I had a surprise visit from the owners of a Dutch Gallery, Gallerie Mooi Man, yesterday afternoon. I was busy glazing and wasn’t going to open the door but thankfully I did.

Because they bought four ceramic sculptures there and then….

Rather a nice surprise. Their gallery is in Groningen www.mooi-man.nl

Gaia

I am sure that everyone has their own interpretation of Dylan Thomas’s wonderful poem, ‘The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower’.
This is mine; a totem pole or story board; ‘Gaia’.
The poem kept me awake for many nights (and days!); dreaming, journeying, searching for a way to join the poet in celebrating and honouring our roots; the Green Fuse that drives our existence. 
I chose to focus on the theme of interconnectedness. Through our collective unconsciousness, dreams and myths can enter ordinary reality.  I decided to make physical some of my personal dreams and visions.
I sometimes encounter whales in my dreams, and just like the Cheshire cat they often leave traces behind. So I decided to include them in my totem pole along with the hands of Gaia, the Earth Goddess, giving and taking life.
The badger is a very real little creature; fat and grubby, sporting enormous claws all the better to unearth sweet corn and carrots; she lives in my garden and I call her Maggot.
This is a link to the poem

My totem pole is almost finished and this is the top sphere – a smoke fired globe with whales and water

I have only used metal oxides to colour the clay

I used manganese, red iron and cobalt oxide – the smoke did the rest!

My inspiration for the sculpture is Dylan Thomas’s poem ‘The green fuse’ I wrote about it in an earlier post http://annakeiller.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/the-green-fuse/.

It didn’t take her long to work out how to get her beak into some of that tasty cat food;

An open patio door and she’s in!

I tolerate this because she has impeccable manners. She never shouts or hassles me for anything. She very rarely craps indoors.
Skittle of course is delighted! He will sit next to her while she finishes off his dismal leftovers. And the moment she has walked out he gives me a meaningful look; OK, tin-opener you, time to top up my plate!

The Skittle cat and I have an arrangement; an empty bowl means a guaranteed top-up of fresh tasty morsels – but a bowl of cat food with the jelly licked off means hours of arguments… Agony for the both of us, really.

Mindy has raised several new gull generations on my roof, but this winter she broke her leg.I’m not sure if the tag she was fitted with by some do-gooder is to blame. But the upshot is that she has lost her mate and he has taken up with someone else…and poor Mindy is a rather sad little girl hobbling around my garden while her erstwhile partner and his new bird large it up on my roof.
I was busy in my studio today working on a new sculpture project when I heard her flat footed patter in the hall

She had broken in through my balcony door

… she has come to see me.

She follows me through the house like a tame chicken.

But she is not a chicken, she is wild and free, riding the waves and chasing the clouds! She is a Dover White Eagle, a creature meant to soar and swoop!

And all this is going through my head when she just stares up at me and says; shut up and love me! Love me and feed me and talk to me. Tickle the feathers on my head and allow me to visit you freely.
And I will. I shall feed her cat food and I shall treat her like the pet she obviously wants to be.

What do I know.

I watched a detective series from the mid 70′s called Murder She Wrote the other day and I must admit it blew my mind. The main character is a middle aged, middle class white American lady with the steely eyed determination of a reptile and the gentle charm of a pigeon.
The series is just far enough removed from my everyday life ( I am a middle aged, middle class white woman living in Britain in 2012) to reveal a caricature mirror image of every day life. Watching an episode is akin to entering the House of Mirrors in a fun fair – you know the one where all the mirrors reflect back  different images. But in the House of Mirrors you are aware that the mirrors are skewered and that it’s all a game, really. Watching Murder She Wrote 40 years after it was made, the society and the values portrayed there seem almost absurd. The sense of absurdness is intensified by the absolute, straight faced conviction of the actors.
It made me think that reality is like an onion in that there are so many different layers and each layer is a definite entity with it’s own particular set of rules. I think that each layer pretty much live in isolation and ignorance of the surrounding layers. Each layer is convinced it is the true onion, their reality the only reality. The dividing factors can be time, geography, religion, or level of consciousness.
I live in 2012, in a small town in England. I live in a country where some people are millionaires and others sleep rough, a country where  many can’t afford to feed their children. I live in a country at war with a large proportion of the Muslim world because officially the British government say they object to innocent people being killed and harassed. I live in a world where materialism is the new God and the ruling church is led by males who side with the rich against the poor. I live in a society where  we are encouraged to seek to meet the Divine only through intermediaries.
I must admit that very little makes any sense to me. I don’t understand much of what is going on in the world, but I have got one area where I thrive and that is exploring what Carl Jung named the collective unconsciousness. He devised a method called active imagination allowing for constructive meetings with the archetypes inside us all. This method is built on an ancient  Shamanic tradition of  going into an altered state of consciousness to journey outside time and space into non-ordinary reality .  I  view it as a way to slide and glide like Alice between the many layers of the onion in the strange funfair of life. Carl Jung brought Shamanic techniques into the light of the scientific world and he called it Psychoanalysis. Again, why use intermediaries?
I can’t say that I have found a lot of answers through Shamanic Journeying, but I have found that my questions shift emphasis and a lot of anger and pain is transformed into a sense of detached wonder. And it does make me appreciate just how transient any culture or ideology really is.
For those interested in Carl Jung and his link with shamanism I can recommend his autobiography ‘ Memories, dreams, reflections’ . The Red Book is also a (very expensive) delight.
To find out more about Shamanism in modern society I think Michael Harner’s ‘ The way of the Shaman ‘ is good, and for a do-it-yourself book of journey techniques I would recommend Sandra Ingerman’s ‘Shamanic Journeying’, a beginners guide.
Faith Nolton is a visionary painter  I have a huge respect for. You can catch her here

The picture on top is of a sculpture  called ‘The Abduction’. I based it on an old Swedish fairytale about a young girl who was abducted by the fairies. To see more of my work, please go to www.annakeiller.com

Another torso sold this week; it is rather nice as I am making a lot of new work and I need the space!

So I have decided to have a mini sale of ceramic torso sculptures; if you fancy any of these on your wall then please let me know.

White Simona

Swift

Forest Floor

They’re all £270, and that does not include transport.

I will upload a few more in the next coming days.

To see more of my ceramic torsos, please go here

The next ceramic workshop in Dudley Road Studios will take place on Sunday 11th March 11-3pm.

It will be a free-for-all; It seems that everyone who has signed up so far would like to make different things. We will do coiling, slab building and if I remember correctly, someone is using my molds for bowls….

I will be on hand with tea, coffee and cakes plus technical advise, should you need it! There are still two free spaces, so I’ll be seeing you!

Sign up here

And the dimensions are 30”x17”
To see more of my ceramic art and sculptures please go to www.annakeiller.com.

The technique we used is quite simple; bisque fired work is painted with copper, iron and manganese oxide and then placed in a smoke chamber along with colour enhancing ingredients such as coffee grinds, copper wire, salt, soot, sea weed and hydrangea heads. We made salt and coffee bombs ( salt and coffee grinds wrapped in a sheet of newspaper) which we placed inside and beside the vessels so that when they get hot they will burst and give the ceramics an intense blast of colour.

Once the ceramics are placed on a layer of sawdust another layer of sawdust is poured on top…

Some newspaper is torn up and placed on top…

It is lit….

And once the sawdust catches fire, it is time to replace the lid so that the sawdust will glow and smoulder rather than burn, allowing the smoke to decorate the surfaces. The barrel will reach about 8-900 degrees Celsius.

My next sculpture and smoke firing workshop will take place at Dudley Road studios on Sunday 12th February and there will be a plate making workshop on Sunday 5th February. To find out more please go here

Plate making Sunday 5th February 11-3pm at Dudley Road Studios.

Decorating the plates, Sunday 19th March 11-3pm

We use under glazes and oxides to paint the plates after they have been bisque fired.
To find out more and to sign up, please go here