A Wild and Untamed Landscape

I am now in a very beautiful studio miles out in the mountains, only 1 hour by car from Canberra.  On the hill road this morning driving out to the studio from a small town, called incongruously Bungendore which sounds like something from Harry Potter – in 22 miles we saw only 2 other cars.  Yesterday a car overtook us which was a major event.  The place is empty.  Out in the bush, miles from anywhere, there are only hills and trees and kangaroos for company,  I could just make out a tiny village in the distance.  Yet in the middle of bush and scraggy eucalyptus trees there is a  mainline railway from Sydney to Canberra which stops a mile down the road at Tarago, the village.  

Jane Crick, the potter who invited me and who organised my whole tour of Australia, runs a teaching studio out here in the bush, and has 50 acres.  She has a tin shed studio, a tin shed for the kilns, a tin shed gallery, a tin shed toilet and an old yellow railway carriage on a very short track as a sleeping space.  She has solar powered electricity and, and no water except rainwater, which is stored in a huge tank. 

Jane lives in Canberra and comes out here to her studio, as do all her adult students – some of whom travel for miles to get here.  They are desperately keen to come as the Adult Education centres where they were going regularly are being closed due to government cutbacks.  It is absurd that the government should close the vocational courses, as the economy here is very strong. Pounds sterling don’t go very far here, certainly not as far as they did last time I was here 24 years ago when everything seemed cheap. 

Now Australia has managed to keep hold of some regulation of its banks and so did not get caught up in the crash bang wallop which affected banks in the UK.  Consequently the dollar is strong against the pound.  And China is buying up all their minerals.  There are rare earths here which do not exist anywhere else in the world, tantanum for example, which is used in mobile phones. It does seem bonkers to depend on selling capital materials, like a giant Ponzi scheme.

Out here in the purple hills it is a beautiful location, truly amazing, like being in a national park except it is just wild country.  Often in Australia I get the sense that I could just start walking out the door and go for thousands of miles to the other side of the country before coming to any sort of obstruction.  And that is in spite of white people having been here for over 200 years and in spite of all the damage they have done.  Still the landscape is wild and untamed.  White people could leave tomorrow and I get the impression that in a few years the trees and wild life would overrun their doings. The strength of the landscape is in the psyche of Australians and is reflected in a national longing for art which expresses their relationship with it. 

There is a large pond in a dip in the hills below the studio, which is manmade, and is a magnet for birds and frogs.  They sing and croak and gargle and hum all through the night.  We paddled around in the marshy land at the edge of the large pond, which locals call a dam, looking for clay to use as a slip on the pots.  It’s not that easy to find clay here, nor soil either actually, as even though the landscape looks wild and original, the trees are sparse because the land was cleared.  So the soil was blown away.  It never was very deep at all, and that has given me a deeper appreciation of soil as an entity.  We have a huge amount of it in England, it goes down deep in many places and is moist and full of nutrients.  Here in these hills it is only an inch or so deep; and seems like a valuable and rare resource. You can’t just make it overnight.

During tea breaks my students on the course inevitably talk about wildlife:  about wallabies, about goannas, and bandecoots.  Some people have seen pelicans flying around.  Enkidnas, which are prickly creatures that lay eggs and are related to the duckbill platypus, often crop up in conversations too.

I bought a musical instrument called a zyladrum from the only craftsman in the world who makes them.  He lives near here and has developed a method of making a tuned wooden box drum.  It sounds divine, it is impossible to make a bad sound.  I am not particularly musical, have never played anything like this before, and on my first attempt made sounds which were meditative, hypnotic and tuneful.  People told me I should make a recording!   I am completely hooked on it.

Sandy Brown is an internationally renowned ceramicist who lives and works in North Devon. She is the Art Advisor at Resurgence magazine.

Find out more about Sandy Brown

Trust your hands

I am in Brisbane now, giving a workshop in creative throwing to the potters at the Brisbane Institute of Art.  This is an independent non-profit organisation which is not a government art school but a place which runs art classes at various levels and is open to anyone.  They have a wonderful building – after years of being peripatetic and homeless, operating out of temporary accommodation, a football club with glorious premises went bankrupt, and now the Brisbane Art Institute has their huge building.  What an interesting metaphor of society here, that it cannot afford football but it can afford art.  There are classes in printmaking in a well-equipped printmaking studio, a massive painting studio, facilities for sculpture, bookbinding, and ceramics of course.
They do award their own diplomas which are recognized by the government art colleges, and interestingly their own diplomas are awarded after students have achieved a certain level of ability, without the need to write long dissertations, in fact without the need for them to do any written component at all.  So it focuses on the activity itself, and is not en route to academia as are all government art courses now here and in the UK. 
The only difference between the old vocational HND courses in the UK and the new BA Hons courses with which the universities rushed to replace them is that the BA course has a dissertation component which accounts for a large proportion of the assessment.  As far as the practical content is concerned it is the same on both courses.  Here the emphasis is on doing, and it seems to be what the participants want, as it is thriving.
There is a mixed bunch of participants on the course, from well-established professional ceramic artists to beginners, including one middle-aged Japanese man.  I am enjoying teaching his culture back to him in the form of the clay preparation method and kneading which I learned in Mashiko where I lived for four years as a student potter.  He seems to know it is something significant to him and has taken to it like a duck to water.
Yesterday we were focusing on using the potters wheel as a creative tool, not just a vehicle for mass production, which of course it can be too.  But too often in the rush to master the technique of throwing pots we can forget that it is a creative medium just as poetry writing is, or composing music is, or dancing is.  I have been surprised to see that the less I teach about the technique the more it is possible for students to grasp what I am saying and to be free to experiment and to play. 
So now I am holding right back, and just suggesting that they focus on playing and being loose, and trusting their hands.  After all, they told me yesterday that the reason they have come on this workshop is because they respond to my lively throwing and also my use of colour, which we will come to later today.

Sandy Brown is an internationally renowned ceramicist who lives and works in North Devon. She is the Art Advisor at Resurgence magazine.

Find out more about Sandy Brown

Coral island in a changing world

Nick Brennan, the warm hearted fair-haired guide on Lady Elliot Island, which is an eco-resort on the Great Barrier Reef, has been chatting with me about the effects of climate change and the state of the coral island in this changing world.

At first, I was struggling with the inherent contradiction in that we fly to this island: it is in fact the only island on the reef with an airstrip, and it is the only eco-island on the reef.  And we stay there.  How can that help the environment I asked?  Nick replied saying that the Great Barrier Reef, in spite of being ‘protected’ and called a ‘Marine Park’, is not well managed at all.  He talked about the ‘Hunters and Shooters Party’ being in power in New South Wales and allowing general use of the reef, saying they don’t protect it and certainly don’t police it.

Lady Elliot Island is the only green zone, and is the only eco-island on the entire Great Barrier Reef.  It means no fishing, no moving coral, no moving the numerous sea cucumbers without putting them back exactly where they were as they only move a foot a year.  It means no taking anything from the island!

The island has to police itself if people turn up to fish, which they do – the young staff have been known to canoe out to offending boats to tell them to go.  The fishermen say ‘There are no fish anywhere else”. Yet surprisingly the island has pulled itself back from the brink of extinction.

Over 200 years ago the guano (Bird droppings) which was over 1 meter deep was drastically harvested for fertilizer, and all the vegetation and trees died.  The birds died.  It was practically a dead island.  Some time later, the government had to build a lighthouse and they imported goats onto the island to feed the lighthouse keepers.   That meant that any new vegetation that tried to shoot up was promptly eaten by the goats.

Then in the late 60’s one man, Don Adam, visited the island and determined to re-vitalise it.  He planted native trees, coconuts, pandanus, casuarinas and shrubs.  As the lighthouse was now being automated he shot all the goats.  Gradually the seabirds returned.  There are now thousands of resident birds, including many white-capped noddies.  They like to nest and breed in the pisonia trees which are now healthy and plentiful.

I snorkeled around the coral and marveled at the abundance of fish; the colours are astonishing underwater; so bright, lit up from the inside like neon.  Nick told me that even in the last five years since it has become a Green Zone the number of fish in their waters has increased considerably; it is amazing how quickly marine zones can recover.  Even the coral is in good shape here, and is not suffering too much from bleaching as it is elsewhere on the Great Barrier Reef.

The main danger that they are all worried about is the acidification of the seas.  The more carbon dioxide we use the more the oceans absorb it, and that is what is causing the bleaching and thus the death of much of the coral further north from here.  Coral is an extremely sensitive living animal; it is not a plant, it is an animal, and it cannot tolerate temperatures too high or too low, and certainly not too acidic.  That will kill it.

Nick believes that the way to justify the use of the island by tourists is education.  He is immensely knowledgeable about the coral, fishes, birds and vegetation of the island and greets each new arrival with an introduction to the ways of the island.  Don’t stand on the living coral, don’t move anything, don’t take anything away.  Here we value each living being, including the 300,000 birds on the tiny island.

It is so small you can walk round it in an hour, as I did. And that includes time to stop and wonder.  Yet it has so many fish.  He takes visitors out on reef walks, gently pointing out that what looks like scum at the shoreline is in fact sunscreen made by the coral itself to protect it from the sun, and is the active ingredient in the suncream which we use.   He can spot a clam from a long way off, and can name almost every fish we see, including the striking blue Picassotrigger fish.  He encourages us to pick up sea cucumbers, which feel rubbery like car tyres, and which squirt.  He tells us to put them back exactly where we found them as because they move so slowly, a foot a year, they will be completely disorientated if they are moved.

It is deceptive, as when you look at the water from the shore, particularly when the tide is out and the water is just in the lagoon, it looks as if there is nothing much happening in the water.  You can see the shape of the coral, its amazing mushroom layered growth, some are like huge brains, and you can see the white sand which is actually dead bleached coral.  It dies when it is exposed to the sun, so when it grows upwards and pokes through the sea to the sun, it dies, or the central bit does, and its only recourse is to grow sideways instead, thus staying under the water and eventually forming a lagoon.  Some big corals grow very slowly, at just one millimeter a year, and we calculated that one particular coral in the lagoon which we were walking around, was two meters across which meant it was actually a thousand years old.

Yet when you put a mask on and look through it, beyond the surface to the life underneath, you see that even right up to the shoreline there are fish swimming about, lots of little intense ultramarine blue ones, long moray eels, tiny little baby fish which are what the birds eat, transparent butterfly fish which are exactly like butterflies you might see in a meadow, sometimes there are turtles.  In the nesting season there are thousands of turtles that come ashore to lay their eggs.  We just missed that as we are too early, but we saw turtles mating and gently swimming past.

The island uses solar power for most of its energy needs, and desalinates sea water so that it is self-sufficient in water.  There is still much more to be done, as they do still need to import fuel.

I went on a snorkeling safari this morning, which means spending longer out in the deeper water, again with Nick to guide us.  We were taken out by boat, and then urged to jump in when it was 4 or 5 metres deep.  Nick does put himself under pressure to ensure we see turtles and also Manta rays, and swims about looking for them for us.  And occasionally he will take a deep breath and swim down to the sea bottom and pick up something to show us.  This time it was a pineapple cucumber; a sea cucumber which is much larger, looks like a pineapple, and is squishy.   He brought it to the surface to show us, and then minutes later took another deep breath and gently placed it back in the sand where he had found it.

I am completely hooked now; I could spend ages looking at this extraordinary world. I don’t mind whether we see a turtle or a manta ray; just the everyday shoals of fishes are amazing.   They move so quickly; I look up out of the water to check where Nick is for example, then immediately look under water again and new different fish have teleported themselves right beside me.   They are not afraid; of each other, or of us.  They bump into me, checking me out.  One delightful turquoise fish stayed with me for ages, swimming around my face and touching my cheeks. I felt as if I had a friend.  Other snorkelers said the same; that a big shoal of fish would adopt the human fish and stay with him or her, incorporating them into the group.

At night, I was most surprised to see in the pitch darkness that the sky was full of stars and that there was a new moon.  Something didn’t look quite right; it was wrong somehow.  Then Patrick, my partner, pointed out what it was: the new moon crescent was at the bottom of the moon, lying along the rounded bottom.  Where I come from in Appledore the new moon crescent is either to the left or the right of the moon.  It did look odd, as if we were on a new planet.

Now I have unfortunately left Lady Elliot Island and am in Brisbane where I am due to give a workshop to the Brisbane potters tomorrow, on Creative Throwing and Intuitive Sculpture.  We shall see what transpires!

Sandy Brown is an internationally renowned ceramicist who lives and works in North Devon. She is the Art Advisor at Resurgence magazine.

Find out more about Sandy Brown

Australia: craft, culture and coral

I am currently in Australia where I have been invited to do a series of presentations, workshops and artist residencies.  I arrived first in Townsville, in the tropics, where there are crocodiles in the creeks and a potter friend we visited, who has tall massive mango trees, was being kept awake at night by huge bats squeaking playfully as they drop unripe mangos onto the tin roof of her bedroom.

They have wonderful plentiful clays in Australia, some of the best in the world. Particularly they have very white clays which are extremely plastic. This is unusual as to achieve whiteness potters have been known to incorporate all sorts of materials into the clay, most famously Josiah Wedgewood who used ground animal bones, hence bone china.  And even in China where it is possible to achieve a wonderful translucent whiteness that comes at the expense of plasticity.  The clay there is short, like short crust pastry, ie crumbly and very difficult to work.

Here in Australia however you can have both superb plasticity in clays which are sensual delights to use on the wheel, as well as a beautiful fired whiteness which takes colour well.

Since I got to know Noel Butler, a dynamic Aboriginal artist who came to Appledore for the Visual Arts Festival two years ago, I have become more interested in Aboriginal people, so I asked my Townsville hosts whether there were any indigenous people there.  I had not seen any so far.  I was told that it was very sad.  There had been several different countries of Aboriginal people here, who each spoke different languages, and who had a history of animosity with each other.

Some time ago they were shipped off to Palm Island, about 30 miles off the coast, and there they remained.  They fought each other, were depressed and often drunk, and it is not surprising.  Australia still has not come to terms with its Aboriginal people, in spite of the fact that Quantas staff wear fabrics printed with an aboriginal artist’s painting.  I know Noel well, I am going to visit him, and it hurts me to think that people like him are virtually imprisoned and devalued in their own land.

Noel is a great campaigner for Aboriginal culture.  He lives Resurgence values.  He runs a centre for delinquent boys and has them live in the bush, showing them how to survive on plants and available food.  I will write more about him when I visit him, and have been planning for some time to write about him for Resurgence magazine.  He also teaches a module on a university training course for Doctors, showing them the healing properties of plants.  He is a truly remarkable man, and has survived a terrible childhood.  It is absolutely shocking how he and his people were treated in the name of civilization by a white government, and I feel shame when I think about it.  And it still goes on.  

Even here, where I am now on the great barrier reef on a coral island which is a green zone, there is a poster advertising a DVD about the coral reef which is called Coral Reef Dreaming.  It seems white Australia is happy to appropriate the art, or what it thinks is the art, of Aboriginal people, while still keeping them down.

I am currently having a break on a coral island, called Lady Elliot Island, which is in a Green Zone.  It is all protected.  We are told on arrival not to walk on any living coral, not to touch any shellfish or living creature on the reef.  I have been snorkelling this morning looking at turtles, manta rays, and beautiful colourful fish. Before I leave this eco-resort I will interview our young guide, who is very knowledgeable about the effects of climate change on the island.  His name is Nick and he has done two degrees in Marine Biology and Marine Science.

Sandy Brown is an internationally renowned ceramicist who lives and works in North Devon. She is the Art Advisor at Resurgence magazine.

Find out more about Sandy Brown

Visual Jazz: Appreciation

The glitterati of Boston and Massachusetts ceramic and art society were there at the opening. In the speeches you would have thought I was as important as Picasso.

The response is full-on and enthusiastic. One collector told me she had bought a piece of mine from my last show here and then found the colours of her house did not work, so she bought a new beach house for the pot and designed the décor around it.

Another collector spent a very long time communing with the pots.  He gazed deep into the vessels, and was stroking them, feeling with his hands where my hands had been in the clay, noting all the thumbprints and fingermarks, and delighting in his visceral connection.

Some people had been following my work for years, and noticed developments and how it is evolving. Considering this is my first solo show in the USA, I wondered how they knew it so well. They said it has been featured in many books here, and over twenty-five years ago I was in a show of British Ceramics in Dallas which people remember. And some had been at a big arts conference, NCECA, three years ago in which I was the International Guest Presenter.

I was truly surprised to find that so many people here know my work well. I had thought that to most of the people at the opening I would be a new artist, but it was certainly not the case.

Lucy introduced me to all these people who seemed like immediate friends. It is a fairly intimate connection for me when people respond to my work so well. I know I am going to like them because they understand the essence of me. (Which is why I have always had a soft spot for Tony Blair as he is on record in a Sunday newspaper holding a piece of mine saying it is one of his favourite things.)  

Red spots were now appearing rapidly.

And then Lucy, myself and some of the guests had dinner in the gallery. It was a lovely gesture and a great way to get to know everyone, to talk, and then in pauses to look up and see the colourful ceramics dancing.

So all of my fears were totally groundless.

Now it is early the next morning and I have been invited to go pilot gig rowing here today with a club in Gloucester, which being America is only ten miles from Manchester and 40 from Weymouth. Bideford is not far either!

It should be a perfect balance to the arty activities in which I am expressing my individuality; in rowing I am in the boat with 6 others and we have to be in perfect harmony otherwise the boat slows. The sun is shining, the weather is warm and lets hope the sea is not too bouncy. I will find out if there are traditional boat builders here too, being kept alive by the resurgence of interest in sea gig rowing as a sport.

Sandy Brown is an internationally renowned ceramicist who lives and works in North Devon. She is the Art Advisor at Resurgence magazine.

Find out more about Sandy Brown http://www.sandybrownarts.com/sandybrownarts.htm

Visual Jazz exhibition takes place at Lacoste Gallery from 16 July to 3 August 2011

http://www.lacostegallery.com/dynamic/artist.asp?artistid=84

Visual Jazz: Communication

As I write this, I must admit to being a little nervous about how the opening will go; part of me dreads being there for fear of not being understood. There will be speeches made by the high-ups of the Boston artworld, and people will want to talk to me about my work and I wont know what to say. My fear is that I will shrivel and mumble and talk gibberish.

Then I tell myself perhaps it wont be that bad; I was anxious before the Harvard day and my fears melted away when I met the people there who said they were honoured to meet me, and that they had admired my work for years.  So maybe it will be OK today, but I am still worried. If Lucy were to telephone and say I am not needed (actually I was told that by one gallery many years ago, that artists just get in the way at openings and invite all their friends, which is partly true I think), I would say “thank you” and go for a walk. But that would be cowardly.

I do this as a way of communicating. I cant sing, I am not much good as a dancer, I have tried to play the piano but struggle, but I can play and improvise and place clay and colour in an original way.  And as it is a way of communicating, then surely I must want to continue the dialogue with those who understand?  “But what if they don’t?” comes the fearful voice.

I will have to trust – just as I trust when I do the work in the first place – that whatever happens will be OK. If I am attached to wanting some sort of particular outcome, then I am just making it hard for myself.  So maybe I can enjoy the opening by not being attached to having to be understood or admired. Yes, I think I can do that, as an observer of the human condition. And I do like my own work myself – I am very pleased indeed with it, so it will be fun to go and see it again and to share a glass of wine with some new friends.

Sandy Brown is an internationally renowned ceramicist who lives and works in North Devon. She is the Art Advisor at Resurgence magazine.

Find out more about Sandy Brown: http://www.sandybrownarts.com/sandybrownarts.htm

Visual Jazz exhibition takes place at Lacoste Gallery from 16 July to 3 August 2011

http://www.lacostegallery.com/dynamic/artist.asp?artistid=84

Visual Jazz: Exploration in Clay

I am so pleased with the title of the show, Visual Jazz. It just came to me in a flash. I have often been aware of an understanding and empathy with saxophonists who say, on hearing back the music they have just played, that they have no idea how they did that. Improvisation is like that, it allows playful experimentation and exploration, drawing on everything we have done before.  The more I look at my work, the more that the title Visual jazz conveys the way I work, in free expression, using clay and colour, and a childlike connection to the moment, without worrying if it is going to work or not, or if it is going be good or not. None of that is relevant at the time.  

In the latest pieces in the show I have incorporated some rich earthy brick clay into the body, and then partially overlaid that with layers of pure white porcelain. I have a box of toys, in which I keep things which will make an interesting texture as I press them into the clay.  Such as a jacaranda seedpod from Trinidad, the square end of a piece of cut wood, bits of curled wire from old electric storage heaters and the sole of my shoe. 

Pressing these textured bits and pieces into the clay is FUN. I don’t plan, I don’t think about balance or structure or form, I actually don’t need to as a need to control gets in the way.  I can safely leave it to my intuition, much as I can leave the editing of Resurgence to Susan and Satish, or the display of my exhibition to Lucy. I, or what I think of as my I-ness, just gets in the way and interferes. 

So I have learned to stay back, and just watch what comes. And interestingly, there is always a structure. There is always a balance; just as there is a balance in a tree, or a rose leaf.  It may not consist of straight lines and formulae, it may be asymmetrical or off-centre, but nonetheless the sense of balance is there in an organic way. We all know this, it is in the core of our being, which is often why we recognise it when we see it in art, even if we don’t know that that is what we are doing.

As the pots dry they shrink, as earth does in a drought, and the porcelain surface crackles and crinkles delightfully geologically. Its whiteness is asking for colours; and they show clearly and fully. So I have titled the pieces using musical terms, such as Riff, Andante Ma Non Troppo, Bose Bouncing and Razzma tazz.

Sandy Brown is an internationally renowned ceramicist who lives and works in North Devon. She is the Art Advisor at Resurgence magazine.

Find out more about Sandy Brown: http://www.sandybrownarts.com/sandybrownarts.htm

Visual Jazz exhibition takes place at Lacoste Gallery from 16 July to 3 August 2011

http://www.lacostegallery.com/dynamic/artist.asp?artistid=84

Visual Jazz: Creating the Exhibition

Before the workshop, I have been resting for a few days in Concord. It is a beautifully preserved town with an English feel despite it being the birth of the revolution. While I have been enjoying walking about the leafy streets admiring the weatherboard houses, huge broadleaves trees and interesting bird sounds, Lucy Lacoste, the gallerist, has been working on the exhibition display. She has a particular ability to call on an intuitive intense focus on each piece, and is creating a vivid strength of environment for each artwork in the show.

She works slowly, very slowly, she has been working on the display for nearly five days, with her tireless indefatigable helper, Linda. Lucy lays out all the work on the floor in what looks like a jumble, and spends time absorbing the form and colour and sense of each piece, so that her creativity can come into play with the exhibition layout. She does not like having artists around while she is doing this, and was visibly relieved when I said I would stay away and leave it to her as she knows the space. I was tired when I got here, so it suited me too!

During the five days she was working on the display she was as focussed and as intense as I am when I am in the studio creating the work; although I dropped in to the gallery a couple of times to see if I could be of any help lifting pieces, Lucy was polite and kind but it was clear her mind was elsewhere. She was thinking about each piece and how it would look in relation to each other piece around it. It is a great art, the art of display and exhibition ‘hanging’, and can only be done quietly and without distractions.    

And now that the display is done and the work on show it is clear that Lucy has done an excellent job. Each piece sings.

She was a potter herself originally, and so understands the medium and the people in it. She has the great respect of all the ceramic artists in the USA and shows the best of them, so I am in very good company. She shows adventurous work, and is not afraid to experiment, to welcome new directions.

Sandy Brown is an internationally renowned ceramicist who lives and works in North Devon. She is the Art Advisor at Resurgence magazine.

Find out more about Sandy Brown: http://www.sandybrownarts.com/sandybrownarts.htm

Visual Jazz exhibition takes place at Lacoste Gallery from 16 July to 3 August 2011

http://www.lacostegallery.com/dynamic/artist.asp?artistid=84

Visual Jazz: Harvard Visiting Artists

The first in a series of blogs by internationally renowned ceramicist Sandy Brown, on the lead up to her exhibition Visual Jazz.

I am in Concord Massachusetts for the opening of my exhibition Visual Jazz at the Lacoste gallery here.  Yesterday I did a workshop and talk as part of the Harvard University Visiting Artists programme, demonstrating being free and fearless with clay and moving ones arms about in a loose relaxed fashion.  The lively acting director of the studio told me when we met that she had been using images of my work for years in her talks to her students.  

The Harvard Ceramic Studio is very interesting because of its open policy – amazingly it is open 24 hours a day for students, many of whom are studying on other university courses here, or are employees of Harvard University, or have regular jobs.  They have great need of the late night opportunities provided. 

It is remarkable in the breadth of its intake; participants in my workshop here ranged from some internationally known ceramic artists to one woman who said it was her first day in the studio. As several of the top ceramic degree courses in the UK are being shut down this model offers ideas for a possible way forward. It is largely self-funding in spite of its connection and support it receives from the University. This gives it an independence and strength.

There are many Ceramic studios in the USA that offer residencies and workshops and I have been invited to do more here in the future, which is very tempting. 

Sandy Brown is an internationally renowned ceramicist who lives and works in North Devon. She is the Art Advisor at Resurgence magazine.

Find out more about Sandy Brown: http://www.sandybrownarts.com/sandybrownarts.htm

Visual Jazz exhibition takes place at Lacoste Gallery from 16 July to 3 August 2011

http://www.lacostegallery.com/dynamic/artist.asp?artistid=84

I Make, Therefore I Am

I worry about the society we find ourselves in today. Many people have become spectators of life rather than participants and as a result, find themselves disconnected and struggling to find a purpose.

While there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution there are, in my opinion, things that can be done to provide us once more with a sense of being, doing, contributing and probably most importantly, with that sense of purpose while we are here and knowledge of leaving our mark for when we’re not; something that speaks of our existence and identity.

Today the media is full to bursting, of programmes and articles dedicated to the tangible achievements of the past, where experts extol the virtues of craftsmen and craftsmanship. They talk about the detail, the design, the skill, the workmanship and the fact that many of these items are still in working use, literally hundreds of years later.

We are fully aware of the significance and importance of those exertions, which I repeat; we celebrate on a regular basis. However, we have forgotten that manual occupation is still one of the best ways to satisfy this primeval need and there is nothing wrong in going to bed tired, maybe even aching a little, knowing that the day has been used to its full advantage and there is something to show at the end of it. We have become obsessed with jumping the gun, to get to the destination without going on the journey, let alone enjoying it.

We have become obsessed with the idea that physical struggle is wrong and bad, so much so that we are desperately trying to eliminate it (in the western world at least) to our cost. What we need to realise is that a certain amount of physical exertion, struggle even, is necessary in every human life. When that is not present an emotional as well as a physical vacuum is created, which as we all know, must be filled.

Are our lives any ‘easier’ today?  I doubt it. We’ve simply replaced physical struggle with mental anxiety. I would argue that a lot of that anxiety occurs because we are not satisfying that innate need to be manually and creatively occupied. Art, Craft and Manual Production satisfy that need on every level.

Using our hands and indeed all our faculties to create things of beauty, use or both, is of immense value. Using the raw materials we find around us, where a battle of wills ensues between maker and material, grappling and tussling with that material, until a truce – a compromise and an understanding is achieved and something beautiful emerges. It is this struggle that helps define us as human beings and we need this affirmation, pretty much on a daily basis, to keep us sane and healthy.

Gillian Montegrande, is founder of Made by Hands of Britain which is dedicated to showcasing the heritage, traditions and contemporary interpretations of British craftsmanship.