I'd like to announce my new website. www.ingahamilton.com
It's a cohesive collection of my work in an ordered manner, with a newsletter that you can sign up to for exhibition info etc.
From now on, my blog here will be just for my work in progress pictures, sort of a sneaky peak around my artistic practice. Hope you enjoy the site.
Andy and I can't believe it's nearly a month since our Clay Safari in the USA.
Here we are at home, the grey rain lashing against our window panes, and our thoughts turn to the warmth of the people we worked with in Maryland and the experiences we shared.
Oh for the warmth of my crucible.
It's a piece I built especially for the last night. I handbuilt it from black clay that I reclaimed from the dump pile. Spending a cold fall day, out on the loading dock, sun on my back, consumed by the flow, feverishly slapping and winding the clay, oblivious to the weak Sunday sun setting behind me, until I realised I was freezing and could no longer feel my hands or nose. On our final night, everyone in the studios took fake money, attached wishes and hopes and burnt them in the crucible.... then we went to sing mad karaoke!
Inspired and in love with woodfiring, we are hoping to bring the process here. Our vision is a Northern Irish version of the wonderful woodfire kiln we were lucky enough to fire in at Baltimore Clayworks. (pic above) Our friend Andy Cooke already has the structure built on his land. Watch this space for a HUGE project we are embarking on to bring the guys with knowledge to our shores....
Wonder what woodfiring is? Well, raw, bisque fired clay is put into the massive kiln and fed constantly - and I mean about every 10 mins, with wood for 3 DAYS! The temperature is extreme. The ash in the kiln makes a glaze, and your raw surface becomes lustrous, sexy and totally unpredicatable. It's exhilarating.
Andy placed simple block shapes around the kiln to see how they would turn out. I created 7 antlers. One for each of the 6-year phases that my body has regenerated through. And one for the body I will begin on my 42nd birthday in June.
These 2 pieces are the only ones we returned home with. Everything else we created during the 3 months either went into collections or was exchanged with other artists we'd worked with for pieces.
Some of our work remains in a show at Handmade in America, in Asheville; namely my flocked antler vase (you view it with 3D glasses to make the flocked pattern dance before your eyes).
It has a butt hole under the tail. Just in case you decide to put flowers in it, it will pee all over your furniture!
And Andy's porcelain 'Vernon; Count Rainier'.
And Andy spent his last two days, doing what he knows and loves best, creating a fabulous graffiti wall with fellow artist Matt Gifford.
Once finished, people chose their squares to have cut out, to take home.
And so you can see, with our Kickstarter and Arts Council backing, not only have we returned home with an expanded knowledge, but the desire to share it with our fellow artists here and to create facilities that will have an impact on ceramicists here for many years to come.
From the bottome ouf our hearts, THANK YOU. x
I can't tell you how excited I am that our Open Studio was such a success. Especially as the work that sold was work that came from my gut.
These pieces were the result of frantic, frenetic days of flow-making that I had no will over. They feel ancient to me, like I've known them all my lives. They reflect the part of me that is quintessentially English. It's as if I had to come to America to discover my English roots.
My piece, "Herald The Feast/Beast" 20" x 16" x 1"
A white hart carved into a slab of ceramic 'meat'.
SOLD!
"Curse Ye, Who Feed Upon The Hart." 16" x 16" x 10"
A white hart, porcelain antler in a carved ceramic 'meat' bowl. The bowl is a feasting bowl and has an imprint of the footprint of a 'Pimperne Roundhouse', an ancient building that existed in the village where I was born.
SOLD!
And my wall piece, which if only it were portable, would have sold.
6ft x 4ft x 1ft, reclaimed clay, porcelain antlers, vines.
But it is a happening. An ephemeral piece that will return to a clay pile in 5 days, when we leave.
This body of work comes as a direct result of being at Red Dirt and discovering my true, gut voice and having the confidence to let it flow. I'm honoured to have had the time here. It will inform my prcatice, my life and my humanity for many years to come. The learning curve has been exponential. The time, invaluable. Thank you to all those who helped make it happen, spent time with me, and gave me the space to grow.
x
Sorry for the lax updates, but a little gal named Sandy came a hammering through the East Coast and it's sort of messed up the schedule a little. Not that we are complaining, there are folks out there who lost their homes, their towns and even their lives. We just had a little interruption to our travel plans and some unexpected snow!
So this Sunday, 11th Nov, sees our Red Dirt open studio. It's a day for collectors, museum curators and other such peeps to wander through our working spaces and hopefully inspire commissions and buyers to add us to their collections. Fingers crossed.
Here's a little hint of what I've been up to........ we are just so grateful to all our Kickstarter backers, as through their generosity I realised that in the last six weeks we have learnt.....
MIG, TIG and Stick welding. Plaster & Rubber mold making. Impression taking.
Glass slumping, fritt casting. Clay reclamation,
working with different clay bodies, (This is a sneak of my 'meat carvings' I'm creating large clay steaks and drawing in them with clay or carving them. The fat is porcelain.)
mason staining, underglaze painting techniques,
low and hi firing. Blow torching on wood. Porcelain carving techniques.
Oh, the list goes on..... But the most crucial thing I've learnt? NOT to bash apart pianos with sledgehammers - they can kill you with 200 tonnes of strung pressure. I've never come so close to wiping out an entire studio of people. Stupidity and a slegehammer are a dangerous mix! : ) SO once the show is up and staged, we will take pictures and share it all with you, our lovely backers, Inga n Andy
HOT AND STICKY It was the oddest feeling in the world to leave our lovely home on a frosty morning and a few handfuls of hours later, find ourselves sitting on the porch in Maryland (pronounced more like Maralyn), sipping ice-cold drink, swatting off mosquitos, and sweating like we'd run a marathon in an aran sweater.
Fortnight one of our dual-facility residency at Red Dirt and Flux Studios has seen temperatures up to the high 80sF - that's in the 30sC to us metric folk, with a humidity of 70% today. So much for fall and all those winter woollies we packed!
Although we gave ourselves a few days to start spinning the right way and stop falling asleep at random hours; to orientate ourselves, buy bikes and stop being eaten alive (yeah - like there's any chance of that last one, this is a swamp you know!); we have dived headfirst into the art world of the Greater DC area.
HOT AND SMOKEY. Mount Rainier, Hyattsville and Riverdale Park, which are the areas surrounding the studios and our house, are awash with artists. We've visited painters, sculptors, woodworkers, glass artists, metalworkers, ceramicists, installation artists, and many many other creatives - in fact so many that our heads are spinning. Each and every one brings a new influence to the mediums that we are using, opening up new avenues for us to explore.
Amazing projects such as Community Forklift, where renovators and contractors drop off unused building supplies and reclamation salvage to be sold on to artists and members of the public, are providing a bounty of items for our work. A fairy godmother dumpster outside a stage and prop warehouse provided the wood for Andy to make us a work table and also some amazing flexi mirror off cuts. Resting in the corner of our studio space after a hard day collecting antique plaster work and humping wood, lazily watching the evening sun filter through our open loading bay doors, we marvelled at the creative light effects as they bounced off the flexi glass, we were enchanted by the dust dancing in the air on a nearby chair..... until we realised that it wasn't dust.... the sun was bouncing off the mirror, hitting the chrome arm of a swivel chair, intensifying its beam and setting light to the upholstery of said chair. Only a few days into our residency, we were just a few seconds away from burning the studios down!
SO HOT IT BURNS! So you might think that in all this heat, we are taking it easy, hanging out in a/c cooled buildings with our hands in cool clay, but that would be too easy! You're forgetting that kilns are involved. And visits to glass studios where the a/c is turned off, the 7 glass furnaces are open and people are running as fast as they can to get shows up and ready.
But most of all, we haven't told you about our welding course arranged through the Washington Sculptors Group. Yep, in this heat, we've been learning to plasma cut, use oxycetelene torches and stick weld at a delicate 2800 degrees in order to make armatures and larger sculptures. Oh, and then there's getting sunburn from the high UV levels given off by MIG and arc welding whilst sparks of molten steel blister the backs of our necks as they spatter in the darkened world beyond our visors.
All in the name of art.....
Tuesday night, we are giving our visiting artists' slide talk at Gateway Arts Center, Brentwood MD
If you're in the area, come join us.
Two of MyTarPit's artworks are appearing in the highly anticipated return of the Transformers-themed exhibition, 'More Than Meets The Eye - The Return'.
The exhibition features some of Ireland's best alternative artists alongside a number of international artists.
It's all brought to you by the Blind Tiger Collective - More Than a Shop.
It's on Friday 24th August, 8pm - 11pm. There's free entry,DJ,drinks and BYOB.
Be there, or disappoint Megatron!
Hello Friends,
As many of you know, we have won an amazing dual facility ceramics residency for 3 months in Mount Rainier, just outside Washington DC, but we need help.
For those of you new to kickstarter, it's a crowd funding site where YOU get wonderful artistic rewards for helping US do something extraordinary.
Please click here to see a video we've made. Please do watch it. We really appreciate your time.
And even if you're not in a position to help back us, please tell EVERYONE you know about it - and even those you don't.
Print T-shirts, stop bus boys, drag a placard on a cart behind you..... thank you! For spreading the word. Inga n Andy x
London 2012's Cultural Olympiad has been running over the last month as a prelude to the Olympics itself.
One of Northern Ireland's greatest pieces, NEST, is an art installation made from thousands of donated objects, inspiring composer, Brian Irvine, to compose and conduct a gigantic musical performance involving over 500 performers and the Ulster Youth Orchestra.
And North Down Borough Council donated the swan I pimped with MyTarPit and Lee Boyd on our behalf.
Click here to see Brian and the swan, and to see the orchestra sitting in our swan, performing!
Nest is an archive of photos, labels, stories and films.
An unusual census, Nest is a unique study of life in Northern Ireland: a collection of individual moments and hidden stories revealed through the objects that line our nests.
Watch for the exhilirating, captivating and skin-tingling choir and orchestra performance at the Opening Ceremony.
Of course I donated something far more emotionally significant of my own to the project; a little pair of sheepskin boots that my Poppa bought me whilst flying to Switzerland in a light aircraft on an impluse. I was about 3. They are one of my most treasured possessions.
So lots has happened over the last few months, mainly anticipation at the prospect of becoming a proud aunt, but workwise, a HUGE amount of travelling and exhibiting. 'Awakening Curiosity' at The Ark.
Runs unitl the 6th August. So this is your last chance to catch my 'Nest Freaks'
a collection of crazy bird's nests,
built from found materials and hanging around the Children's Cultural Centre.
The toys and pieces I used provide each porcelain bird with perfect camouflage.
Spot them if you can!
And for weeks it meant my kitchen was filled with piles of intoxicatingly-clashing colours and tempting squeaky toys for these installations dangling for up to four floors in length.
No robots were harmed in the making of these nests.
My pink and white reefs are there, too,
along with my Monkey Spawn installation on the floor.
There's still time to see the show. It runs until the 6th August and it's free entry. So if you fancy seeing my work along with shoals of tin can fish, or lightup snail trails, the ARK is the place to head to.
There was also the OAK show in Cashel, Tipperary . It was such an amazing experience.
Artists from all over Ireland and the UK were invited to show in the grounds of Killenure Castle on the outskirts of Cashel.
This little guy nested in an ancient muskett shooting hole.
These two lived, teetering on the edge of a stone staircase up to a turret.
Surviving outside through lashing summer weather for 2 months.
The installations were challenging, as the ruins couldn't be altered in any way.
So everything had to fit in tiny nooks and crannies in the walls.
Others sheltered in stables that the owners had converted into a gallery.
And now we are winding down. Getting ready for our next trip to the good ole US of A in September, where we will be spending 3 whole months on a Clay Safari (that's what we are calling it, anyway.) Three months of pure practice with some of the US's greatest contemporary ceramacists and Flux and Red Dirt.
But watch out - some of my artwork will be at the Olympics, too.... I'll tell you on the 26th July!
We were very lucky to have lovely Italian photographer, Franco Bistoni, not only taking part in ELEMENTALS Birds, but also photographing it on the opening night.
The following shots are all 2012©Franco Bistoni.
There it work in the show that's not mine, but Franco takes such beautiful pictures, that I couldn't resist...
My Tarpit's paper and wood sculptures - Woody and Buzz.
Sabeth Jackson's woodblock owl.
Karin Patry's textile pieces.
Joe Crows by Love Ablan, Bernice Anderson, Jon Adams, Patricia McCall, Tara McNeill & Conor McGrath.
Debbie Orr, aka Skein Queen's knitted owls.
Marty McClure's Thunderbirds.
Cas Holmes' red legs.
Jo Hatty's flock and chicks.
Mark Morgan's Joanna and chicks.
Anita Bruce's delicate hummingbirds.
Ashleigh Downey's paper birds and books.
Paula Fenwick's Poppy, Cornflower and Marigold birds.
There are so many more to share.... next post....
