Reflection on Oscar Wilde's Theory (click title for reference -paul greenhalgh's lecture)

Paul Greenhalgh in the Fourth Annual Dorothy Wilson Perkins Lecture talked about: Social Complexity and the Historiography of Ceramic in which he mentioned Oscar Wilde’s ethical analysis of (Victorian) society. One of the points in that was, “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”

The discovery of oneself is, to me, the beginning of life. Only when one loses contact of their superficial self and transgresses through the norms of their past life, do they reach the path to self discovery. It is then that life ceases to exist as one knows it. What is right and what is wrong; these are just fragments of perception. And this is the time when people rethink their perspectives; while some might renovate them, others might totally reconstruct them.
Once the bags are packed and the journey to self discovery begins, one realizes that the journey is one that will not end… ever. However, it is only this realization and a constant interest in oneself that leads an individual to the stage where he would start to be comfortable with himself and maybe even start to love himself.
As much as I would love to agree to with the point I just mentioned, I would also like to add that I felt a bit of disdain and cynicism in few of the other points. There seems to be no belief in the feeling of righteousness. Truth only exists under the threat of detection, wickedness is a myth and those who separate the body and soul are body-less and soulless. Maybe, the author has an entire theory to support himself, but at this point I am not convinced. I have experienced that at some level a lot of people do have malice in them. I also truly believe in the existence of truth, although this belief leaves me quite disappointed at times but hope is a glorious thing. I believe hope is that one phenomenon that helps us in ways that we cannot even imagine. It is that one philosophy that uplifts a life even from the brink of destruction.
The second part of the list summed up what decorative art should constitute. In this section one of the quotes that made a deep impact on me, was, “No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.” I felt no one could have expressed this better or in any other words. I feel this holds true if taken positively or negatively. The ‘mannerism of style’ comes from within, from loving and understanding yourself. Keeping true to your style or deviating from it deliberately is a personal choice which would be forgivable or not is a matter of perception.
I also agree that “it is only the superficial qualities that last.” After a few years people tend to look at a piece of art and say “isn’t it beautiful,” rather than contemplate on what that piece was actually meant to communicate.

A hand at printmaking

Where mature inks dance under rollers, where every scratch twirls in colors and blends into imaginations to spin webs of stories flowing from the mesh of hues.

I talk of printmaking. Printing is defined as the transferring of ink from one prepared printing surface to a piece of paper or any material. Then printmaking is basically the techniques of making prints. There are mainly three divisions to printmaking: relief, intaglio and surface. By relief, as the name suggests, I mean the raised portions on a printing plate which can either be achieved by carving out all the negative area that the artist does not want to print or raising the surface that the artist wants to print as in the case of adding textures on to a plate which would put them on a slightly higher level than the rest of the plate. There are different types of relief techniques a few being linocut, woodcut, metal cut.

Intaglio refers to grooves lower than the level of the printing plate. This means that after inking and wiping the plate off, of, excess ink, only the ink that rests in the grooves would be printed. Some techniques of intaglio are etching, engraving, mezzotint, aquatint, chine-colle and dry point.

Surface or planographic would be the usage of the entire printing surface and some parts are treated to make the image. Planographic techniques include: lithography, monotyping and digital techniques.

Another kind of printing is the collograph print. Collography is a technique used in printmaking where any textured found material is adhered to the printing plate. This texture is captured on the paper after the print is created. Through this technique one can experience the feel of a multitude of textures in one go. This roughly falls in the relief category however we do not create the texture on the plate in this case, we only choose them.

In the last two weeks of my semester I was offered the choice of electives. I could choose one discipline to work in for two weeks. My choices being oil painting, printmaking, drawing, calligraphy, off-loom weaving, screen printing, interior design and wood sculpture; I chose printmaking.

In our two week elective we learnt the collograph and some experimental techniques. My work had characteristics of all kinds of printing; the relief as in the collographs (textures), grooves and scraping as in the intaglio technique and I also used the surface by applying photocopy paper to give a hue in the picture. I first experimented with a lot of textures in my first plate and in my second printing plate I used those textures to form a composition in which I used my textures and I also craved into my printing plate. Then I produced two editions (two identical prints), one final sheet of single color (instead of black) and then I did a top roll and an experimental, for each.

After the printing plates are ready and dried you shilak them two to three times to make sure that the textures are further reinforced. Once it dries up, it is ready to be printed. I used a thick spotting brush and brushed in the ink making sure that all the grooves were covered. Once that is done I wiped the excess to the extent that the wiping paper was hardly getting stained. Then damp paper was placed on it and the press was rolled over it in a smooth motion.

Black and white editions and single color (test and final plate):

For the top roll I first prepared my plate the way I just described, then I took a roller, spread some ink (of a different color) on a clean surface and rolled the roller over it, rotating it every time until there was an even distribution of the ink on the roller. Once this is achieved, I rolled the roller over my plate smoothly in one go and then I printed it.

These were my testing prints for the top roll, before I printed the final top rolls, I experimented with the color combinations. First applying half a top roll of white and half of yellow over a base plate of maroon, then I applied half a top roll of orange and half of brown over a base plate of dark green to turquoise.

These were the final top roll results, where I did a bronze red top roll over a grey-blue base plate on my final plate and a yellow top roll on a maroon base plate for my test plate

These were the final results of the experimental prints of my test and final plates.

The experimental sheet was very interesting. After preparing the sheet for printing I made an inverted collage over my printing plate with glue facing upwards so that it would stick to the printing paper. I used foil, golden paper, newspapers and glaze papers for the collage. I also used handmade paper which gave me a very interesting result. In this case the ink did not stay on the handmade paper, but it actually went through it and spread itself behind it according to the veins of the paper. We also had the option of photocopy transfer.

naked raku - not quite naked

naked or resist raku:
we applied a separating slip to bisqued ware and then a clear crackle glaze over it. we were supposed to burnish the green wear but we had already bisqued the pots. the separating slip was applied to clean bisqued ware, then we let dry and then over it the clear crackle glaze was applied.

separating slip (used in the picture):

fire clay 50
china clay 20
grog (60 mesh) 20
potash feldspar 10

[tim andrews' recipe]
use only over a surface with terrisigilata slip and burnishing;

china 50/60
quartz50/40

clear transparent crackle glaze (used in the picture):

borax 75
quartz 30
bentonite 5

moulded

i casted two forms for this assignment: the ball bottomed vase and a bottle

self portrait in low relief -raisin casted

plaster mold of relief made in clay:

raisin cast washed and polished:

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just found my tickets

My second half of my second year has been a compact experience of knowledge, distractions, entertainment and enjoyment. I feel to have achieved a large body of work this semester and much knowledge, more of which was due to experience, trial and error.

I have learnt that no matter what precautions one may take, one must prepare themselves for the worst when they keep their work in the kiln and if it has blasted then no matter what happens to it, the worst hasn't happened. I have, to some extent learned not to love each piece that that I make to an extent where I either cannot critique it or see it crack or break.

I feel that an introduction into high fire and wood fire glazes has opened up to me an entire field that I was very hesitant about. It has made me love wood firing even more and every time I experience results of wood fired pieces I can't help but be amazed. I feel that due to the intensive wood firings that I have gone through, I feel I am capable of handling an entire wood firing however I feel I need to have done more readings.

Apart from all this I feel I am susceptible to distractions. I have realized that for me to work at my optimum I still need to learn to cope up with distractions and maybe try to express them in my work rather than not be able to work at all. I also feel that I could have done a lot better in some assignments and I had found myself wishing to have had more time for some assignments since they were so interesting but I felt I couldn't do them justice.

I had most enjoyed the totem pole assignment. I felt that was my best assignment this term despite the fact that it cracked entirely I also loved half of the naked clay assignment while its other half would be my weakest assignment. The assignment on the moulds was also very interesting but I had no time to think or to enjoy it as was the case with the naked clay project.

So overall, this semester and this year was a lovely year for me. I feel I have learned a lot from both the visiting and the permanent faculty in very contrasting ways and I feel I can approach them with much more ease then I could before. I have learnt to love my studio, the atmosphere, and the people I work with, since the day isn't complete until I do not have a brush of all of them.

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