve broken pots many times before but I have always done it in private, early on a Sunday morning when no one else is around. I’ve always felt nervous about frightening people with the noise and making a mess with the shards, which can be very sharp – I’ve cut myself on them before now. This time, however, I decided to include the breaking of the pot as part of a process of sharing the ideas and the story with an audience. Still uncertain about how this would work out, I decided, ten days in advance of the date, that I should do this as part of a memorial for Atefeh on what would be the 7th anniversary of her execution.

The Ceremony

Remembering Atefeh was a short ceremony, which took place in Hyde Park, next to Neda’s Tree, seven years after the sixteen year old girl was hanged from a crane. Eighteen of us gathered under a beautiful, mature, spreading tree close to the Iranian Embassy – which is visible though the leaves in one of the photographs. We started at about 7.15 under a cloudy summer-evening sky, as the light started to fade and a few spots of rain fell. Atefeh’s pot was placed on a box surrounded by a red woven rug. Joseph Bates, my nephew, played the flute, (Bach’s Partita in A minor,) and then Pegah Tabaei and I read about Atefeh’s life, her trial and her execution in English and Farsi. We lit candles to flute accompaniment and everyone gathered in a semi circle around the pot, still holding the candles, which lit up space under the tree, emphasising the gathering dusk beyond our circle and creating a sense of intimacy within it. After a short statement about the nature and extent of this crisis in women’s human rights in Iran, we had a minute’s silence which was broken with the smashing of the Atefeh’s pot over a concrete slab placed on the rug which caught the scattering shards in its weave. The ceremony closed with a poem, ‘Litany for Survival,’ by Audre Lourde, in English, and the last, ‘Sarabande,’ of the Partita for flute.

The rug was then rolled up and the pieces safely conveyed to the studio for reconstruction - now in process. I’ll be glazing the pieces and rebuilding the pot with some of the pieces left out so that the names and numbers are visible inside and the light will make the yellow interior glow.

The breaking and mending of the pot is a metaphor for the shattering of lives and the process of survival – of restoration – of ‘piecing myself back together.’ It is also a material equivalent of ‘breaking the silence,’ about rape and sexual violence.

Thanks are due to:
Joseph Bates – Flute
Pegah Tabaei – Reading Farsi
Iman Nabavi – Translation
Hossein Sahabi-Balakhkanlo and Golbarg Amanat - trusty assistants
Ashkaan Bandoui – photographs
Niloufar Farrokh, Kamran Hashemi and Mana Mostatabi - much help, support and encouragement.
All the Iranian opposition groups who have helped out – and you are many!
Thank you.

Between Melting and Freezing

2011-06-12T14:10:00.000-07:00

Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers.

These lines are from Little Gidding, the fourth 'quartet' of the T.S. Eliot's epic poem, 'Four Quartets.'

The vase pictured above is the last pot I made for the exhibition, 'This Twittering World: contemporary painters celebrate T.S. Eliot's 'Four Quartets.' The landscape is The Glyme Valley, where I grew up. At New Year 2010/11 it was under a deep layer of snow which had just started to thaw, very slowly over the frozen ground. As the warmer air met the icey ground a dense layer of fog formed which gave the entire place a blue cast. It had a ghostly quality, silent and still intensely cold.

I'm delighted that this pot has so many distinct viewing positions and I'm particularly pleased with the colour. Took three firings to get it the way I wanted it - oh and 20 year's experience!

This is what I wrote about it for the exhibition notes:

As 2010 breathed its last and 2011 began, I took, my mother home to Wootton, the village where I grew up and where she still lives. The house was still buried deep in the snow that had fallen two weeks earlier but the weather had changed. The temperature was well above freezing and the snow began quickly to soften. The earth beneath had frozen so deep, however that the thaw was painfully slow. For four days, the still, silent battle raged between the frozen ground, refusing to let go of the snow, and the warmer air circulating above. It produced a dense fog, which, clung to the white ground, such that everything was in half tones of blue and appeared to melt into everything else.

Wootton is in the Glyme Valley, tree lined with willows and prone to mists and fog all year round. ‘Between Melting and Freezing,’ is both a recent memory and a much older one, connected to childhood and sledging down that hill. It is also a memory of my father teaching me how to paint snow.

The Pot Book

2011-05-27T14:26:00.000-07:00

Snow ball fight, from the Nabeshima kiln, c. 1700-1800, Japan. (Not in The Pot Book)

A new post at last! I haven't forgotten you, but I now know I cannot write anything long and serious and write a blog and write all over facebook all at the same time. Many were the times when I thought 'oo, I'd love to blog about this,' but time tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'No you don't. Don't even think about it. Onwards. The next text awaits your attention.' It was relentless and, at times, remorseless.

So, for those that don't already know, The Pot Book by Edmund de Waal is now co-written by me. Long story. I'm sure if you go to E d W's website and find The Hare with Amber Eyes, it will be able to tell you what happened far better than I can. I know only that I got an email from Phaidon, the publisher, asking me to finish the book. 'Have you selected all the pictures?' I enquire, 'Weeellll not quite.'

So I agreed to finish off the picture selection - sort of. Almost all of the images were selected by Edmund. The few I gathered in came from Emmanuel Cooper's recent Contemporary Ceramics book and, happily, have now been approved by EW. Actually there are two that are my own selection but both approved.

As to the writing. Well, let's just say I have written a great many short texts about a great many magnificent pots. I am also VASTLY better educated in the matter of pottery history than I was three months ago. I have started to look at pots quite differently and museums too.

I am writing this at my mother's house so I have no pictures to upload now but I'll add some later.(Now added the one above.) If you have a facebook account you can find an album of my favourite pots. These are not in the book, they are pots I stumbled across on the way and loved. They are historic pots only, no contemporaries. There's much more i could say about this but I'll save it for another time. Do go to facebook and have a look.

Hybrid Love and Reflecting on Wisdom

2011-01-07T08:24:00.000-08:00

Hybrid Love, is so called because of the Hybrid nature of the vase itself and also because Agapanthus is a symbol of love. The name, Agapanthus comprises, 'agape,' meaning love and, 'anthos,' meaning flower. When I refer to the hybridity in the vase, I mean that the upper half, with the flower heads against the cloudy summer sky, looks like a painting of specific Agapanthus flowers, which it is. The lower half, evolved as a flattened, designed pattern; something repeatable and general; a comment or a sign or signifier. At the base, it becomes self-consciously patterned, where I've stylised the roots and added the medallions with my potters mark and the date, 2010. The stems on a couple of the plants are ruled lines, or were, I think I changed my mind half way through when vacillating between general and specific/ pattern and representation.

It has two names this pot. The other name is 'Chinese Vase: Agapanthus.' Both are real, they just have very different feel about them. When reading The Four Quartets, I rebelled against,

'The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.'

Then the more I read it, the more I felt that the 'moves perpetually' bit releases the jar from the onerous weight of having to be an oh so still, well behaved, authentic Chinese Vase. So I renamed it, thinking that perhaps that perpetual movement might have something of my own vacillation.

Reflecting on Wisdom is the name I have given to the Iris vase. I also called it 'Searching for Renaissance,' which was exactly what I was doing. I wanted this vase to evoke the Irises in Italian Renaissance painting and to have the surface quality of a landscape painting or of the landscapes which appear as backgrounds to Renaissance paintings of Biblical themes.

The Iris flower has acquired countless meanings and mythological associations but the idea of the message and of wisdom and courage seem pre-eminent among them. The goddess Iris was the messenger to the gods in Ancient Greek Mythology and carried her messages back and forth along the rainbow. The Ancient Egyptians believed that the three petals stood for faith, wisdom and valour. This seems to have been absorbed into more recent, Christian and European symbolisms not least in the heraldic sign of the Fleur de Lis, which also proclaims these ancient virtues and also in the Christian Trinity. The flower appears repeatedly in Renaissance painting, as a symbol for the Virgin Mary, for love, and sometimes for the sorrow of the Madonna at the crucifixion. It is clearly able to adapt to circumstances and cultures and provide meaning almost wherever it is needed. I think my own meaning for it are most strongly associated with Renaissance religious iconography but I too find I am unable to fix its mood which moves between optimism and hope - it is abundant on the most ungenerous, unaccommodating ground - and foreboding - deep purple seriousness.

Floods at Moonrise

2011-01-07T03:58:00.000-08:00

Moonlit landscape, floods, mist. It's a memory of home, when the river valley floods and mist rises. I've added a picture which shows the valley in late summer I think. The vase is gathering of three images and memories. The Glyme valley where I grew up; Portmeadow, in Oxford, where I lived for a time, and which frequently flooded voluminously and magnificently resembling a mighty lake, which froze in winter sometimes and provided the best skating facilities I've ever used; and Lordship Rec, in Tottenham, London, where I now live whose modest and manky ditch is nonetheless edged in vast, stately, mature willows of exactly the sort I grew up with. These are the willows pictured on the pot. There is a slightly mournful tinge to this vase: just after I photographed and drew them on to the surface of the vase, they were subject of major surgery. This is not entirely a matter for mourning. They were suffering. I could see the dead wood and was fearing for them. It is not least for this reason that I gave them a vase. I do want to congratulate Haringey's tree surgeon for doing what looks like an excellent job on the all the trees in our park and I do hope the willows will re-sprout in Spring, as anticipated and in that inimitable way that willows do.
This vase was also in part a response to 'The Dry Salvages' part of 'Four Quartets.'

Technically, the vase felt risky being almost monochrome as it is and almost wholly dependent on tonal variation. I'm not sure how I feel about the lustres. The silver base seems perfect and the rim - neither of which you can see in these images. The moon and its halo seem to work, but there are silvery flecks on the water which need to be well lit to be brought out. Either that or I haven't used enough lustre. The trees and water I'm pleased with. I haven't got to know this pot yet. So I'm still waiting.

A Moment in the Rose Garden

2011-01-06T14:16:00.000-08:00

This is the first of two or more pots. About four months ago I made a similar one. It was more asymmetrical but with the same surface imagery - a garden blooming and with signs of new life but also on the edge of decay. I left that one and turned to the one pictured above. I wanted to explore the imagery which associates with martyrdom. These are all flowers which seem to inhabit the narratives of martyrs and appear when they are pictured. The lilies are taken to be a symbol of purity. They often accompany images of the Virgin Mary and the Annunciation. They are used in images of saints and they adorned the funeral cortege of Diana, Princess of Wales, nothing to do with purity I guess but certainly an adjunct to the growing narrative of Diana as the imperfect saint, redeemed by early death. Their very association with purity always seems to indicate imminent loss - loss of innocence or loss of life - they are often considered one and the same - certainly in Catholic traditions.

Roses, red roses, are the flower of romance but these are dying, these are the decaying part of the garden. These blooms are spent. And then there are green apples, still small, new, yet to grow and reach the stage of ripeness and harvest. So there is hope and promise - possibly.
In this vase, there is not too much indication of a garden. I think the sister vase, still in its unglazed state, has more of a landscape quality, a sense of distance. Even so this one has some sense of distance with the sky and a feel of direction with the positioning of the lily flowers. There is also a hint of 'pattern motif,' in the entanglement of the apples and roses - rather in the way there is sometimes with pre-Raphaelite painting when painting a specific picture seems to become decoration - something more of a signifier, a sign, more general.

I'm delighted with the relationship between the colours: that rather unyielding white, the cold red and the stern blue/grey of the sky seem to me to work together perfectly - though I say so myself. It felt like a colossal risk to place all three with more or less equal weight across the same surface but I think it's worked.

The name of this pot has been confusing me. I kept wanting to name it, 'In the Garden of the Martyrs,' without really knowing why. It's such a precise and strange name that I thought it must have come from somewhere - I must have encountered it before, but I didn't know where. Google tells me that that there are two books of that name, but I hadn't encountered either. However, one of them, actually called, 'In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs,' is a reference to the Golzareh Shohada / Behesht e Zahra outside Tehran in Iran and to all of the other mass cemeteries in Iran where the 'martyrs' of the Iran Iraq war are buried. I haven't been to any of these places but they are certainly in my consciousness because they are often talked of in Iran and now in London too. Ayatollah Khomeini is burried in Golzareh Shohada and, now, so is Neda Agha Soltan and Sohrab Arabi.

I think I shall keep, 'A moment in the rose garden,'(from T.S.Eliot's Four Quartets), for this vase, and the other one will be called, 'In the garden of the martyrs,' and will be an image of the 'martyrdom' of Neda and an exploration of the way that her death has been pictured. I think there will be a third, ideally, which will be for all of those who have died opposing the ruling regimes of Iran since 2009 and since 1979. Navigating this 'martyr' business is not unproblematic though, hence my repeated use of inverted commas, it is not something I can immediately accept - not without question anyway.

I need to get closer to this work before I can really start to explain why. I do know that you need to be dead to be a martyr and I'm not persuaded that the violent deaths of so many young people should remembered in quite this way. It's slightly too fetishistic, slightly too celebratory for my liking. And we need to people to live and win this struggle and function and produce the renewed and flourishing society that Iranians want, not a procession of dead people to be endlessly mourned.

Work in progress and thinking about snow

2011-01-06T12:58:00.000-08:00

I've come back from Wootton smelling of damp snow and wood smoke and feeling oddly disorientated to be in the city again. Only five days there with mum over New Year, but the persistent snow and fog made it feel like Narnia. Wootton is the village I grew up in. It's a about 10 miles north-west of Oxford on the edge of the Cotswolds. The land is flat coming out of Oxford to Woodstock, then, just as you leave Woodstock, the first hill starts. Wootton is a small village which sort of flows down a hill side, church at the top and 'the big house' and the school and the shop and what was a pub and so on and then it heads down hill to the river Glyme and goes over a bridge then up a steep path the other side is mum's house. The picture above with the gateway and the foggy snow leading down to the river is the view from her garden; the gate is close to the house. It's isolated. She lives on her own since dad died and when snow comes, it can be difficult to get to the house.
So it's just a bit too easy to get sucked into a haze of village and field and river and snow and fog and forget everything else, particularly since I've known it since the day I was born - February 1962, one of the coldest winters on record.
So, on to recently completed work, part 1 we could say. I'll start with the bowls which I've called 'Shabe Yalda,' the Iranian Winter Solstice, a series of bowls continuing the 'Ab Lambu' theme because, at this time, Iranians celebrate with pomegranates and water melon. The bowls I made this time just made me think of Shab e yalda, because I finished them on yalda night and because the snow had come and, by coincidence, I had wanted to create a pomegranates in snow feel so gave them all a snowy white tin glaze exterior. Not quite by coincidence: a few years ago I photographed pomegranates in snow and I always had wanted to make something that recalled that image. I also well remember eating pomegranates in Abadeh, in Western Iran, with friends just as snow was falling. So, here there they are, above the snow.
I'll sign this post off now and continue with a new one for the four more new vases which are the beginning of new work.

Work in Progress

2010-10-19T13:58:00.001-07:00

These five plates are all work in progress. They are test pieces but they've worked quite well in some ways. There's still a bit of trimming and tidyding up I want to do on the decals, but I'm happy with the basic idea.
From the top, they depict, Neda Agha Soltan, shot in Tehran on June 20th 2009 for being at an anti-government demonstration. Then there is 'Shame on you: Ashkaan's message to George Galloway.' Ashkaan is one my friends who comes to the demonstrations we hold regularly outside the Iranian Embassy in London to protest the coup d'etat, the stolen 'election,' and to remember the many men and women murdered, raped and imprisoned by the current Iranian regime for being political and social dissidents.
The thrird image is Taraaneh Mousavi, who was gang raped unto death by government irregular forces, called the basij, in June 2009. Her burnt body was eventually found dumped by a roadside somewhere near Qazvin. Then there is Sohrab Arabi, 19 year old student protester, shot in the street in June 2009. He is shown here with his mum at one the demonstrations. Then there is another image of Neda.
Apart form Ashkaan's these are commemorative plates some broken and mended. I love Ashkaan's message to Galloway because it seems to me to so completely from the heart and because he's saying something that matters - that the loathsome Galloway is collaborating hypocrite, who would no sooner provide genuine support to the people of Palestine than he would go to the moon.
The four images of murdered and raped protesters are probably the best known among the hundreds who have been killed and the thousands who are still imprisoned. There is so much more to do. This is just the beginning.
The top four plates are currently at Gallery Oldham but I'm not sure which they have decided to display. I hope all of them, but I know they were a bit pushed for space. The Oldham show finishes on November 14th.

The Short Post

2010-09-17T01:33:00.000-07:00

Dear friends, time to catch up - again.
The kiln is working. So it was time to sort out an ailing computer, an apple mac, so old, so antiquated and redundant at 8 years old, that it could not download new software, had not been able to for about 4 years in fact, and had reached the point that even you tube was refusing to share its secrets with me. No great loss you might think, but you'd be surprised. Fine things can be found on that site and I was missing them. Flash player? you must be joking. I couldn't use it at all. 'Get a modern browser,' barked the pop-up box. 'I would if I could,' I sighed. So, I saved and saved and saved and now have a new computer - which doesn't work either. It's working now, I hear you say. Yes. It wont this evening though. I don't think the fault is with the computer though. The culprit is - oh yes of course it is - BT. I haven't had functional broadband for about a month now. They're working on it, they say. We'll see. This is the first time I've been able to write a post, but I haven't uploaded it yet...
The computer? Well it's a fancy new apple mac. I'll talk about it later. I do think it's SENSATIONALLY vulgar though. I'm sorry. I know I'm supposed to love it but I dont. Well not yet anyway. I shall explore it vulgarity in time. I want to get to the studio now.
Oh, just one more thing - I also have a new mobile number - also my studio number - 07771 872473 - just practising. It is my 'public' number though. It's a blackberry and this I do love. I love it's sound. I can hear it. I love it's efficiency. It works. I love its size and holdability. Spell check doesn't approve of that word but you know what it means and so do I so SC will have to cope. I just love the freedom it gives me. I can check the weather and the transport updates without need of computer - bugger the broadband. Screen's a bit small for facebook but that's probably a good thing. Ok. I really am going to the studio now with my tiny, light, portable blackberry. See you later with proper post of some sort. And stand by for a flurry of posts on The C Word.

Kilns of the North Rejoice!

2010-07-25T04:00:00.000-07:00

Kilns of the North Rejooiiiiiice, Riiiiver and mountain spriiing...
So, it's done its first firing and delivered a fully cooked bisque firing. Hooray.
Adrian and his son turn up at 9.00am Tuesday 20th armed with a van full of optimism and good will, an unshakeable conviction that the fault, whatever it was, could be corrected in - oooo - minutes - half and hour max, and alternatives for every part of the kiln's anatomy, just in case.

A couple of hours later,
and several calls to Mr. Stafford Controller later,
and a great many wires and flashing lights,
and testing,
and little peeps and bigger squeals and an alarm or two,
and numerous figures and numbers and mixtures of figures and numbers,
and a small amount of grunting,
all this a two hours later,
it was,
halleluja,
fixed.

The culprit was one of the electrical components in the wiring. Controller wasn't 'goosed,' nor was the actual wiring-in the cause of the problem. It was a manufacturing fault elsewhere - which was kind of reassuring - for me anyway. It has, as I write, completed its second firing. I love the controller - it lights up like a Christmas tree and tells you exactly what's going on. It takes 2 days to cool down, if you're uber-cautious, which I am. So, we'll see tomorrow how it all comes out but from now on, it's about how I'm making the stuff, not about whether or not the kiln works. It works just fine. Now all I've got to do is learn how to read the meter...

Meanwhile, there's a very fine story about the origins of Northern Kilns that I'd like to share.
It concerns the founder of this highly esteemed, Best of British, company, one Jim Cross.
Originally a school teacher, Jim, it seems, had an incurable love for clay, kilns and all manner of ceramic invention. He went to Goldsmiths, London - (date to be supplied), which is where he trained - or learned - it's unclear if anyone really trained him as such - what is clear, however, is that there was no kiln and that he had to build one. There must have been some kind of restriction on what could be built where and on what could be visible, and what sort of fumes could be emitted. Jim's first kiln, for such it was, was a wood kiln - built in the middle of London, right next to the railway, but built entirely underground. His son, Dylan, takes up the story:

'The kiln was built, as we said, out of old, made-in-Darwen, gents urinals. The toilets were being demolished. The size was 4' x 2' glazed. This was a most crude system. He said he was very, very green at that stage. The kiln was built out the back of Goldsmiths. There is a hill at the back which he used for the chimney which ran approximately 27' into the railway. The chimney was made out of salt glazed, interconnecting drainage pipes. Earth was packed around the joins. Dad sold on the soil, after every firing, to some people who were growing things in a greenhouse because the soil, by then, was sterilised.

The fuel used was wood and waist engine oil. The oil had added kick because the garage he got it from also did re-spray jobs. Dad said he wasted a lot of time drop feeding oil and a drop of water on top to energise the oil burn further.

I've got him to look at the map. It was approximately where the Ben Pimlott building is now he reckons. Laurie grove was not there at that time. There was the railway in the back yard, so to speak. That’s not there either.' (This is an edited version of Dylan's email.)

So, the story of the Mighty Northern Kilns began in the bowels of New Cross, behind Goldmiths School of Art, in a rail yard, or near enough, underground, with a large number of urinals and some engine oil. The combination of temerity, cheek, determination, and sheer outrageous inventiveness has surely made Northern Kilns the most inspired makers of kilns we have in this country. Anyone that can make a flat pack kiln and, as in one recent episode in a school in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, bring it down a two hundred year old oak staircase, without making a mark on either the stairs or the walls, must be deserving of some kind of collective knighthood.

But somehow you just know that the maker of a wood-fired, underground, unrinal-kiln, would have little truck with any such nonsense...

New Kiln: The Path of True Love

2010-07-14T13:50:00.000-07:00

Having a new kiln is like acquiring a new lover: the anxiety in pursuing your dream kiln, the choosing which to have while wondering if you can you really afford it. Will it want to devour the most expensive daytime electricity the whole time or will Economy 7 do - nights anyway? Have you the space - can you live together? What about your other studio mates? Will it get on with their work or will there be tantrums? And will it be 'high maintenance,' demanding your attention the ENTIRE time, or will it be reasonably self sufficient? Really, on second thoughts, perhaps a new lover would easier. Kiln's hotter though. The spark's there and the electricity - oh the electricity - who could argue with that?

The deliberations were endless. First I thought I'd get a top loading one, easier to move and cheaper, I thought. Then I was chasing round after second hand ones - I mean I'm not hung up on virgins or anything. Then, when I'd settled on which studio I was going to be renting, I realised that I'd chosen one with a narrow doorway. Only a very small kiln could get through there. Back to the drawing board. A flat pack kiln was what I needed but that was just the stuff of jokes, surely.

I Called Northern Kilns. 'What's the nearest thing you've got to a flat pack kiln, Adrian,' I quipped, - oh how I laughed.
'Go on,' comes the reply in a 'sock-it-to-me' sort of voice.
'Doorway's just a normal domestic-doorway-width,' I say, beginning to sound more like I actually feel.
'No problem,' comes the cheerful repost. 'We make 'em in two halves - join 'em up in the studio.'
Could it really be that simple? I couldn't believe my luck. A kiln willing to be split in half just for me? My dream kiln - OMG! Could this really be true?

So I dived right in and ordered my dream kiln - added heated swimming pool, palm trees, ten piece band, cocktail bar - the possibilities were endless it seemed.
KW rating? Bah humbug who would worry about that faced with the possibility of flat pack kiln? So, the KW rating quietly rose and eventually I talked to the electrician.
'Phwooor,' said Jim, 'That's a bit bigger than you were talking about before.' Mutter mutter, 'We might have to route that back to something or other else.'
'Yes yes,' I say, 'Don’t worry about that. As long as it works.' I was getting my dream kiln, after all.
So then Jim rings with the estimate. 'Uurh, Ahem, something something, all told, £800.00.'
Yikes, I thought. But I was getting my dream kiln, so what did it matter?

July 1st and the kiln moves in. Dylan and Stuart from Northern kilns appear at 9.00am in a van with a kiln in two parts and deftly move it into the space: my modest studio doorway welcomes the new bride which is at least four times its size. July 1st also distinguished itself by being one of the hottest days of the year - by 12.00 midday, the room temperature had reached about 30C but, piece by piece, the kiln took shape. Stuart put the finishing touches while Dylan plugged in the Stafford controller and showed me how to work it. In essence it works the same way as any other but you do have more choice about how you're going to set your programmes.

A week later and it's wired in. The meter has yet to arrive, but no matter. I pack the kiln anyway and prepare to do a first firing. Confident I'd be able to set the programme and start the kiln in a matter of minutes, I saunter over the studio in the afternoon thinking I'd get to a friend's for dinner by 7.30.

The controller, however, had other ideas. I closed the kiln door, closed the interlocking system, turned on the power and the controller lit up. It started to go through its steps, but didn't show the ambient temperature - which is what you'd expect at this point. Carefully I read through all the notes in the manual. According the Stafford, the temperature was ranging from -40 to 500C in a matter of seconds. I don’t suppose even the Hadron Collider does this.

My heart sank through the floor and on into purgatory yea unto the very depths of hell - but still no chance of a firing. No matter what I did, I couldn’t override this apparent floating temperature. I tried all manner of things, but nothing worked. Eventually I set off its alarm and, at that point, admitted defeat.

On Monday, after a day's therapeutic gardening, I called Northern Kilns and described the behaviour of the controller.
'Dont like the sound of that,' says Adrian. First he asks me to unplug and replug in the kiln, just to make sure the connections are sound. They are. It makes no difference. An hour or so later, after a call to the manufacturer, he calls back to say he's coming down Tuesday 20th to sort it out. 'Controller’s goosed.' Goosed. I love that.

So, the first firing has yet to happen but my devotion remains undimmed. Adrian and Dylan, Guardian Angels of the Mighty Northern Kilns leave no stone unturned in the quest to produce the perfect kiln and make sure it’s just as you need it. As to mine, it’s as I said: Getting a new kiln is like getting a new lover. The path of true love never did run smooth.

Trouble At Mill, Part 6: Postscript

2010-06-08T11:58:00.001-07:00

Here is the shortest and, I hope, the last of these. The trouble has been discussed at length and solutions, such as they are, proposed. The exhibition is now MUCH better labelled and contextualised. Those basic questions that any viewer would surely want to know are now mostly answered. We have some explanation as to why Shattered is showing in this space, some indication of how the stories in the work connect to the history of the Castle and I have been promised high quality professional photographs. It continues to look gorgeous and I still think that, in this respect at least, it exceeds my expectations.

I did a talk and workshop there on June 3rd which was immensely successful but the sense of loss as one or two people, as always, expressed the wish that they could see the pots better, reappeared like a restless ghost. This problem will remain and is, potentially, a difficulty that attends all museum interventions. To this extent, it suggests that Shattered was not the right work for that space or that that space was not the right work for Shattered - but I'm still reluctant to accept that fully, just because it so right aesthetically. I guess my lingering wish would be to find a way of making all sides of the pots visible but in that space, it's not obvious how one would do that. I remember when I first went and had a look at the venue, I was trying to establish which places would work and it was possible but in two places the viewer would have to be quite far from the pots. At least, as they are, Traffic and Princess Hymen can easily be seen from one side - the viewer is standing quite close - even if the other side is wholly obscured.

How this all came to pass is a longer story and one which I have no wish to rehearse in full now. The shortened story is as follows: The proposal I submitted was sound and was accepted as it was but was then passed on and, to some extent rewritten - in effect rewritten anyway. About this I knew nothing until that first email on February 23rd, a month before opening by which time, 'making the best of it,' was the only available option.

So what artists can learn from this? Unfortunately it's a 'learn to live with it' situation. This is one of those occasions where the artist could not have changed the course of events. I guess that is the lesson - keeping a small place in the back of your mind somewhere that says, 'some things you can't control and some things you can't change - be prepared for the occasional situation about which you can do nothing.' That said, I / we have changed the labelling and absurdly small though that may seem, it makes quite a big difference in practice.

A possible suggestion: When submitting a proposal for the first time, it may be a good idea to say something like: 'This proposal can be modified or changed to some degree but this must be done in consultation with the artist and agreed.' Having checked my original proposal, I did say I was happy to discuss possible changes. It's not quite the same as 'must be done in consultation and agreed,' but even so, it's there in black and white. Ultimately, my assessment of this situation is that even had I done that, it wouldn't have made any difference. This is one of those cases that you file under 'e' for experience and add, 'be happy anyway because it's still a good show!'

Trouble At Mill, Part 5: Proceedure

2010-04-12T08:26:00.000-07:00

This is a very short, quick post to say that I have now filed a formal complaint to Bradford Museums and Galleries. My email and attached letter have been received and read and I've received a sort of 'holding' reply, saying that it would be looked into as 'a matter of urgency.' I suspect the writer may very well feel a sense of urgency. I would in her position, but I have a feeling she's going to find a colossal amount of resistance. I know the curator / exhibitions officer did. I have a feeling that Cliffe Castle has been the way it is for donkey's years and they damned if they're changing anything.
I, meanwhile, am investigating Article 19 which, in 2008, launched Artist-alert, to support artists around the world who are being threatened or whose work is being threatened. Most of these artists are in real danger. I am not. No one is sending me death threats. However, Article 19 is interested to hear about all instances of censorship and understands it to be indicative of a potentially threatening situation or emerging situation.
In their own words:
'ARTICLE 19 is an independent human rights organisation that works around the world to protect and promote the right to freedom of expression. It takes its name from Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees free speech.'

Trouble At Mill, Part 4: The Fog Thickens - The Full, Uncut, Story

2010-04-08T12:14:00.000-07:00

It is April 8th. Shattered has been in Cliffe Castle, Keighley and open to the public for a little over two weeks now. I said I was cautiously optimistic about the censorship of Princess Hymen and, as it turns out, both caution and optimism have proved well founded.

Princess Hymen, I’m happy to say, has been included. About this I was optimistic. She is not, however, visible from all angles. About this I was cautious. The viewer can see only one side of her. Below, pictured with me, is what is visible. To the left is the side you can’t see.

As I said in the piece two posts below, I was advised that PH would be excluded on grounds of, ‘the title and clear vagina imagery.’ In the second email that I wrote to the curator I observed that neither of these two ‘reasons’ given are, in any real way, reasons. The reason is, surely, something to do with the way they understand their audiences. Such decisions as these are usually taken on grounds of either morality, or decency. The fear is that someone or some people will be offended. But, to date, no reason other than the one quoted has been offered, or not officially anyway. I have not been included in any discussion and it is only because I pointed out that they had used an image of PH in the publicity literature and suggested that they didn’t know what the pot actually looked like at all, that it was agreed that the she should, after all, be included.

When we started to install the pots, I remarked to Dale, the conservator who was working with me, that PH was the one that ‘they’ had wanted to withdraw and, given that no further discussion had been had, beyond the concession to include her, it might be best to display the ‘least controversial side.’ This remark depends, of course, on who is defining the controversy. I pointed out that there was no vagina imagery and that what the image concerned was based on an Ingres painting which includes a peacock feather fan, (see below). To this he replied that there was a ‘very conservative mosque’ in Keighley. This is point where the Yorkshire fog thickens. I had until this point, heard nothing about a mosque. I didn’t really want to take the discussion any further with Dale because it was not the moment and, anyway, he is the conservator, he has nothing whatever to do with exhibitions policy. At least I don’t think he does. He continued, though, saying that it wasn’t the imagery they objected to, it was the writing…’They thought you were being critical of their culture.’

I politely observed that, in this particular piece of text, I was critical of British and American foreign policy and the double standards in some UK public services which are passed off as a response to multiculturalism even though they’re manifestly an example of racism. ‘I know,’ came the tired reply.

We did leave it at this point and I resolved to take up the issue with someone sometime, but not before I left Keighley and not before the opening. The priority, I felt, was to get to pots safely positioned and the pieces in place. Given the obstructions I had already encountered, (see post below), this was a tall order in itself. I had no intention of adding to the already demanding and nerve wracking nature of the work, besides which, I still had to work out who on earth I should be talking to.

I still have not, at the time of writing this, broached anyone at Bradford Museums and Arts but I am gearing myself up to it. The reason it is taking so long is that the situation I am attempting to deal with is so unclear. Is there a mosque involved or not? Is this, as I suspect, a ‘let’s blame the Muslims’ way out of an embarrassing impasse? Has anyone actually asked anyone at this mosque what they think? I doubt it. Does this mosque community regard itself as conservative? What constitutes 'conservative' in this context anyway and can it be considered representative of the population of Keighley? I chatted to plenty of Muslim girls while waiting for bus, they didn't strike me as even slightly conservative. So what was the original objection? Some kind of bourgeois misogynist exercise in protecting the lumpen proletariat, poor simple-minded souls that they are, from the decadence of the metropolitan arts? Well it would certainly be in keeping with nature of the Castle but why bring artists in at all in that case? Why have ‘museum interventions?’ And whose exhibition is this exactly – mine or theirs??

Turning to the display of Shattered itself. Yes, it does LOOK fantastic. But…Decoration is a primary narrative tool for artists. It is used variously to subvert, to satirise, to generate social and political commentary and critique, it is used as parody, a kind of self-irony, its own function to embellish and to charm is turned on itself and used to tell difficult and wretched stories, those for which metaphor must be found. Here, in the showing of Shattered at Cliffe Castle, the decorative nature of the work really shines, but it has been robbed of meaning, its stories have been brutally silenced. Or they have for the time being anyway, unless and until I can change the situation. Shattered is a response to women’s stories of surviving sexual violence – yet again, these stories have been suppressed, sanitised, violated.

Just before Easter, a few days after the show opened, I received a copy of a letter sent to the head of Museums and Arts at Bradford MDC complaining that the work could not be properly seen - much of it, he complains, is obscured. The writer is the Rector of Bolton Abbey, the father of one of my best friends, with whom I stayed while installing Shattered. To say that I was surprised would be an understatement. I had no idea he felt so strongly about this. I was astonished that he had written. I was astonished and pleased but also saddened that he felt the display amounted to an ‘assault on their purpose.’ He had been able to find the meaning, purpose and narrative of the work from reading the catalogue but not, of course, from looking at the show itself.

So, I hope to find at least some remedy to the above situation by providing explanatory notes for the audience. I am, once more, cautiously optimistic but I’m not as optimistic as I was though. There is a nasty whiff of that suppressed, buttoned up, bourgeois violence hovering over Cliffe Castle – but let’s just hope I’m wrong.

I don’t expect the red carpet treatment. I don’t expect anything much, but I do expect at least a modicum of respect, of acknowledgement, of understanding and of appreciation for the work I’ve done, the effort put in and the many years research and experience that goes into a work like Shattered. I know that the cost of travelling to the museum and the time spent installing the work is done at my own expense. I do expect some appreciation of this however. I got a thank you from the curator and an enormous amount of support from Dale, the conservator, but from the others I got a mix of anxiety, grumbles and outright hostility. This is inexcusable. On the matter of money, the only opportunity I get to receive any revenue from this kind of show is through the sale of catalogues. This too was obstructed. Far from facilitating their sale, I was asked to provide complimentary copies - at my own expense of course. Given the paucity of response from the staff at both Cliffe Castle, Cartwright Hall and the department as a whole, it seems that the least they can do is to show the work and its narrative fully and honestly. Make no mistake, I am a very minor artist with a very very slender reputation. Cartwright Hall, however, is a Museum with celebrated international reputation and should be able to treat all the artists it works with respect no matter how magnificent or lowly we might be – or why bother inviting us at all?

There is much to learn from this confused mess of clandestine gossip, deceit and dishonesty. There are also some significant issues that artists might want to consider about the vexed question of museum interventions. For me the main one is, as stated above: whose exhibition is this exactly – mine or theirs?? Originally, back in November 2007, I sent an exhibition proposal which was, as I understood it, accepted. So I thought it was my exhibition, hosted by them, and therefore, as with all exhibitions, a joint venture – but an agreed joint venture - a collaboration. The answer to this should help to provide a pathway to the answers to many of the other questions. For the time being, however, this show would appear to be theirs and very little to do with me. I am, as I said earlier, the ‘necessary evil,’ the inconvenient artist, there to service the museum. I really should have known my place and stuck to the tradesman’s entrance.

Trouble At Mill, Part 3: Breaching The Ramparts

2010-04-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

Front entrance and tower of Cliffe Castle

Five Giant Pots Take Trip Round England

On March 23rd Matt Fairley came with his truck and crane to collect the pots - all five of them - in their telephone-box sized crates, which stand upright in the back of a van or, as in this case, on an open wagon attached to the truck. They were strapped in and covered with tarpaulin and, to the best of my knowledge, made an uneventful journey to Keighley from London via Salisbury and survived several torrential storms en route. I learnt that, collectively, they weigh about a tonne. I have also learned from this experience that their packing system is pretty secure. The trolleys still move about a bit when inside the crates, so need to secure the wheels better and allow for upward shock which I think is still rattling them a bit and causing the odd one or two pieces to come adrift during transport but, considering the distance they travelled and their oddly circuitous route, they did brilliantly.

Two pots arrived unscathed this time, two only mildly scathed and one, Dancing, with one giant piece adrift. This poses a problem: its immense weight and height, combined with its inherent precariousness, make it extremely difficult to reposition correctly. Thankfully, god invented conservators - Dale Keeton in this case - who settled the piece to exactly the right place and pretty much saved the show.

Shattered still wrapped in grand Victorian drawing room

From Tardis To Toad Hall And A Journey Into Wonderland

I'm beginning to think that Wind In The Willows is in fact some great satire on life in the arts in the 21st Century. Time and again I find myself in Toad Hall type situations with a cast of characters which almost always includes The Badger, The Rat, Toad, and a collection of extras from Alice in Wonderland and, this time anyway, from Beatrix Potter - appropriately. A more Toad Hall kind of venue than Cliffe Castle would be difficult to imagine. A mighty, late Victorian pile outside Keighley, away from the hoi poloi, it was built in 1828 and later acquired by the Butterfield family and rebuilt in the 1880s to a much grander scale to display the wealth and status of textile magnate, Henry Isaac Butterfield. It was at this point that the lavish chinoiserie and twirly french furniture, grand romantic landscape painting and marble copies of Cuipid and Psyche moved in. Toad would have been in his element. Sadly however, Toad, on this occasion, was not present, unless I've mutated into Toad, but I think I was closer to Svetlana, who's really more of a weasel and who also belongs there too in a way - see post for August 2009 - and I was very much missing my co-stoat/weasel, Hossein, my much valued helper at these times. I certainly felt consigned to the tradesman's entrance - a 'necessary evil,' the inconvenient artist.

I arrived in Keighley Castle the same day the pots arrived. We started to unpack immediately and move them into the SENSATIONALLY, almost absurdly lavish, 'grand Victorian drawing room,' all recently restored to its former glory. The manager of the Castle, we'll call him The Badger, did not seem pleased to see me. He seemed even less pleased when the five pots were rowed up in the splendid room dressed in their bubble wrap and he began to fume, visibly, when a million polystyrene baubles escaped and multiplied all over the grand Victorian parquet floor. By the time the bubble wrap started to come off - and this is when the condition of the pots really becomes apparent and the pieces start to leap out all over the place - I really thought he would spontaneously combust.

Cliffe Castle, through the trees, late March 2010 with bank of crocuses

A moderately large piece from the upper reaches of Dancing was the first to part company with its pot and fall crashing to the floor where it broke into a million tiny shards and frightened poor Mrs. Tiggy Winkle, the exhibitions organiser, half to death. I'm really more frightened of people getting injured and, in Cliffe Castle's grand fancy rooms, I feared for the furniture too. By this time, I really thought I was dead meat – the Badger was baring his teeth and snarling audibly. He then demanded and audience with Dale, (Ratty), and Mrs Tiggy Winkle and thus deprived me of the help I desperately needed to the extent that he seemed to be sabotaging the show - which would have been an extraordinarily self defeating act but there's no accounting for public sector Badgers, they're a breed unto themselves. Word on the gold-plated, silk hung rococo(esque) corridor is that people are in line to lose their jobs in the Bradford museums and arts department. Taxidermy, I suggest would be a good solution. There is a very fine selection of stuffed beasts in the ballroom. One more would never be noticed, surely.

Perhaps Mrs Tiggy Winkle suggested it. She told me she’d ‘had words.’ With the Badger. Whatever passed between them I shall never know. I know only that a curious transformation occurred the next day. Inexplicably, the Badger was suddenly overcome with paroxysms of joy. The show, largely thanks to Dale-the-conservator – looked FABULOUS and the Badger knew it and showed it to visitors on open day with considerable pride.

Trouble At Mill, Part 2: Vaginas And Peacocks

2010-03-13T13:36:00.000-08:00

The trouble, I'm happy to say, has been resolved for the time being. There is room for more but, for now, it's settled until the next wave of curatorial nerves falls due. It happened like this. Shattered will be showing at Cliffe Castle, part of Bradford Museums and Art Galleries, from March 27th until September 27th 2010. It will show in the highly ornate, Victorian reception rooms - a sort of 'intervention' you might say. At around 5.00pm on February 23rd, so that's just over a month before the show is scheduled to open, I receive an email from the exhibitions officer saying, '(we decided) not to show Princess Hymen ... due to the title and clear vagina imagery.' Only four of the five pots would be collected.

Gob-smacked - to put it mildly. I was just setting off to the launch of, 'Possibilities and Losses: Transitions in Clay,' a book of pictures with a couple of pretty good essays in it by Glen Adamson and Jorunn Veiteberg, when the email arrived. Fortunately, I had to rush off, otherwise I might have replied and that would not have been a good thing. So I went and sounded off at Emmanuel Cooper, (Ceramic Review) and Alun Graves, (V&A), and Rosy Greenlees, (Crafts Council), and quite a number of other people, in fact any poor sod who was willing to listen. Before you imagine I routinely hang out in such illustrious company, I don't. This was just one of those weird little moments that bursts through the haze of everyday normality from time to time. Armed with words of comfort from the said confidants, I returned home and emailed a suggestion that all five pots be collected and the final decision made when they had actually seen the work - which they hadn't and still haven't. They've seen only photographs.
No reply came for ten days so I emailed again, this time saying quite a bit more and that I'd spoken to various people with big names. I also pointed out that there is no 'clear vagina imagery,' as such on Princess Hymen, it is in fact the inside of a peacock feather purse and is copied from one of Ingres's 'Odalisques.' It is a visual pun. They had had all the documentation about Shattered for over a year and only now, such a short time before the show was due to open, had they raised this matter.

The next email I received was a proof of the invitation, but still no reply to either of the two emails. Interestingly, however, the proof included a picture of Princess Hymen. I replied saying I liked the invitation, but couldn't understand how they could use an image of PH as a marketing image but not show the pot itself. Again I suggested that they might not really know what the pot looked like in reality and it might be better to collect all five and then decide. This now has been agreed. What actually happens remains to be seen, but I doubt they'll find the pot anything like as scary as they think they're going to.
The thing that puzzles me more than anything though is this: by far the most disturbing pot in Shattered is Traffic, (left), and I must say, I would have thought that was clear from the photographs. One child at the Original Gallery show said that she found the inside 'scary,' and hid behind her mother and I have seen three people dissolve into tears in the show, all three because of that pot. But it is not this one they wished to remove, it is Princess Hymen, which has proved consistently popular.

So the censorious instincts of galleries is alive and well. I had not thought for a moment that it would be like this in an organisation of such international renown as Cartwright Hall. I hope we pull through ok. I'm cautiously optimistic for now. But it's salutary to be reminded of the extent to which this goes on and the power that petty officials have to decide what can be seen and by whom.

Trouble At Mill

2010-02-28T11:49:00.000-08:00

It's a shame to start with trouble, but such is the way with diary writing and I frequently read that blogging is 'diaristic.' So it is with this blog, it is, I suppose, a kind of diary. I had intended to write about the progress of Shattered - I mean the process of showing it - what happened, what was the audience response and so forth. I read also that 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions,' and my road to hell certainly was. Ah no, before you get that idea that showing Shattered was hell, it wasn't. This is just another moment when I have to refer to the evil behaviour of my sciatic nerve, which kicked up a turbo-charged storm on October 19th and didn't begin to unravel until December 2nd. How can I be so precise? You'd be too, if you'd had that experience. It isn't easily forgotten and is easy to date precisely. The day I couldn't either stand up, lie down, or sit down, had to piss in the bath because using the usual ceramic recepticle proved impossible, is not one that vanishes easily from the mind. So I'll spare you the rest of the details, except to say that I know the date of the turning point as well because it is the date on the prescription for the tranquilisers, which was the only thing to have any serious and properly discernible impact on this condition. And my purpose in regaling you with these intimate details of my bodily dysfunction - well it's the reason there are no posts on this blog until now and, in particular why the first adventure of showing Shattered is not on record here.

Having said all of that, there is a post on The C Word, which refers to the back problem, but nothing about Shattered, because I prefer not to write about my own work on that blog. If you have a facebook account, I have uploaded some the pictures of the show in my Events space and shall, in due course, post more pictures in the albums bit, once I've done the other 500 things I didn't do during those three months of the nearest thing to hell that I've experienced in a long time. It is now the turn of my computer to go into 'intensive care,' so for a few days, I am without that too and borrowing a friend's, so I'll upload pictures to this post as soon as we're all working at the same time. Roll on!

So what's the story? The briefest outline is that Shattered showed at The Original Gallery, Hornsey Library, Haringey, London, from November 18th - December 17th. The show was expected to last three weeks, but the extra week came free and the response had been so good that it was added on to Shattered's exhibition time. Immensely gratifying and productive - visitor numbers rose steadily throughout as word got around. Which visitors? Local mainly. I invited all the very proper people of the institutions of the ceramic establishment but, alas, I just don't seem to have the 'pulling power!' None came, but Jo and Joanna public turned out in droves. My Iranian friends/ co-demonstrators / hamtazahoratkonandeha - now there's a word to conjure with - turned out in impressive numbers, much to my delight and a good sprinkling of feminists and human rights campaigners of varying sorts.
The big surprise was the numbers of children who came and greatly enjoyed the show. The stories passed them by, they just got involved in the giant, (especially to them), pots and played hide and seek, taking particular delight in the gaps and holes through which they could spy each other. It was declared 'wicked' on several occasions which made me swell with pride!

Groups of teenagers took a close look at the pots and asked if they could watch the film several times over - they could and it produced heated discussion on which i was tempted to eavesdrop but then thought better of it.

Adults in large numbers made their way steadily through, reading the catalogue from cover to cover and spending a remarkably long time looking at the pots, in my estimation. I felt quite guilty, I don't very often spend that long in exhibitions myself. So how do I know all this stuff? Well yes, I had to 'invigilate' it much of the time, a task shared with Geraldine Williams. I had originally planned to employ someone else to do it, but when my sciatic nerve took over my life and I couldn't do studio work, I decided to do it myself. I've never witness one of my own shows in process like that before. I wouldn't want to do it again, but it's extremely revealing doing it once. All sorts of 'received wisdoms' turn out to be wholly untrue. One I have already mentioned,'no-one reads a catalogue,' not a word of truth in it. Very few people don't read them. 'No-one spends more than half an hour in an exhibition and most only about twenty minutes.' Again, I don't know where the evidence for this comes from, but not from any exhibitions which include comfortable seating, a television, a selection of books and a cafe right next to it.

Time to sign off this post. More will come. I haven't yet mentioned the trouble. Actually it did begin with this show. There was a frazzle over the film. The arts officer had a nervous fit and summoned the 'head of diversity' who pacified everyone, 'I've seen it and approved it - what's the problem?' Job done. The film went ahead as planned and was very much loved as it always it. The next bout of trouble will now be saved for the next post. Supper's ready.

Belly Dance Congress, September 2009

2009-10-03T11:58:00.000-07:00

Middle Eastern dance, popularly known as ‘bellydancing’ suffers from all manner of image problems in the West. Firstly, ‘Middle Eastern dance,’ as such, doesn’t exist. There are hundreds of different kinds of dance and, although you will hear people speak of ‘Turkish’ dance, ‘Egyptian’ dance and so forth, it should be understood that these various ways of dancing are really more associated with regions than national borders and even more strongly associated with culture - culture shaped by communities – by their language, religions, occupation, history and relative mobility.

Dance Migration
The extent to which various population groups have migrated and also the extent to which they themselves have acquired new populations and influences has had as great an impact on dance as it has had on language, religion, cooking and all other forms of social and political discourse. Thus the traditional, folkloric dance of the Egyptian Camel herders of the Nile region, ‘Saidi,’ for example, will be categorically different from the ‘Mwahashat,’ an Arab/Andalucian court dance. Technically though, they’re both Middle Eastern dances or ‘bellydancing.’ To add to the confusion, they may share some characteristics depending upon exactly which Arab population it was which colonised the Andalucian region of Spain and when.

From Hollywood to Hip Hop
In the 20th Century, Cinema, especially Hollywood had a huge influence on the Urban dancers of Cairo and Cairo duly returned the favour to Hollywood and particularly to 1970s American pop. Ballet seems to creep in all over the place and I have no doubt that Hip Hop is mixing it up a storm with Saidi and a tinge of Flamenco somewhere – London probably – or Surrey – that beating pulse of the Bellydance Universe - Oh yes! For it was in deepest, darkest Surry that we convened in sequinned apparel to shimmy, camel and undulate our way through three glorious days of sunshine and dancing.

Restaurants and Cabaret
Getting back to image problems, bellydancing, in the West, is considered, at best, to be an embarrassing episode in dodgy restaurant and at worst a form of strip tease. It certainly counts as ‘cavorting in an unseemly manner in public,’ whichever way you look at it and it’s almost always considered to be amateur. So professional dancers in this discipline have their work cut out. Not only do they have to dance better than anyone else if they’re going to have a ghost of chance of being taken seriously and getting paid for what they do, they also have to ward off the prurient interest, entice those with a genuine interest in dance and then, after all that, remember to perform.

Orientalism and Authenticity
Further complications are added by those who consider the whole business to be an exercise in post imperial Orientalism of the most insidious kind. True this would have to come from someone largely ignorant of the history and culture of the dance and somewhat naïve politically but it shows what serious exponents of this dance are dealing with. Oh yes, and if it's 'authenticity' you're looking for, you may need to look elsewhere - if not, check out the last video on this post featuring Fifi Abdo dancing at a wedding surrounded by christmas decorations in Egypt. If that doesn't disrupt every last vestige of concern with the 'A' word, nothing will. That bellydance has never, to my knowledge, received any public funding, also speaks volumes, especially when compared with other kinds contemporary dance.

What Happens at a Belly Dance Congress
Bellydance Congress sets aside all these anxieties, raises the calibre to the heavens, and summons the assembled deities of the dance to come and show us the real thing in all its variety and complexity. Congress brings in the megastars from all over the world and devoted fans and students who came from as far afield as the USA and Russia to attend master classes, workshops, and take a once in a lifetime opportunity to see some of these people perform.

Classes and Stars: Leyla Jouvana
I attended two three-hour classes with Leyla Jouvana, one on layering of techniques and moves and the other on dancing with two or more veils to a mixed ability class. I did a technique class, also three hours, with Caroline Affifi, a tabla solos class – that’s dancing to a solo drum - with Kay Taylor and I had the exceptionally good fortune to be facilitating a class with Randa Kamel. In principle I was facilitating one of Leyla Jouvana’s classes as well, but she did not teach in a way that required it so I was able to do the class in full. Jouvana (Germany) and Kamel (Egypt), are major stars and rarely in this country so the opportunity to do their classes is a rare, extraordinary and invaluable privilege. Jouvana’s rigour and attention to detail accompanied by careful, precise explanations make her an exceptional teacher. She is accompanied by her husband, Roland, on the drum, so the music is always exactly as she needs it.

Randa Kamel
Kamel’s class, the one that I facilitated, was for dancers in grades 3 and 4 and I know from experience that these grades at international level are much higher than is appropriate for my experience. ‘Facilitating’ in this instance means that I had to ensure that the rows of dancers in her class were rotated regularly so that everyone had a chance to be at the front. Even now, remembering being at the front of her class, so close to her that I could see clearly every move that she made and how she did it, brings tears to my eyes, it’s a chance I don’t really expect to be repeated and I shall not forget it soon, if ever. Hers was not an easy class to follow and many of the students clearly struggled in spite of my best endeavours to ensure they could all see, but the truth is, many were just not up to the level she expected of them.

The Mighty Fifi Abdo
This year’s Bellydance Congress was dominated by the legendry presence of her Imperial Highness, (massive drum roll), her Royal Magnificence, the Astounding FIFI ABDOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gasp. Now I get it. Now I understand why everyone talks of this woman. I talked at length in this post about the problems that Bellydance faces in the West. One of the results of this is that we now have a collection of dancers, excellent dancers, who produce highly polished performances, virtuoso displays of technical perfection. And, yes, they make you gasp, but after a while of seeing one after another after another of these displays, one can start to lose the will to live. The intense focus on technique really can be a bit soulless and where you have a dance whose exponents often rely on cabaret to build up experience, it seems we lack a demanding dramatic repetoire that might serve as a training ground for evolving performance dancers.

The Horse, The Hurricane and a Touch of the Divine
Fifi Abdou whirls through all this like a hurricane. Her dance has a kind of roughness and raw edge to it which is wholly unexpected. She struts about on stage like she owns not only the stage but the audience too. She tosses her mane like some demented dervish horse and twirls and shimmies simultaneously punctuated by deep bowing twirly things – we call them ‘breaks.’ No one dances like this without close attention to detail and careful learning in the early years, but technique, practice and training alone will not bring it either. She’s an immensely expressive, intimate dancer, bold and brash in her gestures, there’s almost a touch of aggression, but combined with her own unique equine grace it all results in an electrifying stage presence and performance.

Part 2, The Conference: East &West: Cross-Cultural Encounters

2009-09-30T14:41:00.000-07:00

View of ST. Andrew's looking out over the harbour

I’ve always been a bit suspicious of Art History. When I was still at school and also when I went to Art School and the early 1980s, Art History was about the lives of painters and about ‘brush strokes.’ ‘The Renaissance,’ meaning the one that took place in Western Europe, was deemed to be centred in Italy, specifically Florence; this Renaissance was the back-bone of the subject. All other parts of the History of Art were somehow attached to or related to this time, place and collection of work. I still love Florence and I love what I learned of that time, but I’m very happy indeed that History of Art has become something else entirely, as East &West: Cross-Cultural Encounters eloquently demonstrated.

Orientalist Painting In Poland
The papers in this conference took me into corners of the history of the art that I didn’t know existed. I had no idea, for example, that Polish artists in the 19th Century were producing Orientalism in paintings every bit as rhetorical and absurd as anywhere in France or Britain. However, the underlying narrative, according to Ana Chruscinska, was predicated on Poland’s political situation, particularly its loss of independence, which prompted artists at that time to deploy the Orientalist imagery as a metaphor to describe Poland’s own subjugation.

Ana Chruscinska: Myths about the inhabitants of the Arab World as depticted in 19th Century Polish Oriental paintings

Hungarian Ottoman Woodcuts And Mock Battles
Also examining a nuanced relationship to imperialism and its imagery, AnnMarie Perl discussed the relationship between Hungarian and Ottoman artists during the Ottoman period when Hungary formed part of that vast empire. Far from being divided along cultural and ethnic lines, she argued that there was a well developed cross-cultural transfer which substantially unsettled the idea of an ‘authentic’ Ottoman aesthetic and genre. All this was discussed through book illustrations – wood cuts - and mock battles – yes Mock Battles –the Reenactment Society is not, after all, one of the more outré and eccentric inventions of Middle England, but was a major source of entertainment in the Ottoman Empire and documented in woodcut illustrations. Marvellous!

This, I discovered, was what I loved about Art History. It’s the weird little details which seep through and which tell you so much about the period. I was envisaging Hungarian and Turkish or Armenian or Greek artists dining together in each others houses and swapping tabards and swords before gadding off the local tea house to get uproariously drunk and party it up a storm in the street staging a mock battles till dawn when they’d be rounded up by the district gendarme for being drunk and disorderly and sent home to sober up.

Dr. Seung Jung Kim: The Beginnings of the East-West Dialogue: An Examination of Dionysiac Representations in Gahdhara and Kushan-Mathuran Art

Original Copies
Authenticity, as you might expect, was a dominant theme of the conference and it waltzed into view with Princess Akiko’s paper on the gentle art of reproduction. Her focus was on the repros of Japanese artefacts in the British Museum. Konstanze Knittler talked about ‘Famille Noire’ - a very weird-looking kind of porcelain that I’d never heard of – with a very intriguing story attached. It seems that hundreds of wealthy collectors have collected thousands of pieces of black porcelain believing them to belong to a much appreciated part of Chinese porcelain history – the Kanxi period, (1622-1722), and that this ‘famille’ turns out to be the bastard progeny of another period entirely – late 19th Century – Perish the thought!! This, along with Princess Akiko’s paper, neatly encapsulates much of what the conference discussed, namely, who’s to say what’s authentic and what if the reproduction is really more interesting than the ‘original’ ?

Dr. Claudia Clare: The Artist and the Coup D'Etat: A User's Guide to Exhibiting Ceramics in Politically Unstable Situations

Seen Through The Lens
The lens – the fiendish camera – popped up every so often. It began the conference and ended it – in a way – and it appeared in the middle cleverly disguised as paintings by Jackson Pollock. This was about a group of Japanese artists - the Gutai group, based in Osaka in the 1950s. They are widely thought to be influenced - almost formed really – by Jackson Pollock and that their work sprang out of and responded to his as an homage. However Natalie Roncone’s paper showed that what they were responding to was not Pollock’s painting or his writing but to a collection of photographs by Hans Namuth of Pollock ‘in action,’ published in a 1951 issue of ‘Art News.’ In other words their ‘homage’ was predicated on someone else’s interpretation and mediation of Pollock’s work.

Dr. Luke Gartlan: Portraying China's 'Character': Baron von Stillfried's Portfolio of Shanghai Photographs

Confusing The Image
This first appearance of the camera was in the Keynote speech by Dr. Luke Gartlan, about a collection of 19th Century photographs of ‘life’ in China which failed to attract buyers and was quickly abandoned. Gartlan argued that the main reason for this was that this album of, let us say, ‘images of China’ did not meet or in any way match the image of that country that the Western consumer expected. He compared it to similar albums made by the same photographer, Baron von Stills, of Japan which sold in their thousands. They look remarkably similar. And that’s the rub. They weren’t supposed to. China was considered an, ‘unpaved, dirty, stinking,’ place, quite different from the elegant, stylish exotic Japan. The Western Consumer duly turned up its western nose and refused the offering.

Shirley Bahar: A War Within: The Westernized Performance of Israeli Artists

Had We But World Enough And Time…
This is such a tiny bite of what was really a feast of careful, passionate research and lovingly honed knowledge. There were papers on consumers of Manga, on queer masculinity and nationalism, (possibly), in Japanese / (American?) photography, on masculine self reflexivity in Israeli film, on 18th Century Chinese court paintings, on Graeco-Roman representations in Kushan Buddhist art, on contemporary Chinese calligraphy, on Orientalist bookcovers in contemporary Western publishing, and on a kiln maker and designer of production methods in the Leach pottery, by name of Matsubayashi Tsurunosuke, who’s immense contribution to that pottery and, by implication, to British studio pottery, has been largely written out of the history. All of this was served up with delicious food, sunshine and a fabulous beach in one of the most beautiful towns I’ve seen in years. My thanks to the organisers, to my fellow participants, and to Ana Chruscinska and Dr. Luke Gartlan, who made the final lens-based contributions by providing all of the photographs on this post.

Dr. Shinya Maezaki: A Legacy of Matsubayashi Tsurunosuke in St. Ives: Introduction of the Art of Japanese Ceramic Making to British Studio Pottery

East & West: Cross-Cultural Encounters, Part 1: Diversion - St. Andrews - An East West Cross Cutlural Encounter In Itself

2009-09-17T13:50:00.000-07:00

School of Art History, St. Andrews University, 11th and 12th September, 2009.

On the East cost of Scotland, sort of southernish by Scottish standards, there’s platform in the middle of a field with a metal bridge slung a bit carelessly over the top of it. That’s how you get from the train, which just about remembers to stop for a minute or two by the platform, to the road. Otherwise you’d just tumble straight into the field. This windswept, lonesome, soulful looking place, something between Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth, is Leuchars. It’s where you get off to go to St. Andrews.

St. Andrews, just five miles or so down the road couldn’t be more different. Home to one of the oldest universities in the world, - founded in 1413 – it is busy, thriving, wealthy beyond its modest size, and astounding beautiful. The town is the university and the university is the town. Shops, restaurants and hotels rely on the busy-ness of academia and on the achingly beautiful coastal landscape for their incomes - its other industry is tourism, especially tourism related to golf.

So, imagine my surprise, when stepping carefully off the train in Leuchars, and looking around at my fellow travellers, I spot a woman who, I decide, must also be coming to the conference, and accordingly invite her to share a taxi. ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Forough’ she says. ‘Crikey,’ I’m thinking, ‘what are the chances of that?’ I spend all summer in London in the company of Iranians, I come to a very very small town in the east coast of Scotland, whose railway station is 10 miles away in the middle of a field, and the first person I meet is Iranian.

Later that same day, I venture into town to the beating heart of the university, and find the New Arts Building where I plan to register for the conference. Almost every name on the conference list is Iranian. ‘What the hell’s going on? Is there anyone left in Iran?’ Then I read the title to the conference programme, ‘Historiography and Iran in Comparative Perspective.’ Ok, so I’m about to gate crash someone else’s conference. But seriously, is there anyone left in Iran? – they all seem to be in Scotland.

But you see, it’s not so surprising. St. Andrews and its quaint medieval Scottish streets is also home to the Institute for Iranian Studies. It’s cunningly hidden in the History department, not, as I thought, in The School of International Relations – although there you will find the intriguing Centre for Syrian Studies. I have to say, a bit of Syria and a bit of Iran, a chunk of unusually interesting Art History mixed up with bits of Armenia, Georgia, The Caucasus – all based in Scotland, near Edinburgh, but in St. Andrews, sounds like my idea of Heaven. Surely I could squeeze myself in somewhere…

Dinner With Svetlana

2009-08-01T12:06:00.000-07:00

These Plates together make one work, 'Dinner with Svetlana,' which is my response to a situation I so often encountered when I was in Iran. (See post below for more on this.)

This is what I wrote in the catalogue for the planned exhibition:

Svetlana is another version of me. She is the Russian woman I am often thought to be when I stay in hotels on my own in Tehran and Shiraz. ‘Ruusiii?’ (Are you Russian?), asks the man before me, adjusting his shades and leather jacket, ‘Tanhaayi?’ (Are you alone?) I couldn’t escape her. I didn’t want Russian women to become my enemy so I decided to accept her. I gave her a name, Svetlana, which French people translate to Claire or Clare (English), which is my surname. It means ‘light’ as in ‘claire de la lune,’ moonlight, 'mahtaab,' - a Persian name meaning moonlight. I grew to like her. She was bolder than me, much less anxious in many situations. She plucked her eyebrows, wore nice clothes and argued with people.

At that time, a great many Russian women were being trafficked to Iran to supply the sex industry which was booming particularly in the Gulf area, in Tehran and in Shiraz - and from which, I assume, the revolutionary guard have become immensely rich.

Creative Translation

2009-05-26T14:54:00.001-07:00

Whenever I’m in Iran, people ask me:
What do you think of Iran?

The work featured on this blog, here and in the next four posts, (scrolling down), explores the answers to that question. They are the foreigner’s story. The focus is on intimate domestic narrative and detail because these are the substance of my connection with Iran and they acquire enormous importance when I’m there. These posts show the collection of work for the exhibition I was invited to do in Iran, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Esfahan. At the last minute, the Foreign Ministry got cold feet and refused to provide an entry visa either to me or to the exhibition. I hope to show it somewhere in the UK but, until then, you can see pictures of it here.

Here's what I wrote for the catalogue about the plate above:

Creative Translation

This is what we all do when we’re not quite sure. Bluffing. We just fill in the gaps. It makes for some very fine misunderstandings. Some are not so accidental though. I suspect some are sibling mischief. Many young men ask me about migration. I tell them it’s not a soft option. You have to be very sure. It’s not easy being ‘the foreigner’ in England.
I also spend a lot of time explaining the situation regarding heating in England. The gas and electricity are too expensive to use, so you get used to being cold and wearing vests instead. When I come to Iran, I have to open the windows, even in winter. My friends shiver and put on extra clothes.

The Look Of The Eyes

2009-05-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

The camera is the dominant motif of this work and the look its guiding concern. In the plate above, two enormous eyes stare out of an oval plate, just big enough to accommodate them and their carefully sculpted eyebrows. The face may be framed by a chador, by a loosely worn scarf, or only by hair, we don’t know because the rim does the framing and my point is that it’s of no consequence in this image because, although the law in Iran currently insists on women being ‘modestly’ dressed in public, covered and not ‘made up,’ the other kind of law, the law of social mores, insists, with equal force, that Iranian Women Are Glamorous And Are The Most Beautiful In The World… and woe betide anyone who doesn’t believe it. In other words, social mores insist upon a woman being, by English standards at least, very dressed up indeed.
I don’t know any Iranian woman who would willingly step foot outside the house without wearing full ‘party’ make-up, even when she’s just popping out to buy bread.

The social glamour laws do not, on the face of it, require enforcement by a special police force, which the modesty laws enshrined in statute certainly do. However, if the statute were removed, and women were allowed to dress as they pleased, it would be interesting to witness the result over the long term. Three years ago, I would have said that glamour as a social norm would not change. It seemed fixed forever. Now I do detect, among my own friends at least, a certain ambivalence, a questioning even of the social laws. Some have told me, in a quiet moment, that they do find the necessity to ‘dress up’ (as I see it) as a bit time consuming and oppressive. It’s a complicated process, though, to navigate this kind of social pressure, when set alongside the laws of government, which are vastly more oppressive: young women in particular are often rounded up by the religious police and taken to the police station and sometimes beaten. This plate is my response to the necessity of resisting oppressive legal demands, which dictate what women can and cant wear, while also observing and feeling the gendered social oppression inherent in the form that the resistance takes.

Here's what I wrote in the catalogue -

Eyes

Why don’t you ‘do’ your eyebrows? Most women demanded to know this within five minutes of meeting me. I didn’t think about eyebrows normally. They were just there. Apparently I was wrong. Eyebrows were there to be sculpted, along with the rest of my face, which could be entirely rearranged if necessary. I began to develop a much closer relationship with mirrors.

Clothes

I had worried intensely about wearing the right things outside, in the street. This is where I would be seen. But as soon as I arrived in Iran, I was being invited to peoples’ houses. I carefully said no twice but didn’t want them to withdraw the invitation, so hastily changed no to yes, in case they changed their minds. This is when I realised that I needed clothes to wear in people’s houses. My English clothes were not good enough. Iranians are ‘posh’. English people are not. I had to bring make up learn how to use it. I needed a hair dryer. I was creating a new version of myself but it meant that my suitcase was getting heavier.

Forming The Perfect 1

2009-05-23T12:09:00.000-07:00

From the eyes looking and the look of the eyes, we move on to the presence, the omni presence, of the camera. There are certain images which recur throughout this body of work. As well as the camera, recurring images include the lens, frame, photograph, mirror, us, (me and my friends), pomegranate, knife, and snow.

Forming The Perfect, whose title is taken from a chapter heading one of my Farsi grammar books, is applied to the construction of wedding pictures. These celebrate and freeze frame a moment, the perfect moment when life, briefly, becomes a fairy tale. Forming the perfect uses the oval shape as an elliptical lens, mirror frame and picture frame and hints at the eye shape in the first plate. I, the photographer, observer, guest, temporary family member, and artist am perched inside and outside the lens. I am both part of the proceedings and the observer of them. Wedding pictures are photo-shopped into a world or their own. Stage makeup is worn for the wedding ceremony and the entire wedding is performed to camera. There is no pretence at creating some kind of parallel norm, no attempt by the women concerned to delude themselves, or each other or me or any other viewer in believing this is the everyday. It most emphatically is not. The pictures are superimposed on to fairytale backgrounds as if to emphasise the point. I added a bit of my own emphasis: a white horse. I felt it was missing from Haddis’s photos. You can see it in the next post down, Forming The Perfect 2.

As a British artist, product of modernism and post modernism in equal measure, I feel some weight of expectation that this work must be in some way satirical. I must satirise the wedding pictures, make knowing jokes of some sort. There are some jokes, but they are unlikely to be discernible to anyone outside the families concerned. I have tried to tell the story of the pictures and show what they mean to me. There is no satire. It is simply a part of my answer to ‘what do you think of Iran?’

Forming The Perfect 2

2009-05-22T14:18:00.001-07:00

This is what I wrote in the catalogue about this pot:

I have been learning about wedding pictures: the construction of the perfect moment freeze framed as the perfect image. If it is only once in a lifetime, then they become quite forlorn, lonely images, but if you drift into the fairy tale, the snowy woodland, the star spangled night in a Bollywood movie, the rich, dark interiors of a distant, northern castle, you can create more and more scenes, your own secret garden with which to adorn the ordinariness of your life. Ordinariness, after all, is what most of us hope for at a time of economic crisis, global warming and bombs.

If you look in the right hand column, you can see the photos I took of the wedding photos.

How to Eat a Pomegranate

2009-05-16T11:17:00.000-07:00

This post shows five views of the same pot. It's about 90 cms high. It depicts, in flat-on-the-surface, frieze-like, decorative form, the ritual of pomegranate eating. This what I wrote for the catalogue - which assumes an Iranian audience by the way. If you click on the pictures they should enlarge.

How to Eat a Pomegranate

I think it was on my second visit to Iran that I learnt how to eat a pomegranate. The first visit was spent learning how to cross roads. On the second visit I stayed most of my time in Yazd, and young woman taught me ‘ab lambu.’ English people have no idea what to do with a pomegranate. Some people eat them one seed at a time, using a pin, but most people just don’t bother. I made a film of my Iranian friends eating pomegranates so that my English friends could learn how to do it.

This is how I explain ‘aab lambu’ to my English friends:

You hold the pomegranate in both hands and slowly, but firmly, begin to squeeze it. Gradually it softens as the fruit inside is crushed by the pressure of your fingers and the juice released. The skin, however, must remain unharmed. When it is completely soft and squashy you take a sharp fruit-knife and pierce the skin, carefully. A large drop of red juice will appear on the surface. Put this ‘bleeding’ part to your mouth and squeeze, drinking the juice until the fruit is spent and only the crushed pith is left inside. The pomegranate now resembles a deflated rubber ball – which is what ‘lambu’ refers to.

Catalogue text ends here. This is one of the most in-yer-face decorative pieces I've made in a long time. I didn't really intend to use decoration as rhetoric, although it does have a slightly rhetorical feel to it, nor is any irony or parody intended and I dont think any suggests itself. It is related to the film I made, of the same name, which is about the vexed question of virginity. This peice is an 'iran proof' version of that and should, ideally, be shown with a large group of pomegranate bowls, see above, a sort of homage to Hannah Wilke's ‘159 One-Fold Gestural Sculptures,’ a collection of virginal foldings in painted, fired clay.

Legacy

2009-05-16T10:50:00.000-07:00

I started working on the very big one in January 2009. I had orignally intended that it should go to Esfahan with 'How To Eat A Pomegranate,' (see next few posts above and the pot in the foreground immediately above this text), but when it became clear that there would be visa problems, I decided to put it aside and continue work on it next year. Like the pots in Shattered, this one is now broken into many small pieces. It will be put back together as a fragile, skeletal memory of its former self. I'm expecting it to be a good deal more frail than the pots in Shattered.

Welcome to the Open Studio

2009-05-16T07:20:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Lab. This is the cyber studio, shed, top of the bus or sunny corner, where new ideas ferment and become pots, drawings, blogs, short films or long stories. The C Word, my other blog, is the ideas lab and this one is more like the studio or shed. Here you can see work in progress, as it is being made and before it goes on show. I expect more pictures than words on this blog but we'll see how it goes.