Happy Birthday Keith Haring!

Happy Birthday Keith Haring!!

 

 Google commemorated his birthday today by changing their logo to one inspired my Keith Haring!

 

What annoys me about ceramics...

OK so here I go on a rant, but first off 2 blog posts 2 days in a row?!?!?! I must be sick or something!

((The opinions in this post are surely mine and mine alone, I do not mean to offend but rather create and facilitate a conversation.))  

Anyway what really gets me with ceramics every time I say that I'm a ceramic artist is get the puzzled look, then the comment "Oh you do pottery?" I suppose that I do, do pottery but that's not what I call it. When people ask what I do I say that I'm a CERAMIC ARTIST where in that did you hear POTTER? To me when someone calls themselves a potter, it means that they do it as a hobby. I am not doing it as a hobby but rather as my chosen career. I now many people that call themselves a potter and are not doing it as a hobby and that's fine with me. The labels we put on ourselves are personal and what we call ourselves is a personal thing to do as well. I think that if someone calls themselves a ceramicist then they are just full of themselves. Why call yourself something that people can't pronounce let alone spell, because inevitably their going to get the "What's that??" question. Come on people! Also to me when you call yourself a potter that means that you use the potters wheel like seen above. I do not, I handbuild my work and make most of it from molds and use coils. (Basically snakes of clay rolled out kind of like a log cabin wall, but you can't see the logs when I'm done this the piece.) So does that mean that I'm a potter? In my opinion the only similarity between a potter and I is that we both use clay as our medium, that's it. Nothing more nothing less. I use glaze yes but it's not the same glaze from one person working in ceramics to another.

NO not the glaze you use on a bunt cake, that glaze that I use to make a piece functional and food ready! But even the clay body that I use can be completely different from one to another. There are hundreds if not thousands of different clay bodies out there in the world and a lot of them are custom made with a clay mixer. (I wish I could get my hands on one of those!)

The other thing that drives me nuts about ceramics, well people on the outside of ceramics is that the only reference people have about ceramics is the movie GHOST, with Demi Moore, Patrick Swayze and of course Whoopi. OMG ask anyone in ceramics how they feel about this movie and I bet you anything you'll get a moan and a groan. HA! I knew about the scene pictured above before I had even seen the movie, and I only saw the movie about 2 years ago. PS Demi's "WORK" as in ceramics in the movie are horrible! UGH!! Really bad shapes, I hope she really wasn't making the forms that they were using for the movie. As a joke every ceramic studio in the country should have a Ghost movie poster hanging on the wall. I mean really come on people! Get a little more education before jumping and accusing someone in ceramics of basically having sex on top of their potters wheel and the clay... gross. That's just gross and really messy and not in the good way either. Anyway till my next rant...

Pattern Inspiration

Over the past few weeks I have literally become obsessed with looking at patterns (like the one seen above its a marimekko print). I really think that people that make ceramics tend to wear clothes that compliment the pots they make. I was just talking about this concept to a friend of mine today in the studio. I mean think about it, what we are drawn to as makers is that we are going to buy as a consumer as well. It's not that hard of a concept. I like to use pattern on my work and I love to wear patterns. I was wearing a plaid shirt today and that's how this whole conversation was sparked, that doesn't mean that I put plaid on my work that would just be silly. I don't think that I look like my pots, my pots are pastry looking things and I am far from looking like a pastry. My studio mate has the same sort of body shape as the work that she makes, another friend has very elegant forms and so is she, to me a lot of the guys I know in ceramics tend to wear a lot of brown and you guessed it their pots are brown as well. Obviously it doesn't have to be how people decorate their pots that the connection is made but it could be the shapes of their bodies as well.

 Next time your choosing or looking at a ceramic piece that you like, ask yourself why you like it and what is it about the piece that makes you drawn to it? I think if you ask yourself this question then you'll find out a lot about yourself as well.

A little catch up...

     There has been A LOT going on in my person life as of late. I feel like I have been living in a snow globe and the snow begins to settle but every now and then someone comes along and shakes up the snow globe to see how the snow could settle differently within the globe. I'm really getting sick of it. One of the best stress relievers as on late has been the Boston Marathon, with highs in the 90's and adding an hour on to my last time where I finished 4 hrs and 54 min, still good to be under 5 hours considering the heat but I wanted to beat last years Personal Record of 4hrs 8min.

Time for me...

Over this past winter, the studio has been a refuge for me. A place that I could go to on a daily basis and just get away from it all and create my own reality. I think this has a lot to do with my artist statement, and where I talk about Candy, cakes, pastries and parties have strongly influenced my work...  Parties being the operative word because they mean that there is a celebration going on, there is something worthwhile to celebrate. Life has a way of throwing you for loops and its all about how we deal with these loops, and we do become better people in the end. I really value my time in the studio and make the most of it to escape and get into my own head. I do it too when I'm running, when I'm stressed out or whatever going for a run is a great way to clear my head, I love it more then anything. With the marathon coming up I'm going into spring with a VERY clear head. I have a glaze firing coming up this week and next in the studio, I hope they all work out!

Weeks 4, 5 & 6

This project is sooooooooo hard! I'm having a really hard time not turning this into the vain project it could be if it was let loose not without control. I think I'm going to start exploring the self portrait not as face/head shot photo. We were taught in school that a self portrait dose not have to be figural. For my next blog post, and the series of photos that follow on my Instagram @arthurhalvorsen. That last photo is probably one of my favorite photos of myself I have ever taken. I feel like this is the first time that I actually look 26! haha Anyway I still love taking photos with Instagram so follow me on there!

Self weeks 2 & 3

OK first off this project is a lot I mean A LOT harder then I thought it was going to be! I think it's really hard to do a self portrait photo project with an iPhone. I mean come on how much of a harder project could I of give myself? Seriously... I think its really hard to do this and not look like an emo teenage skater boy. But I digress...

Self week 1

This is the first week of my self imposed assignment of the self portrait. All I have to say is that it is A LOT harder then I thought it was going to be! I'm afraid of it becoming a quirky project, and yes it is a quirky project but at the same time I want this to be a serious project reflecting on me and how I'm feeling on a particular day, or what I look like on a particular day etc I will not be posting photos of myself naked, I know I have said that before and it's still not going to happen, I may be shirt less or in my bathing suit for some of them... I have no idea when the moment hits me you'll see it. I wanted to also post some of the other photos I have taken not as myself but I still like them a lot. Remember you can follow me on Instagram if your on there as well @arthurhalvorsen