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print and words week 2

Posted jane -->on 29th Jun 2018

so when you have strips like this and your tutor says she thinks you should slice them into even narrower strips …

you think for two minutes and then you take the risk ….

and stick words on and fold …

and then the print looks even more like manuscript illumination

and you cut up your poem

and find the words are so much more brilliant isolated on their long narrow pages

like jewels

and you print more in an afternoon of adrenalin

and more ideas are offered

that you need days more to explore

and at home

you tear and fold what you printed

and cut up another poem

that you are in the middle of writing

hoping this process will clarify

its labour-pains

and then

you have two more concertina books a little more resolved

being pressed between boards

to flatten and many thoughts towards more.

print and words week 1

Posted jane -->on 29th Jun 2018

I’ve just taken part in two workshops with Tara Sampey and Jonathan Ward (he leads the Writing Outside courses I’ve been doing at the Cley Wildlife trust visitor centre)

these centred around a walk through fields and a holloway in Edgefield, Jonathan’s home patch.

we collected words and plants

and chatted

sharing a sense of wonder at the small details – overnight rain had collected on these funnel spider webs and turned them into a constellation of shining drops around the black hole of the spiders’ traps

it seems that we have not had rain for weeks and weeks, but there had been some showers (that was about ten days ago)

and the swallows were hawking low over green barley fields

linnets and whitethroats singing in bushy hedgerows

a sad very dead pair of elms loom over a small meadow pasture full of insects

the hedges full of pattern making us greedy pickers beautiful things to print with

back at the hall we were shown how to roll ink onto the gel plates to make monoprints

the mind-bending part is how to make use of the negative image produced by the first print, and the delicately detailed positive which comes after you peel the plant material off the plate

some of the images reminded me of medieval manuscript illuminations

the really exciting part is when you start printing a negative in a different colour over the positive, off-setting

and generally playing about with part of the plate …

so we went home excited, to play with words at home and make some texts which could be combined with the images

a (common) ringlet festival

Posted jane -->on 28th Jun 2018

yesterday morning I decided to run the tick gauntlet and

dive into the long grasses along the bottom of the big field

ending up with boots, socks and turn-ups full of grass seed

luckily there are none of those very dangerous barbed grass seeds that get into dogs’ ears and paws

although inland there is a heatwave, here near the coast we have the benefit of the low cloud and mists

off the North Sea, and of the slight dampness that comes in with the mists, so we are not as thoroughly scorched as other places, although grass that is cut too short looks awfully straw-like at the moment.

in the long grass of the new meadow, set as conservation grassland by Henry Carter a few years ago, there are plenty of wild flowers, like this tufted vetch

and common spotted orchids which are spreading around the dampest parts,

invading from the woodland that used to be a water meadow

there are marsh thistles

a lovely assortment of grasses, with wildlife paths in them

ragged robin

a lot of orchids, and meadow vetch

the general view. there’s also lots of fleabane and hemp agrimony waiting to flower

but the main thing was that this long grass was full of common ringlet butterflies just starting to warm themselves up as the sun gradually came out

no sign yet of the silver-washed fritillaries I saw last year, but they really prefer a lot of sun, and bramble flowers which are mostly just in bud

more orchids

and more ..

a ringlet just coming up out of the grass

and a small skipper on the jack go-to-bed-at-noon clock

there are always lots of those at this sunnier end of the field

then we waded through Cakes lane, which is not so bad at the lower end where George Harcourt cuts it often

but at the top it is head high in bracken, hogweed, grass and docks with the odd bit of bramble. all us walkers are doing our best to trample a trail though it, but it’s quite hard work, and one knows there are ticks lurking! sadly the council have completely stopped cutting it, although it’s a green road that’s not the responsibility of the neighbouring farmers. luckily the Hotblacks usually take pity on us and give it a cut later in the summer.

this morning’s walk took us past Bullfer Grove, where the uncut edge of the bank is host to plenty of insects, including this lovely speckled wood butterfly

in my garden there’s a bit of a shortage of insects, despite the wildflower meadow effect. I did find this beautiful brown carder bee on the knapweed flowers this morning. it (she?) is a little old and faded compared to the bee identification pictures at friends of the earth’s website

accompanied by a flower beetle – one of those beautiful shiny green creatures. I would expect to be seeing more butterflies – small copper, comma, red admiral, peacock, small tortoiseshell in my garden, but perhaps the drought or the cold May weather is making them later. we saw a painted lady two weeks ago, and the odd red admiral in the lanes, but only two gatekeepers and a ringlet or two in my garden yesterday.

at last, back to the kiln

Posted jane -->on 24th Jun 2018

I have had nine big pots sitting unfired in my workshop for nine months, waiting for me to pluck up the courage and energy to fire the kiln. this might sound strange, but having an insulated box at 1280C with gas pouring into it is pretty terrifying if you think about it. and the door is only bricks with no cement. also my knees were quite bad, and kneeling to pack it, and to clean the burners out, take them off and re-bolt them in, was not a nice prospect. but now my knees are so much better, and the evenings and early mornings are light, I finally decided it was a “go”.

I had it reducing from 950C with a big red flame coming out of the flue (reduced oxygen in the kiln which pulls all the impurities to the surface of the pots and makes them much more interesting. then the gas that has not burnt in the kiln catches fire as it comes out into the air and makes the flame)

it takes about 18 hours to get up to temperature this way – slow is best, it evens things out.

and here are my cones afterwards, yes, 11 is over, which means the pots had the equivalent in heat work of about 1300C.

when I opened the kiln it was at about 90C which may have been too soon as there was an ominous cracking sound, and indeed the big one behind the one at the front was very thoroughly cracked

but maybe it would have been cracked at the bottom anyway.

otherwise everything okay, and some stunners, especially this one with the looping combed decoration.

it was not a blue firing, like some in the past – I’d not got the chun glaze on thickly enough for that – except on this

where the double dip had made it thick and it was in a hotter part of the kiln. despite the 18 hours and cone 11 over, it probably was not quite hot enough in most places.

but I am happy with the way the black oxide wash has come through the slip and shows under the glaze.

this one is the same wash, slip and glaze but because I put the slip and the glaze on in the same working day, the pot didn’t have time to dry out and did not absorb much glaze. however the iron oxide wash has done some great things with this lovely rust speckle over black areas.

I had a few small pots and they all came out well

also this porcelain sculpture where the glaze and slip almost peeled off, but didn’t and is firmly attached, like leaves or petals

these two little porcelain bottles are re-fires, with a cobalt mix glaze over the top of the already fired barium glaze – I particularly like the one with the ink black, where the glaze was really thick.

this large bottle is quite dramatic

with the heavy crawling and the oxide wash

here’s a full photo of the porcelain sculpture

and another of the small ones, which is currently on its way to Delaware in the US.

a full photo of my favourite, which is in the Bircham gallery with the two above the Delaware bottle,

and a few others, including this

a shino jar which has become much more beautiful because I used it as the core of a bundle when eco-printing with leaves, and the eucalyptus leaves have stained it, and even left a couple of leaf prints on it.

I still have a kiln’s worth of pots to glaze and fire – in a couple of weeks perhaps.