Aimee McLeod in Aberystwyth

by Aimee McLeod

International Ceramics Festival, Aberystwyth, Wales, 1-3 July 2011.

Kate Malone

Thanks to the inaugural NZSP scholarship scheme I attended this festival.  A fuller article on my impressions will be in the next Ceramics Quarterly, but in this article I will focus on the numerous demonstrators.  While each of them had a workstation somewhere on the campus, which allowed for more personal contact, the main demonstrations were held in the Great Hall, with 2 potters featured simultaneously for 45 minute slots.

Kate Malone (UK/France) was first up on Saturday morning.  I am fascinated by her enormous organic pieces, but she did not deliver her promise of “giving all her secrets away”.  The only secret I glimpsed was that she works very slowly and gets her apprentices to press mould all the pieces for her.  All she did was put one coil on a press moulded half pumpkin and I never found out how she joins all her pieces or manages to get them through a firing.

On stage at the same time, Ruthanne Tudball (UK), a no-apologies “real” potter and soda firer, showed an interesting way to make the spout on a jug and also managed to make a teapot with a whole new way of putting on a spout: making it wide at the pouring end, joining it to the body, then poking the holes and narrowing the spout.  All the while she was talking about her philosophy and firing methods.  There was no interchange between her and Kate at all.

Ruthanne Tudball

Michael Eden (UK) was paired up with Korean master Hyang Jong Oh and this was rather a misfit.  Though Michael’s exploration of digital technology as applied to ceramics – virtual experiences and 3D printing of digitally designed pots – was an interesting subject in itself, he needed to be in a lecture room on his own, with his laptop screen displayed at all times. It felt like the Korean did not know how to deal with this and just made a few quick plates one-handed on his special kick wheel, then proceeded to make little wacky figures.

Mr Oh’s output over the few days however was phenomenal, several large jars, as well as a huge coiled pot.  His way of drying the inside of the pot was to have a charcoal brazier hanging inside it.  At a later session, Oh was paired up with Dylan Bowen (UK), and they really sparked together.  The whole scaffolding for the large vessel had to be moved into the hall.  In this case “just adding one coil” was not a simple task.  His coil was formed by cutting a bag of clay into three lengthwise and banging them together on the floor and rolling till a longer coil was formed. His two assistants helped him hold it while he joined it to the pot.

Mike Eden - digitally printed pot

I probably enjoyed watching Dylan the most.  Having to find his own style to distinguish himself from his well-known father Clive, he was very humble and very casual in his approach to clay.  His methods of throwing, assembling and putting slip on his work were very immediate and loose.  Picking up a freshly thrown platter, he would slump it on a ring of scrunched newspaper.  He invited Oh to decorate one of his platters and then he got to squirt slip on Oh's monstrous jar.  They seemed to have fun together.

Other demonstrators included Ponimin M Hum (Indonesia), whose excitable enthusiasm and speedy building of imaginary figures based on tradition and his total disregard for his own safety, throwing straw into the flue of the loose brick kiln, was disarming.  His “beautiful woman” made on stage, turned into an elephant god, to the audience’s delight.

Michael Hewitt (USA), a functional ware wood firing potter, built a very tall pot on the wheel, throwing on coils and using a gas torch. to firm up the clay as he went.

Hyang Jong Oh	Hyang Jong Oh

Emma Rodgers (UK) makes anatomically correct, but sketchy and corpse-like figures and animals based on her visits to vets during their operations and dissections.  Clever, but altogether too creepy!

Hyang Jong Oh

Lowri Davies (Wales) slip casts bone china applying decals of her own paintings and drawings, inspired by her grandmother's (Welsh!) dresser full of fine china and tacky “souvenirs from Brighton”.  She aims to present these with a Welsh flavour and re-invent some Wedgwood decorations as a testament to her time in Stoke-on-Trent.

Robert Cooper (UK) built up boxes from slabs patterned with textures, prints, decals and slips as well as left-over glazes.  His way of working held a certain fascination, but not the pretension that went with it.

Elke Sada (Germany) uses the upside-down approach, painting engobes onto plaster, covering with slip and building pots out of the slabs created this way.  Her method was very similar to that demonstrated by Jo Howard at “Fusion” in Dunedin.  Her work was fresh and I liked it a lot.

The method used by Shigemasa Higashida (Japan) was unlike any other I have seen.  Making a huge thick slab from a bag or two of clay, he proceeded (with a couple of helpers holding the trestle table down) to push the clay around with the heel of his hand, more or less carving into the slab with his bare hands or with a chunk of wood, producing a very sculptural platter.  He uses a number of Oribe glazes, which he layers up to 3cm thick to get the right visual depth to his glazed pieces.  Yum!  The use of interpreters can be very stultifying, but the woman translating for Higashida was excellent.

All in all it was an eclectic mix, with some great highlights, with aspects to appeal to everyone in the audience, and with a tip or two to take home.

Aimée McLeod