Joseph Hartley Artist in Residence

Back to school.

Well here I am back at university to complete my last year.

I am pleased to say the dry pots have made past stage 1, a vigorous course over the Pennines and through the back streets of Leeds, a route designed to test only the finest porcelain housing systems. They completed stage 2 on Monday, trip to uni in Taxi, and are now sat in the uni workshop waiting until they have really dried out properly before they go into the gas kiln to be reduction fired at 1280.

I transported the pots packed into old fruit crates with shredded paper around them, this seemed to work pretty well.

I’ll keep you informed to when they are going into the kiln.

Day 10.

What a week and what a day, somebody open the kiln, I’m well and truly fired!

Thank you so much to all of you that came to watch my talk, you made my day. Thank you Magdalene (sorry if that is spelt wrong) for firing the pots for me, you did a grand job. Thank you Gabriel for the clay, I’ve been throwing it today and its great, i’ll put up some photos so you can see what I made out of it. Thank you Roger for letting us stay in your beautiful house. And last but not least thank you Robert and Paula for letting me work in your fantastic gallery.

Keep watching the blog, it doesn’t end here!

Aprons 5, 6 and 7.

Watch this space for apron 8 which just needs altering.

Penultimate day

So it is my penultimate day – for those of you who don’t know that’s my last but one (I had to find that out the hard way…). The dayhas been a bit of a marathon (but luckily didn’t end up as a Snickers) – thereve been a lot of loose ends to tie up like throwing cases for left-behind pieces of porcelain and also turning the cases I threw yesterday. Also added a third to the pair of rib pots I did yesterday, making a neat little trio of vessels – see pictures. I’ve begun work on my ribcage apron which I intend to complete first thing in the morning – I am actually dictating this to Robert as I sew – who says men can’t multi task??

Silly Islands

Just thought I would put this phot up of me in the Scilly Isles. Your probably wondering why?

Well you cant tell in the photo but my dad took this photo from with in the tent i’m using to make my aprons. You can just see the shadow of it. I remember this moment because of the small brown birds that gatherd round the entrance of the tent.

Day 8

I cant believe its the day before the day before my last day.

Been trying some thing new today. I brought some lambs ribs through from manchester that my mum had given me a while ago. I tried using them as profiling tools on the wheel so the shape of the rib dictated the shape of the pot. I only managed two but will try more tomorrow.

Tomorrow I want to make an apron that has horizontal pockets on either side so I can store the ribs in them in the same possition my own ribs are. Im looking forward to doing that.

Day7

My stoneware pots hadn’t dryed enough today so I could’nt turn them or print onto them. Hope fully they will be tomorrow. At the moment I have to start thinking about fitting in all the last batch, when am I going to throw them, when am I going to turn them, etc?

Day 6

I,ve been thinking alot about how I can marry up the porcelain and stoneware better and something I thought of was to use coding of some sort to link the two, like a specific number that is only on one porcelain pot,  stoneware pot and lid. Over the weekend I took the letters off an old type writer (dont worry it didn’t work) and  brought them to York. I tried printing onto the porcelain with them today and  I really happy with it. I like that you could either match up the number to the number or you could match up the symbol to the symbol. When the matching stoneware pots I threw today are leather hard tomorrow I will print the same symbols on to match them up.

Day 5

Well, its been a brilliant first week for me, I’ve loved every second of it and Saturday day was the perfect day to finnish it off with. Thank you to all of you that came along and had a go at making some thing, I had a great time and I hope you did too.

It was really good to get my first set of pots delivered to the kiln location, they made it there in one piece with no chips, phase 1 complete. Now lets see if they make it through the firing. Because I decided I didn’t want them to be glazed I have put them straight into a stoneware firing, this means no bisque firing and will save me 2 days. The trouble is I have never tried this and also I have never tried firing some contained in an other thing, its new territory, exiting territory.

Aprons 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Day 4

Yesterday I had the absolute pleasure of a visit from James Beighton, curater at MIMA. I even managed to get him on the wheel, as it was James I thought I’d ‘throw’ him in at the deep end and gave him a ball of porcelain to play with. The result was a beautiful flat rimmed bowl. Thanks for your visit James, look forward to seeing you soon.

I realised some thing yesterday about the work i’m making, it can only be made here in York, as soon as I go back to Manchester I have easy access a kiln, and that renders the concept of having a container to transport the work safely completly useless, it is a really good lesson in context. I am quite sad I wont be able to carry this work as I am enjoying it so much but for the idea be a firm and clear it has to be York specific.

Its the last day of week 1. I,m running an open workshop today from 11.00 to 1.00 so anyone who thinks they can do better than James on the wheel come on down!

Still having trouble putting photos up in the hostel, I’m going to try this morning in the gallery but if not I will put plenty up when I get home tonight.

Day 3

An excellent day!

I feel as though I have resolved some things in my head that had been bothering me the day before. I wasn’t completely convinced the relationship between the aprons and the pots I was making was strong enough. I’m now happier because I have realised parts of them both feature and show off the act of the  ‘making’  celebrating the processes and actual time and effort it takes to make something. They are also both forms designed to protect something, one me, the other porcelain.

This concept of having to make one thing before you can make an other is making me think, could the first thing become more important than the thing at the end? To begin with I was making the stoneware crates to match the porcelain but today I was thinking about throwing the porcelain to match the crates, have there roles been reversed?

Day 2

Was very pleased to get into the gallery today to find non of my pots had cracked through the night, this is a problem when using porcelain. By the time I left in the evening one had developed a crack in the base, lets move on.

Been thinking about the ‘crates’ and thinking I’ve spent to much care on the ones I’ve made so far, I think they need to be cruder, crude with charisma though. I’ll but some photos up in the morning to show what I mean.

The apron I’ve started for tomorrow is red with a big metel zip running right down the middle of the front, this can be un zipped from the bottom for when you have to sit on a wheel with your legs open. Would like to get a pocket on this one, which reminds me Robert told me a great pocket story today, perhaps we could up load it?

Looking forward to tomorrow!

Day 1

Well, just got back from my first day at the Gallery and its been proper super.

Managed to get on the wheel as soon as I got there, been throwing porcelain as as thin as I can. There is a slight problem i’ll come against whilst at the Gallery and that is that there is no kiln. Usally I wouldn’t have to carry my pots too far to go into the first firing, but here they may have to take a short car journey, this could be disastrous as thin, dry porcelain is very brittle. I’ve decided to throw stoneware ‘crates’ in which to transport the porcelain, they could even be fired to bisque together with out even taking the porcelain out. I will then end up with a set of duos, one porcelain and one stoneware, I like that I will get an extra pot as a result of having to protect an other pot.

I’ll keep you posted.

Tomorrows apron, BLUE!

I also had a fantastic sandwich from the Italian Deli next to the Gallery, Gorganzola, artichokes and cured ham!

Right, it’s Monday evening and i’m just making last minute preparations for the morning.  I’ve had a great first day in York and I managed to get my wheel and stuff here in 1 peice so everything is going well so far. Been thinking alot about tomorrow and i’ve been doing some drawing, would like to put some up but this computer wont seem to let me do it.

Been thinking about Wedsdays apron, RED! (maybe)

Apron No.1

Apron made for day 1 of the residency. It uses lots of the ground sheet on the lower half because its waterproof and throwing spits a lot of water at you.

It features a rubber ring all ready attached the material that will be used for holding a slip brush.

Nice Pegs.

I saw my dad yesterday and he gave me the bag of pegs that went with the old tent, not sure how so many different designs got into one bag, maybe swapping pegs was an old tradition when you went camping?

When you look at these pegs you can’t help think they might be slightly over engineered, especially when you look at them next to a new tent peg which is basically a bent piece of wire.

Being a thrower of clay I can’t help looking at these without thinking ‘turning tools’ so thats what i’ll use them for. (try to anyway).

An apron a day.

I know a lot of people might think an apron is pretty boring, not me!  Was thinking about aprons today and thought what if I made a different apron for every day I was in the gallery, and then put specific pockets on each one depending on what I was doing on that day. Like making an apron with long slender pockets for putting turning tools in on a day i’m turning. I like the idea of them being made out the tent fabric as that is what the material was designed for in the first place, protecting someone from the elements.

Super bowl.

Spent the last couple of days on the wheel.

Been throwing a finely grogged clay which I’ll fire to stonewear.

These photos show the bowls just after I had applied some white slip, All though I quite like the brush strokes I think they need more coats.

The photo at the bottom shows a little bit what they will look like.

My kind of canvas.

Been thinking a lot about the types of things I would like to work on over the two weeks I’m in the gallery.

Something that first came to mind was an old canvas tent that my dad had recently given me, its far to torn to be able to go camping in it  so I took it and decided to use the fabric to make something. These photos show some of the colours and detail on the fabric.

I’ve just finished the first garment made from the fabric, its a coat that features an A4 pocket, perfect for anyone who has ever been caught in the rain after doing some photocopying.

Im keen on putting new life into objects that have become unusable or void, especially when they hold so many memories. When I put the coat on it smells just like the tent and it instantly reminds me of childhood camping holidays. I wonder if somebody else had secretly made the coat then let me put it on, could I still pin point the smell if I didn’t know where the fabric had come from?

I think the A4 pocket is a result of my little obsession with measuring devices, I’ve been thinking about pockets a lot, and their volume. I like the idea of this tent which once housed me, housing other smaller objects, just like a pocket does.

The tent was huge and there is a lot more fabric to play with.

I also just worked out that the last time I went camping in this tent was with my dad 13 years ago in a camp site just outside YORK. I’m hassling him to look for some old photos of me next to the tent.

Hello.

Hello friends, artists, designers and enthusiasts.

Welcome to my blog.

Right here you will be able to read about all the things I’ll be getting up to during my 2 week residency at the New School House Gallery, which by the way I am extremely exited about. Thank you Robert and Paula for letting me loose in your Gallery, I’ll try not to make to much of a mess.

I will be administering small doses of photos, thoughts and ideas from now onwards.

I look forward to meeting lots of you and hearing your opinions and views.

Joe