I have been having so much fun trying to capture the view from my studio on clay tablets.
Deciding what is important to include in my seascapes and what isn’t. I want to bare everything down to the bare minimum, without becoming totally abstract.
So I started off with 10 fired ceramic plaques which I was going to smoke fire.
Here they are, glazed with transparent glaze and a lot of different oxides. I have deliberately hammed it up a bit, as the smoke will knock the colours back
I place the plaques in my dustbins and pack them up with dry leaves, saw dust and newspapers
My favourite dustbin is too full of holes and what with the gale blowing things are getting far too hot for my liking. But it is too late to back out. I can’t stop the process now. I should have listened to the weather report..
I had a very restless night listening to the gales and wondering if the bins would tumble over by the force of the wind.
The next morning I found that the bins were still standing but most of the clay tablets had cracked – I guess the heat was too uneven. These are the ones that remained in one piece. But even one or two of these have hairline cracks in them and I won’t be able to sell them. But I still like the three that remained intact. With smoke firing, you never know what you are going to get.
Annakeiller's Blog 