Bribie Island

Fishing line caught in driftwood at Bribie Island.

Weathered log at Bribie Island. (On school camp! My friend and I overheard someone looking at the fishing line and commenting "artists get paid to do stuff like that." If only that was true. The idea that "artists get paid" is a strange misconception about the role artists play in society.)

throwing with grasses,ferns and paper daisies

Collected material from the wallum at Tin Can Bay.

Wedging the dried kangaroo grass into the porcelain.

The pots. Throwing with organic material is difficult, Even getting the clay to stick to the wheel was quite hard! The pots tear as they get thinner, but I want them to be even thinner. The paper daisies dyed the clay a beautiful rich orange.

small sculptures

The stock is on the stove. In the studio porcelain sits in huge recycled lumps surrounded by combings from the wallum up at Tin Can Bay. Daphne and Pearl have taken a lump each with the bag of bush bits and are making their sculptures that capture the essence of unco-ordinated concentration, and pure delight in the physical world. Hair, dirty feet, toe prints, gumnuts, paper daisies and porcelain. Later, when they are in bed I'll try mine. When I'm throwing I'll remember the pure, immersion on Pearl's face. Having children both stops and starts the creative flow.



It is hard to let go of the romantic vision of complete, scholarly pursuit, dressed in some kind of fetching but shapeless cassock in an ancient stone tower.I think of the old motto carved in stone at the University of Qld "A Place of Light Liberty and Learning". It could be a quiet library but I have to make this busy, patchwork life such a place. As much light, liberty, and learning comes out of here as anywhere. Uncovering it amidst the chaos is the trick.

first bowls

The first results out of the kiln from throwing organic matter into clay. I glazed this one entirely and drew a little map on it.

Pied Beauty

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spáre, strange;
Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)
With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:

Práise hím.

only connect

"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die."
- E.M. Forster, Howards End, Ch. 22


Strange objects, domestic form creates a "ground" that can be read as a familiar object, shadows and impressions from the bush make marks..... Throwing with foreign objects in the porcelain.

“I know this already”

“I know you know.

But do you believe what you know?”

From season 2,HBO television series ”In Treatment”

Before I even laid eyes on Anton Reijnders I read Arjen Mulder's “The Virtual Object of Interactive Art”. This text provided me with an intellectual articulation of the ideas I've been pondering for the last few years.

I see the use of domestic form as activating a dialogue between the artist and the user. Mulder refers to the conjunction of the symbolic and the physical form of art as a “coming to consciousness”(pp186, “Understanding Media Theory”)

Expanding one's inner self by looking at (or listening to, touching, smelling or tasting) something external and deepening one's view of the world by contemplating one's inner self. The insights thus gained can be expressed in words or translated into gestures, practices, worldviews and emotional processes to be embraced rather than avoided. In short reflections purpose is- do not be shocked- love” (pp186, “Understanding Media Theory”)