This is our penultimate interview for the year, so savour it folks! Happy Friday and happy reading.
I began my career as a painter completing a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 1993. My degree concentrated on conceptual art and as a reaction against this I then started decorating for a ceramicist in Brisbane and learned to throw from there. From the minute I started throwing I knew I wanted to make fine, white vessels.
When I first started my studio in Maleny it was hard. Working as an artist is a solitary occupation and it took me a while to get used to this. I was still cooking for a local cafe but then I was accepted for a NEIS scheme run by the government to set up small businesses and I quit all the part-time work and concentrated on ceramics. The hardest thing was the "marketing" which is a grand word for approaching galleries and meeting people. I hated that at the beginning, but I looked at successful artists and realized that I just had to knuckle down and become good at it. There are parts of every job that are boring and horrible- the marketing is the part of an artists job that I find the worst.
The achievement I'm most proud of is...
Persevering through the obscure beginning stages, the poverty stages and the having children stages and still loving my job. And actually I'm really proud to be able to say that I make my living as an artist. Art is my career and my income and contrary to the precious artist stereotype I have found that being professional has made my pots stronger. When a pot hasn't been selling it is tempting to think that the philistines out there don't really "get it", when I've really looked at these pots and broken them down to their formal elements such as line, composition, form etc I've always found that the ones that consistently haven't sold are weak in some areas. It is pretty harsh in the marketplace but it can be your greatest asset to making good work.
I've also published a book...
My Book! This is a book (pictured below) I've published through Blurb.com, an online publishing house. I mainly published this as a catalogue of the work I've done with excerpts of essays I've written interspersed throughout. I thought it would be a good thing to give prospective galleries and collectors of my work. I do quite a bit of writing for journals etc.
Back in the mists of time I was doing a Masters degree in contemporary literature. I feel very strongly that artists have a responsibility to the art community and the wider community to talk about what we do. As a young artist I craved information and insight into the lives of working artists. I also think the arts community can be too isolated, most people don't understand what artists do on a day to day basis and how the arts illuminates our thoughts feelings and actions. If you are able to speak (and not everyone is) you should make time to share your experiences.
My soundtrack while I work is...
I'm addicted to Radio National. Lately I've been listening to Chet Baker's beautiful songs and trumpet, Sia, The Old Crow Medicine Show and gospel music from the 40's and 50's - my favourite is The Soul Stirrers singing Jesus Hits Like an Atom Bomb!!!!!!
A day in my life would entail...
Wake up as the sky is turning from grey to blue and listen to my daughters marauding around the place demanding milk and toast. The bedlam of breakfast, doing haystack hair, throwing food in lunchboxes, thinking of what I'm going to do in the studio. Thinking about capturing some little thing I've seen on the surface of a pot. Everyone out the door ... Goodbye! Goodbye! Goodbye! Sit at the table with a cup of tea and look at my diary, sketch shapes of pots, read a cookbook. Ignore the messy house and walk straight downstairs into the studio. Throw pots. The repetition, porcelain sliding through my fingers cool and creamy.
Decorate. Come upstairs at about 1 for lunch, thinking furiously of what shopping to do for dinner. All the time thinking in nanosecond snatches about pots, how artists fit into the world, how to get a particular feeling into a vessel, should I apply for a competition or grant?Sometimes the kiln is on at about lunch and I run up and down the stairs in between all this, turning it up until 9 or 10 at night.Speak to husband for three or so seconds. Sleep.
I admire the work of...
I love Jane Sawyer's terracotta and hakeme brushwork pots and the English potter Joanna Howells. They both capture the sensual delight of making pots.
If I could anything in the world tomorrow…
I'd love to go to Japan and study calligraphy brushwork. This might be more of a project for contemplative old age so, with the family, I'd go to Italy and stay in Orvieto for 6 months eating, looking and living.
Shannon's lovely book.
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