I finished the work just a few days ago and sent it off after a bit of a struggle to complete it. I often drag my feet at the end and this time around was no different. It’s those small details that cause me to procrastinate. Anyway, I am pleased with the final pieces…I also wrote a short statement which I am really happy I did. It helped me to make sense of it all. I have posted it below.

“These works are about singular moments collected while observing the winter landscape around my current home in North Carolina and my childhood home in New York State. The moments were solitary and quiet; some deliberate, others accidental. Through a process of experimentation with liquid enamel on steel, I reinterpreted and captured these moments, presenting them in ghostlike translucency, as echoes of the memories. Each enamel piece is also accompanied by found objects that are aged and worn. When arranged together, the enameled and found objects establish a narrative for the recollection of my observations.”

I posted more images on Flickr, including some details.

Thanks so much for reading.

Looking forward to seeing all the work for Heat Exchange 

the work is in Phoenix. I’m grateful for the blog since I won’t get to see the exhibit. My work has focused on bodies of water in recent years. I’ve also been teaching a photographic transfer method via gum bichromate. I love the process and results produced but rarely use it in my work. I’ve posted an image of an earlier piece using this process, followed by a series of platters that will be in the exhibit, in progress and complete. The second body of work sent to Phoenix is based on vernal pools.

I have finally finished my work and have sent it to Elizabeth T who will kindly carry it to Phoenix. I haven’t had too much time in this project to really think and so the work is an amalgamation of ideas in progress. The blue pieces of oak are small gifts from my partner David…he works next to me and is a furniture designer and maker. Almost daily he leaves me small gifts of things/stuff that he makes or finds and these often go on to feature in my work. The blue pieces are the ends/offcuts of long planks of wood that he has been using in various commissions and projects. I have a rather nice collection of blue end-pieces in the shape of the letter H. I also had some work on my wall, some scraps of paper put together, which I had made in response to a visit to Amy Tavern’s studio at Penland a few years ago, where she introduced me to her collection of envelope papers…you can see in the image the same blue shape appearing…I hadn’t realised this until I looked back through my images. It reminded me of this blue wooden house that I have had since I was a child and a memory of these objects that kept flashing through my mind as I made this work. Finally the drawings on the enamel have been made as I walk and then repeated/scratched in the enamel. I guess this work is somehow about being home after travelling a great deal over the last few years…it’s a good feeling.

If you’re in Arizona next week, please come along to our exhibition opening:

There was the jewellery bench and the enamel desk in my St Kilda studio. At any time there could be a pile of metal on the enamel bench ready to go, as well as (and fed directly from this pile) a stack of enamelled segments on the jewellery bench, awaiting stringing into a single piece. By the end of my progress in making works for this exhibition, enameling and making days would alternate, which allowed my studio to cool down between firing days. It also meant that I would have to concentrate hard and think creatively on enamelling days, while on making days more dexterity, but less imagination, was needed to complete the pieces. By this point, the tethering points and fixing methods I was planning to use had been decided, just the work of ordering and joining remained.