New work environment

There was a time in time, when the majority of humans had to leave their homes and go to work, sometimes miles away. Those humans were called among other names, commuters, workers, staff. They worked for institutions who were represented by other humans, who were called bosses,masters.... Bosses and workers formed part of an economic system1.

So they did go to their jobs, and followed externally imposed routines. They went to factories/ offices/shopping malls,or those locations where they could sell themselves for money. At the work locations there were tools set in place for them to use. Their work was divided in tasks in which they specialized.
They worked their scheduled time shifts, and when finished returned in mass to their homes. This was called exodus or commuting. The displacement of high numbers of humans generated many problems, jams and delays. So roads, tube systems, buses, rail tracks, and maintenance of everything was implemented.
The workers may have had the transport to the work placement payed by the company for which they were working. Maybe even have had their food payed

Back at home was the other reality, family, friends, neighbors and house to keep , or their absence. That meant a segmentation of their lives. The family, clan, tribe, or herd disintegrating . Lots of people thinking they were not happy.


The bosses problem was their need to keep investing on the maintenance of the system infrastructures, including those huge buildings needed for everything. They had to build them, and pay for the energy resources consumed during all the processes.

As anything in the known world the system was reaching its peak and was exhausted.

Then...

The advancements in communications, internet and the personal computer enabled many workers to work from home. Lots of people found unnecessary to leave their home, neighborhood, in order to work, to earn money.
So for some it was not necessary to commute anymore.

The system was cracking.

But...


At some point workers started to rent their own offices, work placements, studios ,shops/stalls, corners in warehouses , or whatever the premises.
They payed for the furniture, tools of their trade, installed all of it, payed for the energy resources and for any transport needed , etc, etc. They payed for their food.

Why?

Some say they wanted to be their own boss.

Some say they did not have space at home. Or they were not able to proceed with work without having interruptions or distractions. In an office/factory/mall environment workers were directed. They were given appropriate breaks for tea,gossip and loo. Nothing could break the pace of their routines.
At home, by themselves they did not keep straight to their work roles. Some returned to short time attention spam behavior and spread themselves out of the assigned work pattern. Some just collapsed in non-action.

Many needed somewhere to escape to from their household lives. They needed to have separated life realities to switch to and from. So there appears a need to reproduce the lost work environment.

So some people started to rent work premises away from their homes, where to work. This time though workers work ed for themselves.
They worked to pay the rents, insurances, bills, maintenance, marketing, transports, holidays and loans/or mortgages.

Some time during time most of us were enslaved by human masters. Most of us were serving human lords or following human leaders.

Now , soon, there will be no need for human masters,lords or leaders.
Many workers think they have become their own masters. They sustain themselves incessantly working and competing against each other.

The system is their master.
The system has survived.

It was humans who created the system. Is what some humans want. Is what some humans need.
Many humans do not know what to do, and some humans are not up for doing it.

clumsy week

Last week was one of those clumsy ones.
I did many things wrong, had bad news or been neglected and broke some of my work. The casualties were mainly from the functional, 5 items in total. But I also managed to break my last favorite figure. This figure was based on a painting from William Bouguereau which depicts two souls fighting, an illustration from Dante's inferno. I love the painting I made a 3D of version of it.
It took me more than a month, which I enjoyed of course. I set the two figures on top of an inverted skull. I am using the inverted skull quite often lately as a metaphor for humanity; 'the skull is a vessel for the human soul' many people said that.
I was very content with the modeling, form, size , proportions and everything about the figure. But then boum! shit happens....I broke one of its hands when I was packing it for the biscuit firing. I was trying to fit as much work as possible inside the kiln so I was arranging and rearranging the pieces, wrong...Before biscuit firing clay figures are in the most fragile state. After biscuit they are quite hard and is save to manipulate them.
It did not feel good, even though I can repair the figure. I am considering to make it again, after I leave a bit of time to pass by. Somehow Ceramics is a battle with destiny, so many things can go wrong without reparation and sometimes due to bad luck. As ceramist I can not help but to aim for the perfect piece, technically speaking, no cracks, no glaze drops, even and uniform. But that is irrelevant for a sculptor like me who wants to communicate with the work.
I did not want to communicate perfection but the human struggle for survival. How we fight against each other even if we are lookalikes or love each other... We fight.

Great! I tickle with my catastrophes. Somehow I was in good mood, upset, grumpy but happy in the back of my head. So I went out for a few drinks during the weekend, wrong again...

My clumsy week is finished but I managed to caught a virus during the weekend. So now I am at home feeling awful with a red nose and time to spare on having this little crisis with Ceramics
Shall I stop doing ceramics?, as it distracts me from my real goal. At the same time I love the medium, I even love to do functional table ware, and to eat from them...

Design-makers Market

I will be selling some of my domestic ceramic wares at this event.

Art fairs: Ceramic Art London

Last weekend I went to Ceramic Art London.
The event was housed at the RCA . It was my first time at this fair and venue. There were 77 different stands, divided in 3 rooms , talks and lots of people buzzing around. I ended up spending more than 5 hours in there, but managed to miss the work of some exhibitors. I realized of this fact when going over the exhibition catalog, back at home, my fault.

I went by the second day which was a Saturday. My first impression was, oh my! too much, too many people, lets get out of here. Nonetheless after paying my £12 entrance ticket I dipped myself in, not chatting at first, just looking. By my second round I started to engage in conversion with those who I knew or liked the work. My acquaintances seemed to be doing well as they were quite relaxed in their attitude. Even if there was a lot of variety in color and shapes, by the end of my first round I had the impression it was all focused around the vessel, functional or not. Just at the end I found some figurative work and there were maybe 2 or 3 more makers of volumes which were not based on containers.

CLR is a major Ceramic event in London. It is a showcase for Ceramics but for the artists is very important to make good sales. I could guess from the artists attitude and stress (not just the red dots) who was selling and who was not. The price of the stalls is very high , from around £600 the smallest to almost £2000, but I was told you just have to pay a percentage in advance and the rest at the end of the fair. The fair lasts for three days and it is organized by the Craft Potters Association

In future years it is a kind of a must for me to apply to this fair and to get in, which is not so easy. There are many fairs like this one, in the ceramic world and in the art world. It is fun to attend but as an artist is another investment to make in order to get my work out and have some remuneration from it. Sadly I can not live from air, even if I could I have to pay my rent and materials and studio rent and transport, and etc, etc. included in this etc is the price for stands at this kinds of fairs. It is all linked.

This year I will do Battersea Contemporary Art Fair. I am looking forward to it. Both as a way of exhibiting my work and as a way of making cash out of it. It sounds bad but it is what it is. In order to produce more work and sustain my practice I need to be purchased . If I do not go to this sort of fairs I have very few chances for my work to be noticed. My work is very time consuming to produce and fragile in nature. It is not possible for me to be moving it from small exhibition to small exhibition risking to damage it, which already happen and none compensated me.

The role of Art

This days I am writing an application for a future exhibition. With it, I was asked to send a paragraph of exactly 50 words describing the role of art. I could have just make up some kind of irreverent piece. But somehow I took a serious and sincere approach when writing it:

Art has a different role/edge for each individual. Those roles are not fixed they evolve.
For me it is a way to explore, apprehend and communicate my human experience. Art is embedded in my social relations.
But also I use art to experiment and transform myself and the surrounding world.

I left many things out. Maybe I should have written a whimsical piece, which could have satisfied more my artistic self. Instead I took it as a summarizing exercise. Which is something I have to practice nonetheless.
I did not mention the fun . Neither did I speak of my position as a consumer or user of art. But there is no need to say everything about everything, actually is impossible.

Control

On winter times, you should keep warm, eat nuts and sleep. I was advised by a friend. Wise words, difficult to follow in London. I do end up having that guilty feeling of being lazy and laid back, the world is still spinning around and London with it, there are plenty of shows, talks, work to do, parties, functions, demos... whatever... In any case case I try to put my catholic guilt aside and, stop the headless chicken in me.
Most of my time during January was spent at the studio, I am working on figures now, I get quite absorbed on them, and it is the only thing I think about. I have been drawing too, and doing some house keeping within the folders of my computer.
No many exhibitions to report, also I have not seen anything remarkably special. I keep going to Matt Roberts help sessions for struggling artists. They are very helpful, and I have met some very nice people there. But I will talk about this other time when my opinion is more formed.
I wanted to comment on one talk I managed to assist last Monday. The talk was deferred from a previous date due to the cold weather, so I am not the only one. The talk was from one of my ex tutors, Ruth Dupre. I quite like her, lifestyle and art practice, I even like the results of her work. She was also an encouraging and positive tutor. So I want to keep in ouch with her, she is interesting...
She has been jumping from painting to ceramics to glass and now she is making movies. It seems from what she said that she is now interested in sound. We have something in common there, also the ceramics.
She started her talk stating that she does not feel obliged to talk about her work as her work is a way of expressing what she thinks, so if on top of that she uses language to define those expressions she will create two or more parallel discourses. I agree with this. After the clarifying introduction she guided us with words and images through her artistic trajectory.
The talk was for me a learning experience, capturing words and ways of describing my own artistic practice. Her attitude is so confident that made me feel reassured on my own ways.
At some point she talked about control. She wants to touch, edit, film, and be the one creator of her art works, no surrogates or slaves to make her will. She explain this as a need for total control. I can relate to that, but there is something else though. I have experience briefly myself the (suppose to be) pleasures of ordering others around, to do my will. I did not like it, it is a boring burden, I would not care, I prefer to do it myself, on my pace, and experience it, because that it is what interest me, to experience the creative process, not the end result. If someone is doing it for me, where is the fun and the discovery journey. I should say I am a very selfish person so you can not ask me for long to give duties to others, is like I have to construct their lives for them...I am more interested in my life...

Nonetheless I am not a power monger. Maybe I will, when old become bored with my life and everything. Maybe I should pity myself, as there are so many power mongers willing to manipulate and give orders around me. Some of their skills and attitudes are necessary to survive in the world. Living is not just creating nice objects or situations. Living is the fight for survival. And I want to live

On pots

Life at the studio has been the most important part of my day to day lately. There is a string of new works coming up and awaiting their turn to be realized. It makes a difference, a great difference for me, to be now mainly working on my magical realism pieces, rather than the functional table ware. I have to admit that time goes by at a very fast pace and I feel more committed to sculpture.
It is not the case that I force myself to make objects for daily use. I need this side of my artistic output to flourish too. It balances me. Besides I like to use them myself. They are special not like the lifeless slip casted clones. They have weight, they are warm, their colors are vibrant, they do not resemble plastic to me but a rock, somehow they make eating or drinking from them more exciting.
Pot making is a good training towards mastering the architecture of forms, in my case it is also where I allow myself to go wild with color and glazes. I let the abstract expressionist in my to come out of the closet. I paint on my pots, I paint with glazes. It is not the same as painting with oils, what you see is not what you get after firing. The firing conditions have also a huge impact on the colors and surface obtained. But all this is part of the special magic of ceramics. It is alchemy, it is making rocks.
My next outpost for selling/exhibiting my functional ware will be the first Saturday of March at the Abney Hall in Stoke Newington Church Street.