New work

 I have updated my website at last.  clothandclay.co.uk

The composite picture which is on the homepage is not new work, of course, but nevertheless it is a new picture and I hope conveys the several directions in which my work is going.
I have simplified the website greatly to reflect the simpler life I now have; the previous site was written ten years ago and updates were mostly additions rather then reductions.

I do have a mailing list, which these days is by email only.  If you are not on the mailing list and would like to be, please email me and I will add you.  I don't send out mails very often; they are more occasional newsletters, but I do send out to notify you of events such as exhibitions and open studios.  I have been quiet with my work lately, as most of us have with the pandemic, but hope to be a little noisier in future!

I'm taking part in a group exhibition in Lower Slaughter 20th - 26th April so am now busy making some new work.  The updated website was part one of that.  I'll be showing textiles, silver, other jewellery and greetings cards and am now working on new pieces within those categories.  More details will follow, on my website.

In other news, completion on my new house was quicker than expected but the work will take much longer, partly because builders are booked up until next year.  However, the house is still an exciting new project for me.  Planning with the architects, showing friends and relatives round the existing house and getting started on clearing unwanted trees from a boundary wall are the current stages.

I feel energised by needing to make new work to a deadline.  

A bit of a surprise.

At the end of November I fired the kiln for the last time this year.  It was a lustre firing and everything turned out well, including this serving bowl, which was an order.

And then ...

I decided to retire.  This was a really big deal for me and a decision I never thought I'd make.  To begin with I didn't think my state pension would bring in as much money as my earnings as an artist but when it arrived in September I was very pleased to find that it does.  So no drop in living standards ...  so I don't need to make a mug ever again if I don't want to?  Or a cereal bowl?  Or promise stock to anywhere?

What's not to like?  I always said I'd never retire because I wouldn't want to.  Finding out I do want to was something of a surprise. 

Let's be clear - you don't retire from being an artist.  An artist is not an occupation, it's who you are.  I'll always be one.  And I suppose I'll still do accounts every year, since I can sell the work I've made and will do.  I can make more things if I feel like it.  I can make different things.  I can work in different materials.  I might write more (or not).  So technically, as far as tax goes, I suppose I won't be retired as long as I'm keeping accounts and selling stuff.

What will I be doing?  I'm surprised to find that the first answer that pops into my head is that I'll  be spending more time on my garden.  Quite traditional. I'll be making sure I have time for my friends and will continue to visit my elderly parents at least once a month.  And after that ...

I don't know!

This makes me happy.

#64MillionArtists challenges - a new year's perspective

Last year I began with a post about challenges in the year ahead - and it turned out there were many.  I knew of some in advance but others jumped out at me and a few are still ongoing.  These include a very close friend (who doesn't live locally) being diagnosed with myeloma (a treatable but incurable cancer),  my parents suddenly unable to live completely independently and my developing plantar fasciitis.

I also began two literal challenges - the Photo A Day challenge and the 64MillionArtists challenge, which to begin with was daily challenges in January but then became weekly challenges.  In spite of my expectations I completed every challenge and have begun a new year with the daily challenges too.

What I have been struck by is how many challengers posted at the beginning of January that last year had been very difficult for them, for reasons which included bereavement and other family traumas not dissimilar to those I had and how taking part in the challenges had helped them enormously.

My first thought was that one mostly hears bad news, because good news is more commonplace and doesn't need commenting on.  My second thought was, my goodness people are really going to town on some of these challenges.  And my third thought was, why am I happily reminding myself that they are only supposed to take five to ten minutes each.

I think one of the values of the January Challenge and then the Weekly Challenge is that it really does help in kickstarting creativity, in prompting people to have a go whose lives have undergone a major disruption.  You may be waiting for the confidence to start or waiting for something to connect to or, in my case last year, glad of something that was my own to do every day.  Once you've got over posting a rubbish drawing and nobody minding, you gain confidence.  Once you've really enjoyed a challenge you have the bit between your teeth.  Once you've got three quarters of the way through the year without missing a single challenge it's a matter of pride to complete the set.  Or so it was for me.

This year I begin in a different place but because I got so much out of last year's challenges, I'm taking on 64MillionArtists challenges again.  I don't need things which are just for me as much as I have more time for me than in January last year and the problems are not so urgent and consuming.  I have re-engaged with my creative work and set goals which I met before Christmas.  I've begun new textiles work which I'm keen to get on with so I do find myself thinking perhaps I'll miss this one, but I'm going to try not to.

Last year I learned a few things -

• in spite of being essentially a 3D artist, challenges which involve writing are often the easiest and most enjoyable
• challenges which involve photography are often the easiest to tick off
• I'm pretty bad at drawing but occasionally surprise myself
• I didn't want to engage much in 'making' challenges, with a few exceptions
• I really loved connecting with other challengers

- and I see that these are excellent reasons for continuing with the challenges.

Here are a few of my favourite things that came out of last year's challenges.

This one encouraged me to research and I found it fascinating that Stroud is such a hotbed of protest.  I found a connection with history which has often been absent in my life.

This was a photography challenge, Finding the Light.  I was pleased to have made a photograph where shape and shadow were so difficult to separate.

This challenge was lovely because it made me condense what I thought about relationships to a formula I'm still happy with today and because it stretched my Photoshop skills successfully.

This was a joint effort with another challenger.  It was called The Bridge.  We bridged the gap between us, never having met and not really knowing much about each other.  She supplied the photograph of the stone pillars which she'd built and I photoshopped in the oak beam and tweaked the background.

My favourite challenge, Walk with Nature.  I went out for an hour, it made my bad foot hurt a lot, but I then felt inspired to work for several hours to produce the finished piece.


and finally ...  a quick drawing I felt pleased with.

A significant step forward

Dear People,

You have no idea how great it was to delete you from my address book. 

I will be 65 in a couple of months’ time and this feels really significant for me.  For one thing, I didn’t get to celebrate my 60^th birthday properly because of bereavements so I intend to celebrate better in some way this year.  For another, I’ll get my state pension in September and already feel the freedom this bestows on me with regard to the work I make.  Now I can really choose what I want to make, regardless of whether it will sell or not.  And finally ….  well, I realise that I’ve been moving into a different life space and that this move will somehow become complete when I’m 65.  I will be of an age where people retire or semi-retire or don’t but from now on nothing matters in the way it always did.  There is a sense of liberation which I wasn’t expecting. 

Throughout my life I have always kept all addresses, just in case, deleting only those of people who’ve died or moved without trace.  This has been really important to me.  I know I can make contact with people I’ve not heard from for 10 years if I wish.  I’ve carefully updated my Addresses document regularly, and keep a small paper version of my most used contacts (mostly phone numbers) in my Filofax.  (Yes, I’m that dinosaur.)  The Filofax version is often reprinted in January.  I do a lot of ‘housekeeping’ tasks in January and they always make me feel good.

Today our #64MillionArtists challenge was to write a letter saying something we’ve been meaning to say to someone, so I opened my Addresses file to find a lucky recipient.  What I found instead was a whole host of lucky recipients, you whom I am never, ever going to need to contact again.  I deleted you aIl!  It’s done and I can’t ever get you back. 

In some cases you are people or organisations that I can easily find contact numbers for on the internet.  This, it has to be acknowledged, is an important factor but it really applies only to organisations or suppliers. 

In some cases you’re home tutors.  I don’t feel any affinity for you and when I see you in Waitrose you don’t seem to recognise me any more.  Some of you are counsellors who were friends when I was counselling; I can’t even bring to mind some of your faces any more and again, those who I do remember, seem to ignore me in Waitrose. Occasionally one of us says hello and may even have a brief chat but I’ll never need to contact you.  Some of you are artists but again I haven’t seen anything of you for so many years, or you belong to organisations that I might have applied to join but didn’t and at this stage won’t and even if I do, I’ll be applying on my own merits regardless of who I once knew.

And finally, a few of you were friends. Surprisingly, this was easier than I expected.  I never thought I’d be able to delete a friend from my list of addresses but I have.  I thought about what you offered as friends and then I thought about why we drifted apart.  The reasons for drifting apart were nearly all because I don’t want friends with your views and values any more.  I feel some shame for continuing contact in the days when I did because of what your friendship offered me.  But not much.

So, farewell.  Or not.  I probably don’t care any more.  I feel great.  Liberated, forward-looking, positive and hopeful.

Jane

Being me - and going with the flow.

Updating my website is no longer an open job. I've been working on it most of the year when I'm not at home and it's been quite time-consuming.  It probably doesn't look much different but it is considerably slimmed down, made more phone-friendly and the galleries and some of the other images have been updated.  Six years is quite long enough for artwork to become out of date.

I'm not good with 'open jobs'.  There's a point at which there are too many of them and I feel stressed and unable to tackle any of them well, so it feels really good that this one is off the list. 

In the mean time I've had plantar fasciitis for several months, which in my case anyway is exacerbated by stress, and means that I am limited in what I can do.  It took me a while to work out, therefore, that once the website was updated, what I really needed to do was be Jane Vernon, Artist.  I've been busy filling time till I was better or till I was at home for longer and all the while a little bit of me has been becoming weaker without my realising; the Tinkerbell effect if you like.  I was being useful, completing several other open jobs; I was going with the flow, riding the uncertainty and all sorts of other very good things, but suddenly I realised I wasn't being me.

It's difficult and subtle.  Balancing being me, the essential me, with helping others close to me, being patient with my foot and keeping on top of domestic chores.  What brought me to my senses was arguing my case with a health practitioner who is working on the plantar fasciitis with me.  She wanted me to do less rather than more and I knew that was all wrong.  Even if the foot gets worse, I have to do the things I do.  I was reining myself in and hadn't realised the damage this was doing.    


So now I am embarked on a new course - being me, but going with the flow as well.  If I'm too tired to do anything I'll go to bed and listen to the radio.  If I want to sit and write something I'll write it.  If I want to cook something I'll cook it but if I want a takeaway I'll have one.  Mostly, though, I'm going to do the work I want to do.

2018 Challenges

Tomorrow a new year begins.  Like everyone else, my life has ups and downs and uncertainties and from my current perspective 2018 looks more than usually uncertain and complicated, with several personal challenges on the horizon.  However, I’m going to start two new creative challenges this January.  

I’m giving Photo A Day another go.  Last year I managed until some time in April.  I was happy to find I’d given up and felt I benefited from the space I gained.  However, as the year wore on I found I was taking fewer and fewer photos and that my life was feeling the poorer for it.  I understand why/how this happened; much was to do with getting the balance of the year wrong and needing to work full time to restore my pottery stocks to something approaching normal and I was pleased to achieve this eventually.  But where are the photos? 

The other challenge is the 64million artists January challenge.  This will apparently provide a short task every day during January, designed to kick-start one’s creativity.  I’m not promising to do the task every day if it’s impractical but it struck me that 10 minutes or so each day should be achievable.  This year started quite well with textiles work but my pottery work has been a matter of keeping stock levels and with nothing new.  I also had lots of vague ideas about mixed media work but no time to explore them, though I am hoarding materials that come my way.  This challenge is about creativity generally: drawing, writing, music, I don’t know what because I haven’t done it before, but it starts tomorrow.

Results of both challenges will be posted on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo a day challenge

There are various of these challenges around, apparently, but the one I fell across and joined is run on a Facebook group.  Daily 'prompts' for the topic of your photographs are posted in the group, one month at a time.  The idea then is that everyone posts their photos to the group where others can comment, or just 'like' them, and a small selection are chosen each day as the pick of the bunch.  I do post occasionally to the group but mostly I post in my own Facebook Photo a Day album.  Recently a friend asked if I had learned anything and that prompted me to write about why I decided to do the challenge. I sort of knew already, but I found it interesting to put into words that other people could understand.

I took on the challenge as an artist's discipline. For me it's about many things 
 
- stretching my brain to find a subject to fit into the brief when I find it uninspiring
- continuing the process of documenting my life which I do already
- stretching myself as a photographer when I've got time to experiment with different settings on my camera
- sometimes aiming and occasionally succeeding in creating an attractive image that I can use one way or another in my artwork.

Like sketching, taking photographs doesn't always lead to anything much at the time but provides a resource to be drawn on when needed. I'm no good at sketching.

On 4th January I came down with flu and did nothing much of anything for a few weeks, including taking photographs, but since resuming on 24th January, I've managed to post something every day.

I am certainly learning - about myself, my cameras and about what other people like in a photograph.  I've also learned that a flatlay is when you lay the subject(s) of your photograph out on a flat surface and photograph from above.  This one, 'Fish pie', from January, was my first ever flatlay.  I'm quite pleased with it. 

Sometimes the prompts would be easy enough for anyone with any other people to hand to pose for them and others require animals so lacking both I resort to archive photos on those occasions.  It's often an opportunity to share some of my favourite photos, such as 'This is funny', from March.

Sometimes I go out with my camera looking for something that fits the prompt ('Path')

and sometimes I'll put together a still life of some sort, such as 'Toy'.  I'm particularly fond of this one.

And finally, occasionally I use Photoshop to create an image from one or more of the photographs I've taken.  'Abstract' is my favourite of these.

I am learning to look around more, take a little time out of what I'm doing in order to capture a photograph with a little care and planning, and at the same time to be spontaneous in my photography.

Watch this space.  

Letting go

If you're a regular reader or know me in real life, you'll know that my working life has been disrupted over the past couple of years by one thing after another and particularly in the last 9 months.  I seem (fingers crossed) to be ok now and able to work in the pottery once more.  It's just as well; stock is very low in both shops where I sell and my showroom here at home is getting emptier too.   But here's the thing: I'm letting go of the idea that low stock means more work to catch up.  It's scary.  But it's also right.

Since last April, when I turned sixty and started receiving my small teaching pension, the idea has been that I can now afford to work part time, which should mean the work/life balance improving a bit in favour of life (in the garden, in the kitchen, with friends, etc).  In practice there was catching up to do at first, and then life went pear-shaped, but when I was able to work I was still doing so more or less full time.  Now, though, the complications seem to be over.  I'm back from my travels and have no plans for any long trips in the forseeable.  There are some nice events coming up but nothing that takes over.  I was looking at throwing myself into the pottery all day and every day in order to try to catch up with stock and orders.  But that way, when would I know it was ok to actually work part-time?  In reality, one never seems to have done enough, so it was unlikely to happen.

So this week I have drawn a line.  I now work part time.  I am still alarmingly low on stock and working part time means it will be even longer before I progress through my usual cycle of throwing and drying and then having a batch of firings, but I am letting go of all those thoughts.  Letting go of the worry that I won't have enough work to sell.  Letting go of the lists of pots I should have made.  It's done.  Life happened.  I wasn't able to work.  But now I am.  Part time.

It's a bit scary.  But I've been self-employed (part time and then full time) for 31 years and I've done ok so far.  I'm letting go of previous pressures and putting my faith in my work, whatever direction that takes me next.

Photography

I have recently taken part in a Facebook meme - to post an archive photo on six consecutive days.  It was a really interesting exercise.

To begin with I searched through all the photos I am pleased with and made up a short list. The first one I posted was this.  I love this picture and wish I could print it out, but unfortunately it no longer exists in any except compressed form as it was part of a big computer disaster which included losing a batch of images.  I had uploaded them onto Facebook so am able to retrieve the compressed version but the original is lost.  Since then I don't remove photos from my camera until they are saved in at least two places.

The second picture is another personal favourite, taken at Westonbirt Arboretum.  After this I began  to think about the fact that it was a photo archive challenge and not necessarily about the photos I consider to be my best ones, so I moved from digital photos, which accounts for the last ten years, to those I have in my many albums.  Most of these have not kept well.  I do have all my negatives (yes, even from 1962) in a filing cabinet and could in theory scan them in to create clear versions of them once more, but I'm probably not going to!

This photo at the Snake Temples on Penang, Malaysia was taken with my first ever roll of film, when I was 8.  It doesn't have a huge amount to recommend it as a photo but I wanted to mark the beginning of my interest in photography.

Having got into different types of subject, I looked for a still life.  I haven't taken many, but this one is one of my favourites.  Getting photos printed in the eighties (and beyond) often resulted in distortions of colour because machines don't like an image to be more or less one colour range and they compensate.  This still life was green and white (even the wallpaper was white with a hint of green) but the machine compensated with a pink wash.  The print has probably deteriorated in the album as well but I managed to Photoshop it into something I still rather like.

My family first started saying I was a good photographer (which was kind of them) when I got a zoom lens and managed to capture family members unaware because I was standing some distance away.  You can often, though not always, get some great shots of people if they don't know you're taking a photo.  This one was taken in 2001 and shows a dinner at my house.  The two people central to the photo were very close friends who both died within six months of each other in the last 18 months.  This is such a happy photo, showing them both 'au naturel', oblivious not just to me but everyone else. 

And finally ...
This photo from 2009 was an accident because I initially set out just to photograph the window I had just painted, however it is now one of my favourites.  I like the composition of the photo but it is also a picture of a place and time that are very important to me.

Searching through all my old photos has given me yet another nudge to make sure I do more photography.  I have ideas.  The next task is to set aside some proper time for them. 

A bit of discipline

When you're learning to throw you want to keep every pot that makes it off the wheel because you are so pleased that it has.

The trouble is that a potter, like any artist, is always learning.  You have never finished learning or you would probably stop.  You may be able to guarantee getting a pot off the wheel, but now you are learning to make a different shape, or now you are aiming at 12 near-identical mugs, or now you are trying to free up your style of ...

So you continue wanting to keep everything.  What is needed is a bit of discipline.

I'm quite good at self-discipline generally.  I know people who are astonished that I can keep chocolate or biscuits or liqueurs or other tasty things in the house for months or even years without eating them all up.  On the other hand, I am, as you know, overweight, partly because of my metabolism no doubt but combined with the fact that I do like to eat more than I need, so 'quite good' at self-discipline is probably about as good as I'll get.

In the pottery I am also 'quite good'.  I am moderately strict about what is let through, but not rigorous.  One thing I have always done is to follow the advice of the person who taught me most of what I know about being a good potter*, Douglas Phillips of Ridge Pottery in Somerset, and occasionally cut a pot in half to look at the thickness of the walls and base.  Are they even?  Are they the thickness you thought they were and is it a good thickness?

Here's one I cut up yesterday.  It's a one-person teapot, one of four I made the day before.  As I was rolling the base to tidy it, the centre of the base curved in.  This is usually because the pot is not really firm enough for rolling the base yet and doesn't really matter in a finished pot apart from aesthetically.  It can sometimes be, though, because the base is too thin.  I was feeling a bit more rigorous, so I decided to cut it in half.  Base not too thin, though slightly thinnner than the rest of the teapot.  The walls of the rest pretty even too, and it was a nice shape, so I was pleased with what I saw.  To be really self-disciplined, I think you have to not mind finding you have a cut a good pot in half.  I didn't.  So that was good.



* On the matter of how not to be a good potter, I am entirely self-taught.

Work in progress

There is work in progress.  You will have seen that I have made earrings and new textiles work.  I have also done some work in the pottery.

I don't tend to write about or show pictures of the pottery work I do until it's finished.  This is partly because there's not often anything different to see until it's decorated and fired and it also has a lot to do with the fact that I can't be sure it will exist as a finished pot until I open the kiln after firing.

I haven't been writing about the work I've been doing lately for a different reason, though, which is that until now I wasn't sure what to write.  A few weeks ago I was at the stage of saying that I was pretty sure I would return to the pottery but that I couldn't be entirely certain.  Of the few people I spoke to, some were cool with this and thought it was a fairly healthy place to be while others were clearly taken aback.  Well, having gone back, I think I can say it's likely I'll continue.  I'm probably still a potter.  Probably.

I don't know what sort of potter I am, though.  I don't know what I'll be making.  Oh yes, there is a long list of things that are needed because I am running out of them, starting with a few hundred mugs and cereal bowls.  I am not sure if I shall be making them, though.  The things I have made so far have mostly not been things I normally make.  It has felt ok.  I did make 15 mugs last week, but that wasn't great and the idea of going in there this morning to make mugs - well, I won't be. 

Obviously this is part of the bereavement thing.  But how?  Why?  Where does it fit?  When I returned to the pottery a few weeks after M died I found that the glazing and firing was ok but the making part was the hardest thing I've had to do.  The first time I tried, the grief was overwhelming and I had to give up. 

I was astonished by this.  It was the last thing I expected.  My creative work is so much an integral part of me, my self, and time spent in the pottery was always something separate from M (or indeed anyone else) that I really expected it to be the one place I would feel ok. 

I think I know what's going on now, though, and the explanation has been crystallised by reading someone else's blog.  L is also a creative person.  She's currently going through treatment for breast cancer and has just written that she has not felt able to continue her usual work.  She has been creative, though, writing, painting, making wonderful headgear for herself.  Just not her normal things.
 
I have come to the conclusion that with life-changing events (bereavement, serious illness) it is because one is never again going to be in the 'before' state that things that totally belong there are the difficult ones. One is now in a new state and things that have a new element belong in the now, so they fit and feel ok.  Things that belong so much in the then, the 'before', are the hard ones to return to because there is a mis-match between the activity and the time.  They're not new, so rather than being part of this new life, they are a sharp reminder of the permanently lost old one.

With creative work this is particularly a problem if you make your living at it.  It's scary to think what might happen if I never return to making the things that people buy.  Will they buy other things?  What will happen if they don't?  If it takes me months to return to production, will outlets wait for me or will they ask me to leave?  Will my business lose so much momentum this time that I won't get it back? 

If a hard thing presents itself, I try to tackle it head on.  The bigger the emotional challenge, the more likely I am to go for it, once I have recognised its existence.  Acknowledging these questions and accepting that I don't know the answers has been a pretty huge challenge, exactly because they are so scary to contemplate, but I think I've met it.  Waiting to find out what happens next is easy in comparison.

Why don't I apply the same principle to making a hundred mugs, you ask.  Well, it's a good question to which I have some answers but I think they are for another time.  This post is already long enough.  And, to be honest, writing it, re-exploring the ideas and feelings that have been milling around for the past few weeks, has taken enough out of me for one morning.  The heating is on in the pottery so I after a comforting hot drink I'll go and turn three small bowls which are ready, because not to do so would be a waste of them.  After that ...  I don't know.  

It's a work in progress.

The time is now

I try to avoid being too arty farty or making precious statements about being an artist.  I hate the phrase 'in the zone'; it sounds pretentious and I think can be easily misused.  "The time is now", however, goes some way to pinpoint that same area of an artist's experience.

Creative work has a place in time not only when it is finished, but in the making.  If it isn't the right time, the work won't happen.

Plenty of obvious things affect whether it's the right time.  You have to be in the right place mentally.  For some, stress is a boost to their creativity and they can channel anger into their best work.  For others, the mind needs to be completely clear of other distractions.  I'm probably somewhere in between but definitely towards the calm and stress-free end.  You also need to have the right physical conditions.  I don't function well if I'm not really warm, nor can I do close-up work or choose colours without at least a little daylight of the real kind rather than a daylight bulb. 

There is a more important side to 'the time is now', though, which is what I'm conscious of at the moment: every piece of work has its own right time to be made.  There are external factors; the zeitgeist must surely inform our work at least unconsciously if not consciously and for those of us who make our living from our art, market forces have to be a consideration. But these are minor considerations.  The most important thing is about sitting here making this exact piece of work at this exact moment in time because it's the right time to be doing it.

You have an idea.  You have the necessary the resources.  You put them together...  and create ... often without having to think anything through because everything just falls into place.  At the end,  something arrives which has worked and which may even be good.  It wouldn't have been last year, or ten years ago or possibly not a year or two in the future. 

So, many years after having the original idea, I have made some work using photographs, printing on silk and paper, and stitching.

The time was right.  The time is now.

Back to work

In a world where we depend on people working 24/7 in many service industries, where increasing numbers of people work from home at least part of the time, where we expect customer services to answer the phone any day of the week and where you can find a shop open somewhere most of the time - still the concept of 'the working week' is alive and well.  I spend so much of my time in or connecting with areas where conventional working hours and weeks no longer apply that I sometimes forget how many types of work still do occur in roughly conventional working week blocks.  And yet, 25 years since I inhabited that world full time, the working week is still something I measure my life in.

This week has been the first full working week of the year and of the new term if you think in the academic calendar (which I also still do to some extent)  so there is much talk about going back to work.  It might have been the first week of work of the year for me too but I have I sustained a subluxation of a cartilage or two.   Subluxation is a new word to me (meaning partial dislocation) but the event isn't.  I've damaged rib cartilages before, so I know this means two or three weeks allowing it to heal and that includes no work in the pottery.  I don't know anyone else who damages cartilages around their ribs but my GP tells me it's quite common, especially in people who work in confined or awkward spaces, like plumbers.  I was in the totally unconfined, straightforward space of my garden, pulling up a raspberry cane, trying to get as much of its root as I could, when I felt a ping or a snap or what my GP describes as a pop. 

Then, there have been a few other things in my life which are affecting my working week.  In my mind, life is not only measured out in working weeks but also marked out into sections by significant events.  Two such are destined to shape what my life will become over the next months.

Last March I turned 60 and began receiving a small pension from the teaching I did for the first part of my working life.  This income means in theory that I could now work part-time because I don't need to earn quite so much money.  In practice, so far, I have had to work when I could to try to catch up with falling stock levels.

Then November brought a much more fundamental life-changing event, the death of my lovely husband Mike.  I've been widowed before so I had some idea what to expect and one thing I knew to expect is that some things will be unexpected. 

The most unexpected thing that has happened to me in the last two months is that I don't know where I am with my work.  My head is making plans for returning to the pottery, what I'm going to make, where I'm going to sell ...  but my heart has been glad that I have been too busy doing other things.  I am really not sure that when it comes to returning to work, I shall know what it is that I want to make.

What's in a Blog?

I've been aware that this blog has been gradually shifting and the emphasis in the decreasing number of posts has become almost entirely on my work as an artist.  I'm not sure how this happened but I think it's been a bit of a circular thing - if I'm not writing so much I need to make sure that when I do write, at least people can keep up with what work I'm doing but much of my working life is spent doing tasks which don't change very much so there isn't anything to write about so often.  So it's time to break out and return to the original flavour of the blog.

I'm not writing for any particular audience.  I hope people will read this blog but I have no idea who they are - friends, possibly some of my customers, but also people I don't know who happen on the blog by one accidental route or another.  Whatever I put here has to be what I'm happy for the whole world to know.  Trying to balance that with what the whole world might want to know is, I think, something that's been in my mind lately and has led to the whole thing becoming a little stultified.  If I'm writing something you don't want to know, feel free to stop reading and come back another day when there's something more to your taste.

I hope to post more blogs which contain just photographs.
I may include more creative writing - if I do any!
There will be mentions of work.
I mustn't forget about food (writing about it, that is, not eating it!)
I hope to return to writing about ideas.
I'm going to write about more personal things too.



Today I went outside with my camera and the garden was not particularly promising.  However, the rosemary is looking splendid, so that's what I photographed.  Over the last ten years or so I have used herbs in cooking much more than I used to and I think I use rosemary more than any.  It may be my favourite herb.

Exhibition news

Once again I'm exhibiting at The Cotswold Craftsmen Gallery, in an exhibition called, imaginatively, "CLOTH and CLAY".  It's a smallish exhibition space - what you see here is most of my exhibition - but it really suits my work.  I can display the complete mixture of what I make in a way which allows all the component elements of my artwork - ceramics, pictures, scarves, accessories and cards - to come together in a single whole.

Life is a bit difficult and stressful at the moment (hence even less blogging than usual, apologies) so I'm particularly pleased to have put together an exhibition I'm proud of.  I know most people reading this blog live too far away to visit, but don't forget you can always contact me if you want to know more about anything you see in these photos.

Losing my way

I seem to have lost my way, big time.  For some time now I am stuck in a place where I feel I can't do any artwork.  I've been trying to pretend it isn't so, but since I don't really believe in pretence or dishonesty or whatever else you want to call it, it seems time to speak out.  I don't tend to splurge bad stuff on the internet, either here or on Facebook or anywhere else, but on the other hand this all seems important enough to write about.

The problem seems related to where I am both physically and temporally.  Physically I'm in France and temporally I'm at the point of possible semi-retirement, or at least improving the life/work balance.

I think it is the temporal stuff which is the biggest problem.  Having turned 60 I now get a small pension from the teaching work I used to do and I have promised myself and M that from this point I would work less and live more, in the work/life balance.  But I don't seem to be able to do it.  In France I can do textiles work, make accessories and greetings cards, but I can't do any pottery.  And it's the textiles work that is the problem here because I think I need to be totally immersed in it once I start.  I had an idea that I would work on the property (land clearing, maintenance painting etc) and do domestic stuff like washing and cleaning and shopping in the mornings [life] and then leave the rest of the day for textiles [work] but whenever I get to the point of starting creative work I find I can't do it. 

I can't start.  It's like I can't go through the door because if I do I'll be on the other side, the work side, and not able to get back to the life side.  So here I am, sort of attached to the door handle.  Not able to go through but not able to go back and leave the door alone.  That would mean saying that I'm basically taking a four month holiday and I don't want to do that.  Apart from implications of stock levels, I miss the buzz of being in my work. 

I have ideas.  I even have some exciting big ideas.  I got as far as phoning to ask how big the stretcher frames I use go up to.  But then when it comes to it I can't actually do the work. 

I see pictures of new work friends are making, some of them producing several new ranges in the blink of an eye ....   and I feel even more cut off, not only from their physical company but from that part of myself.   You'd think that would propel me into a place where I'd just create, but it doesn't seem to.

The only creative work I think I could do now is making accessories - both the earrings that I have been making for a while (because I am very low in stock) and new ideas I'm quite excited about.  But this work requires a heat gun or hot water and in our part of France at this time of year it's too hot.  September is the time for the heat gun, when the mornings feel a bit chilly.

In case anyone was thinking of commenting that I am being creative with photography, cooking and other things, yes I am.  But right now they're not enough.  They're not the things I really want to be doing but can't.

So, here I am, losing my way.  I daresay it will pass.  But for the time being, it's a bit grim.

Thirty years!

Somewhat weirdly, I am on LinkedIn both as myself and as Crafts In Gloucestershire, where myself is a contact, if you see what I mean.  So Crafts In Gloucestershire gets the notifications that Jane Vernon's other contacts get, which is actually quite a useful tool because otherwise I really wouldn't know what's being sent.  LinkedIn remains rather a mystery to me, I'm afraid.  Anyway, this week Crafts In Gloucestershire received an email suggesting it should congratulate Jane Vernon on her 30 year work anniversary at Cloth and Clay.  Well, I hadn't realised.  But it's true.  May 1984 was when I started up in business as an artist.

And this was the picture that did it.  I had been making embroidered pictures for a few months, but this one made me realise that it was something I could do professionally.  Looking at it now, I'm not sure it looks all that much but at the time it seemed to and certainly everyone else thought so too.

I was still teaching full time at this point but managed to produce enough pictures to start selling at Cirencester Arts and Crafts market later in the year.  I painted on silk with artists' watercolours, then embroidered by hand, using wadding to pad out the work.  The pictures were mounted and framed but never put behind glass.  They were of landscapes and plants.  Some were realistic, like this one, others more abstract and worked in different colour schemes.

Over the years my textiles work developed and I moved through embroidered mirror frames to wallhangings and now embroidered canvasses.  Silk paints came in and I took to those like a duck, as they say.  I've used machine embroidery, hand embroidery, mirror work, applique, synthetic fabrics, metallic threads, beads, sequins and more. Who knows what's next?

Although I had my own wheel and kiln when I started the business, I was making very little pottery and still finding my way through experimenting with clays and glazes.  I sold a few pieces to friends now and then but it wasn't until 1992 that I finally found the clay, glazes and techniques that form the core of my work as a potter even now.  Back then I still had a lot of unresolved back problems and could only work at pottery a few hours a week.  I can't even remember when I started having kinesiology treatment and eventually acupuncture, but between them they turned my life around and most of the time I am now able to work full time in the pottery if I want.

Thirty years was half my life ago.  Back then I was psychologically a very late developer, a bit scared of life generally and hadn't much self-esteem.  I can still remember how I felt when I made the picture above.  That amazing realisation that I had made something I knew someone would buy and that I had it in me to go on doing that.  Starting "in business", making, selling, registering with the tax office, meeting customers but above all making, making and more making, was the beginning of becoming myself. 

The first decade saw me married, widowed, giving up full-time teaching,  and training in counselling.  The second decade saw me developing my artwork, my teaching skills and wonderful friendships.  The third has seen me in a new relationship and marriage, giving up teaching completely and becoming a full-time, self-supporting artist.

It's a pretty good place to be.  I'm not sure what's in store this next decade.  I want a little more life and less work in the work-life balance but new ideas are still tumbling around in my head and I still love making the things I make now, so we'll see.  But thirty years, eh?  Who'd 'a thought?

Just For The Present

"Just For The Present" is now open!  It will be at the Cotswold Craftsmen Gallery, Market Street, Nailsworth, until 24th November.  Tuesdays - Saturdays, 10.00 - 5.00

Artist's statement

As we develop as artists, our ideas sometimes take on a life of their own and lead us to new discoveries and passions so that we sometimes find ourselves taking surprising roads.  2012 has been a year when I have been following new roads which may themselves lead in directions I haven’t yet imagined.  So, Just For The Present, what you see here is a selection of the work I am making currently. 

This year I’ve returned to my roots in fashion (nearly forty years ago I studied fashion and textiles at college) and I’m delighted to be showing some of my new silk-painted scarves.  Having worked on silk-painting in isolation, I then moved on to give machine embroidery the same treatment and three new pieces portraying lizards are worked entirely in machine stitching with no other added colour.

Lizards seem to have become my theme of the moment in ceramics too as they are ideal subjects for rich decoration.  As well as my tableware ranges, I’m now making more one-off items - mugs, bowls, plates and vases - decorated with individual designs in coloured underglazes, slips, lustres and precious metal lustres. 

Just for the present, these are my preoccupations.  Next year – who knows?

 The Purple Corner!