Code:    M17

Name: Sea Foam           

When was it made: June 2015                  

Weight: 309g                    

Width: 8.5cm                                                    Height: 9cm

Technical Data: Stoneware clay body fired to 1220C

Hyplas and local clay slip monoprint

Modified Leach 1-2-3-4 glaze with 0.5% Cobalt Oxide and 2.5% Red Iron Oxide

Platinum Lustre                740C

Time to make:  Mug Body           5 minutes

Handling              10 minutes

Monoprint          6 minutes

Glazing                 2 minutes

Lustre                   8 minutes

Total time            31 minutes

Story:

Ripples in the sand, in the waves, those childhood moments still affecting what I make, what I want to make. I always look to the sea, the shore line, always changing not the same from the past. The same is with my work, I can settle, a change in movement changes my thinking, creates ripples for the future.

It feels odd that most of the lending library so far was made in a single month, with so many failures from before that time, sharp edges and useless handles. It took longer to get back into the swing of making than I thought it would.

The monoprinted mugs aren’t marked as they were only an example for collaboration.

Response

M17Title:            The Heavenly Race (Running)
Medium:      Oil Paint on Canvas
Size:            30.5 x 90.2
Date:           c. 1959
Artist:          Agnes Martin

The Heavenly Race (Running), how strange, I was only looking at this painting by Agnes Martin the day before receiving Joseph’s Sea Foam glazed mug. The resemblance between the two patterns is uncanny.

An infantile impulse to repeat, as if seeing and experiencing something for the first time. I remember too running across the surface of the ripples in the sand, those strange undulations beneath your feet, running towards the sea, the breaking of the waves, the sound of the water retreating, only to return again, wave after wave like the beating of a heart. The repetition of the same simple action; paint on canvas, glaze on clay, footsteps in the sand, waves across the ocean.

I run into the water, laughter and screaming as the cold laps around my waist. I run back to the safety of the shore only to return moments later; a to-ing and fro-ing between the familiarity of the shoreline, anchoring my confidence and allowing me to return, time after time, to the danger of the sea; a heavenly race, running.

Lesley Halliwell

30 July 2015