Beyond June 2011......

I've been pushed to think about this a little more seriously with the approach of the interviews for the second part of the PPD3 module, but it's actually helped in settling my mind a little in how many opportunities are actually out there if I set my mind to it.
I've started researching into a few more craft fairs around the UK that I could potentially try to sell my work at throughout 2012. The British Craft Trade Fair is high on my list already, as I had such a great experience there last month,but here's a few more that I'd like to visit and get a feel for the vibes of the fairs to see if they're a potential selling place for me in the near future.

Origin: Made not manufactured... held at Spitalfields Market in London, with 17,000 visitors in one week with over £700,000 taken on sales in 2010.

New Designers: One Year On. June 2011
"For the 12th year running, New Designers is proud to present One Year On, a major feature within the event. This is a focused zone, showcasing a group of 50 young designers with an entrepreneurial flare and a strong body of work.
Buyers, collectors and press absolutely love One Year On, so this is a fantastic opportunity anyone who has set up a business within the last 12 months."
...Tough call, but not unrealistic?

The Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair, Spinningfields in Manchester. October 2011.
They also have a graduate section: "Chosen from degree shows and New Designers exhibition 2010, these 14 graduates are amongst the best new talent from across the North. Showcasing a wide variety of techniques, ideas, inspiration and media, these new makers are undoubtably ones to keep an eye on for the future."

It might be worth looking at smaller, regular events that would be cheaper to buy a stall at. There are a few established in Leeds such as Handmade and Reetsweet, but it's worth considering venturing to London for a different market base and hopefully a broader audience to strengthen my experience. Stour Space in central London sounds like a fantastic place to look out for.

There's also other events nationwide such as The Contemporary Craft Fair, based in Devon. Held in the height of Summer, this looks to be a guaranteed busy event - again with a different audience and market base to the North. It's further to travel, which entails more costs, but potentially worth a look for the future?

Also took a quick look at funding, as I'll almost certainly need it...:

Arts Council

"CIDA is Cultural Industries Development Agency is the leading support organisation for the creative and cultural sector."

Exhibition Show Plan

Time Management

I've recently felt really distracted from the creative side of my FMP with everything else going on around me. The Young Curators project has started to take over a lot more time than I anticipated, with an average of 2-3 meetings a week, emails and phone calls going on in the background and then I'm also aware of the introduction of Friday mornings as dedicated YC meet up from the 22nd April. This is a project I can't avoid or cut down on, as I have a massive responsibility as one of the coordinators. I also have my part time job which I'm getting about 2 shifts a week for now, again I can't cut down on this as I need extra income to be able to fund myself through to my graduation.
This has lead me to reconsider my volunteering with People in Action, where I've been helping out on Thursday evenings at Potternewton Gateway. It's only a small part of my week, but I felt like this unfortunately is the easiest thing to drop. I called up the office to speak to my contact there in person to explain my situation - and also that I'll be around Leeds for part of the Summer and I'm living here for another year, which leaves plenty of time for me to help out then. The team there were really understanding and appreciated my help so far, and were keen to keep in touch for the future.
Another area I'm conscious of is the Artsmix seminars, running for the Pop-up Shop in May. I was unable to go to the latest meeting due to a clash with Young Curators, but I'm determined to keep up to date with the seminars as they're invaluable to me for the future in regards to pricing, selling and marketing my work.

This rethink in general has made me more determined to use my available time as well as I possibly can. I've been working long hours, but making sure I get my sleep in! It's difficult to get carried away with sketching and designs or researching and reading, so I'm trying to be as constructive as possible and make plenty of lists to work through each day.

Branding by Paul Price

I've asked Paul Price to help me out with some identity branding for me. This will ensure my presentation is much more professional online, within any labeling of my work and potentially business cards as well. In the development stages at the moment, but here's some plays on type and colour, (full blog post link for Paul's website below and above).

Our agreed favourite on colour is the blue and cream combination, still playing around with layout as this is dependent on my 'tagline' and how I feel I want to present myself within my identity.

Jodie Curley Branding – Development « Paul Price.

Made: Pop-Up Shop

Last week I sent in my application for the Leeds College of Art Pop-Up Shop, MADE,  to be held on the 17th - 19th May. I'm hoping to sell my ceramics, cards and books.

This afternoon I went along to the first seminar ran by ArtsMix about marketing and selling work. Also discovered as students submitting and selling our work, this shop is entirely down to the students as well - a task I didn't realise we'd have to undertake!! This means more commitment and time out of my already hectic schedule, I'm hoping they're sympathetic to third year students who have  a lot on their plates already.

At the moment, it looks like maximum 2 hours a week to this project, then the odd half a day producing more work to sell. I feel this is a manageable commitment and a very relevant one in 1) promotion of my work 2) experience in selling my work and 3) money!! All of which are extremely valuable for me now and the near future. 

With all of this in mind, I've constructed a bit of a diagram of my workload, expectations and available time. This will be a reference point when I feel like time's getting too tight and I can decide what's best to drop/cut down and be sensible about my actions. 

Fingers crossed all goes to plan.

Time to Think & Time to Move

I started to worry a lot over the last couple of days, realising the minimal time left on this project with the amount of work expected for the credits of the module. I feel like I'm lagging behind massively.
Only down to my own self-motivation and hectic last month or so, I've not given my work as much commitment and determination I should have kept up. With a sudden empty couple of weeks appearing, this just gave me the excuse to take it easy, catch my breath back and get back to a reasonable sleeping/eating pattern again.
I've started to realise just how much I need to catch up on, how ambitious this project is that I have in mind that I want to do and how much is still left to take on. To start with I've just felt helpless to the point where I just don't want to work on anything, or I'll find other things to do instead to pass the time. Now I'm determined to just do it and hopefully impress myself with how I've managed to turn it all around.
I need a strong sense of direction, I need a plan, I need a big list of what needs to be done and I need to start ticking all the boxes now.
This list will grow and change over the next 3 months, but I want it to be here to remind me of how much I've got to do, then I can feel relieved every time I can happily cross something off it:

- practical research; drawing, photographing, illustrations, printing processes,
- analytical: understanding why handmade & British trade makes a difference, what's the point?
- identity/future: who am I? what is my 'practice'? how do i define myself? what do i want to be doing in 3 months/6 months/1 years time?
- identity: get help with branding of 'Jodie Curley', photos of work, Wordpress blog full of work & complete with new identity, business cards
- design: print patterns, ceramics patterns, illustrations, products (including - find sewing patterns)
- practical work: printing onto fabric, producing ceramics, producing textile home-wares
- documentary: justification of what, why and how i'm doing things, including brief(s)/rationale/context

Ceramics final submissions

For my final designs, I decided to really simplify things down, working in panels of colour/texture/plain porcelain, in the hope this simplicity would demonstrate a professional level of work, rather than a rough and ready fixed together research piece of ceramics.

Following my sketched out designs for my final pieces, this time round I found I was struggling with handling the clay. I was talking to Andy about this following the firing of my pieces and he explained how porcelain is a really difficult clay to handle, as its qualities make it very delicate. If it's stretched or creased at all, the clays structure has a memory which reverts back to this and can result in it easily cracking or warping at any time between the raw dry clay pre-biscuit firing, to post glaze-firing. It's so interesting learning about the qualities and 'characteristics' of the materials I'm using, as well as the pieces I can produce with them.

A lot of the porcelain i rolled out ended up in the scraps bucket for porcelain slip, partly for being rolled out too thin and I'm not sure if the weather had anything to do with drying the clay out too quickly as well... annoying, but at least it will be recycled! 

I played around with some more handles, this time with porcelain rather than the porcelain and paper pulp I had used before. They felt a little more sturdy and after being wary of how delicate the clay is I think I managed it quite well. I tried out varying shapes and styles of handle, also managed a much cleaner finish this time compared to the research pieces, a vast improvement!  

With left over bits of porcelain, I started playing around and manipulating the clay, testing the idea of its handling qualities. With the nature of these pieces, I had a copper oxide in mind to test out the black/green finish of the oxide.

My selection of potential final pieces, pre-biscuit fire...

After the biscuit fire, there were a few cracks starting to show, Andy helped me attempt to secure a few by filling some of the gaps with thickened glaze.

Also the ceramics quite obviously warped in this firing, which if I'm honest I don't really mind; they're still functional objects and still look absolutely fine, if anything, it just adds an extra touch to the handmade essence of the pieces.

My final collection covered in latex panels, spots and patches to help protect the plain porcelain areas for a cleaner finish.

All covered in oxide and glaze ready for their final fire!

And a last minute fatality :( The handle fell off as I was cleaning the glaze off the bottom, which made me drop it on its side... Damn! I still stuck it in for the final firing, and Andy said he'd attempt to fix it together for me.

The final firing .......!!

The pieces warped a little more on their second glaze, resulting in some quirky, not-so-circular shapes! I really love this quality to the clay as they give a much more hand made feel than a generic 'mug' or pot shape.

My little experimental pieces turned out better than I hoped, the touch of green shining through the black copper oxide is really beautiful, I can't wait to play around with this later on in my work when I return to ceramics.

Although the final pieces turned out on the whole a great success, they aren't flawless as there's a few cracks visible, so they still need to be handled with care.

Andy's attempts of saving my broken big mug were pretty good! It's obviously not usable, but the style and effect intended can still be appreciated.

My full fired pieces, round 2...

And my final 6 pieces:

I'm so so happy with my final selection!!! I'm surprised and pleased at how well the repetition of simple patterns, panels and textures really bring the ceramics together as a final selection, rather than just 'a group of work' as I found with my research pieces. I think the work really looks as though it has progressed as well; in a constructive sense of how I have handled the materials and produced the ceramics pieces, including making and attaching the handles, which I managed a lot better the second time around! Also in the design and style sense I think there is an obvious visual improvement, particularly with the cobalt carbonate pieces, (blue selection above), where I have taken on board a professional approach and feel to my work, but still ensured I have delivered a hand finished look.

Ceramics - glazed & fired!

Here's the results of my ceramics after their oxides, glazes and second firing... I've got mixed feelings about the turn out, some are looking amazing and some not so brilliant, but all part of the learning curve...
All my sample pieces - not many colours came out too well ...

 Copper oxide close up - I love the green tints coming through on the creases in the porcelain; it's a really lovely effect which I could try to manipulate into some of my future designs

 Some mugs with cobalt carbonate, (really strong!) the red iron oxides & yellow ochre (not so strong, but close up has a slight tint of colour)

 Detail of the cobalt carbonate; I really love this range of depth of colour - the effect on the handle is lovely and soft and the speckled blue finish to the other areas of the mug are a nice delicate effect as well.

 The manganese oxide finished off varyingly; in some places it came out really quite strong and other areas, not at all. The colour itself is quite nice in the softer finished areas, but is more of a mucky dark brown finish in the darker finished areas.... not too sure on this oxide at all...

 Close up of the effects of latex; you can just about make out the lines where the latex was protecting the porcelain when I first used the oxides. Seeing the comparison of plain porcelain and the faint colour of the oxide is actually quite a lovely finish; I might try to incorporate this effect when designing my final pieces.

 Cobalt carbonate - really strong and striking finish... absolutely love this!

 Of the pieces that didn't have bases, I found there was quite a lot of distortion to the very circular shapes the pieces originally were before the second firing. Don warned me about this, so now I can see it's important to keep in mind how this could affect the professionalism of my pieces. (Unless I used it to my advantage and focused on it as a feature point of interest in my work...?)

 The copper oxides also came out as quite a success. The Paris etched piece came out a bit of a mess - but I've learnt my lesson about how much oxide to put on the ceramics and the effects if I go overboard = very dark black burnt finish!!!

 I do really like the tint of green across the whole piece though, it's almost like a smokey, hazy effect across the city landscape....

 Another favourite is my 'skinny tall' piece... Had a minor casualty when applying the oxide, hence the big chunk missing out of the side - again, learnt my lesson on how to handle my materials! I absolutely love the range of colour from the porcelain grey/white - green - black that flows over the whole piece.

 I particularly like the edges, they look like they've been burnt away...

 I'm really happy with the textures underneath the oxides as well, they're really brought out by a touch of colour and give a really delicate finish with some of the details such as the lace below.

All in all, a fairly good turn out, and some really important lessons picked up about the way the oxides work, how to use them across my work, how to apply them to my pieces and how you can't be too sure on how they'll turn out!
Next plan of action is designing the final (minimum of 4) pieces to make fire and glaze before next thursday....!!!!!?!?!!!