I really dig ceramic art. It’s a wonderful excuse to buy something handmade thats both artful and functional. You can always say to yourself, “Yeah, but I don’t really need art”, but with ceramics you can always say back to yourself, “Yeah but I totally need a new mug!” and by the time you’ve finished arguing with yourself you’ve already left Urban Cow and you’ve got yourself a new little thing. Ceramics are also generally pretty affordable, and just nice to have in your house.
For example, I’m sitting here this evening with a lovely little ceramic cup on my desk. Usually this is the little cup of water on my bedside table when I go to sleep, and sometimes I just like to pick it up and hold it a little. It’s always cool and fits right there in the palm of my hand. You can tell it was made by a pair of hands to be held by other hands.
I remember being quite young and opening a box of paint tubes, and my older brother told me that the paint was made by machines and put in the tubes by machines, and probably put in the box by machines too. He said my hands were probably the first human hands to touch those tubes of paint. I remember being pretty amazed at the time, but having grown up with that sort of stuff, things made by people and touched by hands have a whole new feeling about them now.
This particular cup was made by Sunshine GB March, and you can read here blog, Ceramirama, here. I met Sunshine when she politely put up with me interrupting her working with Dainica Headland out at the Parks Community Center to ask about their printmaking studio. We all chatted for a while and I really dug her work, I left a few hours later and then kept seeing it all over the place. Most recently she has a lovely piece in the Prospect Self Portrait Prize.
Finally, last month I managed to get some of her work for myself at the Adelaide College of the Arts Art Bazaar, which is the school’s annual market for artists. Two little ceramic cups and a saucer for myself, and a taller glass for the office Kris Kringle.
I’m pretty damn pleased with them, and I really do encourage everyone just to hold something made by hands. Urban Cow, The T’Arts Collective and Pepper Street Arts Centre are good places to start. And keep an eye out for Sunshine’s work.