Rachael McCallum's Unicorn Spew,

Rachael McCallum's UnicornSpew ~The online journal of Artness as-it-happens.


Wednesday 26 December 2012

Lime trumpet

Lime trumpet was not for sale. Mainly because it was the first time I made a glaze window. The window was succcessful thanks to a handy piece of fibre that the glaze melted to, given to me by Tania.

Dear diary, looking back ~ I'm not sure what I'm searching for in these pieces.
I remember making it and being excited for the possibility of having the trumpet frame a just-glaze painting.

The clay is a cross section of huge vase thrown and discarded by a friend , and when mixed with other discard it was an interesting composition with each little clay addition having character traits that demand different colours or effects. The cracks within the trumpet was one point I didn't want to get overlooked  because I can't represent that depth in glaze but it is easy to cover and lose it.

But what is the total aim ?
A painting free of convention.
It isn't square, representative, abstract , paint, or untouchable.

I think that's what I'm doing...
But to be honest I just go. Not with plan , to protect against a contrived result, and not with commercial aim. I don't even think about what to do with it when it's finished: if it's bad it will be fixed or probably be thrown away, if it's great it will find a home somewhere.
But whatever, I just want to keep exploring ceramic effects

Saturday 15 December 2012

Pink eye

This is a painting that let actually acknowledge the behind side of the clay. I have been so preoccupied with making a painting at the front I had ignored the presentation of the whole. So I made the back plain except two finger dents which I made pink. The title is intended to make you curious because there's no pink on the face of the painting... and when presented at an angle you can find the two pink eyes peeking

Thursday 13 December 2012

Free form ceramic painting; (toxic ringworm)

I know what your thinking,
What a gross name.

That's ok, yeah it is gross , but so is clay when it's at the super squishy stage of life. This piece is from a chance composition made by sloppy bits of discarded thrown items.you might have noticed I have written about it before, but the change is the acrylic colour enhancement.
I chose a strong colour because I want the central bar to have the most gravitas, and the side parts to be exactly that- side parts. I felt like symmetry was important. My friend disagreed but that is ok.  She enjoyed the colour as it was ...

This piece has great little windows to see the shadows through and really sings off a cool white wall. The arch of the clay creates impressive shadows and it all neatly rests on a hook or nail.

It is one of the few pieces I decided I couldn't put up for sale.

What am I doing

What a horrible thing to think about.

What am I doing?
I can guess what it looks like to others.

There are so many ways to answer this question, so many moods that present ultimately the same end result - I do whatever because it makes me happy.

But that can't be right cause I'm sure there are ways to feel happy without making paintings or ceramic anythings. I could take things to make me happy, or eat things, or buy things. I could do nothing. but these don't make me happy so I guess that is why I don't do these things


I can say that I'm keeping myself busy until I die.

That's a morbid way to put it... but I do know I feel horribly miserable if I don't make paintings. If I don't feel busy, (entertained?), I fall into periods of feeling very lost and bored -> and that is no fun.


Because I'm psychotic. I like that, that sounds exciting, perhaps that is the best answer because I like it.

I would say that I'm looking to explore abstract expressionist paintings and the materials in ceramics provides a more interesting platform for experimentation, and that's a good reason , but why paint at all and not simply earn a plain life?
Because I wouldn't feel like I'm living.


That-sounds a bit sad too actually,


I would rather be content with the meaning I imbue into my life, than to question it. 

MY life means whatever I make it mean, so at the moment it is about making marks, moving paint, and experimenting with ceramics. 

Today I was asked what are you doing?. Why. Why. why, is making paintings what you do?  I take it seriously because I know I can't answer it and convince myself. It can be so Many reasons I make up, but when I listen to myself it's like an addict making excuses.
I'll find it one day. I'll find the confidence for an answer. 


But until then I'm going to publish my journal thoughts.

Saturday 8 December 2012

Trojan

Here I am playing with the question "what is a painting?"

Tania

My favourite teacher and friend Tania Rolland. (No offence Stevie B an Mdog Merran) this piece is for you. Why.. cause your awesome! And so is this :-)

It is s ceramic painting. Through and through !

Cone wars

This is CP (ceramic painting) Cone Wars detail. Those bright purples and greens are all Copper Flambe glaze layered with a simple white satin recipe, mixed with the white of the cones it sets off the orange of the iron wash. I am happy with the colours, there was a risk that the iron would be too dark or the brown would kill the pinks but it's totally nice the way it is.
Its a shame I has a hairline crack but that's a good reminder that everything is fragile.

Friday 7 December 2012

Ogre tissues

What would a pile of ogre snot Look like ?
Who knows....
It could look like this

Babies in a blender

This was/is a stack of  rejected thrown bowls and cups that I sliced a quarter off to keep. I painted glaze faces on with an untested black glaze but it became mucked up so I just mixed it all together and made it areas of pattern and non pattern. I called it babies because they are things made by someone, like children, but rejected in a disposable way , disposable like passing joke or comments about awful kids. But mash it all together and it is a black mass of insult... I'm  not sure if I explained that right but you can always ask :-)

How excellent are the white spots in the blue glaze !?! I love this technique now...

Vaulkos chair

This chair was a treat I made myself because I had figured out what firing temperatures I preferred, one day I will put the top on like a mushroom and glaze it all together.... not yet. It's beautiful now. I don't want to spoil it until I'm bored with it :-)
There is a light blue run which I painted and it was a baby blue day glaze but at stonework it has created micro crystal surface and it's all sparkly and gorgeous :-)  it's like putting subtle glitter on a polished turd. So awesome

Persian spew

This piece is so gorgeous when you get your face right up close, there are do many fascinating aspects to it.
It was a earthenware dry glaze painting layers of slip, dry glaze, then clear.... I didn't know what to paint and so I was doing just lines in reaction the the confines of the frame... so the composition was very boring .... until I made a pool of lead glass magic!!!

Petey the unicorn had eaten a blue sky and  some dirt earlier that morning and when he ate too much, he left this little treat on a tray

No, but that's a funny idea.

I truly look forward to making more paintingsin this method with dry glaze pools and just letting it all go !

I can't wait for next year :-)

This piece became a "Persian" blue colour and after much deliberation I Hadz to name it after the colour it was !
it is Completely not intended to be offensive, I didn't even realize it might not be liked instantly until some visitors were put off by it. Well they hadn't seen Babies in a Blender yet...

Thursday 6 December 2012

WHat does a Unicorn Vom look like??

 
hrmm...
Whatever you think it looks like!

I would think it is a fantastical thing, that would last forever. A splattery mix of fun colours and materials. It would be ugly and joyful at the same time.

Would you like to see one?
I have made a few attempts to make my own splattery joyful things. What I really want to do is communicate joy. My kind of joy, because I dont connect with the generic joy you find in advertising. I want to make people happy. It is not an original concept, but Joy isn't really just a concept.

I make Ceramic paintings with glaze and clay effects fired at multiple temepteratures. My palette is freedom. Freedom from store bought unknown concotions of paint and manufactured limits. Freedom from traditional ceramic conventions of pots and bowls. I have made a place where I am free to make anything my imagination leads me to, constantly exploring fantasy. But not in the cartoon direct sense of fantasy, but the material possibilities of minerals and elements in powder form from our real world combining into unknown substances of beauty. Thats my kind of fantasy- pretty chemistry.

Ceramics is one of the unknown arts, often ignored by the general public as an art form. Sometimes I agree that its craft history and traditions influence it to the point that it really is not high art, but that does not mean it is not possible. Peter Vaulkos, an American Ceramic Artist of the 1970s, started a revloution when he made plates with holes in them and put them on the wall. What I make is a link in that growing chain. I love painting, but the limits I have found in the materials I have found limitless in ceramics. By hanging my paintings on the wall we can share in the timeless, eternal abstract expressionist joy of ceramic fantastic possibilities.

"We should remember that a picture -- before being a war horse, a nude woman, or telling some other story -- is essentially a flat surface covered with colours arranged in a particular pattern."
--Maurice Denis, Definition of Neotraditionism. Originally published in Art et Critique in Paris, 23 & 30 August 1890
(This version of the quote translated from French by Peter Collier for Art In Theory: 1815--1900 edited by Charles Harris, Paul Wood & Jason Gaiger, page 863.)

Tuesday 4 December 2012

I named him crimson moon

So finally this most excellent cadmium red and magnesium dry painting has a title that is more discerning than the arbitrary numbers it originally had.

The colours are SO awesome and I am completely happy with the way this one is.

It is a painting.

So beautiful.

If you look closely at the cadmium red, you can see the speckled black drool within the glaze that makes a web shaped pattern. (I have to remember to put up a detail)

And the dry glaze is just that > it's not powdery or too dry, or runny, it is perfectly dry. In different thicknesses it becomes darker purples or mauve. This was an early success story and it was in my graduation exhibition.

Soft palette

So this is a collection of effect that I have discovered at stoneware temperatures. It's also an experiment to see if I could construct a well of glaze to make different levels or depths of glass.... a tool I may play with next year.

There are underglaze colours used to keep the overall scheme bright, I'm not interested in dark atm. When overlapping with the white satin and the extraordinary peach bloom I found in "Ceramics' Art and Perception"( i dont recall the issue), the effect is a bubbly, fun, energy. To me it gives information and is pretty for everyone else. We can get different things out of it, and hopefully it inspires people who see it to think about materials in a new way- why not hang on the wall an change the direction of gravity?? , why not splatter and scratch with your materials to give details or movement? Even if this wasn't ceramics, or even art , but was  cake decoration or furniture- isn't it beautiful when there is a variety ? :-)

Every day and everything has its quirks , it's changes, differences, faults and  perfections- but combine them and it's just right.

You have to hate one part in order to enjoy another.

Do I make sense or am I ranting??

Cracked fairy saliva

So when making ceramics paintings, you have the option to continue a tradition of a rectangular format or to go crazy and use all of the possibilities of the clay.
So this is an instance where I wanted the piece to be simple to understand as a painting and not a tray or plate. This is why the crack is so important! It couldn't really be a decorative tray if it has a crack! I found that whenever I would make a ceramic painting someone would comment , full of good intentions, that it could have cheese and biscuits on it or maybe fruit could be stacked on it.
WHAT?-WHY!?
It's pretty the way it is.

You can't makenit better by covering it up!!
If you don't like it , don't look.

But how can you not like thinning offensive combo of colour ... that's why subtitles are exciting :-D

A house in Mexico

So this little guy was a really early piece that when it was fired, the dry glaze wasn't as dry as I supposed and it ran and attached to another something. But I liked it so I made it become part of the interest of the object by drawing attention to the movement and flow on effect of the obvious "mistake" with a hot glue drool. Then to give the pirec the right space from the top of the table a rested it on a brick and I love it ever since.

The nails were an experiment just to see how they would look with glaze colours and temperatures, but the feature let's the ragged surface make since, adding to the gritty, ironically-happy coloured piece.

The name was initially simply to help me tell this piece apart from the next, but the colours do remind me of the trip I took to Mexico. There the buildings were painted in bright colours but also neglected and worn. Some people lived with mattress walls for a shanty house, but they always smiled. The yellows I used remind me of the searing sunlight and the purples of vibrant colours that give hope to the community.

Sunday 2 December 2012

Scabby galaxy

So this is a ceramic painting to the extreme. It is extreme because it is made totally with knowledge of what would happen and planning and I expected it to be essentially what it is. Its a bit darker than I would like but that is not bad, it just needs to be in the sunlight .. but so does iron spots on tea pots. The frame was not an experiment, the glazes I used were not an experiment ..... it all was just to melt and be.
I love the mixing. Its so intense and chaotic.

Blood diamond!!

This is a mantle piece. Just for shelves. The back is pretty cool too.

The whole thing about the self standing pieces started cause I wanted to have paintings that didn't risk falling to the ground. They don't have to be on the wall..  they can just be paintings. Like a photo can be a photo  in a frame. Luckily these don't need a frame or a stand or anything, they are the whole deal. I learnt that these "handles" are strongest when they are a loop, of course.

The diamond shape is soo interesting, I am glad I did it, it is the only one which I did end up making this kind of sideways.

I had to do it sometime...

The cadmium red is blood-like  
And by firing it sideways I get a blood drool going up the wall !!

Cone wars

This is CP (ceramic painting) Cone Wars detail. Those bright purples and greens are all Copper Flambe glaze layered with a simple white satin recipe, mixed with the white of the cones it sets off the orange of the iron wash. I am happy with the colours, there was a risk that the iron would be too dark or the brown would kill the pinks but it's totally nice the way it is.

I was aiming for the look of an explosion; I built the cones into the layers of glaze, I knew they wouldn't float in the tray of glaze because the satin glaze doesn't move around, so the cones were fixed in an arrangement that would mean as they melt they curl outwards like a flower.
I should explain what cones are! Cones are a ceramic tool to indicate the temperature of the kiln. They are made of a combination of elements so that their melting point is controlled to a particular measurment, more reliable than pyrometers or just looking at the red heat. So I used cones as a bit of an in joke, but also  because they curl eerily like fingers and if they are arranged right could look like a range of movement. Now that all didn't exactly work but that's ok too.

The tray frame was made when I was thinking about how free I am to use any shape in ceramics. I wanted it to be simple at first glance but also different on all sides. There are just so many different ways to frame in ceramics that his is just a tiny sample of a huge idea (Which I hope to explore next year)

The flat plain of the piece has kept the canvas detail printed on its surface as well as the rice impression within it. I wanted to create the opportunity for the glazes to be in different thicknesses so I could have a speckled effect rather than the one depth pour of colours, this was relatively successful but I will explore it further.

Its a shame I has a hairline crack but that's a good reminder that everything is fragile.

Layers of tests and exploring is what this is... a cumulative effect.
Cone wars? Because it looks like an explosion  ,  duh!
Overall I love the piece! But what to  do with it!? Perhaps a friendly trade ...

Thursday 29 November 2012

Current thoughts on young people selling works

Selling works is how, as students , we gauge each others success. In the long line of life, I'm so often told, that not selling works whilst your only twenty is not a problem. That's easy for you to say when it's not going to decide your future. When your twenty, you know you have time to figure out if what your doing now is the life you want, and there is time to change if soon it feels wrong.

But when you make art you are essentially making what you want to, whatever it is, and expecting to find a kindred interest to buy it.

And so if you start life doing whatever you feel like and it feels wrong you have the option to begin doing what other people delegate to you or become the delegatee.

But unfortunately, if you have found happiness so-far-in-your-forever in making what-you-feel-like and you want to keep going in it, your leaving yourself extremely vulnerable to the opinions of others and their incentive to buy.  Assuming that the person described is not supported by unknown magic funds that can be drawn at will, the young artists are left swinging their art between passion and pastime amongst the pastime job paradox.

Money makes the art world grounded.

Pastime jobs, part-time jobs, take up somuch more than just a part of your time. They suck you dry of the confidence you could have had, that you were-and are-capable of making money for yourself in your art. an attist is a lifestyle. Yiu cant just say im going to be one, you probably already are if you want to cmunicate with displays, it takes a lifetime to be efective. In that sense part time is an unfortunate title

Now back to the initial rant, assuming the subject isn't financially free, the young is doomed to waiting for that initial investment surprise. If that doesn't come soon enough, unfortunately that tall poppy will wilt.

It's essentially a filtering process where the determined and confident will prevail and the insecure will trail off.

But, I encourage you to, if you as a audience like a student work, at any age, purchase it or trade for it ! - so they can have the assurance that they are making desirable goods. It isn't about money, but confirming their skills are valuable!  A note will do ♡♥
If you like it, do something about it!