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A SOUTHERN PERSPECTIVE: A COLONIAL GLASS ARTIST AT LARGE IN EUROPE
Introduction
In September this year, I participated as a delegate at an
international conference in the UK- “Making Futures”, The Crafts as
Change Maker in Sustainably Aware Cultures. It was the 2nd edition of
Making Futures and was held at Dartington Hall estate in the heart of
Devon, a sprawling 200 acres surrounding the grand medieval residence
and hall. (the fascinating history of Dartington can be read at
http://www.dartington.org/about-the-trust/the-story-so-far) I will
borrow here from Malcolm Ferris’s welcoming speech, as he discussed the
relevance of the conference venue to the themes:
The choice of this sight is pertinent and resonates with our theme, not
least because it was here in 1925 that the Elmhirsts’ instituted their
project to make Dartington Hall a centre for progressive education and
the arts in the service of rural regeneration and positive social
change. But today, Dartington Hall is also important for the way it is
inextricably linked to Totnes, the ancient market town 3 kms away that
is the home of the modern transition movement, a grass roots community
initiative which is dedicated to promoting sustainable forms of living
in anticipation of a post-peak oil milieu…
The conferences were conceived against a background of the global
financial upheaval and a growing sense of desperation about the
direction and sustainability of arts and crafts in the 21stC. The
continued global situation of nationally fraught economies, urban
unrest and rioting and imperatives of global climate change have
obliged everyone to question the notion of sustainability. Against this
backdrop, Making Futures engages in the debate of crafts’ position and
relationship to society and the possibility of making significant
contribution in the cultivation of resilient and sustainable
communities.
Dialogue
Five thematic strands where chosen as a basis for dialogue throughout
the two day conference with small intimate groups allowing high levels
of interaction:
• Craft as Social Process
• Critical perspectives on Post-Industrial Futures
• Local-Global Dialogues
• Practice-based Redefinitions & Positions
• Endangered Subjects- Ethical Minds
As well, there was a special research workshop in which I participated:
• Regeneration in Glass- A Sustainable and Financially Viable Future.
Anchoring the conference were six keynote speakers, Kate Soper
(Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, London Metropolitan University),
Trevor Marchard, (Professor, SOAS), Kevin Murray, (Adjunct Professor,
RMIT, Melbourne), Chris Gibbon & Karen Yair (Crafts Council UK) and
Catherine Hough (independent glass artist, UK), who opened the plenary
sessions over the 2-day conference. Thirty-eight delegates also
presented papers addressing the various strands, providing a wide scope
of interpretation and suggested solutions to the questions of
sustainability in the crafts.
Research Workshop: Regeneration in Glass
As it was physically impossible to participate in each strand and
listen to all the papers due to the strands running concurrently, I
will briefly summarise those that I attended personally. All abstracts
are available on the Making Futures website-
makingfutures.plymouthart.ac.uk, as will be the full papers in the near
future. Obviously, as a glass artist, my main interest was in the Glass
Research workshop conducted on Day one, although I found much food for
thought in following other strands on Day two. Our group was small,
about a dozen participants including speakers and we met up in the
Griffith Room for an intense morning session, before adjourning after a
delicious lunch to view & sample the ingenious prototype glass
furnace developed by Ian Hankey. (More about this later.)
Catherine Hough as keynote speaker, an independent glassmaker in the UK
since the early 1970’s who stumbled into glassmaking quite by accident,
opened the session. Her paper was underpinned with a history of the
English studio glass movement as she discussed her own journey as an
artist. She stressed the importance of continued learning, adaptability
and evolution against an ever-changing environment:
It has been a fascinating journey witnessing the transfer of
glassmaking skills and creativity from factories to studios through the
rise of the international glass movement, the growth of higher
education, the development and expansion of marketing opportunities,
and the influence of new technologies. Now with many of these trends in
reverse we have huge new challenges to overcome in terms of changing
markets, education cuts, and sustainable energy use.
The second paper, Technical & Reflective Rationality & the
Implementation of a Sustainable Business was presented by the animated
Ian Hankey, a lecturer at Plymouth College of Art, who has been
researching 17th C furnace technology for the past six years. His paper
investigated far more than the mere technology of furnace construction,
but his research on the furnace held all enthralled. I would rate his
paper as one of the most significant at the conference concerning
ramifications of sustainability for the studio glass movement. The crux
of his research is a low cost build and running furnace adapted from
17thC operations:
Ian Hankey, a lecturer at Plymouth College of Art has been working for
many years on designs for a small, low cost glass furnace that can be
turned on and off extremely quickly in comparison with conventional
furnaces. With support from Plymouth College of Art Research Committee,
Safelame Ltd, Members of the Society of Glass Technology, and
Dartington Crystal, Ian has built a working prototype based on ideas
that were prominent in the 17th C.
The information on the furnace will be freely available to anyone
willing to sign a “no-profit” clause as to resale, as a condition of
access to the plans.
Xin Li, a Chinese student studying in the UK, presented the third
paper, Researching the Sustainable Possibilities of Glass as a Creative
Material. He discussed the benefit of developing sustainable glass
product within the context of the studio glass movement. He is working
on a classification system that goes beyond “recycled glass”, and
suggests a far more diverse cataloguing of said glass to enable a more
efficient and sustainable recycling process. This would involve the
inclusion of specific recycle catalogue tags Xin has developed, onto
each piece of glass, allowing thorough sorting & utilisation of all
products reducing contamination & waste:
The {studio glass} Movement has been seen to provide a new freedom for
glass artists, designers and makers to exploit the possibilities of
glass (Lynn, 2004, P4) However, glass is not only a remarkable creative
material, but a material with incredible sustainable properties and
possibilities.
The fourth and final paper of the session, Studio Glass Sustainability:
A Southern Perspective, by Judith Bohm-Parr was the paper I presented.
This paper reported on research signposted by the continuing Art/Craft
schism and the socio-economic challenges that bulwark the imperative of
sustainability as an artist today. This highlighted the challenge
implicit in the fundamental dilemmas for todays’ artists which centre
firstly on the nexus between the sustainability of artistic integrity
whilst retaining economic viability and, secondly, on the potential
engagement of the broader community’s ability to link/re-establish/ via
socio/symbolic bonds to current craft/art conceptions:
The paper probes the genesis and professional focus of the artist in
the twenty first century with specific relevance to a personal arts
practice providing an economically feasible model which enables a
synthesis between tradition and innovation based on arts tourism…Issues
of financial security, collaboration, career path options and artistic
content point to a necessary redefinition and re-conceptualization of
key parameters within the discipline. This should lead to a different
focus on arts practice, enabling the arts and artists a continuation of
sustainability and value in society.
The afternoon session at the prototype furnace set up by Ian, was
eagerly anticipated and well attended by the glass strand as well as
many other delegates keen to see this innovative furnace. Ian had
achieved the impossible - relatively inexpensive construction, combined
with incredible efficiency on fuel consumption. He has also solved the
problem of having to run a furnace 24/7.
Early test melts of glass cullet indicate that the 25kg furnace
can reach 1300 degrees C in only 4 hours without damage to the
combustion chamber or crucible. As the furnace can be turned off just
as quickly, the potential for the reduction of energy costs and
emissions are impressive, as well as the implications for the financial
viability of small ‘entry level’ businesses start-ups in studio glass…
he believes that it is only through the free disclosure of developments
in this field that young emerging glassmakers might benefit from this
research.
The Other Strands:
On day two I had to choose between the remaining four strands. It was
explained we would have a better understanding and it would be more
productive to remain with one strand rather than skip from one to the
other. I chose Endangered subjects – Ethical Minds, where Dr Houghton
instigated discussion with a paper entitled Craft Education: What is
it. Where it Comes From and Where it is Going. This paper reviewed the
history of craft education in relation to the minimal funding, low
esteem and narrow syllabus accorded the subject leading ultimately to a
decline in provision of satisfactory outcomes. He also discussed
craft’s evolving contextual relationship to society, technology,
design, industry and art. He finished with a case for the relevance of
craft education in today’s curriculum. The issue of education was to a
pivotal topic in the summary plenary discussions. The second speaker in
this strand, Barber Swindells, put forward a case of care through craft
in his paper More than Charity; Textiles in Daily Life. He discussed a
project involving students’ thinking as global citizens using craft as
a collective responsibility to ‘highlight the current phenomena of
consumption and disposability of textiles in daily life and its
relationship to social highs and lows.’ The project involved
students collecting discarded disposable sleeping bags, tents and
abandoned textile material from music festival sites and recycling them
into personalised products to be distributed to homeless people:
The intention to is to insert homeliness and individuality into each
bag. We see all of this as giving something more than charity; we are
interested in the crafted gift and time spent beginning to form small
acts of resistance to the dominant flow of globalised sensibilities.
Dr Graham McLaren followed with a paper Ethics, Education and the
‘Kitchen Table’ Potter. He discussed the importance of manuals
published between 1945-1970 as unsung but vital information concerning
ethical approaches to making; usually written by the professional
potter for amateurs. Susan Carden’s paper Craft Informed Digital
Textile Printing proposed a case for combining craft techniques with
advanced technology to apply dye-based rather than pigment form in
digital textile printing:
Due to the discrete nature of the system, this process has the
potential to encourage the establishment of micro-businesses in
outlying locations. With energy costs beginning to rise it also offers
a novel aesthetic at a low cost.
The afternoon session began with Keynote speakers, Chris Gibbon (Senior
Consultant at BOP) & Dr Karen Yair (Crafts Council UK) who brought
the delegates up-to-date on new research mapping the UK contemporary
craft sector, the first study to be carried out simultaneously across
England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland. The research conducted
as a phone survey considered all spectrum of the sector from makers,
curators, and writers to retailers. The new study had three principal
objectives:
• To indicate the size, economic impact and
demographical profile of the contemporary craft sector in 2011-10-07
• To identify size, economic impact and demographical
profile trends, and to compare where possible with data available for
makers (for 1994 & 2004).
• To identify relevant sector characteristic and
trend, undertaking comparison with previous data where possible.
Questions posed on broader themes that emerged from the project
included: What evidence is there of portfolio careers? How is digital
technology reshaping contemporary craft? How ‘international’ is the
contemporary craft sector in the UK? Findings will be published in the
next few weeks.
The last strand I attended was Critical Perspectives on Post-Industrial
Futures where two papers were presented. Mary Loveday-Edwards examined
nostalgic responses to craft in her paper Craft as a Socially Aware
Nostalgic Practice: Re-Envisioning a Positive Future. Her research
identified various forms of nostalgia from medical and reflective to
restorative and legislative and noted that nostalgia always follows
eras of consumption. Her presentation posed questions regarding craft’s
future role in a society altered by peak oil and climate change:
In looking towards the past, could craft engage with wider contemporary
critical debates? In showing what we feel we are missing from the past
in our present society, might we use nostalgia as a tool for
envisioning how we would prefer a new society to be, post peak oil and
in time of climate change?
The final paper, entitled Take a Look at These Hands was presented by
Malcolm Martin. This was a refreshing end to the session as he asked
for the curtains to be opened and stepped away from the theoretical
dialogue of the previous few hours to present an enthralling
performance instead of the usual slide show. He discussed the
importance of hands to the craft worker; that tools were a mere
extension of the hand in intimate making. Within the dynamics of
makings, the nature of hands is never to repeat, so errors and mistakes
equate to success where copying exactly is failure:
Conventional critical and theoretical analysis, even that produced by
makers, has tended to underplay or ignore the centrality of this
physical embodiment, unintentionally treating the body as a theoretical
construct rather than an experienced living reality. The
presentation/paper will address itself to the audience’s hands and
bodies as much as their minds.
As with any conference, it was not all-hard work, in fact some of the
livelier conversations took place at the Craft Council sponsored
cocktail party on Thursday evening, many of which continued at the
wonderful dinner. Delegates also had the opportunity of a private
viewing in Plymouth of The British Art Show on Friday night.
Summary & Outcomes
After the days’ papers were summarised in the final plenary session,
comments from the floor were encouraged to determine if any directions
for the future of the crafts were gained from the conference. Due to
the short two day period of the conference and the running of
concurrent sessions it was only possible to gain an overview of the
whole from the summaries presented each day. It was felt that there had
been progress made since the first conference regarding issues of
sustainability within practice, but a warning not to throw the baby out
with the bath water by taking yourself out of the equation completely
as craft will be needed in a post peak oil world. Many issues still
needed resolution and some of the directions intimated were:
• Social interaction:
o Craft still is referred to as the “C” word in parts of society.
o There is a still need for broader interaction with
everyday life, an engagement with ‘real’ people instead of insular
& sector based connexion.
o Redefine the narrative of object/subject relationship, review ‘labelling, provide provenance.
o Consider a ‘fair trade brand’ in relation to the use of ethical materials; i.e. gold.
o Narrative needed on the value & connectedness of craft, too much theory, not enough practice.
• Craft/Industry:
o More interaction/convergence needed, and value placed on creations from;
o This would prompt craft ethos spreading into industry and so to society.
• Adaptability:
o Listen to attitudes,
o Use descriptions rather than interpretations,
o Employ a positive vision towards sustainability rather than negative.
o Quiet, non-violent revolution using reflectiveness in making and redefining cultural ecology
• Cohesion
o Rewrite the script and play together
o Who should we lobby and at what level to instigate change
o A cohesive lobby group needed of not just craft
people but all associated sectors (artist’s, designers, curators,
makers, educators writers) to initiate change.
In summing up I would say the general feelings were that craft’s
interaction with society needs a lot of work. A lot of craftspeople are
not living in the real world, with a frank need to listen, adapt and
employ much more flexible policies in their practices. Education was
singled out as an area that needed urgent attention, with reduced
curriculum in all levels from primary to tertiary studies, reducing
young persons’ exposure to and understanding of the ethos of craft.
Whilst sustainability has, in the main, centred on ecological issues,
there is more to sustainability for the artist than is encompassed by
these publicly debated issues. Whilst environmental stewardship is
indeed an important element in the equation of craft sustainability,
the issues of aesthetic, economic and ethical sustainability are at
least of equal importance. Lastly, there is a need for a focused and
cohesive lobby group to initiate changes.
My attendance at the conference has been a lesson in objectivity and
perspective. Leaving the familiarity of my comfort zone in Australia
prompted a different vision of our industry & its workings. The
trip engendered a feeling of positive global “crafthood” where we are
all facing similar hopes & fears for the future of the crafts,
striving together for the goal of sustainability. On a personal level
my confidence in my abilities as an artist and researcher were put into
perspective by the positive reception and interest in my work. This
will enable me to pursue broader agendas in my practice confidently and
enhance my career development. Valuable contacts made with other
artists will allow ongoing dialogue on issues of mutual interest &
concern. In the context of the modern digital world, some may think
attending conferences in person is an unnecessary and costly exercise.
I disagree with this, as talking on Skype or reading papers online in
no way replaces the personal interaction and dialogue that occurs face
to face. The same can be said for the tactile response received when
viewing artefacts in person- books and the Internet only allows the use
of one of the senses- sight.
On that note I would like to acknowledge the support given by Arts Qld,
who provided a career development grant to help cover costs, Plymouth
College of Art for organisation and assistance during the conference
and lastly the joint contribution of ALIAS and Plymouth College of Art
for provision of a bursary covering registration at the conference.
Without this combined financial assistance, it would have been cost
prohibitive to present my paper in person.
At large in Europe
The conference was part of a broader itinerary, which involved touring
France for eight days, investigating pertinent sites associated with my
artwork, especially pate de verre glass. Before we left for France
there was an opportunity to do some limited touring in England where we
visited Stonehenge, south Devon and did a big red bus tour of London.
History and cultural stimulation at every turn in the road, and an
inspiration to a visiting artist, especially Stonehenge, which has a
presence that palpably reverberated down the centuries. We stayed right
next to Waterloo Station in London at the Union Jack Club, reserved for
serving and ex-military forces, very close to all the sights.
After a short trip on Eurostar, we arrived at Gare du Nord in Paris,
and made our way to the outer suburb of Ozoir la Ferriere, by train and
bus and lots of walking to pick up the motorhome we had rented. It was
only possible to include the north of France in our touring due to the
short time available, so we made the most of it. Our first destination
was Reims, where I marvelled at the magnificent stained glass windows
in the Notre-Dame de Reims cathedral. From there we travelled along
very narrow roads, driving on the right hand side in a seven and a half
meter long motorhome to Nancy, in Lorraine, to enjoy first hand, the
beauty and excellence of Art Nouveau glass by Daum, Galle, and
Decorchemont. Our route to Nancy took us through the magnificent area
of Champagne, where we were distracted by all the chateaus selling
boutique wines, necessitating an overnight stay.
From here we returned west towards Versailles, then onto Giverny and
Monet’s garden. As long as I live, I will never forget standing on the
bridge in the water gardens, seeing all the aspects as Monet did for
his paintings. We spent three happy hours discovering the multitude of
different aspects in the gardens and exploring Monet’s house and
studio. That visit alone could easily inspire me for the rest of my
life.
Whilst travelling, we did not stay in caravan parks, but through the
Passion France pass, were able to stay on farms, wineries and artisans’
homes for an inclusive fee of €29, valid at over 1600 destinations for
12 months. This was so much more enjoyable and allowed us to meet the
people of France and sample farm produce, boutique wines and craftwork.
From Giverny we travelled all the way through Normandy to Bayeux to see
the famous tapestry depicting William the Conqueror’s invasion of
England in 1066. A few miles further brought us to the D-Day landing
site where we paused for contemplation on the events that occurred 70
years ago. Paris beckoned, so we headed east again and decided to book
at a caravan park in Bois de Boulogne, an inner suburb of Paris, so we
would not have to drive the camper to see the sites, a scary
proposition due to its size and the traffic in Paris.
The metro is the way to get around Paris, so we took a train ending up
at the base of the Arc de Triomphe in Place de l'Étoile at the top of
the Champs-Élysées. Here we boarded another big red bus to do a hop on
hop off tour of Paris, which was superb. Highlights included the Eiffel
Tower, Cathedrale Notre Dame de Paris and of course the Louvre. Too
soon we had to return the camper and catch our flight out of Charles de
Gaulle airport. On our way back to the camper site, we inadvertently
drove through a civil riot; rocks, fires, police with shields and
machine guns, roadblocks; the real thing. A lesson learned here and
everywhere we went in France- have some knowledge of the language, as
young people tried to warn us before we got too far in, but because we
couldn’t understand French, we thought they were trying to hitch a
ride! Came out the other side shaken, but in one piece.
Jetted off to Hong Kong where we had a twelve-hour stopover before our
flight back to Cairns. By this stage we were a little weary, having not
slept on the eleven-hour flight from Paris due to very uncomfortable
seats. A note for the future- do not contemplate flights of more than
four hours overseas unless you can afford business class! Whilst in
Hong Kong, we did a short trip into Kowloon to see the sights then
retired to the travellers lounge for a much needed massage, shower and
food before our 11.30pm flight. Just to add spice to the equation we
anxiously watched the approach of Typhoon Nesat heading directly for
us. We were on one of the last flights to leave, before Hong Kong was
closed down by the category eight storm. Finally arrived home to the
lovely tropics on the morning of 29th September and slept for
twelve hours. By the time we arrived in Cairns we had lost nine
hours over the dateline as well as no sleep for thirty-six hours, just
like being run over by a big red bus. Too much in too short a time-
next time I have to plan less or arrange more time in the itinerary. So
much we missed, but so much was absorbed. All up, a fantastic and
rewarding experience. If the opportunity comes your way, don’t hesitate
to tour overseas. Travel as the saying goes, broadens the mind and also
provides a source of inspiration and memories that time will never take
away. I’m already planning my next excursion.
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