BLOGGING ON BORROWED TIME

Things are getting so tight that even blog time is now on a quota so I hope I finish this before my 10 minutes is up.

I had my print elective last week.  It was brilliant.  I didn't even miss cups of tea.  Here are some of the results:-

Ceramics has some stiff competition!

Google Art Project

Just wanted to let you know about Google's newest offering which is a virtual tour of some of the world's finest art galleries using their street view technology.


You can 'walk' around the museums and galleries and look at close ups of the works themselves.  Some paintings are in gigapixels and you can zoom in and even see the individual brushstrokes. 


The galleries featured include MoMa, New York, the National Gallery in London and the Uffizi in Florence.  Google say that it's been developed to stimulate people into visiting the real thing and also offer access to this art to people in developing countries that might never see the originals.




I think it's a great idea and now I'm off to the Hermitage in Moscow - it's one museum I've always wanted to visit.


The website is http://www.googleartproject.com/

The sugar dummy

It came out green and rather soft and even deformed taking it out of the mould.  I will have to perfect my toffee recipe before I try this again.  It eventually melted into a sad green lump.

Berlin Interlude - compare and contrast

In a past life, when I was a working woman, the New Year meant an end to the Christmas lull.  By 8.30 am on January 2nd I would be found in a factory with 40 machines and 95 decibels, ear defenders clamped to my ears, pressing green buttons and hoping that none of the operators was suffering from an excess of Christmas spirit.


This year I was still in bed at 8.30 am and and not even thinking of doing anything until January 12th when I had my assessment.  And after that I went to Berlin for 5 days.  Here are the photographs:-

Picasso

Picasso

Picasso

Berlinische Galerie

Extremely spooky installation of life size figures with grilles in their faces

Funky dancing skeleton from the Neues Museum

Berliner Dom with TV tower in background

Brandenburg Gate

Berlin has the most amazing and diverse street art

Jenny Beavan

Artist unknown but made from paper



What I liked most about Berlin was the availability of everything.  Art, nightlife, music, shopping, it was all there.  It wasn't a pretty city and didn't even feel like a capital city - for inspiration though it was brilliant.

Gillian Lowndes

I have always adored the work of Gillian Lowndes.  She died this year at the age of 74 and broke new ground in ceramics.  I love the dusty, textured look of her pieces that look as if they've been through a fire or buried for years and then dug up.  They have absolutely no function but look as if they might have had at one time.

There is a dearth of images on the net of her work but visit www.anthonyshawcollection.org for lots more small sized images of her amazing pieces.

And now the end is near ...

On Friday I set up my studio space for the assessment after Christmas.  It looks rather minimal but I'm hoping the work will speak for itself - here are a few photographs:-

I've a couple more sockets to make and of course the sugar dummies/insulators and that's about it.  Over the holidays I'll be working on my sketchbook and notebook and eating chocolates and staying close to the fire.

Fingers crossed for January!

Brown ...

Remember my nice yellow ceramic piece?  It fired brown.  Brown seems to be my default setting for ceramics.  And the colour wasn't even fixed, it rubbed off on anything it touched.

So I rubbed off all the excess oxide and then tried to improve the appearance with yellow acrylic paint applied using fingers.  The best that can be said is it looks industrial but it's a far cry from the sculpural, polished look I was hoping for:-

Oh well, you can't win them all!