Whatever happened to the painterly potter?

ByJoseph Travis

Watching Alex Shimwell throw on YouTube always reminds me of watching Kevin Millward. Kevin Millward was a visiting tutor during my final year of my Undergraduate degree, he only taught at the university one day a week for four weeks. By this point I had been watching YouTube videos for a year to help with my throwing and I was truly awful. Not only did I not know what I was doing, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I had drawings of what I wanted to make which were far beyond my making abilities, so I just…

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.

Time to Review

ByJoseph Travis

So last night I recorded the final episode for Season 1 of the Nurph Chat. As always I had an amazing time talking to the guests and learning so much, which makes connections with other things I have thought about and even written here on the blog. Things to consider for the second season: How are we going to advertise it better How are we going to grow our audience Is there a better time of the day to do this at How often am I going to do this Should the title come before or after the episode is…