farming

So, here I am, in this idilic setting called Church Farm, Arderley, not far from Stevenege, wich is not far from big black hole London.
What am I doing here?
I am helping Valentin Manz to build and fire his tree like clay sculptures. We are working in the farm grounds, where at some point in the past there was a clay pit. Which is the reason Valentin choose this setting.
The weather has been kind of awful since I have arrived, but with that I get to appreciate the brief moments of warmth that the sun gives. Someone here said we should cherished those moments like a love affair.
The farm workers are mainly a group of student interns coming from all over the world but mainly Europe. They get payed £50 a week and they are fed and sheltered for free. It is not a bad deal. The farm has paid workers too
The Farm consists basically on cows, pigs, chiken,geese,and sheep who are roaming almost free on their respective fields.
The space dedicated to agriculture does not look that much compared with the quantity of animals.
There is the cafe restaurant, a shop for selling the farm own produce, which includes meat, eggs, vegetable boxes, and other organic products produced elsewhere. There is also cabins to be rented for short stays and conference rooms.
I would have preferred myself a less meat based farm. With more vegetable production.
I would not mind to have a cow and sheep from whom to steal some milk from time to time, to make cheese and butter, but without killing their babies, neither depriving them from mum's milk. Some hens to have eggs. No pigs.
I would like a huge garden with many vegetables and crops, lentils, peas, rice, corn, millet. Lots of fruit trees, avocado, kiwi, apple, orange,lemon, mango, figs, vine, nut trees and etc, etc...
I guess this would involve much more work.
Or maybe I am just naive.

Pot Fest Scotland 2010

This is a ceramic fair, a festival for the potters. The event has been running since 1997, and for what I was told it has a sentimental charge for many of the participants who bring their wares every year to this event.
http://www.potfest.co.uk/coxs.htm

This year the fair was relocated to Stirling as the original site in Perth was not available. I can not compare between the sites as this was my first time at it. Nonetheless I enjoyed the location for the fair
The new site was in a huge Mart outside Stirling, of easy to access by road and with plenty of space to park unload and display, camping area and services, delicious food and coffee
I was traveling by train, bus and foot, with all my work inside a suitcase, a tent and a sleeping bag. My arrival was a comic sight as I was told by some of the potters.
The Mart, was surrendered by fields and a twisting river, on the far backgrounds the mountains, the castle and the tower. The high sky like a busy highway for winds and clouds, charming...

Color in Scotland is very saturated

My display was neat and simple. We were provided with as many tables as we manage to carry to our spaces. I could not bring with me any props or plinths to create different levels so I was forced to displayed my work all at the same level on the table. I had white and black fabric to cover the tables and some of the cubicle fence. Some flowers collected from the nearby fields gave the last touch, It looked alright, fresh and rich in color.
There was a constant affluence of visitors during the three days of the fair.
I had positive feedback for my work and good sales.

To Pot Fest I brought my functional work. This work is intended to be used and liked. In it I explore and combine highly functional table ware forms with a colorful surface of layered glazes forming abstract landscapes. The glazes I use have depth and saturated colors. Color is provided by oxides. My functional wares are meant to be aesthetically attractive and functional.
I see my making of functional ware as making flowers.


The good thing about Pot Fest was the socializing with the other potters. There was some communal activities organized for us, we have food and drinks together and many chats. There was even a bonfire waiting for the dawn to come.
The mood was very amiable. Most of the people new each other for many years, meeting in previous Pot Fest or at other fairs.
Pot Fest was for some the beginning for a season of traveling with their wares. During conversation potters discuss the different fairs, work, methods, lots of jokes and some gossip.
I see myself coming back next year, I am looking forward to it, to catch up with all the lovely people I have met in this fair.

Caprichos at BCAF

This weekend I will be exhibiting my new work At the Battersea Contemporary Art Fair. http://www.bcaf.info/exhibitors.htm
The title of the series is Caprichos.

Caprichos is an allegorical set of archetypes materialized as three dimensional figures. They are the product of the creative union of my conscious and unconscious mind.

As a group they have a few things in common, the processes and material used; clay.
Drawing is my first step to consciously visualize and capture images from my unconscious. But it is not enough, I need to materialize them in 3D in order to finish their individuation and define them.
I follow a kind of ritual during their production.
They all originated from a pinched pot, two pinched bowls which are joined together to form a ball. This ball is like a planet to become or to be inhabited by the figure. The figures grow from this primal ball of mass and define their forms during the process. In some of them the ball gets transformed into something else, a skull, a turtle... In others, it disappears to become the core or heart of the piece.
I do not always strictly follow my drawings though they are the starting point.

The logic behind my choice to name these figures Caprichos is that I felt like indulging myself in their production. The term Caprichos also refers to Goya's series. They have in common with Goya's a the humor, but even if I consider them as food for thought it is not my intention to enlighten or to lecture the viewer. The viewer will make up her/his own stories. Caprichos are triggers, devices to stimulate cognitive (thought) processes.

construction line

I participated in this event last week. I was very excited and looking forward to it. It was a great experience, I did not have enough.


A review and photographs of the event can be seen at:

"http://detailsonrequest.blogspot.com/2010/05/report-on-fridays-performance-of.html"

having flowers goes to luxury goods

This week I am participating with one work in Luxury goods. http://luxurygoods.freevar.com/
The work is called Having Flowers.
The starting point for Having Flowers was to make a piece which would specifically refer to females. My work is quite sexless in general, as it is made to represent all earthlings, any organism, and the dynamics of forces. Being a woman I felt the need to make something to illustrate and celebrate the feminine in particular.
What first came to my mind was the power to generate life. With it came too the taboos and prejudices exerted throughout history towards women and their sexuality.
Menstruation is seen in some religions as a punishment from God. A punishment given to Eve and her successors after she mislead Adam into disobeying God. Leaving religion aside, not so long ago it was considered bad taste to talk about menstruation. Instead people made use of expressions like 'having flowers' among others, to refer to women menstruating.

The saying (Having flowers) gave me the idea and title for this piece. The piece represents a pubescent female, menstruating, bleeding. Flowers bloom from her blood. Her features are not just human and her expression shows bewilderment.
Which is what many females felt and feel when having their first menstruation. Even if women know it will happen, and it is part of a gradual process, it is none the less a big deal. It is like gaining super powers. Those super powers have a lot of implications, it is best to master them.

While in the process of making the sculpture it occurred to me that Having Flowers did not just represent women discovering their first menstruation.
As humans (any gender) we do a lot of creation; more humans, cities, empires, laws, paintings, art, genocides, myths, poems, languages, computers, cars, guns, bombs, etc,etc. Animals do their creation bit too, and plants, and volcanoes, and insects and planets and stars and cells... To create something has consequences, speaking from a human point of view not all of them wanted or foreseen.

So, the creative power is challenging, can be puzzling and all organisms have that power.

A shipwreack story

My father started to work when he was 16 years old or even younger. He was in a kind of apprenticeship in Astano, combining working hours and study. Astano is a shipyard located in Fene, Galicia by the river Juvia estuary. By those times late 50's In order to get a job it was necessary to have the approval from the village priest. I am not sure if this was the case of my father as he had the approval and recommendation from his own uncle. His uncle was the owner of the main wood supplier carpentry company for Astano. His uncle was a very respectable citizen by those Franco times. But he was a good person and I adored him myself.
My father had another uncle who was working for a newspaper, El Ideal Gallego. He had a brief work experience there too. He told me once that this was the job he would have liked. His mother did not think the same. Astano was closer to my grandparents house and my grandmother did not want my father to move out. My father would have had to move to A Corunha to his uncle's in case he wanted to work for the newspaper.
In those times and due to his age and character my father felt obliged to follow my granny's orders.
Astano was booming by the time my father started to work in there, late 50's early 60's. The First State development plan made huge investments in Ferrolterra .
Astano benefited from it, improving its installations. From that period is the huge blue crane placed in the shipyard . An impressive and suggestive sight of my childhood. It looked to me like a bridge to nowhere.
Astano was building many different kinds of ships but specialized in civilian or cargo ships, also on fishing ships. The fishing industry is very big in Galicia. For military ships there was Bazan which was almost opposite in the ria to Astano but in the Ferrol side. In short time Astano was going to specialize in the construction of large oil tankers2.

Ironic as it is, those large oil containers were going to crash and spill their cargo, thus contaminating the Galician coast periodically, killing the flora and fauna, almost every five/ten years.
Polycomander 1970, oil.
Urquiola 1976, oil.
Cason 1987, chemical products including 1430 drums of 126 tons of sodium.
Mar Egeo 1992
Prestige 2002

Dad got used to his new life pretty soon, he was studying and working,:making money and new friends, becoming a man. He was never good at manual work but he was an excellent administrative and in those early days very good at networking. I think life was looking good and promising for him. Even if he did not get the job he wanted.
He met my mum and married, soon afterward I was born .
At the same time constant pollution and degradation of the environment were taking over their area. Pontes CCGT plant and Meirama combined their efforts, mining and burning coal, to better contaminate the air and rivers. Worth to mention is the destruction of river beds like Eume by sucking their sand which was to be used in the construction sector. I witnessed all with disgust but without fully understanding the consequences. I do now. This was called progress.

I have a brother, he is ten years younger than me. By the time my mum was pregnant with my brother the prosperity and progress dream bubble exploded. Astano was in crisis, it could not compete with other similar shipyards located in countries were human labor was much cheaper.
There were many meetings, mobilizations, strikes, committees, occupations, unions selling out and etc, etc, all of it was for nothing. The whole process killed my father's spirit, dreams and way of life. It was the 80's and the word was reconversion. Reconversion meant lots of people loosing their jobs and the decay of the whole area. Astano was not an isolated case. People did not have money to spend nor to pay their debts. Debt collectors started to knock at the doors, and many business closed due to lack of customers. Recession and depression took over, I grow up in this atmosphere of no hope.
Sadly, there were more bad news, after a visit to the doctor my father knew he would soon completely loose his sight. He retired prematurely from his endangered work. He never recovered his high spirits and died of cancer during his fifties.

Love you dad, fuck you economy and progress .

More info at:
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_I-e20nPK1bU/R_FKf3MB0aI/AAAAAAA
http://journals.cambridge.org/fulltext_content/supplementary/UHY/supp1/eng/PI/Etapa3/IC3-1.html
http://www.tagzania.com/pt/central-termica-das-pontes-en/
http://www.tagzania.com/pt/central-termica-de-meirama-u/

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.