Notes on Time

Many readers of this blog asked for a detailed account of the factory environment and life. The factory, and within it, the pottery, is a very unique and interesting place, which I will try to describe in this and in forthcoming posts. It's also important to note that Kohler does not allow photography within the factory, so I will not have pictures of the factory on the blog. I don't think that the pics could reflect the true sense of the place, anyway. One has to be here to see, hear and smell it. So, come and visit!
For one thing, it's utterly unreal, a strangely wonderful and wonderfully strange universe of its own. In Kohler village, I cannot avoid to feel a pronounced sense of the put-on: the town feels like a stage-set with its manicured yards and pleasant but drab Mid-West style sleepy homes. Never a soul out and about. No children playing, no noise making. Barely any traffic except for when the shifts are changing in the factory and workers arrive or depart for home.
There are three things I wanted to write about on the account of time: factory time, clay & time, and some personal side notes on time.

Factory time
The factory has a life of its own, independent from what's going on in the rest of the world. It never stops. I can be in the pottery at 9am, 9pm, or 2am in the morning and be sure to have others around, workers attending their tasks. When I bike out I can smell the foundry and listen to the rambling sound it makes. It's going, constantly. There is something comforting in this reliable rhythm of things. It's a like a clock that tells me the time: I look over at a certain hour of the day to the casters of the first shift and I know before turning my head where at they are going to be in their various tasks. They come in in the morning, fill their molds, move down the floor on a series of molds in a choreographed sequence, one by one flipping molds, opening them, joining parts, cleaning joints. Lifting out finished pieces, cleaning and dusting the molds, then assembling them for casting the next morning. Then they move on to the casts of the day before for final checks before they are carted away to the dryers.  They take their few short breaks like clockwork and start banging their tools and buckets together 15 minutes before the shift is over as a signal to start the day's end cleanup and sweeping. This is the first shift from 5:30am to 2pm. These days, in the second shift, only the pressure cast machines are going, with much fewer workers attending to them. Their rhythm is a faster beat: taking the sinks off the machine every few minutes, checking for flaws and wiping them clean. Over and over hundreds of times a day. While a caster who works manually does only 20 to 50 but very complex shapes, the pressure casters are churning out their simple efficiently shaped ware. It's amazing to watch the casters: they move around efficiently without hesitation, like a dancer moving through a well rehearsed movement. Even though they mostly are big guys with big bellies and big arms they move gracefully and with a good sense of rhythm. Most of them have been working for Kohler for 15+ years, sometimes spending as long as 10 years casting the same toilet or hospital ware. 
So, the pottery does not stop. The soundtrack of the morning shift is a contemporary rock-pop station over-flooded with syrupy songs of love and heartbreak (still a welcome change after weeks of heavy metal and '70s hard rock). After the first shift is over and all the manual casters, design, development and administrative people leave there is still much going on: sprayers glazing, loaders and unloaders attend around the kilns, metal cars loaded with unfired ware are being pushed around on a series of ceiling tracks. Night shift workers have their individual soundtracks playing near their stations, accompanied by the bass from compressors, conveyers, forklifts, and moving ware carts.
The evening rhythm is just as reliable metronome as that of daytime. Maybe there is a little more breathing room, space to chat, less confusing movements, if for nothing else but simply for the fact that there are less people around. At 6am and 2pm, like clockwork, swarms of workers are leaving and arriving with their plastic lunch boxes.
Visitors on factory tours like to ask me about my own work schedule: They shake their heads in disbelief when I say that apart from a few hours of eating, sleeping and running or swimming, I'm at the factory 14-16 hours a day. From 8:30am to often 2am or as long as it takes.  We joke around with the associates saying that the resident artists work all 3 shifts. The studio has this effect of sucking you in, and even at 2am it could feel like that I haven't managed to finish everything I planned for the day.
This brings me to the next theme:

Clay & Time
Everyone who has worked with clay understands the importance of time / timing in making.  Clay is this great material that goes from liquid to a hard brittle rock and capable or incapable of doing things in certain stages of its life. For each clay body, this behavior has to be figured out in order to be working with it. The differences can be minute: it could be only 5 minutes drying time between being being able to slice and assemble large forms, (I'm making ceramic pedestals this week for my sculptures.) between the clay being just fine for attaching it or being too dry to do so. So working with clay is like nursing a baby. Especially when it comes to casting. It matters how long the clay slip stays in the mold, how soon I can pour out (creates a certain wall thickness), how long it's left to dry in the mold before taking the form out to patch it up. Each of my molds is a unique shape, size, dampness or dryness, concave or convex, I have to assess them daily and pay attention what they like and don't like in order to successfully cast them. The casters tell me that they have the same experience with the large and seemingly uniform industrial molds. They keep track of each' unique personality and baby it accordingly.
What's true for clay is also true for plaster. I've watched Tom Spleth (see previous post) to build his positive for a new vase form by troveling setting plaster on the floor.  In a plaster class we usually encourage students to make a box into which they pour in the liquid plaster and only remove the box after the plaster is set into a hard block. Working the way Tom does gives one a good understanding of how the material changes over time as the plaster goes through the chemical change of setting and solidifying. Making a mold is a good exercise in timing. Again, even minutes make a world of difference between workable and a torture for my developing carpal tunnel. I can hardly think of another materials that depend so much on time like clay and plaster do. And because of this it's hard to find time for a break when in the studio. There is always something that needs tending; catching in the right stage or coaxing back into it by controlling drying or rehydrating carefully. 

Personal side notes on time:
Some of you might have noticed that I skipped a post last week. I was about to type up the above when I got a phone call from Hungary that my father has passed away unexpectedly. He was in a hospital for a miserable week prior to that, literally between life and death. He was 67. His passing made me consider the passage of time over and over this week. Among other thoughts, it reminded me how much I enjoyed spending time with him when I was little. We would always be doing something creative together: Bauhaus style collages, photography, making up silly songs and word plays. This was before he divorced mom who raised my brother and me by herself. That was also the end of collage making and game playing.
I'm writing this while at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport waiting to my connecting flight to Budapest to attend his funeral service. I just left the pottery at Kohler at 7am and now I'm sitting here idle several hours and two flights later. Airports and airplanes are heterotopias where time is suspended. Kohler is such a heterotopia. A village stuck in time, a factory that has been operating for over 120 years and never stops (apart from two union strikes that are significant part of US labor history. Read about them on Wikipedia.) Residencies are also heterotopias: while still preserving a sense of normalcy with daily and weekly routines, in every moment, I'm keenly aware that this is not my normal life of social, professional and personal obligations. These periods devoted to the studio solely are a privilege.

a set of ceramic pieces

my studio with 20 molds, a couple of pedestals in the making

new pieces with the pink blushing glaze on a newly finished pedestal

Colors of Autumn

After 2 weeks of stormy, windy and drenching weather an Indian summer is treating us all in Kohler with sunshine and warmth. The trees of the factory yard are turning color: intense hues of red, orange and yellow against the bright blue sky. During work hours, the warm weather is not a blessing though. Fans, heaters and humidifiers keep the casting room at a constant 80 degrees temperature, from which the only relief is to find a spot next to a slightly open window. On these warm days of late autumn, the air inside does not move and it's a numbing sweaty experience.
Funny side note: we had a group of distinguished guests visiting this week. By the time they were through with the factory tour and arrived to our studios for the "much awaited" visit and demo, most of the ladies decided that the heat and dust was too unbearable for them and took their leave.

Before I go on, I have to introduce my new studio and house mate, Mr Tom Spleth of North Carolina. Tom is a distinguished artist of many talents, and an seasoned mold maker. He came here to do color and got me swept up in experimenting with colored clay bodies.
Technical note: It is possible to put ceramic pigments directly into clay resulting in intense colors when fired. The advantage of this is that the piece does not need a glaze, the color is already incorporated into the form. For a studio artist, it's an expensive way of working but at Kohler there are available resources. 
Tom does a very interesting technique for getting a pattern onto his large vase forms: He pours colored slip on his disassembled mold parts so that the casting surfaces are covered with drippy dynamic lines, then he assembles the mold and fills with the regular slip to make a cast of the form.

Tom Spleth developing a new form by pouring plaster on the form then scraping and piling tall...

...there are many more steps to go but the form is starting to take shape.

On his first day at Kohler as I was describing my project to Tom, I realized that with all the delicate textures on my forms, glazing may not be the way to go. Kohler glazes are thick and meant to cover, they tend to make surface details disappear (see previous posts). What I wanted to do in the first place was contrasting surfaces of bone-like dry unglazed clay and high gloss glaze, white with a touch of a pink blush. After many disappointing results on test tiles and our conversation, it was easy to convince me to be sneaking up to the glaze lab and mixing bucket after bucket of color slips for "experiments".
So, the week started out with the promise of playful colors of blues, yellows, greens, as well as more somber grays and black.
Color made my casting process more complicated. I decided to do a double layer wall: by pouring the colored slip in and immediately pouring it out, I could get a skim coat of color to stick to the mold walls first. Then this is followed by pouring in regular slip in order to make a structural wall. This process means rotating the mold one additional time while a jelly-like thickening veil of slip if clinging to the mold wall on the inside.

the molds being filled with casting slip (on the cart in the back is the "library of forms" - the chunks of broken industrial molds that I would like to make molds of)

With every complication in the process you take more chances. And so it happened that I had to face the fact that there is a certain percentage of error in this process. Molds would blow up leaking slip all over the floor (this actually has nothing to do with color but a lot with the fact the the thick rubber bands that I use for strapping the molds together unexpectedly relax over time). The walls of the fresh cast would occasionally collapse together, making a sad deflated mess out of the form.  Working with so many colors all at once, it was also harder to fix cracks and flaws.
I tried to comfort myself with the fact that these losses were minimal and to gather enthusiasm by describing the potential with these colors to the factory tour groups that come around in the mornings.
Except, that I should have known better: I'm not really interested in getting a variety of colors. My pursuit is pink blush against pristine white. I don't know why. But I needed to get it.

And then my luck turned: I got into the spraybooth one night with all my pieces and started spraying glaze. I tried to be calculated and layer what in the tests had given me the best indication of some sort of pink... But then I got carried away (or went rouge?, or got greedy?). In addition to my own test glazes, I also scavenged some of the production glazes and at that point continued spraying with an abandon: thick coats for the smooth parts of the form and thin for the textures, layer after layer of a quick puff of color.

I put them in the kiln with dread the next morning. It's not enough that I went crazy with the glaze and could not even remember what I put on any of the pieces. But they may as well stick to the kilnshelf for good, or explode, or fall over in the kiln.
A necessary technical side note here: The firings are done in the factory's main tunnel kiln. This is a kiln that runs the entire length of the floor: could be as long as 300m  or more (I should really find out). Ceramic ware travels in it on a cars that run on a track kind of like a freight train. Each car has shelving set up to place the sinks, urinals and toilets. As ceramics travel further down the tunnel the gas burners pump in more and more heat, by the middle of the tunnel reaching cone 10, around 2300 degrees F.
When loading the kiln at Kohler, I have to make room on the shelf without interfering much with the loaders' work and the production schedule.  Carefully placing 22 little pieces with no flat bottoms while the car keeps jerking forward was an anxiety filled event to say the least. A good reminder that I have to plan for efficiency for the next round. But everything was on the shelf at last and my pieces went off on their scorching 27 hour journey.
They came out yesterday. When I went to rendezvous with them at the unloading station I could see from afar that all the guys were circling my cart grinning and pointing and probably making some jokes I rather not want to hear. What's really great is that they did not touch anything until I got there and then they handed me the setters with the pieces on. Wow!!! The late night rampage in the spraybooth was not all that crazy after all!  I got my pink blush, several different versions of it and I love it!!! It makes these clunky chunks of plaster forms look very feminine and sexy in a weird but not totally unexpected way. "Of course", - said Sandor, "you are making them, so even dumb chucks of plaster look bodily".

Dirt and Water

It's only the end of the second week and I've lost track of time already. The parameters of my project are taking a solid shape, and besides that, there are many smaller side projects I would love to pursue in the next 11 weeks. With every ceramics place I've visited as an artist in residence there come a set of opportunities and a set of limitations. At Kohler, these are materials and finishes allowed by the factory (I will probably discuss these in the weeks to come...) as well as technologies that fit into their very own industrial process. In other words, I'm going to have to use what fits within these limitations, and in turn, using what's available generates new ideas I would have never thought of otherwise. One of these creative cul-de-sacs is the limited production-line color palette. For my project, the main color finish I had in mind was a sexy hot pink blush in contrast to the sanitary white. The glaze tests came out this week, - looks like there will be no blushing. Similarly, the '70-es vividly "Bold look of Kohler" colors are no longer used in the factory due to lead silicate (a very common but, in unfired form, deadly ceramic ingredient). What's left is old-lady-pastels, and basic B&W. Comfortingly, these latter are thick and luscious.
To test the strength of the Kohler clay and methods for joining, I slapped a few little house of cards structures together last week. Against the odds they survived (everybody thought they were too flimsy and fragile) and became adorable little sculptures. So there is one enticing side-track already.

As for my main project:  
A reminder: I'm taking old, broken industrial molds, which look nothing more than chunks of plaster of an interesting shape now and will be remaking them in clay. See previous post.
This week, I've started making molds. Each plaster chunk is such a complex shape that it difficult to get away with molds less complicated than 5-6 pieces. It's not uncommon that certain shapes require 7-8 mold parts. When the tour groups come around, they are baffled by the sight of me playing with putting together a 3D jigsaw puzzle that seemingly requires more than the two hands I got. As a nice elderly lady revealed to me on Friday, even though I'd described the project, she and her friends did not understand what the plaster pieces are for until I started to put them together to show that the hollowness the moldparts enclose indeed gives the negative shape of the chunk of plaster I was showing earlier.

a 7-piece mold disassembled, with its positive (the slightly more yellow chunk)

the same mold assembled with its positive

This is really the first time for me for working on molds of this complexity, and in such a large numbers. Every day, I make one new mold, if I make it a long day (13 hours +) I can finish two of the easier ones. With this rate it will "only" take 2 months to make molds of all of the chunks I have. Nice!

the smallest chunk, it's complex enough that it still requires 5 parts

ready to pour part #2 with plaster

plaster in the cavity, 3 more parts to go

Having to make molds every day is not as dull as it seems: Some people do sudoku, mold making is my way of fighting off early dementia. Each mold is a new mental challenge of successfully breaking down the form to surfaces without undercuts.
Technical side-note: an undercut is a recess in the surface that does not allow the mold to be pulled away without breaking off some part. For example: your neck is an undercut relative to your head when taking of a sweater with a tight neckline. That is, unless you literally are a pinhead.
As a side-effect of the long hours of mold making, by the end of the day I look like I'm thoroughly dusted with powdered sugar (it's plaster, of course). With a deep trench on my cheeks from the edge of the respirator digging into it. Factory issued steel-toed boots caked with plaster. Ceramics is a DIRTY business!

And here comes the part about water:
- Oh, the waters of Kohler!!! As an artist in residence, I was offered a membership to the town's gym, Sports Core. Being used to the IMA at school, I was expecting utilitarian  facilities and crowds but was looking forward to resume weekly swimming at last. It turned out that I'm the only one using the 25m "competitive swimming pool" (that is the pool that has lanes and no babies with inflatable rubber duckies). I go to the pool nearly every day now after work. It's addictive. Floating in silence in the aqua blue rectangle looking out to the stars I feel like Juliette Binoche in Krzysztof Kieślowski's  Blue. (Rent it if you don't know what I'm talking about.) It's a weird thing to be alone in the entire swimming pool. No noises of splashing or staccatos of breathing. I can't get over how strange it feels.

sunset (in the factory)

At Sports Core, there is also a large outdoor Jacuzzi on the deck with a fireplace. The view is to the small lake, woods with songbirds, peachy-purple sunsets turning into the inky night sky. Unbelievably peaceful and beautiful. And to top it all, I must describe the shower in the dressing room: True to Kohler fashion, it features pretty much every type of showerhead that there is. There are 4 showerheads all together, in every stall. One for each third of the body + a handheld. Each with functions that can be set to massage or shower in any combination. Unlimited hot water with complementary fancy toiletries.  No signs of signs about conserving water and saving the planet. The do-gooder, earth-saver-Seattleite conscience cringes about the wastefulness of all this luxury but I can't resist the extensive shower ritual after the long and dirty day at the factory.

KOHLER: "What?" "Where?" "What are you doing there?"

I should probably start this year's blogging by answering these questions.
I've just started a 3month long residency at the Pottery of the Kohler Co. in Kohler, Wisconsin.

Among artists, clay people, the opportunity is known as the coveted Arts/Industry Residency, administered by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. The artist workshop is on the casting floor, barely private, noisy and hot, which takes a bit getting used to.

Kohler is the leading manufacturer of sinks, toilets and all kinds of bath and sanitary products both in clay and in metal. The Kohler iron and steel foundry started in 1873 in Sheboygan, producing farm equipment.

The story goes that visionary Mr. Kohler enameled a feed trough, put 4 feet on it and started to market it as a bathtub. Riding the wave of interest in personal hygiene of the late Victorian era, the business proved most successful, moved a few miles out of Sheboygan, and grew into the current factory. By the 1910s, Kohler invented the first built-in bath with apron, and started designing new forms for sanitary ware in both cast iron and vitreous china, which (and this is very revolutionary) had continuous shapes where germs could not hide.
By 1917, the Olmsted brothers (see also Central Park, in NY) were hired to develop a long-term building plan for Kohler village. It must have been the most beautiful factory town of its age, and by now the only remaining one of its vintage. Its wide avenues edged with old trees, its curving streets and cute single family houses are very lovely, indeed.

And finally, what I'm doing here: This early into the residency I can only report about my intentions. What it ends up being by December is a complete mystery for me (as of yet) and I'm open to the adventure.
I'm in the casting shop, which means that I have plaster and clay slip in an abundance at my disposal. I had proposed to do a project that uses the old, broken production molds. In a way, my project salvages and redeems them by making molds of the broken plaster mold fragments and then making casts in multiples ("clones" of the original broken mold parts) in vitreous clay.
*Just a quick technical note: the clay casing slip used at Kohler is referred to as "vitreous china" because it is not a porcelain clay body, even if it looks like that fired and glazed. I will refer to it as "vitreous" in the future.
The broken plaster mold pieces have wonderful sculptural qualities, - I was hoping to use these ceramic "clones" in larger installations.

The first week slipped away fast as I was familiarizing myself with the many shops and departments at the Pottery. By Friday, I managed to find some retired molds which may or may not prove to be useful.

In the meantime, I was keeping busy by getting to know the clay and the glazes.
*Another technical note: Clay is amazing!!! Every claybody, - a wet mixture of clay minerals containing various percentages of ingredients, behaves differently. Kohler's vitreous was developed for a specific industrial process and scale and that's what it does best.
All week, I've been playing around with forms and construction methods, glaze colors and combinations. Most of the experiments are a complete failure but I learn a lot from them and every once in a while there is a result quite interesting. I really don't feel the pressure to go into production mode, as most artists would and do do when they get here. Being here is my opportunity to explore these materials and come up with new ideas that can only be done with these materials.
...Hmm, come to think of it: Can I have a swimming-pool filled with creamy white clay slip?

The Bornholm project

Oh, the joys of putting up my feet after the day's of work!

The rain had miraculously stopped by this morning and with a slight hesitation the sun came out and the most beautiful blue of the sparkling sky took over. After much preparation, labor, and planning (frustration, as well, over small logistical issues) I could finally begin the last phase of my Bornholm project. Unlike my work in general, this project happens in the public space, it is performative, it is meant to be soliciting some kind of an action, but I'm still having a hard time to categorize it as "public art", "intervention", or even as "interactive".
Here is where it comes from: ever since starting to plan for the residency I've been intrigued by the history of this island, especially because of clay plays such a crucial role in shaping both its past, as well as its present (see previous posts). It only made sense to create sculptural work that would not be transported home but would function (and only make sense) here on Bornholm. Again, first I had to come up with the shape that makes sense for the location. During my wanderings, I'd been looking for some kind of a marker or object typical to the island. Pretty soon I would find returning shapes and proportions in the markers of paths (usually a round piece of wood cut with a slanted top), in stone kilometer markers (blocks of granite with rounded tops); and in he houses themselves (squat little buildings with steep red tile roofs). All my brown stoneware clay was turned into roughly shaped blocks, tops cut in a 45 degree angle, with a little storage compartment dug into the top. Textured to resemble dry earth, the blocks were air dried but not fired. They were left unfired because I would like them to be eroding, melting back into the earth under the plentiful autumn rains. This symbolic gesture is a metaphor for replenishing the clay that used to be mined everywhere around the island and was the most important resource. Not that I carefully plotted out every aspect of this metaphor in my mind beforehand, but when I think it through now, it's also an interesting analogy with what the local friends have been telling me so many times: how much the island needs an influx of new ideas, people, and resources coming from outside to refresh and reinvigorate what is native to here. And this is also true of my clay: what makes up my little sculptures is clay imported from some other place in the world. Inside compartment of each clay block is a little porcelain sculpture (a mini-version of the large porcelain stick constructions I've been working with here - see earlier post). It is fired but due to the form's tremendous fragility, I don't trust that it would survive unbroken very long. Unceasing high winds, wild animals, traffic, - anything could easily smash each to little pieces. Or, and this is the desired outcome: they could be "adopted" by users of the trails, nearby property owners, and passersby. (Although, I have to note here, that this scenario may be unlikely. Bornholm is a place where nobody locks their bikes, cars, or doors; things are not being taken, property of others is respected. People have lent me all kind of valuable equipment without the slightest hesitation.)
The rough block of clay is like a little armchair-pedestal for the porcelain structure to sit on. When a fellow resident artist, Xavier, saw the pieces put together for the first time, he exclaimed: "beautiful! ...the strong holding the weak!" - Hmm... Funny, I've never consciously thought about it that way! For me, each object is both fragile, impermanent, as well as resilient; but both have these qualities in different ways.

OK. So, I made 79 of these (400kg of clay) and I've planned for a long time to take them by bicycle on the trails in three different directions starting from Nexo: one to the south, to the historic stone embankments and to the beaches; one to the north, along the rocky shores, making a loop on my way back through the farmlands; and the last one to the west, inland direction (along a trail parallel with the route between the two major towns, also farmlands). Today, I did the first two trips. Each trip transports almost three times of my own weight in clay. For this, I had to have a special vehicle: the Christiania people have been making a cargo bike (technically a tricycle) since the '70s when they took over a part of Copenhagen, banished cars, and set up a unique socio-economical structure for themselves. I needed a Christiania bike! The company was happy to offer to lend me one for this project. For various logistical reasons, at the end I did not take that but borrowed a Christiania bike from Bright Green Island (sustainable energy solutions organization in Nexo). After some rebranding (new signs fabricated from garbage bag plastic and traded masking tape), I took my lovely green bike on rides! Even though this kind of a transport vehicle is not uncommon here, it's much desired as it is quite pricey ("a Hummer of bikes?"). My sexy, shiny, bright green, boxy three-wheeler provoked some looks along the way. This baby is beautiful! And it goes very-very slow for a bike (very much like the pace I used to run with)!!! ...and it made my knees sore from pushing the pedals with all that weight all day long!!!
Along the way (it must have been 3-4 hours each trip) I kept thinking why I needed to do this project, as I never for a minute thought that the real reasons are the ones mentioned above (...There is a difference between inspiration for creating and motivation to sustain through the making of a project).
And this motivation all goes back to running... and looking. Running provides a pace with which I can move through spaces and observe them. I tend to look at details. One might say I'm very observant of my environment. This is a mapping project in which I place markers at places where I'm looking, where I'm thinking that you should be looking and observing too. It's like google earth gone real!
All one needs to do is to follow the trail.
All one needs to do is to slow down enough... to see.

Geology can be fun

Thanks to the Baltic woodfire symposium organized by Cassius Clay, yesterday I went on a tour of the island lead by Jesper Larsen, to see evidences of Borholm's unique geology and ceramics history.

The island is cut through by a fault line from Ronne to Nexo separating the basalt rock of the north and the sandstone of the south. Around this central/southern area is where clay was discovered accidentally during repeated attempts of coal mining centuries ago. Oh, yes, there was coal (and also Jurassic fossils and dinosaur remains...) but every attempt to get it out of the ground failed commercially, partially because of pesky clay getting in the way. Finally, and because this isolated land was otherwise not at all fertile and, consequently, its population was very poor, pottery production started up as a means of economic survival. One-man potteries grew into small factories like the Hjorth Fabrik in Nexo we visited with the tour. Hjorth was one of the first workshops to develop wood-firing and stoneware bodies in Denmark. In their museum it has been an eclectic collection of pottery produced during the 200+ years, styles following international trends from Japonism to fajance (yes, they worked with earthenware for a while too). The bread and butter of the pottery was, of course, reliable and plain functional objects in solid yellows, browns, and black for the table, as well as apothecary jars. The workshop still has the old equipment (although most of it is just for show; - I'm pretty sure their clay now comes from the same place in plastic bags like the clay I use here does). Everything was very charming in a nostalgic yet claustrophobic way, as built spaces in Denmark tend to be very small. Seeing the workshop floor, a Japanese artist I was with was enthralled; while I tried to imagine my own sprawling studio practice cramped into this tiny space. On the tour, we also visited a now defunct mega-factory. Its location is still marked by what the kiln shed used to be: a 200 meter long roof structure (amazing timber construction, like an upside down boat!). This was a place for refractory production: ceramics for bricks, tiles, pavers, pipes, etc. A very high fired stoneware varying across the color spectrum from yellow to chocolate brown. The kilns were 70-80 meters long, rail tracks going into them, feeding clay 24/7. The factory was located right next to the stoneware (high temperature) clay deposits in the ground. The company mined the land heavily, creating several pits, which are scattered in the area. Being very close to the sea shore, they had to dump fired ceramic shards on the shore constantly, in order to build a bank preventing sea water to enter the pits. All the pits are now abandoned and filled with water, becoming cute lakes for recreation tourism which is the sole basis of income to the islanders in the present.
At our next stop, also a lake now, we found lots kaolin (the essential ingredient of porcelain). I took samples from two places, one was very plastic, the other one was very white but mixed with coarse sand. My hands and shoes caked with clay, I' was picking up all kinds of rocks and mineral samples all day long, stuffing them next to the camera and notebook in my daypack. By the time we arrived home I must have collected at least 5 kilos of stuff. Some of this went right into the kiln. In two days I can see what this clay looks like and does when baked to 1260 degrees Celsius. The last and most amazing stop on the tour was a part of the coast just south of Ronne. We had to cut through private land (with special permission only,) and climb down a steep path to access this very special and scenic shoreline area. Here in the side of the sand-cliff, there were two kinds of earthenware (very low temperature clay that is saturated with iron) side by side: one is blue-gray and the other is flaming red. And tons - and tons of it; making crackled mounds like a giant's playground. There was also slate and rounded stones of many kinds (I wish I'd know the proper names!): fossilized black wood from the sea, stones that looked like baked chunks of this red clay, and finely layered hunks of compressed sand (something like a sandstone, except this splits easily). Amazing stuff! In the 17th century a fleet of fleeing Swedish boats shipwrecked near this coast. Until present day the sea still delivers something on occasion (sometimes it is silver cups) from these long sunken boats.

All this is not just curious history or a geology lesson. This field trip for me was very much part of the research for my current project... which, I promise, I'll describe in detail in the next post.

Here comes the queen! (actually, it was "only' the crown princess...)

Saturday was busy with the conference opening parties. There are two major exhibitions, each European country is represented by two emerging and two established artists. During the afternoon we were bused to the Helligdomsklipperne Art Museum (what a beautiful building!) and after that to the "Young Talents" show in Hasle. With the crown princess in attendance (smiles, handshakes, speeches, photographs taken) for the opening, every one of us tried to do our best in terms of formal attire. This resulted in a motley crew of jeans, clay stains, un-ironed shirts and dresses complete with studio shoes and napsacks.

These pan-continental survey shows are always suspicious, there is a variety of work and very little thematic coherence in the show. Although I found many favorites most of the work was unthrilling but not entirely uninteresting. As far as the technical goes, all were very accomplished. What I enjoyed the most was seeing the differences from country to country and recognizing the dependence on the historic context and cultural heritage that lead to these. For example, artists from former Eastern-European countries tend to have less resources in terms of production. A studio artist often times works on small scale with uncomplicated forms, where the presence of the hand is obvious. The clay is in its most natural form. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is some bold, almost architectural computer aided design work coming out of the Netherlands, while the UK was represented by a young artist, Katherine Morling's lovely figurative work. The jury award went to a Spanish artist, Rafael Perez, whose amazing abstract forms were laden with color and texture.
While the mature artist's show was much less the expected, the young talent show was unfortunate. Work is badly displayed and jumbled together in no particular order or organization. Here again, the work may be technically spotless (a good cast, no glaze faults, etc.) but, for the most part, too formal, too much trying to fit in with the so called "rules" of the medium, uninspired and conceptually underdeveloped. Interestingly, and differently from the other exhibition, here it was impossible to discover regional differences: transformer figurines recast in clay by a spanish artist and a latvian artist alike, vessels of a japanese tradition mixed with those of the bauhaus tradition.
A dinner party followed the exhibition openings, giving a chance to mix and mingle. (Let me not go into the details of the menu: There were lots of boiled meat and potatoes and, for vegetarians like me, grudgingly given mashed potatoes for change. An all time record in bad food!)
On the other hand, I met a lot of great people, interesting artists, managed to compare notes about educational and art systems particular to many geographic areas, and most importantly had great fun. Unlike any other conferences or events like this I've been to in the past, here everybody made a special effort to get to know everybody else. There was nothing easier than to go up to someone and say, "where are you from and what is it like?" or "I'm really interested in your work, let's chat" and lots of chatting we did. With everybody,... except for the Hungarians. Which made me remember why I'm no longer sad to have left my country of birth. Being small and without much economic resources or professional opportunities is a thing that could be accepted and overcome. But for some reason my fellow countryman artists reside in a constant state of denial, negativism, and a smug "we know it better" attitude.

This post should have extended to some thoughts on the art vs. craft divide in the light of the conference events but I'll pass this time and return to my studio. Hopefully, what happens there makes more sense on this topic than the words I could come up with.