Jane Wheeler's Blog sheds

Ty Newydd again

Posted jane -->on 13th Aug 2019

Back to Ty Newydd, the National Writing Centre of Wales for a nature writing course with Mark Cocker and Kathleen Jamie (with Horatio Clare as the guest writer/reader) last week. when I was there in the autumn it was late October and quite a different feel to everything. and this was such a different course to the rather alternative storytelling retreat with Hugh Lupton and Eric Madden.

last week it was warm and we had a lot of sun

the lavender in flower and filled with bees – honey, and several different bumblebees

I think this is a carder bee

and this is a white-tailed bumble. One of our morning workshops with Mark had us looking hard at the bees for at least fifteen minutes to write something really concentrated about them.

there were also dragonflies – this is a dead one found in the house

and a few moths. this rosy footman was stranded in the house overnight

having entered and become confused by the glass the night before. there are so many moths with wonderful names; it was great to have someone (Mark) who is an expert on insects to share information.

this time I managed a walk to the beach almost every morning – the circular walk is just over two miles, taking in small paths

through tree-edged fields of grass

under the single railway line

past brambles – ripe blackberries one morning for breakfast –

bracken, grazing cows

a deliciously tarry hut

down to where the river Dwyfor comes out into Cardigan Bay

and along the coastal path

beside burling water (burly water described by Norman MacCaig) that in spate into a high tide must be quite a sight –

but the tide was out or going out in the mornings last week – and one morning a heron flapped across low to the little waves

there’s always a special light in the mornings

and back up to the house, David Lloyd George’s last home

a lawn full of self-heal, and the semi-circular porch and window echoed by lines of flat pebbles set on end raying out in another semicircle before the grass starts

the house is surrounded by mature trees, but this walnut is my favourite, its branch across the stone steps down to the kitchen and utility part of the house.

I omitted to take photos of the wood and the river where we spent one morning making notes, leaving me with a few close-up portraits of Himalayan balsam flowers – extraordinary sexy glutinous objects.

full of thoughts about my own writing and about the very good insights into the poems we worked on, from the whole group of writers, and from Kathleen Jamie. I drove home in a gale, shreds of leaves flying across the road. these damsons blown early off the tree in my garden went into a cake. the next lot will be gin.

those blues seem to have got under my skin

yesterday I tackled a large oil painting (48 x 48 inches) which has been waiting for me to know what to do to it. the large emulsion brush turned out to be the key.

it’s good to have a break from something like painting. doors open, just like that!

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open studio starts tomorrow

Posted jane -->on 26th May 2017

I’m waiting for the evening to set up my signs – I have a mallet, but the ground is a bit hard, I just tried one ..

this morning’s early walk brought one of the most magical things that’s ever happened to me – two hares on the lane above Bullfer Grove ran towards me instead of away.

I think they were intrigued by the beep of the video button on my iphone, and my leaf contact print dress blended in in the dappled shade of the hedge – their sight is not thought to be very good. so here is my Hare poem (in the Rialto) come to life!

they hovered and looked and sniffed and dithered for about five minutes,

in the end deciding to bound away back to the field.

earlier this week I walked down Cakes lane – got soaking wet feet and trouser legs, the rain has made the grass, cow parsley, docks, hogweed and the odd nettle, shoot up.

everything in full leaf, even the ash trees have decided it’s worth the risk.

Bullfer Grove is a better bet for dry feet on an early walk

I recorded a thrush singing in Cakes yesterday morning

it sounds quite nightingale-like at times

the hedgerows are as pretty as gardens.

I’m filling mine up with pots for Open Studios.

which has liberated the shed, I even cleaned out all the spiders and dead flies –

the shelves are still full

it’s so sad that some pots have been hanging about in there for ten years

so I am open to offers

and I think they look much better out in the garden than crowded on the floor of the shed.

two for tea

and tea for two

some wood-fired

some last year’s experiments

some just old friends.

some that have very definitely been overlooked, up on a high shelf. they need to be on their own.

the office has been de-officed and cleaned up, and will be my painting studio after this.

these are all from the last seven or eight months

the abstracts!

the evolution of the landscapes

from winter

and autumn to spring.

I do hope I see a few people! then tomorrow afternoon Bimba is arriving. she will deserve a whole blog to herself

for the time being, this was taken in Spain. a slight lens distortion making her nose even longer than it really is.

It’s just been pointed out to me that I haven’t given the address of this event (which is on for 3 consecutive weekends by the way including this bank holiday Monday). I’m in the Norwich and Norfolk Open Studios catalogue, number 103. I am at The Granary, Sharrington Road, Bale, Norfolk, NR21 0QY

for hare afficionados, here is Cowper’s account of his tame hares – link

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archaeology

Posted jane -->on 21st May 2017

I’m clearing the old office out, to make it into a summer studio and a gallery for Open Studios, which starts next weekend (27th May). I’m opening studio and garden for 3 days the first weekend, as it’s a bank holiday Monday, then the next two weekend just Saturday and Sunday. I had the old photocopier removed for recycling (expensive!) and amongst the old paper carrier bags and wrapping paper tucked behind it was a watercolour I painted in 2001.

I painted a series, and when I looked in the plan chest I found five more, two red, and two blue the same size, and bigger square red one. I remember enjoying how the pure colours behaved on the paper, sometimes drowning in water, sometimes very intense, and planning the bare paper areas. lovely paper to paint on too.

four are mounted, the first red one has gone to the framers. it is going to be very expensive, using clearglass because it makes such a difference to the colour.

then I found something much older. I went to Norwich Art School for summer school in 1985 and got very involved in the print department, especially etching. they had a fantastic etching studio, with a very big press, and I was liberated by two weeks of life-drawing before I started on these.

the three make a triptych. obviously Picasso’s Vollard Suite was a big influence too, but previous to this I had made a huge painting on a roll of brown paper of human figures with animal heads, more influenced by Assyrian bas-relief.

these three coloured etchings are one-offs, artist’s proofs, but I also have an edition of 25 in black.

I have to mention a particularly pleasurable outing, in The Rialto, one of the most respected poetry magazines. This is the cover, which is lovely; they always have great covers. I have FOUR pages and a mention on the back! wholly amazing and wonderful. I would encourage anyone interested in poetry to buy the magazine, and subscribe, not because I want you to read my work especially, although of course that would be very nice, but because it is a wonderful and beautiful publication, and the Arts Council’s support depends on there being more subscriptions and sales.

meanwhile I’m still walking solo, although in six days that will no longer be the case. as she will be on the lead you won’t see Bimba trotting ahead like Tilda. we shall see how her recall and attachment to me progresses, but when a dog goes off after something it’s seen, one’s heart is in one’s mouth, and I am less prepared to take the risk this time. This photo interestingly echoes the stormy etchings above.

I caught a few drops that time, but this cloud looked like soaking me for most of the walk.

lastly, a rare find in the churchyard

meadow saxifrage

rare because there are so few unsprayed meadows with ancient turf left

after a very dry spring we have had rain at last and there are plenty of puddles reflecting the sky!

even so the ash trees are only just coming out.

a weeks ago the oaks had very young leaves still but now they are well covered

in my garden the buttercups are replacing the cowslips

for Open Studios most of the pots for sale will be in the garden. I hope to see plenty of people. Bimba is arriving on the first afternoon, which will be interesting – she is an easy dog, sweet and affectionate, so although I will have to keep her on a lead while I have the gates open for visitors, it will be good to have her meeting lots of humans.

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how I got started with ceramics

Posted jane -->on 16th Jan 2016

At my school there was no 3D art, so the first time I touched clay was at Great Yarmouth art college on their foundation course, with Barbara Balls. Having left school wanting to write and illustrate historical novels I made a complete about-turn and spent the next three years studying ceramics at Bath Academy of Art, or Corsham, as it was mostly known then.

an early piece, made in 2006

Clay touched off some deeper practical need, that of making things in a medium which is so receptive and versatile, it can use all of the skills you might have learnt in other media or disciplines – drawing, sculpture, design, printmaking, painting, chemistry, engineering, geology – and combine them, using your intuition, into your own burgeoning ceramic practice. And it is a medium which keeps you humble, there are always new and old things to learn, mistakes to make, fruitful and not so much!

2007, I’m getting some good results with this shino

Although, with huge regret, I was not able to continue with ceramics as a career, what I had learnt allowed me to make a living designing knitwear for forty odd years, and doing this also meant that I could pursue other interests and threads, (such as painting), but in my fifties I came back to ceramics, largely through my friendship with Stephen Parry whom I met when I returned to Norfolk in 2000.

2008, the shino again.

Doing a raku workshop with Stephen opened my eyes to the possibility of building a gas kiln for stoneware, and having a workshop in the ramshackle old pig sheds in my garden, and with his help I built a small gas kiln which I still use. He continues to be a generous help and I find potters in general open and unstinting in their advice and willingness to share. It is a wonderful world to be part of.

2009 extreme slab-building and my dry (poisonous) barium glaze

Returning to pottery I had very little idea of what had been going on in the world of ceramics since I was at college, but I had the resources of a life spent working in the field of textiles, and fine art, and the experience of selling my work abroad, travelling to fashion fairs, meeting designers from all over the world, and this has stood me in good stead, both in terms of influences and concepts and being able to expose my pots to different markets.

2009, experimenting with porcelain layers over grogged stoneware

However making pots again has enabled me to find my deepest roots here in Norfolk, in terms of the living landscape and its archaeology. This has become very important to all the things I do, including photography and writing.

2007, a large piece which lives in a collection in Japan

I would say that working with clay again has changed my life and my art/design practice radically, from the bottom up; it has not been a superficial application of design to another medium.

2014, experimenting with layers of oxide and slip under the pale chun glaze. this is in the same collection in Japan

The nitty gritty of attempting to find my own way of making, shaping, my own shapes, surfaces, combinations of clays, glaze and decoration, obstinately outside the dictates of functional ware, and throwing, though influenced by, and referring to these forms, informs what I do and make.

2014, the chun glaze can produce these lovely optical blues

I have settled on this hand built bottle shape in many sizes and proportions

2015, winged clematis imprint pearly grey chun bottle

sometimes adding extra bits, and recently I have got more interested in drawing and painting again,

2015, pearly rain clematis impressed bottle

so the pots are taking on a more painterly aspect. This year will see me slowing down on the knitwear front and I hope, finding more outlets for, and making more, pots.

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home

Posted jane -->on 16th Dec 2015

and at home there has been some sunshine in spite of the generally damp mild and grey late November/early December

early walks allow for sky appreciation

as well as catching up with a backlog of work, sending knitwear orders off in time for Christmas in the shops in Japan, Germany, Italy ….

there were still leaves on the trees

to shine in the sun’s backlight

hedgerows green

winter wheat and autumn barley coming through

but bare twigs make better patterns

one pauses to admire the trees

especially where there are people in them … my young friend Ben Carter, expert tree surgeon, spectacular and graceful in his element.

at last back in the shed making pots

though getting clay to dry enough

just to roll out without sticking to everything

never mind to stand up

has made for several days without being able to get on. however the mild weather means no extra heating is needed, all to the good.

then there has been the much anticipated publication of my calligramme poem Lunan’s Guardian in the Rialto. so exciting!

you can find the background to the writing of this in a post almost a year ago Lunan.

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the last journey south part one – Sens

Posted jane -->on 1st Dec 2015

this trip south to stay for the last time in my house in Spain involved more exploration of France than usual. my first

stop was to deliver pots to my dear friend Philippe Model, for his new shop Philippe Model Maison in the rue Condorcét in Paris, opening soon.

he lives in Sens, south of Paris, in his family home, a seventeenth century farmhouse with four hectares of

river

avenues

trees

ex-tanning factory

fascination

hat-making workshops (he is a famous hat designer)

theatrical sets (he does that too)

secret places

hoards

shambolics

objets/things

hidden floors

the king of the labyrinth

photo-scenic corners

and a delicious house

with its ancient high wood-lined vaulted ceilings and attics

and courtyards

after this adventure I drove all the way across France to the south west and over into Spain

where we stayed in a very nice hotel that allows dogs and doesn’t even charge extra

in the beautiful city of Vitoria-Gasteiz. from there a six hour drive to the finca.

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march is almost over

Posted jane -->on 23rd Mar 2015

most remarkable thing this month; the eclipse/new moon/equinox triangle.

I stood in my garden and I could see the eclipse – through cloud, so I didn’t need the unobtainable glasses. unfortunately the iphone I use as a camera could only record a very very white blob instead of the elegant crescent that was visible. at times the cloud got too thin, and I used a couple of sheets of paper with a pinhole, but a very small upside down image was pretty disappointing, compared with the cloud-veiled eclipse.

spring has been very cautious, with cold winds and a frost at night from time to time. the classic spring flowers are all out

hellebores, primroses, violets in Clip street, the japonica,

blackthorn, though the remaining bush in my garden which is covered in flower buds is in the shade, so it comes out later.

I am back in my shed too – a bisc firing last week cooked all but 2 of winter’s production.

today I’ve been washing some with iron oxide,

preparatory to slipping and glazing them, and there will be some glaze tests as well.

next I’m concentrating on bowls, mostly small

with little stem-type feet

and maybe some spoons

whilst birds and trees

and woods

get on with the spring business

secretly

but not so quietly in the case of the feathered sort

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red clay, madder, cochineal

Posted jane -->on 22nd Feb 2015

it’s been a couple of weeks since I posted pictures of snow and frost, but already it feels like spring is coming, as the days get longer. my early walks are no longer begun before the sun is above the horizon.

we go from frosty morning to rainy, windy night from day to day

crocuses are flowering in my garden, but I had to pull up mats of half dead grass and dead nettles to find them. the snow drops that I laboured so hard to put in are crowding around the edges, some clumps need splitting.

out in the fields birds are singing every morning, a blackbird carolling across the other side, several song thrushes improvising from the tops of the tallest trees in the woods

I have been making pots in my shed, the red clay has a warm glow, but I did have to light the woodstove.

red is a preoccupation; I tried madder dye (from the roots of rubia tinctoria) before christmas with tannin and citric acid, but now I am trying a different method, using symplocos, a wild rainforest plant from Indonesia, as a mordant. this works in the same way as alum, the traditional western mordant which is extracted from bauxite, but it is easier to use, and the use of it supports Indonesian communities and rainforests. you simmer silk or wool in a bath of rainwater and symplocos for half an hour, rinse, and then you can put straight into the pot with any of the usual plant dyes.

I sampled various pre-mordanted silks and wools with cochineal – not a plant, but the crushed bodies of an insect rather like greenfly that lives on central and south American cacti.

and then with madder. such a clear red! the lighter ones are the silks, and silk/merino jersey, the darker one at the top is wool crepe which always takes deeply saturated colour, and at the bottom some silk noil (wild silk) which had already been in a holm oak/eucalyptus/iron water dyebath.

I have two dresses which have been tied and dyed in the holm oak mix ready for further dyeing with symplocos/madder or cochineal – or indeed the logwood I have ordered (purples).

or perhaps in this case leaving as it is ….

and some tests in the pot to see if this madder dyed length of silk, ready tied, would lose its beautiful vibrant red if boiled up in the holm oak, as madder is quite heat sensitive. if it would, I’ll over-dye with indigo.

this natural orange red happens when the old bracken gets soaked by rain, until in the end it gets darker and darker to purple blacks. nature has the best colours in the end.

I’ve also been experimenting with wrapping up fabrics together so that one bleeds its colour inside the bundle and prints onto the other fabric. I have no idea what this kimono fabric is dyed with – it’s been laboriously shibori-dyed in a beautiful deep rust red. it releases a pure red onto the other fabric -silk or wool, both are in the dress – for a dissolved, soft look

adding touches of colour to the plant dye

pots waiting to be made

walks waiting to inspire

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hot work

Posted jane -->on 25th Jul 2014

last week I brought back ten bags of clay from Bath Potters, which had to go through the pugmill to make a tough grogged mix for handbuilding, with a good spottiness that isn’t too even. this is hard, heavy work and my hands and wrists do not enjoy it. added to which even the shed verandah is warm, and the workshop where the resulting mix has to be knocked up into blocks is about 35C.

the trusty pugmill has to be taken apart and cleaned out first, as I don’t use it often enough to keep the clay left in it soft, despite plastic bags at entrance and exit.

the convenience of standardised clay sold in bags is enormous, but they are heavy bags (12.5K) and of course, mixing up a clay to use that is not standardised makes for better pots.

and there is a bucket or two of reclaim clay to put in with the mix as well, stiffer than you’d think despite topping up with water at regular intervals. there’s always a bit of organic matter in there too. some of that clay must have been in the bucket for at least a year.

so, the pugmill makes a horrible racket, doesn’t have an on and off switch, nor a guard on the feeder hopper –

due caution has to be observed with that greedy maw. the operative gets basically pretty much covered in clay, especially when dealing with the reclaim bucket. sand and/or grog (small particles of already fired fireclay to brace up the pot bodies and make them behave better when fired) has to be added as well. gritty hands get sore on the lever that pushes the hopper plate down.

the reward – fifteen big blocks of clay from which to make some more big bottles which I’ll glaze with the suedey rusty matt ash glaze.

afterwards, a hose down, and garden watering

the garden is full of butterflies, they come for the honey-scented buddleias. but at night, the honeysuckle brings moths

the heavy scented star-gazer lily needs care and attention to keep off the lily beetles – worth it when it comes into flower.

these tiger lilies seem to be immune – but they have no scent

my goodness they are stunning …

echinaceas – not doing so well this year –

the little rose climbing to new heights since it was released from its pot ..

and those good old reliable dahlias, taking up half the flowerbed.

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one firing done, another on the way

Posted jane -->on 10th Jun 2014

in summer the garden frames my day; early mornings, whether rolling out clay or lighting the kiln, are begun by a short walk up the path to the shed, past waist-high oxeye daisies, overhanging pink dog roses, red campion and all the flowering grasses.

the last firing was a bit sticky, although I lit the kiln at 5 am it stuck in the eleven hundreds all afternoon. but a slow firing means the temperature doesn’t have to get so high to melt the glazes – potters call this “heatwork” – and in fact I ended up turning it off perhaps 20 minutes later than the firing before, although it was lit an hour earlier. today’s firing is going faster, as I dropped the burners down a little, giving them more air to burn. I think the wind helps too.

the results were good – a whole lot of blue-ish chun, two pieces with the old “chalk beach” barium carbonate glaze, suitable for the hot spot near the flue. a refire which did well, but some other pieces which need refiring and they are mostly in the kiln again today.

I kept this one out, because I want to see what happens to the others when refired in higher parts of the kiln

front left bottom is a pretty dead area – usually I put a tall pot and the props which support the cones there.

this was next to the flue and I’m pleased with the result, though there could have been more early reduction to make the clay pop through the glaze more. still, the purity of it is rather pleasing.

there were five of the bottles I made in march and April in here – I have nineteen more to fire. the two that were higher in the kiln came out the most blue.

I got braver and fired this incense burner with its lid on (I have been firing them separately) with a perfect result. no sticking, and no grinding to be done because one part has warped and won’t fit.

the bowl came out well, though the interior is still frozen lace – all crawled and rolled – not functional. I have only made one bowl which is functional and acceptable so far, out of all these.

the only one with bidori (melted droplets of glaze) was this, which was in a fairly hot place near the flame on the top shelf at the back. it’s great – the combination of the stronger blue, the peeling back in a patterns and the altogether five bidoris makes it special.

more of this in today’s firing – I have seven large bottles, and quite a few smaller ones in there.

I’ll be at Hatfield (Art in Clay) in just under four weeks, and I want a good selection; also Padstow Fine Art need more stock.

I love David Pearce’s landscapes and interiors – and the pots go really well with them.

meanwhile, another visit to the kiln to check the cones, 1222C and cone 8 going, cone 9 thinking about it.

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