The Real Digital

Sad news this week, some first hand, some second hand. This regards the steady decline of the commercial craft industry, particularly pottery, that started some decades ago in Stoke and now extends to small private enterprises and even worse - education.

Why have I titled this blog entry "The Real Digital"? I will explain.

Apparently, and I have it on good authority not just from students and their friends but also from tutors who have long feared this day, courses in ceramics in colleges and universities are closing down (with the excuse that it saves money, probably), and the departments being stripped of kilns, wheels, shelves and equipment and filled up with yet more Macs. The microchip is replacing all other art media, it seems. Certainly as far as attracting students there is nothing that is going to get bums on seats and fees in the bursary than computer courses that give youngsters and mature students (false?) hope of a job at the end of 3 years accumulating debts. But at what cost to society? Soon the only "digits" we'll be able to use will be 0's and 1's and not our own fabulously evolved five fingers. In an age when young adults cant even wire a plug, surely there is a need to maintain and improve manual dexterity and imagination that enables the human being to form something in real four dimensions (3D and time), consideratley, patiently and skilfully.
I will be sad to see Camberwell's renowned Ceramics department wound down, and my local ceramic painting shop closed down.
One day we will realise the folly of being stuck behind keyboards in sterile air-conditioned offices, and how demeaning and damaging it is. I hope the day of realisation dawns before we completely lose track of what it is to be intelligent self-sufficient beings...

If You Cant Be Good, Be Good At Being Bad

(or.. how I learned to stop worrying and love painting)

I am now, officially, a Bad Artist.

This is the story...

For a laugh, and because I wanted to know what the definition of "bad art", I entered some work for inclusion in the Bad Art Salon at the Vintage at Goodwood Festival this year.

I dont often enter competitions or make submissions, but I saw what examples they had and I knew in my attic I had similar works that were truly breathtakingly awful and deserved recognition as such.

I have to admit I am not the world's greatest painter, I might do the odd poetic composition but really I dont have the patience for all the techinal minutae and really like to be frenetic and colourful. This technique does not lend itself well to life drawing unless you are a really good expressionist painter, rendering the figure usually means taking one's time and using subtltey..!

(This is why my recent work has been more in the arena of the found object)

So, in a marked moment of insight, I selected my ugliest work,and sent my application and JPEG. Imagine my surprise when I was selected as a finalist and rewarded a pass for Vintage for the weekend as a "prize" (more about that later).

This appeals to me in the sense of the ironic. Having waded through my MA and having to be very serious and "good" it was lovely to be "bad" for a change. Its great that an artist can have this freedom and I embrace the whole idea of a Bad Art Salon! The irony is perfect for someone trying to cultivate a Postmodern persona.. I dont know if this is what I'm trying to do but the way I see it, any publicity is good publicity!

The Poetic Phenomena Of Light

“ The solid is for the dead, but the transparent is for the living ”
— I.M. Pei


For the last few years, I have been exploring the importance of humans being a participating element in an artwork instead of just a watcher or reader. This statement by the architect I.M Pei, about his creation The Louvre Pyramid, sums up the concepts I have been recently been dealing with neatly and concisely.

The transparent certainly does allow light to filter to the viewer, but the viewers are more than just passive – they are also a part of the effect of the structure, as the incoming light negotiates the physical presence of the human figure, casting shadows and creating ever changing effects. The life of the work is in the fact that it lives itself, it is not “dead” – in fact it moves and exists in a time frame that is as long as the structure stands or the person inside stays. In that instant it creates an exquisite collection of phenomena – an experienced moment that can never be repeated in its minute detail.