Nine potters are opening their studios in Central Victoria over 17-18 August, 10am – 4pm. What a great chance to look inside the studio – especially for those of you who love clay and ceramics. 
Here is your invitation.
Download our brochure – with map and more about each potter.
Come to Place Matters for a chance to play with some clay and make textures.
Last weekend was a delight. Lots of visitors enjoying the open studios scattered around Newstead, perhaps adding a coffee at Dig, a locally brewed beer at the Railway Hotel or one of our local wineries. Its all on again this weekend, so do come and visit Newstead. My studio is in Green Gully – between Castlemaine and Newstead – look out for the flags on the Pyrenees Highway. Sally Roadknight is at my studio too – with her beautiful stitched baskets and exquisite drawings.
Newstead Open Studios is on again as part of Castlemaine State Festival with most studios open 18-19 and 25-26 March 10am-4pm, and some open during the week.
We have a website again this year – https://newsteadopenstudios.wordpress.com – and a Facebook page too (Newstead Open Studios). Some new studios too – have a look!
What’s happening at Place Matters? Well I’ve been making a lot of clay – re-hydrating and wedging up a variety of clays that people have given me or I have some how collected! So I’ve been playing with my usual terracotta and added some stoneware, and so there are some quite different pieces in the studio this year. Maybe there will even be a chance to play with some clay too – pinch pots are a fun way to get a feel for each clay…
As well, Sally Roadknight is joining me – Sally makes beautiful things from nature – this time hand-stitched baskets – and drawings.
Come and visit!
This long weekend – 12-14 March, and the following weekend 19-20 March 2016, I’m opening my studio along with other Newstead studios and heaps of others in Castlemaine. Please come and have a look at what I have been making – 11am to 4pm or let me know if you’d like to have a look at another time.
Our new website – Newstead Open Studios – here there is a flier and map to download, and pages on each studio.
Lots of new work – from bowls to buttons.
Detail – small dish in iron rich clay
Pendants and buttons
Yunomi – before firing
This is the third part of the talk I gave at Clayspace back in August 2014. Some new work based on this part of the talk is on display as part of Newstead Open Studios.
Laos is a place I have visited several times now – I feel like I am falling into a kind of connection with this beautiful country. My last visit was all about textiles and traditions, travelling into the mountains to visit relatively remote villages and experience their textile traditions.
Supplementary weft silk weaving
Travelling out of the mountains in the north-east we came to Vieng Xay, a landscape of limestone mountains that became a haven for Laos people and for the Pathet Lao, a communist political movement closely linked to the Vietnamese communists. To quote Wikipedia:
Through the 1960s and 1970s the Pathet Lao battled the Royal Lao Government during the Laotian Civil War, gaining control of the north and east of Laos. The Pathet Lao gained power throughout the country by the spring of 1975. In May, the US-backed Vientiane government fell and the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party formed a new government.[3]
In Vieng Xay we explore the caves deep inside these mountain, visiting places where the Pathet Laos planned their campaigns and where people lived, sheltering inside the mountain as bombs rained down outside. Laos was the most heavily bombed country in the Vietnam (aka American) War, and today unexploded ordnance – bombies – still takes lives and limbs despite the massive efforts of the bomb clearance teams.
Today bombs are made into practical objects and jewellery – including miniature bombs!
Vieng Xay
Vieng Xay – entering the well protected cave system
As a counterpoint, the story of the Hmong people interested me. They are one of the so-called ‘ethnic minority’ groups in this region – mountain people who were recruited by France and then the United States to fight on their side during the first and second Indochina Wars. Being on the losing side meant many Hmong became refugees, heading for the US, Australia and other countries; those who stayed were pushed out of their traditional areas, out of the mountains. Hmong women wear skirts of hand-woven hemp with patters created through wax resist and then indigo-dyed, and then appliqued, embroidered, stitched together, pleated and starched and finally worn. Remarkable pieces of work, representing days or weeks of work in each skirt.
Hmong skirt: museum display
And so I have started on a series of work on the theme of “Haven”, reflecting the form of the mountains and the sweep and motifs of a skirt. The first pieces were only a partial success, with the terra sigillata surface peeling unexpectedly.
2015 Developing the Haven idea
Recently (in early 2015) I have made another set of pieces on this same theme and have had these on display as part of Newstead Open Studios during the 2015 Castlemaine State Festival.
Ultimately for me it is about being in our place – in our identity, our inspiration, our stories, and using our signifiers and symbols.
For me, ideas and words are evocative. Often what seems like a new idea leads me back to a familiar place, visited before.
I continue to be intrigued by enclosed forms – the unknown interior – and in painting the surface with the clay that is literally from beneath my feet. I enjoy throwing on the wheel and reshaping – pulling, folding and cradling pots.
And I love the not knowing – the wondering of how might I express this feeling, this idea, this place!
This posting is just one of many steps on my continuing ceramics journey.
Come and visit my studio during the Castlemaine State Festival 13-22 March 2015. You’ll be able to see Landforms-Lifeforms – a combination of drawings by Maritsa Gronda and my ceramics. The studio will be open on weekend afternoons – Sat & Sun 14th-15th & 21st-22nd, 1pm to 4pm. The studio is in a lovely bush setting. To get there, download the Newstead Open Studios guide and map.
In our local Newstead area, 6 artists’ studios are open during the Festival featuring sculpture, ceramics, print, photography, drawing and painting.
Each day of the Festival, you can visit Trefor Prest’s studio and Roger McKindley’s Antares Iron Art Garden. Studio Paradiso at Sandon, featuring the prints of Dianna Orinda Burns, is open on 16-20 March.
As well as my studio, two other studios are open on the two Festival weekends:
Get your Newstead Open Studios guide and map here or from Newstead Spadeworks exhibition at the Newstead Community Centre, 9 Lyons Street, Newstead, open 11am-5pm each day of the Festival.
Place Matters 