Praeterita

Over the summer, I have been making oil paintings, etchings, and terracotta sculptures with a common theme: a pair of arms and hands reaching out to or holding a crow. The theme ultimately derives from the darker, industrial work I did a few years ago, based on memories of my coalminer-grandfather in England. That started with images of him as a boxer, or lying on the ground after being injured in an accident underground. Gradually, the image has become refined until I'm just using the arms. The crow just floated into the pictures, as it were. I've always loved crows, and I can picture them sitting in the trees in the village where I grew up, or on the top of the church, cawing up a storm. They are associated with sinister things, which still links to the idea of misfortune in my work. But I also just love their shape and colour. The etchings are slightly more detailed-looking than the paintings: And the clay sculptures are somewhere in between, technically: I...

One of my goals for 2019 is to make more ceramic pieces. I don't pretend to have any groundbreaking skills in the medium, but I do love manipulating the clay and seeing the final glaze-fired piece. Below is a set of photos taken at each stage of making a recent piece inspired by my paintings and prints from the last few years. This is the terracotta clay piece just after I made it: Then after it was bisque fired: And finally after it was glaze fired: Not sure about the colour, but I do love the high gloss effect of fired ceramic. For this one, I brushed on two layers of a reddish-orange glaze, two layers of black on the arch, and two drip layers of blue on the figure and base.

Fired terracotta tiles. Made in 2011. Rediscovered 2013.

For our ninth wedding anniversary in May, Patty bought us a joint gift of a 4-week course in hand building at Chicago's Lill Street Art Center (because pottery is one of the gifts that goes with the ninth). I finally got my hand built stoneware pot back from the kiln, and it looks like this: Hardly the best thing you've ever seen, I'm sure, but I'm putting it up here because, well, it's my blog. And the glazes are really quite lovely. It has two contrasting glazes of antique white, one on the outside and the other on the interior. The 'coal circle' pattern is one of those Asian iron-based pigments, which fired to a nice green-brown colour. The surface is very smooth, and glassy, but with the suggestion of a lot of texture. And the circles, which when painted on looked like dark red, almost black-red smudges, fired to this set of patterns with interesting variations in tone. It's nine inches high, and about 3.5 inches in diameter. If I ev...

I've wanted to do a proper ceramics class for a long time. Last night, I finally got to do it. For our recent wedding anniversary, Patty bought us places on a four-week course in handbuilding at the Lill Street Art Center, a northside institution in Ravenswood. Our instructor, Dustin, showed us how to make pinch pots, coils, and handles (for things like tea-cups, etc). He also took us on a tour of the center. Here he is showing us one of the giant kilns in the firing room: Here is Patty, inscribing her initials at the end of the evening on one of the pots she built: Everything in the beginner's class will be fired before next week, when we will start choosing our glazes. Fun-ness!   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

from Carrie Ohm's work at the President's Gallery, Chicago Carrie Ohm is an artist who combines ceramics with performance, an unusual combination that produces striking results. Since graduating with an MFA in Ceramics from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000, Carrie has taken part in numerous group shows, solo shows, and artist’s residencies—most recently at Harold Washington College in Chicago. She is a University Lecturer at Governor’s State University, IL.   Q: Can you describe your current work, and how it came about? A: During the spring of 2009 I was a visiting artist at Harold Washington College. During that time I threw several non-traditional forms as demonstrations for students. I also discussed with the students possibilities for clay work beyond functional pieces and pedestal display. For the pieces I made at that time I was thinking of shapes as containers and pieces that fit together. They reminded me of buoys and ideas about grand presentation...