Looming Boredom

ByJoseph Travis

“boredom haunts me as I work, I fear it will destroy me. I want to be better than my fears” -a note in my sketchbook. Not all old ideas and thoughts are comfortable. Putting them out into the world makes me feel uncertain like I am giving away too much. As for the date if this particular quote it is between January and December 2014. Finding this quote reminds me that I haven’t been happy with my work for some time. I am at the uncomfortable stage of being a maker where I am very aware of how bad I…

1 : 453.6 or 1 : 2.2

ByJoseph Travis

I am fascinated by numbers at 16 years old I used to say I loved working with numbers, but that was before I did double maths for my A-Levels. I was good at working with numbers, more so than reciting facts verbatim, in fact before I got my ceramics degree my only qualifications were mathematics and sciences. Sometimes I think like about the cost of making something, as the cost of often selling something is higher, due to other factors and the fact I don’t sell means working out that final cost doesn’t bother me. The following is a thought…

Backwards Thinking

ByJoseph Travis

  Or should that be thinking backwards. Recently I have been finding myself rediscovering older thinking and going back to earlier ideas. For a start I decided to go back to my original title for my research and for my thesis, I also found a business card on my desk that showed marks into the clay that I had recently tried and thought was a new idea for my work. The business card was from my final year at university and I stopped making the marks as a tutor told me it made the work “too busy”.

Slow Starting

ByJoseph Travis

Staggered stumbling starts words awkwardly twist not forming cohesively stopping any progress -Red Fox Poet Writing for the lending library I sat each piece on my desk, I measured it, entered the technical data. I had made each one, I knew them intimately by the time I came to the story I didn’t have to think too hard. So within a few hours I had written over ten thousand words, without much pausing to think.

A few days away

ByJoseph Travis

At the moment it is the children’s summer holidays which means I have to wear my Dad hat a lot more.  We went away to a camping barn and the children had fun staying in “a little house” as my youngest put it.  Oddly while I was away some interesting things happened. For one we had the first piece of writing for the lending Library this is mug 17 that was given away to a member of my writing group.  I love the connections other people make that I never would have found by myself. The second thing that happened…