Saggar fired ceramic, and cast glass creations, inspired by toys, addressing dairy farming practices.
As I age I am drawn to ruminate on the dairy farming environment in which I was raised, and contemplate present farming practices and their consequences. Our history of rural legend and our need for identity, needs re-imagining in this time of environmental crisis. My mediums, methods, firing practices and design decisions all reflect these concerns.
These ceramic pieces are fired in saggar pots filled with cow dung, wrapped in waste hay held in place by fencing wire and sprinkled with ash from native trees. The clay saggars are formed from recycled clay slip, and a mix of out-dated dairy farming magazines and old 1970s New Zealand Nature Heritage magazines. The reaction between the sculptural pieces and the combustibles within the saggar process is unpredictable and volatile. Other pieces are painted with black slip and ash glazes made from Puriri trimmings and fallen Mamaku branches from my own garden and fired between the saggar boxes. These ash glazes celebrate the specific trees which inspired my clay tree pieces.
My contemplative clay pieces, wrapped in carefully considered combustibles and fired within pages from pertinent environmental and farming magazines, have become vessels of sympathetic magic. In doing so they not only chronicle their firing history through their surface marks but encapsulate the laws of similarity and contagion, which are the essence of sympathetic magic. Uncovering the pieces after the saggar process feels like an archaeological discovery. Carefully extracting the clay pieces from their saggar confines, involves careful decisions over which scars are to be celebrated and which are to be smoothed over.
Glass is common; it is in all of our homes; it is mundane; intended not to be seen but to be seen through. In contrast the glass in this series of works speaks for the unseen and despite the human desire not to see. These cast glass pieces look light but feel heavy. I believe this mirrors the emotional weight of environmental crisis in Aotearoa. These pieces are a mix of polished surfaces and crudely finished exterior, reflecting the process of their making. The intent of casting glass is to capture it in its molten form. It’s akin to setting a glass trap and patiently waiting to see what it is you have captured. When the glass is released from its cage, it reflects the shape of its prison. These glass pieces represent ephemeral moments caught in time.
Creating clay & glass toy-like sculptures are my means to face difficult truths and imagine optimistic futures. By creating these toy inspired objects in clay I become part of a ceramic tradition which reaches back millennia. My “never seeing dollies” and their “bovine cohorts” stand frozen within the conflict between contemporary dairy farming practices and our current environmental emergency. Toys invite daydream and speculation and so create a fissure in our mundane world. They provide a conduit in which to talk about challenging issues and imagine positive futures.