Wild Things

My ceramics summer course started yesterday! It looks like its going to be great - I love how intense summer studio courses are and the community that's created when people spend days on end working creatively together. Our first assignment is to choose an African pot we like and using the coiling method create our version of it. I took ceramics at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) four or five years ago and we mainly focused on the wheel, so I think I'm partial to that but so far the coiling isn't looking too bad! I chose this pot

which reminds me of choral so I started looking at images of choral and plan on combining this tube choral

with this bobbly choral (technical term).

I really like complex, weird, and playful looking things so we'll see if it works out in this piece. It is the first project though so I could very well wind up with a horribly ugly pot but I'm going to try my best. I think the bobbly choral looks like nipples and the tube choral is quite phallic so hopefully it'll turn into a crazy looking pot. My teacher, Xanthe Isbister, actually recommended I check out the book Sex Pots: Eroticism in Ceramics by Paul Mathieu, so after scouring for it in libraries and having no luck I cracked and bought it online. I'm really excited about it - I think it will be a good starting point for this course. One of the artists featured in the book - Susan Beiner - blows my mind! Check her out...

And on a random note: Check out these painted cats! I have no information on what kind of paint was used - I'm hoping non-toxic... The colours are pretty cool but who does that!?

Frankie and Toulouse will stay healthy and paint free thank you...