Encountering

It has been a busy week, but rewarding. The opening of the Wesca Encounters exhibition at the Dorset County Museum has provided me with some artistic inputs, a meet the artists session was very revealing and useful to better understand where they are coming from. I urge everyone to visit the show, you've got until June, but don't leave it too late.
Tomorrow we stage the first workshop as part of Encounters, John Bartholomew is masterminding a bronze casting session at the Upwey Village Hall, working with the various methods of creating the molds into which the molten metal is poured. I shall be there with my video cameras.

This evening we celebrate William Barnes' birthday - an excuse for me to play the village idiot again!

Juggling The Dates

This morning I made a list of the events I am attending in 2013, usually a displacement activity, but I think very useful to check I am not trying to be in more than one place at the same time! The calendar looks fairly full already.

The Upwey Potters met this afternoon, to discuss our activities, in particular the annual exhibition 25th May to 9th June, which is part of the Artwey Open Studio event, for which I am busy doing the design of the map.
The potters have arranged to meet again soon with the aim of updating the website with some new images and text for 2013. www.upweypotters.com

Encounters - The Set-Up

I've just been up to the Dorset County Museum to see how the setting up is going for Wesca's Encounters exhibition. I am very impressed with all the work being hung. My plinth is providing a challenge for the curators, but I am sure they will cope very well!
http://www.dorsetcountymuseum.org/current_exhibition

Artwey Open Studio 2013

I've been working on processing the text and images for the Artwey Open Studio event in 2013, happening 25th May to 9th June throughout Weymouth and Portland. With my Artseeker hat on I look after the Artwey website and do the graphic design for the printed map.
I am always amazed at the talent of local creative people, seen from the images submitted.
I am really looking forward to participating in the event with the other Upwey Potters. More anon....

EXARC and other August Bodies

I have recently joined EXARC, an international body devoted to promoting experimental archaeology, by helping both individual practitioners and institutions such as Open Air Museums.
As an experimental archaeologist, I am interested in seeking new information about particular technologioes and also finding out about how others "in the same field" behave.
I am a great believer in the aggregation of effort (management speak for the benefits of working within networks so that everybody involved gets a better deal). I have spent my life getting involved with "August Bodies", with that in mind. Sometimes I doubt my wisdom and at other times the benefits leap out at me.Let's hope EXARC turns out to be a good move.

Hengistbury Head Visitor Centre Replicas

I'm getting on with my next major project - a commission to produce a couple of dozen replica ancient pots for the new Hengistbury Head Visitor Centre. I've been researching all the types of pottery required, from Neolithic Grooved ware, through Beakers to Urns and Iron Age bowls. Plus the different clay bodies and inclusions - the added ingredients that make some of the pots very special. I've also been printing out full size images of the pots, so I can make templates of the profiles and check the decorations as I construct them. Plus a portfolio of each pot, with all the relevant details and photos to help capture how they should look.
I'll post some this on my website, when it is ready to roll.

A couple more opportunities arose today, during a trip to the offices of Dorset Visual Arts. In return for handing over the Upwey Potters' subscription, I have been offered a place at the DVA Art Fair in May, doing Raku Firing - including an evening performance for the great and the good.
Then the folk from Artsreach leapt at me asking about running workshops as part of their offering for the next phase of the South Dorset Ridgeway Awareness project. If the lottery funding comes through that will be spread over several years, just up my street and over the hill.

CinBA here we come!

I have just been offered a chance to do a "sideshow" (my description) at the CinBA Conference in Cambridge University in April.
Creativity and Craft Production in Middle and Late Bronze Age Europe (CinBA)

I am really looking forward to the conference, as part of my CPD (Continuing Pottery Development!?). I hope to learn more about the Bronze Age and how contemporary artists relate to it.
I will be conducting a small experiment within a display of some of my pottery, inviting delegates to sort items in terms of desirability. My piece of research concerns how both I as a contermporary maker and the potters of the Bronze Age would deal with satisfying the needs of our clients. Bronze Age pottery appears to lack inventiveness, remaining similar for generations and keeping to a reasonably tight design code for shape and decoration. That might just be a result of how modern archaeologists like to pigeon-hole their material evidence, but I don't see a great deal of differences. Modern makers are far less restricted by limitations of technology and materials, but also are free to be more spontaneously creative - making things that do not necessarily follow trends. However as a traditionalist, I tend to pick up on the "tried and tested" designs and run with them, at least in the back of my mind. My audience has expectations that if met tend to lead to better understanding and thus potential trade.
We shall see.