The Chesterfield Arts Centre

The first single step in this journey of a thousand miles seems to be taken: the CAAF group are meeting with the Feasibility Study consultant. They are showing him the results of a social consultation that happened last month at Chesterfield Market Festival. We have our photo with the Lord Mayor!


We also have absolutely wonderful support from the public, as seen in their comments, made with humour, earnest interest, hopefulness and encouragement.

We feel that the many hours of dawn meetings at Shirley's house, were well worth the trouble. See here:

And of course Shirley's fire-red locks were captured in the course of the day for all to admire:

With Half term raging, parents and children took to the bustling market lanes of the town centre and some brave souls took their crayons and paper and created images of the old buildings, their vision of the old town, of what they know and love, and of what they would like to see.

There were prizes and there were good laughs! But above all, there was consensus: WE WANT AN ARTS CENTRE FOR CHESTERFIELD. Marvellous!

Beauty and Ugliness

In making these pot women, I stray into the notion of joining the clay and bringing to life the feelings of people I have met only in abstraction. How can I do that?! It seems too arrogant and presumptuous. And of course it is.

What I do, in fact, is give form to part of me that I feel the need to negotiate with. I need to bring out the abandoned person, fashion its likeness, sustain its collapsing tendency, allow it to retain precariousness and flaw: just make it all bearable before it can be fired and fixed satisfactorily. So, no, this is not a strangely vulnerable, barely human form. This is not an emigrant with a small baby having to roam and desintegrate in a careless and violent society. This is who it is: a shard of me.

A lump of clay is, unlike the bright white page, a thing without dignity, packaged in a red or buff plastic bag. It is not hard to gouge lumps out of it, to knead it, to compress it, to attack it with fury or to coax it softly into shape. The only sentiment it will not brook is disregard and negligence. If left, it will become resentfully brittle or it will slump discouraged. So, staying together, the form evolves with thought and becomes.


Nevertheless, the risks are immense. All that time, all that planning, all that sketching, all those materials for what? One has to be prepared to end up with a piece that has all the ugliness of one's fears, all the split badness of schyzoid dread and no resolution of integrated beauty; it is not for me shameful that the clay refuses to obbey my command, nor that I fail to pursue it until it does. The shame is that I fail to press myself beyond the ordinary level of awareness and discover that scary cavern within and there delve for acceptance of my ugly self and my beautiful self. When Beauty falls in love with the Beast, there is success, there is glory.


The artist "who needs to control [the work] completely will produce an over-refined, stifled and lifeless work that has been allowed no independent intrinsic vitality and life of its own." Instead, I should learn to "develop a genuine and sensitive dialogue witht he artwork as an independent object." - so says S.J. Newton in Painting, Psychoanalysis and Spirituality.


Furthermore, says he, the art work should expose the entire creative process in its dynamic, it should have the mark of the hand that dealt with it, should have traces of incompletion, so that the further dialogue of the piece with the viewer can continue. The artist leaves the door open for others to share in and relate to the work.


No, I genuinely do not worry about my incompetence as a potter. That is, like the common cold, an inevitable nuisance not to be avoided but to be cured in time. I worry about resisting ugliness and dictating what beauty looks like; I worry that I will not be able to remember that it is a symbol I want to produce and not a statement.


I write this because I want to remember. Mostly, in the light of day, out there in the dialogue with each significant other, I forget so easily this quiet flame that burns while I work but flickers when I don't. The question I ask myself is, where lies my road in life? Is it in the clay? Is it in the counselling? Is it with the nurturing family? Am I trying to do too much? Am I living too much inside my own head?


Yes, Bernard, why am I so serious? Because my life is very serious business to me: I remember very well feeling as a child that nobody else seemed to think so! So I've always been this way...

The Return and Rebirth of Madame Seuss

She is an old friend. She has meaning rooted deep in my soul and it is a great pity that upon her latest firing she met with a great obstacle to fulfilling her potential: her feet distorted and she can no longer stand. She has lingered prone on the sidelines, a hopeless image of restless abandon. Things have now changed, at least in theory...

Propped up, she awaits eagerly developments to come. Action is afoot and planning is hotting up, thanks to Hanne Westergaard, a much admired potter in Sheffield who knows a thing or two about moulds...

Cheerfulness is a triumphant bonus to life. It lifts the clouds and lets in the vitamin of hopefulness. Even if dashed later, the moment has been saved in a frame of golden optimism and can be glanced, in passing and savoured.

I am cheerful and hopeful about moulds. I shall work on remaking Mme. Seuss with feet square on a plynth. How magnificent she will be, poised in inscrutable superiority atop a stony outcrop, a grassy knoll or even a soap box.

I met Mme Seuss for the first time through a relative of hers, a warrior of great spirit, striding through the streets of a devastated city under enemy bombardment, in one of Edward's ellustrated drawn strips. This heroic general, a leader of men, is nothing to me but had to have a profoundly influential relative, a female, whose wisdom and fortitude gave him his swagger and self-confidence. I found her emerging from a billowing porcelain dream.

Having lost her footing in the infernal heat of vitrification, Mme. Seuss is about to become once again the towering figure whe was meant to be from creation. She will emerge, re-cast but unbowed and will once again dominate the landscape of significant women, augmented by new technique and reinvigorated by new adornment. Good news, eh!?

Lighten up Already!

"In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river, it was always hungry. In that land of beginnings, spirits mingled with the unborn." (Ben Okri, The Famished Road)

Freedom, I think, extends in all directions. I look beyond the incredible and the unknown, and there it is. Through barriers and prohibitions, taboos and dangerous frontiers. It is a wild and dangerous space out there. I imagine exhilaration and baulk. I suffer for it. I stake my fiercest claim to the walls of prisons in the mind.

What is the difference between me, you and the circumstance? Can I see it? I hear what I want to hear; I see what I want to see. Irrespective. Feels hot just to think of it.

It is hard to have the courage of the open sky, to let go of the other and of the circumstance and set sail down that river - not on your own, but on your own merit. Without borrowed clothes: my husband the big cheese and my daughter the big hope; my son the big doer and my son the big thinker. All of them, all of us, deep feelers. Not a criminal among us! What makes it so? The prison walls of the mind?

The hungry river is the only gateway.

"Phlebas, the Phoenicioan, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you."
(T.S.Elliott, Death by Water)

Or again, as TSE would say, "These fragments I have shored up against my ruin": it is like sweeping autumn leaves in the high winds; it is like sifting out the chaff; it is like paring down and minimalising: you are always aware that any moment now, it all has ultimately to end up in the bin.

Lightening up the load is a beginning. First, I want to throw away fake memories. The first to go whould be the ones that simply prove that I have existed for so many years; the next will be the bits and pieces that prove that someone noticed I was there; after that, I will throw away the clothes that no longer fit; then go the things I dislike; by then I should be able to discern what I like but don't need. And so it should go, throwing out the garbage thread by thread, crumb by crumb, tears, smiles and all... until all that is left is me = small, unimpressive and bare. But real.

See the curls around the forehead and the pouty lips? See the strong eyebrows and the upturned chin? See the puffy cheeks and the scored temples? Who would ever do anything for me without expecting payment? Who would ever chase me for an autograph? Who would ever sacrifice a chicken to my image?

Giving the Game Away

I have prided myself in being the most secretive public person: hiding in full view. There is a thrill to this. But it is childish, maybe even ridiculous and certainly affected.

I am going into a period of uncertainty and search. My kiln is not working, my hours of work are erratic, I am avoiding myself. But when I get into the clay I really produce and the ideas stream and knock each other down: being a little out of control works for me in the end, but it is disconcerting.

I think about becoming...emerging from the waters...maybe eventually taking a deep breath and not feel the squeezy hurt...

A particularly vulnerable child experiences a series of shocks which he/she is not equipped to cope with. I am not yet born, and yet the enclosing, enfolding, moist, nurturing cavern ruptures and the harsh rasping dry world rushes in, right in, inside the little body of the newly emerged baby. What can that be like to endure?

And again, I am not yet born; the thoughts that make sense of pain and uncertainty have not yet coalesced into the symbols of word strings. I am not yet born to the reality or the understanding of what is it like to be here, to be me. I am yet to become what I will be tomorrow.

As I grow out of the turbulence and foam of a raging sea, I strain upwards and stretch myself to breaking point, trying to achieve the height and freedom of the upper air. Ragged, the clothing of old events slides off me and plunges below; Now only truth and simple being can touch my skin.

There is transformation and it goes on every day and forever, as far as the mind can discern.

Loneliness

"Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."

Working in a group is not an option for me. I am able to work with one other person about, but even then I create when alone and manufacture when in company. In a group I am paralysed and dispersed.

And yet, in isolation I feel cut off and starved of the oxygen of comment, encouragement and the possibility to look at my work through cold outer perspective, rather than the inner eye of emotion.

Networking makes it possible to spread out the work for others to see, in shows, in festivals, in the marketplace.

So company has to be mediated so that one-to-one dialogue can take place but the invasion of the senses by too much presence is avoided.

I get used to it, but long for the perfect world...

The Braided Heads

Braiding is a painful and lengthy process. Both victim and perpetrator invest time and perseverance in a repetitive task of which the result are tired fingers, a sore scalp, numb limbs from holding difficult positions for hours.
Braiding happens in a shady and quiet space, perhaps outdorrs, perhaps by a large window; the simpler the abode the more blurred the distinction.
All around, the heat and dry dust settle slowly; there is a deep silence permeating any sounds that occur.
Women wait for their life to unroll before them, commanded by others. They braid in the meantime, hoping and waiting.
There is no hint of resignation here, because there is no alternative possible.
Braiding in clay is similarly linear and serene. We may laugh and tell jokes, but the quiet remains and there is no underlying tale to tell. This is just life as it is and has to be.
Within the deep shadow inside a thatched hut, perched at the rim of the dunes piled high above the roiling sea, a woman and a young girl sit on their heels. Little hissing sounds escape now and again, audible above the restless waves' sighing, lapping, shimmering.
The morning wears on, the heat trembles on the horizon. A breeze clatters among the coconut fronds. By early afternoon, a head covered in small curvy forms, worming back and down, each finished by a colourful bead, shakes and emerges into the blinding sun: there is a feeling of soreness and joy mingled and a look of expectant pride. A young woman ready for the feast.
In clay, all of the sounds and light are blurred in a blunted edge. Within the figure, are the hollows and worried pains, encased in happiness and eagerness. A drowning in sand.

See the Job. Do the Job. Stay out of Misery

Robert Genn talks about the way to serene art; I think that a translation of Transcendental Meditation (TM) into Spiritual Potting (SP) is not out of the question.

He recommends a good mantra: lots of mmmms; and a good focus on the movement of hand and clay as one responds to the other; and letting your work change course if that is what the dialogue between both decides is best.

Let there be a good reason for not doing this everyday.

Seeing What Isn't There

Being online blogging like this, I fancy myself as a bit of satellite debris, circling the earth, out there for all to see and yet invisible and unfindable. Slightly vertiginous and yet safe.



I understood some things as a result of the Arts Derbyshire show. I felt very comfortable to stand beside my work and own it; I felt as if I had earned the right to make the pieces that I do make and the right to try and express thoughts and feelings, those thoughts and feelings which don't quite make it onto the page when I write: those that are like the rolling smoke always becoming something else. I don't have to make cups, saucers and bowls. I can make vessels and forms and shapes that simply translate one small edge or angle of the larger self.



I have had a quiet period, producing nothing because of holidays and other work. In July I will start again to function. Smartie is a part of me who has been writing autobiographical notes. I want to bring out Smartie and show - show me and others - why she had to live and then abide with me and complete me and why she has to be kept from falling into the void between me and others by maintaining and strengthening my connections to them. I want to explain Smartie to myself and explain myself to her.



So, work has to be done on this cast of characters who compose the whole of understanding. It is not necessary to give them names. The submissive person I started with has been joined by a lad with many worries, weak and beset with an unwearable skin. But Smartie will be different. She has a name and a face. She is what I needed to be before she came. She is what had been left behind or killed right at the start. I need now to celebrate that and give her a proper boundary and form. I will attempt this in terracotta, the clay of creation. Will she come out for me?

Why underwater?

In the archaeology of Maya civilization, the finding of complete pots and many chards of various stages and periods at the bottom of bodies of water felt startling and shocking.

Lake Amatitlan lies at the bottom of an active volcano. Around it many villages, looking deceptively precarious but really very ancient, cultivate traditional life sustaining crafts in agriculture, weaving, dyeing and of course ceramics, using the locally dug clay and fired in heaps of meagre logs that hardly reach the 900 degrees Celsius they need to become impervious. A tightly compacted slip of of a beautiful rose colour is used to help seal the surface. These pots are simple, fat, wobbly and frilly edged, bruised by black charred marks and livid patches where the fire churned, they are used mainly to carry and contain water. All the water for the household has to be carried on the head of the mother. They are very fragile and have to be replaced often. It is therefore incredible that the shady verandahs often boast at least a couple of hanging pots with luxiriant ferns, their feathery fronds waving in the hot breeze.

The lake itself is dotted in places by clusters of bubbling hot springs amid blackened lava boulders and it is around these spouts of the underworld that most pottery finds are made. Unlike the modern utilitarian versions, these ancient items are straight sided cylinders, well fired deep red earthenware, at times with a carbonised core. They are decorated, not with frilly edges or braided handles but with scenes and calligraphy; monster serpents, frogs, hyeroglyphs, enthroned beasts, slaves, killings, scribes, all scenes drawn very precisely in fine black trace, with some paler and some darker patches to aid relief. The tripod legs, when present, are sometimes hollow and have small clay spheres inside so they rattle. They are incense burners or sacrificial vessels. Some of them speak of a king's self-sacrfice, where a stingray spine was used to pierce the tongue and the blood collected in the sacred container. Sometimes a deadly ball game is depictred, and the basin collected the heart of the defeated warrior. To consumate the dedication, the vessel is pierced and thrown into the waters of the lake in dedication.

To think of such a society, such a religion, touches a deep emotion. And then we see how in modern society fun loving tourists throw coins into small springs or even concrete receptacles in urban environments - is there a a connection somewhere between these tourists and the feather turbaned frog faced personages of Maya pots?

In Mozambique, in the early 60's, a deffective Portuguese government of corrupt and venal old men drove the local population to increasing rebellion. The easy going peoples of the Indian Ocean shoreline began to organise and muster their resources. A handful of them accessed universities and began the hard slog that ended in 1973 with the independence of the country.

The conflict had become more and more bloody over years, it had opened rifts of pain and mistrust within the society and at independence more complicated counter movements emerged which shifted the bloodletting from the white enemy to the enemy within.

Civil war lasted 25 years. It was horrendously brutal, dumb, dark and devastating of humanity, of environment and of resources. This civil war seems to have had no proper direction or cause, and no proper final solution or target. It just expired one day of exhaustion. To me, it was the excising of a blood clot left behind by centuries of depraved collusion. For me, nothing can be taken away from the evils of colonialism, but some gesture needs to be made to the connivance of black people and their enabling of the servitude and humiliation that occurred. Reconciliation came naturally to the wonderful people of Mozambique, once the new generation was able to take up life in freedom.

Mozambique is a country of wonderful water. The emerald beaches fringed by palms and golden sands, the reefs, the open skies. Powerful rivers like the Limpopo, the Rovuma, the Revue, the Zambeze, the Inkomati flow and fertilize the land. In 35 years of conflict, this pure water, source of life and recreation, was polluted by sacrifice and madness. Victims of prosecution were thrown into the rivers to be devoured by crocodiles or drowned; Ships were sunk to prevent the other side from using them; rockets and missiles were flung to the skies and plunged their spent cartridges into the deep waters. in Mozambique, the water is full of memories. Tese memories are black and pitted, deformed, by hatred. They are being overlaid with algae and coral formation, used as attachment for barnacles and hiding places for octupi.

Just like our own memories, they transform and modulate their appearance, but at the core is still the human tragedy and shame.

On February 14th 1978, my daughters Caroline and Smartie and I went with my friend Phyllis to the pool. Smartie died drowned that morning in that pool. Her memory lies in water, overlaid over thirty one years by many other thoughts and events, succeeded in time by questions and wondering and the impact of her own death. At the core is the death of our 28 month old child, Caroline's sister. Around that memory is a long weave of days and thoughts and actions that would not have happened if she had not died.

This is for me the story of UNDERWATER

The Convention of Bankers

I organised this meeting of Bankers to prepare for engagement with the outside world. Too long have I beavered in solitude, but now it is time to ask: who will join me at the kiln face?

There will be a firing soon of more sedate and dreamy material.

The Firings of War

The first day of Spring - so fresh and so inebriating started early: at 8 the kiln was turned on, the little god of fire sitting on its lid, geode haloed and smiling. I figured it would take 13 hours to finish soaking and switch off: I would be done by 9 pm.



All went well until about 12:30. Then, the big slow down set in and by 9 pm the temperature was rising at the rate of 1 degree every three minutes. The controller registered 1030. At 00:48 I had had enough, with the kiln at 1257 and no soaking.



Decent results in some cases, including some of John Morgan's chess pieces.

The idea of this series of pots is to think of what lies under the sea: out there, where people for centuries have been discarding their rubbish, their votive offerings and their hated orddnance, the corals and fish live and thrive. But what would I retrieve from the deep?

It is important to remember that what matters is what I make, not what I think. Right?