Home again

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I’m back home again now, after my 3 months in Korea as Artist in Residence at the Yanggu Porcelain Museum. I’m really glad to be home. I Missed Janine and Geordie, and the chickens and my gardens and orchards. Everything really. 3 months was too long for me at my stage of development. It was better suited to someone younger, who doesn’t already have a home and workshop, not to mention garden and orchards etc.

My first week back was spent in the orchards spraying lime sulphur over all the tress to inhibit fungal diseases. This has to be done early, before bud burst. I only just made it. The earliest trees are in flower now a week later. We are still in the middle of winter with good frosts each morning, but we have chosen all early ripening varieties for our situation here, on dwarf rootstocks, and with a low chill factor to allow for the effects of global heating into the future.

I pruned all the trees and piled up all the prunings to burn, so as to minimise any chance of disease from establishing or spreading.

After pruning there is fertilising and liming the soil around the drip line of every tree. I also spread all the ash from the burn pile as well, because ash has some potassium in it, which is an essential element, good for fruit set and development in fruit trees.

All these jobs are achieved with the assistance of the chickens. They love to be involved, and follow me around from tree to tree. Where ever I am working, then that tree is the most interesting tree in the entire orchard. Besides wood ashes, the trees also get a handful of composted chicken manure per sq. metre around the drip line, and a handful of dolomite/lime as well. 

Dolomite has the slight advantage of adding a little bit of magnesium as well as calcium into our ancient, depleted soils.

The final job is to spread a thin layer of well rotted compost around all the youngest trees to help them along and get a good grounding. I spend the first few years after the fire pruning these new trees quite hard, without sentimentality, to get a good strong open shape. I also pick off a lot of the small emerging fruit at the 1 cm. size, to allow the tree to put all its energy into growing strong roots and branches. I leave a few fruit on to get a taste of what sort of fruit it will have for us.

I built a netting fence around each of the newly planted avocado trees before I left for Korea, to protect them from the kangaroos and wallabies, who love to nibble anything that is new in the garden. Even to the point of completely denuding it of any greenery, quickly killing the new plant. I also added a top wrapping of clear plastic industrial ‘glad-wrap’ around the top half of the netting and them over 2/3 of the top, allowing for some rain to still fall through to water the plants. This mini green-house cover is to minimise the effects of the frosty nights over their first winter here, until they can acclimatise to our cold frosty winters. I’m back and they are coping well with the cold, with dark green leaves without any frost burn, and they are starting bud burst with new growth for the coming spring.

All 5 new trees are doing well, so I’m hoping for some good crops of avocados into the future as these new trees come into flowering and cross-pollinate each other and the big 50 year old Fuerte tree that is coming into old age now and has lost a lot of vigour. The fuerte variety is quite cold hardy, as our old tree can attest. handling the winter frosts here as well as a week of snow back in the 70’s. I also planted a ‘Bacon’ variety which is renown to be the most cold hardy of all the avocados. However, even the ‘Hass’, ‘Shepard’ and ‘Wertz’, are all doing well, even though they are not know for their cold hardiness. I’m particularly keen to see the Wertz and Hass varieties do well and flower, as they are the best cross-pollinators for our aging Fuerte tree.

In the weeks and months before I left for Korea, I planted out a load of small vegetable seedlings that I hoped would mature over the next few months to keep Janine in fresh veggies in my absence. On arriving home, Janine took me to the garden to see the last of the 350mm dia. cauliflower heads that had matured over the last few weeks. These had to be the biggest cauliflowers that I have ever grown.

There are others that aren’t as big. We will be eating a lot of varied cauliflower meals over the next month.

The other lovely culinary delight that we have enjoyed in the past week is a very nice French black truffle. Janine and Geordie had a small one while I was away, and thought it wise not to brag about it to me while I was too far away to share in it. She saved a small fragment for me packed in rice in the fridge, but it was pretty much dried out and lost most of its subtle aroma by the time I returned. However, hey presto, we have just one more to share together over a couple of breakfasts. 

We were out for dinner together before going on to a philosophy lecture in Bowral last week, and stopped in at the local French restaurant, where they had truffled egg on the menu. I had to order it!  However, I was somewhat underwhelmed when it arrived at our table. The micro-gram of truffle had been passed through a very fine sieve, so that when my plate arrived, I had to put my glasses on to see the fine black dust.

In my opinion, the only way to eat a truffle is to not think about the scarcity or value, but go for it like it’s your last meal. Be generous to yourself. I allow about 5 grams per person, generously shaved over soft scrambled eggs. We may only get a couple of breakfasts out of a small truffle, but every mouthful is rewarding.

Even though it’s winter, we are still getting 3 to 4 eggs a day out of our 6 chickens, so Janine made a delightful huge and airy savoury soufflé for dinner. luxurious! 4 eggs never looked so huge and luscious. or tasted better.

Now that the garden and orchards are mostly back in order and under control. I have started to prepare wood for the house and for a future wood kiln firing. I want to get at least one wood kiln firing in before the hot dry weather comes. I started by felling a couple of huge dead stringybark trees that died in the big fire. Luckily there is room to fell them safely into the back paddock where we used to have the vineyard. Dropping big trees is such a dangerous activity. I treat it with the utmost respect. I work completely alone, so that no one else can get injured. If I’m concerned, I use a ‘come-along’ steel rope winch to help make sure that it drops in the intended place. So far I’m still alive to tell the tale. In this case, there was plenty of room for error in the open paddock. However, as it turned out, there was no error. It was an almost perfect cut, within a few millimetres.

We spent a day cutting it up into useful lengths measured to suit the kiln firebox or house stove. Chain-sawing takes a lot out of me, so we had a day off to recover, then went back to it and split it all up into small cross-sections, working along the length of the log across the paddock, leaving small pyramids of logs as I went. Janine came along behind me and the splitter collecting the smaller billets and driving them up to the house wood shed for stacking out of the weather. As the tree was long dead, we don’t have to worry about seasoning it before use.

The last job was to rake up all the detritus, bark and tiny sticks for use as kindling. All cleaned up and back to normal, ready for obstruction free mowing in the spring/summer.

We’ll be doing this again, and again, for the next few months and even years, as we slowly work our way through the huge number of dead trees killed in the big fire. Standing dead trees are capable of falling, or dropping branches without warning at any time. So I want to reduce their numbers anywhere near the house, gardens and paddocks where we are likely to move about frequently.

Poetry and Madness 12, Looking for the grit in the oyster

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I have been working here as the Artist in Residence at the Craft Creation Centre, attached to the Yanggu, White Porcelain Museum.I am not Korean, or have any real insight into what it is to be Korean. So I’m staying well clear of any claim to insight, or knowledge of Korean culture. I love the rather unique, fully rounded, Moon Jars that are quintessentially Korean. However, I don’t want to make a copy, or worse still, some sort of cringe worthy, awful pastiche of this exquisite from.

I started my work on this trip, looking in from the outside, through the open window of this opportunity here, but with mixed results. I love what I see, hear, taste, smell and experience, but the window pane is frosted and the image is blurred. My early attempts to make something unique to me and interesting to Korean viewers were inadequate to describe my vision of living and ‘being’ here in this generous, creative, Artist-in-Residence opportunity.

I love the romance of the Moon Jar, but it ends there. What I make is not a moon jar, but an homage to the cultural artefact, and my viewing experience of enjoying them. It’s a very personal view. I have thought long and hard about how I might express my regard for these subtle objects. I had decided early on that it would be an insult to try and make a copy. No matter how close that replication might appear to be, it would always be a poor imitation, by an outsider, that would forever be seen as lacking. A clumsy attempt to impersonate, or worse still, to be a caricature.

I went back to basics. I decided to make something that encapsulates my ceramic interests, my total life experience, including my Korean sojourn. These jars are made with the greatest respect and reverence for this place that I am coming to consider as being a kind of 2nd home, as this is my 9th visit here in 10 years. I have dipped my toe into Joseon Dynasty history and the influences of Confucian philosophy, and find that I have so much in common with this ‘ideal’ form of proscribed behaviour. This way of thinking, of being and living. Interestingly, I was brought up in that milieu. I know it, as I live it, but by another name. I was brought up in a buddhist/quaker household, with similar values.

It’s a calm, quiet, respectful way of living within a society, while also respecting nature and the environment that supports it. This is what engages my attention. The emphasis on virtue, harmony, and responsibility with benevolence and propriety. It just seems to be the right way to live and create, or at least attempt to.  I have tried, and often failed, to live my life by most of these values, long before I learnt about Korean history.  I simply call it living ethically.  But I am no philosopher trained to think in those terms. I am just a simple potter who has chosen to live a sustainable life of minimal consumption, and all of the rest just followed. 

I endeavour to make sustainable, environmentally sensitive and socially responsible life choices and objects. From growing my own food, building my own home, growing my own forest, making my own furniture, and wood fired pots, as well as building my own truck from recycled materials. It’s a unique life, based on a complex set of choices and interrelated actions. I hope that the pots that I make here embody these principals to some extent.

I am making what I hope will be seen as a respectful attempt to create beauty in my own way, with my techniques, showing my sensibilities, but with a Korean flavour. I use a very personal technique based on my explicit needs. A technique of mixed hand-building and throwing, on the wheel. I have also limited my attempts at throwing large scale jars. In my most recent work here, I found a great deal of pleasure in making smaller scale forms in one piece, faster and more freely. It also transpires that these smaller scale works are much better suited to this local clay and the kiln that I built here, so there are fewer losses in the firing. The work has slowly and naturally evolved into an expression of my personality, aesthetic choices, physical abilities, quirks, needs and peccadillos.

This smaller scale has also opened up a lot of other opportunities to fire more creatively and use the kiln’s creative and aesthetic possibilities in more adventurous, artistic and flexible ways. I’m very pleased with these latest works and their variable and expressive surfaces. The ash glaze deposits, the purple/mauve flashing and carbon inclusion. These are surfaces that represent me and my aesthetic.

These surface qualities have become possible at this scale, in this kiln and with this clay, in this place! These pots belong here just like the plants that have self seeded, and grow wild along the edges of the roadside and fields.

So there is a story here. This is a story of muted ambition. Of managing expectations, and keeping a clear vision of what is possible in making an interesting jar. Working in an environmentally sensitive way. Firing my kiln without smoke, and with minimal carbon pollution, but also of testing myself, going further, and living a commitment to an ideal. A dance between poetry and madness. 

Was it some form of folly to decide to undertake this odyssey at my age? I could just as easily have made 50 porcelain jars at home, in my own studio, with more forgiving clay, much more conveniently and comfortably, in my well equiped studio, surrounded by my partner, friends, garden and chickens.  I could have fired those home made jars using my own solar power in a much more sustainable way. All reliable and well understood techniques, equipment, clay and studio. Totally safe, with little challenge, but where is the poetry in that? It helps, I think, to live a little bit closer to the edge, to experience new insights, motives and perhaps just a little bit of madness? In doing so, I think that I might have just discovered the grit in the oyster?

Below, A selection of jars that will be on show here in the Porcelain Museum Gallery from 16th of October to 31st of December.

Hardly a perfect, pure white, porcelain sphere in sight, rather a collection of grey, black, mauve and yellow ash glazed, wood fired jars that reflect my aesthetic choices. No one will accuse me of copying, or stealing National cultural property.

I did 3 firings. 14hrs, 19 hrs and 30 hrs, in my ‘Bourry box’ kiln. A satisfactory outcome I think. 

Funnily, Looking at this collection of jars with their naturally ash glazed surfaces, I see a lot of influence from my friend Svend Bayer. I hope that he is not offended by that comparison. I do know that he was quite influenced by his visit to Korea earlier in his career. Perhaps Korea is the flux that has brought our two very distinctly different approaches closer together.

I fly out in 3 days, just enough time to clean out my fridge and studio, mop and scrub everything into submission, have a farewell party, then hop on the bus.

Poetry and Madness 11. It takes a village.

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I fired my kiln again, and for the last time yesterday. Started at 3:45 by my mentee/assistant Riyeon, 30 minutes before I got there. She’s very keen! Firing number 3 on this visit and firing number 6 in total over 3 years. I’d like to think that Im getting the hang of it, but I’ll have to wait to see what it’s like after I unpack on Saturday. Technically, it went beautifully, climbing to temperature in reduction, without smoke, and without effort, an hour earlier than I estimated, at 9:00 pm.

Riyeon is the most enthusiastic student that I have taught wood firing to in some time. 

As this is my last firing, I organised with some of the other residents that we should fire up the pizza oven that I built last month. It has been sitting waiting for an opportunity to use it. I couldn’t fire it up last firing, as I was more or less firing on my own, with just one or two others intermittently, to allow me to get a nap. This time I have a shared firing with 4 constant helpers. So I can manage to cook pizzas for 10 residents for lunch.

Apart from a minor glitch at the start, the rain held off, and the oven heated up really well, seeing that it was soaking wet from the rain at the beginning, it did well. It’s been siting out in the open, all this time with just a shred of tattered blue plastic draped over it, like a refugee. It’s waiting for the promised roof, which has not as yet materialised. 

I made the dough yesterday and put it in the fridge overnight. I started by demonstrating to everyone the basics of constructing a pizza. A thin base, not too much bigger than the ‘peel’ so that it is easy to handle. A well floured surface, so it won’t stick. Not too much passata so it won’t go soggy, then cheese, just a bit of restraint is the best approach. Simple is usually best. 

My favourite is something vaguely influenced by the classic ‘Margarita’. I like a little passata sauce, then a hand full of basil leaves fresh from my garden spread over the sauce, a few little chopped tiny tomatoes and a sprinkle of cheese. Maybe an olive or two – optional?  The first pizza cooked in just 2 minutes, as the oven was quite hot. We all shared that one. It didn’t last long. It took less time to eat it than it took to cook it!

So for the next hour and a half, every one had a go at making their own version. We cooked some very delicious and good looking pizzas. So I’m now, not just a kiln firing mentor, but a creative pizza kitchen-hand as well. I couldn’t fire the kiln and make pizzas at the same time on my own. I‘m not a woman. I can only do one thing at a time. So I left Riyeon in charge of the kiln. Sooyeong and David have a car, so they were in charge of collecting all the equipment and ingredients from my studio and garden. YoungMi made a fresh salad from her garden, and it all came together nicely. Mr Choi the Residency manager and Mr Jung, the Museum Director both turned up. So that was good, a real gathering.

Cooking pizzas for 10 is a big deal that takes some concentration and coordination. It’s not a solo effort. It takes a village to raise a pizza!

 You can just see the pizza oven in the far background.

Poetry and Madness 10

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My kiln is out. It is unpacked and it started well, everything looked good from outside, but as I started to unpack the setting, one by one, the large jars came out with cracks, most very minor, others quite large and one jar completely collapsed. Interestingly, in the same spot in the kiln as the one that collapsed in the last firing. Only 2 of the large jars have survived completely intact.

Not what I was expecting, but what I was prepared for. There is definitely a show of work here, but it is a different show from the one I might have imagined. Some of the cracks are spectacular. When I saw this one, I said, “look, a crescent moon crack”, and Mr Jung the Director of the Museum, exclaimed that it was 2 moons! A moon jar with a full moon on the surface!

If I disregard the cracks, there are some really lovely pots here. Most of the smaller jars have survived intact, and with some astonishing ash developments on their surfaces. The most interesting thing to me is the purple/mauve/pink colour of the ash glaze development in this firing. This is redolent of the surfaces on some of the work of the Japanese National Treasure potter ‘Mitchio Furutani’. I’m very pleased with this association, as I’m a big fan of his work. I would have liked to have bought one of Furatani’s lesser pieces when I was studying in Japan, back in the early eighties, but he was too famous, and his prices, even back then, were somewhere between ‘effing’ and ‘eye-wateringly’ expensive. I did buy a small sake cup from his son, which was just plain ‘expensive’! Furutani, among many things, specialised in pink flashed ash glaze on his ‘Iga’ style pots. Even the inside of his anagama kiln was coated in a pink/mauve ash deposit. Very beautiful!

As I examine each of my pieces, I’m much happier with the overall result. In fact, it’s not too bad for a second firing of a new kiln with an unknown clay with a different wood. I always tell my students that it takes at least 6 firings for me to get to know a kiln well enough to get good results. Each kiln has a personality, and you have to get to know its strengths. That would mean a year spent here to do that. Out of the question! So I have to be satisfied with what I have here. And I am!

I also make a ‘note-to-self’ that it is a well known fact that trying to make large round jars in a small single chamber kiln is notoriously difficult. I have just proved the rule! Big jars are usually fired at the middle and back of anagamas, not in the front row. Or, they are fired in subsequent chambers of climbing kilns. Also, big-ware has a much better survival rate if made from grogged, or rough, open textured clay.  No body in their right mind would attempt to make big round jars from fine smooth porcelain clay and fire them in the front of a small, single chambered wood fired kiln. Yes! Muggins! That’s the madness part!

So I have broken all the rules. but managed to pull off some lovely, even very lovely surfaces on my jars. I took this picture above, outside Furutani’s studio, showing that even pots by the master, from the back of the anagama, and made from rough shigaraki clay, get cracked and broken. It’s par for the course.

These pieces below are quite lovely to my sense of aesthetics. I’d be happy to show these works anywhere. I’m particularly fond of the mauve/pink ash.

Of the largest jars these are very nice. The last one being tragically beautiful, and would have a place on my workshop verandah, if I were at home!

So there is poetry here. Nothing has met the hammer – yet! 

But it is not haiku, nor luckily, neither is it doggerel or iambic pentameter! My work has no meter, it doesn’t rhyme, or have an even flow of stanzas. I’m thinking somewhere along the rambling lines of Kerouac, or possibly the eco-sensitive thoughts from Snyder? Today It’s the madness I live with, the hill I climb. The pot I make. The kiln I fire. The result I accept. My kiln firing – the dharma burns. Elusive results, like looking for Rexroth’s daughter? “My life is like a plump ripe melon, so sweet, but such a mess!”

This newly minted show will now be about The Journey, The Hill, The Residency, The Experience. The highs and lows. The isolation and the camaraderie. The bad clay, the wet wood, the long nights, but most of all about the joy of almost accidentally creating something unexpectedly beautiful in a new way. Achieved by sticking my neck out and being prepared to take the fall. Although I’m very aware that 50 years of study doesn’t result in any accidents!

I take full responsibility for all my failures, and am fully willing to share the credit for any successes with my collaborators, who helped me get to here. That’s the essence of a shared residency. I’ve worked hard here and put in the effort. It’s a situation in this residency that is best suited to young emerging artists who don’t have a personal studio yet. They need to work somewhere like here. I don’t. My role has really been one of mentor to aspiring young wood firers, while exploring my own interest in Moon Jars. My jars are very different from the traditional ones that I visited in the Museums in Seoul on my first day here in Korea. Different but still very interesting and beautiful, or, at least I hope so. This is the poetry part! 

Purple poetry and mauve Moon Jars. Yes, there is alliteration in my poetry.

I don’t really belong here. I’m the out-layer. It was all laid out in the application form, “applicants should be under 40”. Being under 40 was such a long time ago for me. I can hardly remember being in my 30’s. However, even in my 30’s, I was already settled with a house, studio and kiln of my own. I was secure-ish, and on my way to being established. life was a lot different back then, we were still naive and filled with optimism. What Janine and I did wasn’t at all easy, but it was achievable. We made it difficult for ourselves, because of the choices that we made, to do everything by ourselves, sustainably and without borrowing any more money from corrupt banks. Refusing to take full-time jobs, to be part of The System! It isn’t like that here. No one thinks like that any more, if they ever did?

This whole exercise has been a great big experiment, tinged with failure, yes, sure. It was a difficult ask, But luckily elevated somewhat by my weird optimism. Where does it come from? The desire to make the difficult creative choices at every turn? Get knocked down and then get back up and do it again? It’s the hill I climb.

This art work will have to remain ‘unfinished’, as my time is almost up. Nothing is ever finished! Nothing is perfect and Nothing lasts!

I have metaphorically nailed my thesis to the pottery door and left my mark. I will return in October for the exhibition, and see what has transpired in my absence. In the mean time, there are a lot of pots to clean and grind. More wadding to make and the last of my jars to glaze and pack in the kiln.

I have just one more firing on Tuesday, then I leave. I have mentored one particular resident artist here, who I feel sure will go on to be a wood firer. I can  feel it. I sense her quiet enthusiasm and determination. She has stayed up through all the long hours and nights of each of the wood kiln firings. Carted and stacked the wood, volunteered to crawl inside the still-hot kiln to clean out the firebox ash. She is always taking notes and asking very thoughtful questions that show her thorough mental process. Impressive! She just might be the most successful, but intangible, result of my stay here?

Enthusiastic engagement, how can you show that?

phenomenological ecologist, or ecological phenomenologist?

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I am desperately trying to keep away from the kiln while it is cooling. I have recently been asked to give a lecture about my life’s work in ceramics to the students at Seoul University. The professor is interested in my unusual DIY, organic, self-reliant, ecological approach to ceramics. Apparently, it’s the road less travelled here, and I can see why. Having spoken to all of the recent and current residents here, plus staff members, it’s almost impossible to conceive of what Janine and I do. Almost everyone lives in high rise apartments. There is no ‘spare’ space to put a potters wheel or a hand-building table, never mind a pug mill or re-cycling bucket and plaster tub for drying. As for a kiln! ?

So I’m not too sure what I can offer these students, other than an exotic glimpse into an almost impossible to conceive foreign world. Will it be useful to them? Showing them something that they can probably never achieve? Maybe they wouldn’t even want to live like this? Perhaps I can inspire them to live as sustainably as possible, within their societal limits? I’ve been told that I’m a phenomenological ecologist. Wow! I can’t even spell that, never mind be it. It sounds difficult!

Apparently I’m someone who explores the meaning and significance of my lived experience without trying to explain it?

I looked it up, and am no more the wiser. I read that Martin Heidegger proposed that truths are contextually situated and dependent on the historical, cultural and social context in which they emerge. That seems fair enough to me. Why not? The only other thing I know about Martin Heidegger is that he was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table! That is according to Bruce from the University of Woolloomooloo (who was also in charge of the sheep dip). The Philosophers Song in Monty Python! if you have lived on another planet, and don’t know it. Try googling it. It’s very funny.

Am I a phenomenological ecologist, or ecological phenomenologist? And there was me thinking that I was just living an honest life with good intent, and minimal disruption to the natural rhythms of nature, using home grown and hand collected materials from my local environment, to make my creative living as gently as possible. I call it being a Potter and Post Modern Peasant!

I have in the past, described myself and what I’m interested in, as being a gardener, potter, artist, a conservationist, practicing minimal consumption. ie making everything that I can by myself using home grown, or found materials and recycled stuff. I try to live like this, quietly, and without being a nuisance or being obsessively annoying. 

For instance;

I built my own truck body, by myself, from recycled aluminium. It’s isn’t maybe the best truck body, but it is very strong and has proven durable over the past 22 years of use, and still going strong. I made it almost entirely from re-cycled aluminium off-cuts, that I had collected and stored for such a possibility. I think that it is an almost invisible triumph of creative re-cycling. No one thinks of a truck body as being sexy or even interesting, let alone being environmentally friendly. It all depends on its historical, cultural and social context. However, it exists and only Janine and I know its meaning and history. When I die, it will probably go to the wreckers, unsung!

I re-built our new pottery studio after the fire using steel rather than wood. A strange choice you might think for a conservationist? But as the last 3 workshops have burnt down in fires, which is a total waste of the world’s resources. I decided that steel, although energy intensive and polluting in its creation, will be longer lasting in the long run than wood and is also endlessly recyclable. In an effort to minimise my carbon foot print with this steel studio, I only used new steel in the frame, to comply with council and engineering regulations, and used all recycled steel roofing sheets to clad and line the building, taking a year to collect and sort all the steel. The excess that I had over after the building was completed, I gave to my friend Andy, so that he could build his wife’s studio, and so it goes around. All good outcomes. There is also an added benefit of using recycled iron. It can have a very beautiful patina of age about it. Something that the Japanese Zen Buddhists have words for, but which doesn’t translate easily into English. Words like ‘wabi sabi’.  ‘The beauty of imperfection’. or ‘the nostalgia of age’.

We also used the recycled bricks that we collected from demolishing the old Mittagong railway station, built in the 1880’s from hand made, local, sandstock bricks. We built our house from these and the left over bricks from that project were used to clad the West facing facade of the new pottery to make it even more fire resistant. It also had the effect of uniting the two buildings, the house and the pottery, aesthetically. That and the use of the big arched window in the facing facades.

I have made all my own kitchen chairs and tables from home grown trees from our land, and lined the new pottery studio room with timber boards that we grew and milled, on site. After seasoning for a year, Janine and I planed and sanded them smooth before making the lining boards and also all the cupboards and shelving in the gallery. These trees were burnt in the fire and would have been destroyed, if we hadn’t intervened and saved them for a new life as furniture and lining. It was an expensive exercise, but cheaper than buying plantation wood, which is environmentally destructive. So win win.

We spent some time, making and seasoning our own red hardwood floor boards for the house, as well as the windows, french doors. Also the ceramic tiles for the kitchen, laundry and bathroom, as well as all the roofing trusses. It took a few years, but cost very little and allowed us to have a mortgage free home at the end that was not just sustainably built, but aesthetically unique and very beautiful. 

One distinctive feature of our house is the big arch window in the kitchen. It would have cost an arm and a leg to have it custom made in the local window factory, but I made it myself over a few months for the cost of the wood and glass, still expensive to me, at the time, or so it seemed, until I met the window factory forewoman, who came to the pottery to buy some pots and enquired where the window was made. She was surprised that it was home made, and told me that it would have cost many thousands of dollars if she had made it. However, she hastily added that she wouldn’t have made such a good job of it, as to cut costs in the factory, she would have taken the fast track and routed the arch curve out of straight pieces of wood. Whereas I had steamed and bent each piece of the arch before glue-lamming it all together. The true craftsmanship way. That window is still working well after 40 years, and has recently just been given an up-grade when we installed double-glazed panes into the frame.

So in the end, a house like this would cost in the millions of dollars, but we did it on money saved from our part time job wages. ie, next to nothing, but with hundreds of hours of labour. I think that the house is the biggest artwork that we have created?

Phenomenological ecologist, or ecological phenomenologist? I don’t know! I’m far too busy being me and making a frugal living in a small, quiet, unimportant life, creating things that I think are both beautiful and meaningful, as well as growing my own food and creatively recycling.  What more is there?

Thinking about how I will present myself and what I do over a 2 hour lecture at Seoul University has kept me busy. I’m thinking  powerpoint with some add-libbed descriptions of my process? Even then, writing about all this stuff that I don’t really understand, that is to say that I haven’t planned my life, it has just happened in this way, but that is because of the very deliberate choices that I made at each turn and with each opportunity. Flexibly directing my life along this creative road less travelled. 

Anyway, It has successfully kept me away from the cooling kiln for another day. I did go up to the site, to cart and stack some dry pine from the wood store to the kiln site for the next firing. I made use of a break in the rain for a couple of hours, I’m glad that I did, as it is hammering down again now, and I needed the exercise.

So now, although I’m no wiser. Still just me. I am not at the kiln scratching at the door bricks to get an early peek. Tomorrow is make or brake day. Will there be any work worth showing? I’m hoping for poetry – as long as it isn’t doggerel! 

Please not doggerel. I’m hoping for something more akin to haiku. Deeply meaningful whilst also being elegant and restrained.

However, elegance and restraint are contextually situated and dependent on the historical, cultural and social context in which they emerge from the kiln?

Poetry and Madness 8.

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I have spent the last two days firing my kiln here in the Porcelain Residency. 30 hours of my life that was hopefully well spent? Starting at 4:00 am on Tuesday and finishing at 9:00 am on the following day – Wednesday.

I put a bit of time and effort preparing, splitting and stacking wood, so that everything would go as smoothly as possible. But, as always, the best laid plans…

One of the things that I have no control over is the weather. It rained heavily for a lot of the time. The monsoon has arrived! ‘Uji’ in Korean. Luckily, the kiln shed is well built and water proof, as far as it goes, but it’s an open, well ventilated shed. The kiln is situated on the edge of the building and the heavy rain can blow in sideways. There has been some discussion of adding a verandah to this side of the building. It will probably happen in due course, but I dare say that I won’t see it in my lifetime. It will have to be presented into next year’s forward estimates, be considered by the city governors. Proceed through the various stages of process, eventually approved for quotes to be sent out in 2028, then contractors selected, contracts developed and then reconsidered, re-drafted, re-estimated, re-quoted, new contractors selected. Approval granted for fiscal year 2030! 

Delays, holdups, bankruptcies, heritage listing investigations, archaeological contingencies. All this just for an awning!

You may laugh. But I was first asked to come here and build this little kiln 8 years ago. Later, I was even sent progress shots of the foundations being dug. But the catastrophic bush fires in 2019, then covid in ’20/’21, and various other events intervened and the kiln was eventually built in 2024.  Such is life.

Anyway. I’m here now, in the here and now! Good thing that I began this project in 2016! 

Like climbing ladders, it’s the sort of thing that it is not recommended that old, fat, balding, grey haired guys over 60 should be doing. They should know better and get it out of their system in their mid-life-crisis years! However, at 74 I’m still climbing ladders as well as building wood kilns in foreign climes and doing 30 hour wood firings, well past my use-by date. What went wrong?

I have a friend, who I admire enormously, who has only recently given up doing 100 hour wood firings in his mid 70’s, but he did have helpers!  

Janine and I usually fire more or less alone, with Janine’s assistance coming and going through the day. We have developed a firing schedule where I start the kiln off at 4:00 am and Janine comes down with some toast and coffee at 8 or 9. We fire through the day and into the evening, through into the night. I have found that I can do a 15 to 18 hour firing this way without missing a nights sleep. Working from early till late, and going to bed on the same day as I woke up, so that I don’t feel ‘wreaked’ the next day. With luck, I can see myself being able to continue potting and wood firing in this way for a long time.

Because these 14 to 18 hr firings are relatively short, compared to what some other well known potters do, there isn’t the kind of ash buildup with the glossy, runny ash glaze, that some people attribute to wood fired pots. So I have developed a range of clay bodies and glazes that look their best in these shorter, and more manageable wood firings. Ideally suited to domestic wares, with colour variation and flashing on the surface. Interestingly, even some of the pots from my friends 100 hour firings, the ones at the very back of the kiln, come out with surfaces not too dissimilar to my 15 hour pots. Only a very well educated eye can tell.  Having said all that, the pots at the front of the setting in my short firings do get a lot of ash on them, but that space in the kiln is relatively small in my kiln, so there are not too many of them in my repertoire.

This is a pot from the front of the setting that was in my last firing here of just 14 hrs. This is as much ash as I need to see and deal with in the cleaning of the foot and rim.

I tried 30 and 50 hour firings in my youth, but decided that the returns aesthetically for my kind of domestic pots weren’t worth the bodily wear and tear on me – even then! So this firing is a major effort for me. I can only do it here in this kiln with assistance from some of the other residents. I really need someone to keep me awake through the night. I was fortunate to have a two helpers to look after the kiln for a couple of hours between midnight and 2:00 am. Hours 20 to 22,  so that I could have a nap to get me through the night. Thank you!

Luckily, the truck load of oak wood turned up just in time. One arrived the day before and another during the firing. It is very fresh! to the point of still have birds sitting on its branches 🙂

I say luckily, because we ended up using about 2/3 of it. Along with some well seasoned old pine. Blending about 1 to 4 pine to oak. When I tried burning just the oak, it was too slow to burn well. It needed the very flammable pine to keep it burning fiercely. After 1150oC, wet wood isn’t a problem, in fact it is even better for reduced firings. 

The chemistry is too complex to deal with here, but in essence, Water dissociates to a hydrogen ion and an OH radical. These both eventually reform, back to water, along the way having cleaned up the atmosphere a little. The energy required to crack the water is such that the fire needs to be above 1100 degrees Centigrade to get a positive return. The chemical action still takes place below this temperature, down to about 800 C, but there is a negative energy return.

Using water vapour to create an energy rich and highly desirable hydrogen gas from carbon monoxide is called the water-gas shift. It takes energy to do the shift, but the return is equal to or greater than the input. from 134 btu per cu. ft.  of gas to  156 btu per cu. ft.  of gas produced under ideal conditions. Enough!   I don’t want to loose readers by boring you with too much reality. One person I spoke to was amazed. Having been told that wood needed to be seasoned and very well dried for up to 5 years before burning in a kiln. And that is true for some wood in some kilns, but it is clearly not universal.

So this truck load of wood was very freshly felled and full of sap, This made it slow to combust until we got it up to 1000oC. Which we did by using a bit of dry pine mixed in. No problem, because I had sorted, split and stacked enough dry pine – just in case – a couple of days before. I was very pleased that the air temperature dropped down with the rain over night and made the conditions more comfortable, although it was quite humid, it was also quite cool. As we only need to stoke the kiln every half hour. There is a lot of sitting around doing very little. I’ve heard it described as ‘Laid Back Wood Firing! in French as ‘Le gran feu au bois sans effort’. and Korean as ‘ Pyeon-anhan jangjagbul piugi’ – relaxed wood firing!

I spent the ‘dull’ time teaching my helpers some chemistry and physics – in disguise of course! I made it invisible and more palatable by dressing it up as anecdotes about growing a forest and my choice of fuel, stoking, identifying atmosphere, pitfalls of temperature measurement and glaze colour development. I don’t think that they noticed. Notes were taken, kiln logs recorded, references ‘googled’, images examined and techniques demonstrated. The time passed quicker and I stayed awake. Everyone wins.

The kiln at full fire in reduction. No one can tell!  I’m very pleased about that. Silent and clean.

We fired through the night with the rain until 10 am. Then amazingly, it cleared up for us, just in time to get back down to the residence for a well earned shower and some desperately needed sleep. 

Poetry and Madness 7

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I finished throwing all of my left over re-claimed trimmings into smaller jars, just to use up the clay. I forced dried them out in the sun and wind, thrown one day turned the next and into the kiln on the 4th day. This other batch of sericite is very forgiving!

I bisque fired all my jars last week and loaded them into the Museum’s truck for the slow drive up to the wood kiln area, a few hundred metres up the hill from the residency. I can walk there direct, cross country, a much shorter route, but the truck has to take the gentle road more traveled.

Everything arrived intact, with me sitting in the back cuddling the rear row, to stop them rolling out the back. I glazed them all in one day and then packed the kiln over 2 days. It was very nice to be there on my own, taking my time, thinking it through as I go. I stopped and unpacked parts of it twice to get it right, or at least better – hopefully?

I didn’t get everything in, but about 2/3 of the big jars and half of the smaller ones. I have booked the kiln for another firing for next Tuesday. I won’t have enough to fill the kiln, but about half. I will share the space with the other resident artists.

I bricked the door up in the evening and got it all sealed and slurried over ready to fire yesterday. Today I spent time splitting pine into some quite fine sticks. The size usually associated with side stoking. For the non-potters reading, that means split into very thin sticks about 50mm sq. I will need this small size of wood to start the fire gently, eventually building up to using larger pieces and then logs.

I went out early this morning to water my garden and do a bit of weeding, as it wasn’t raining. I picked my green leaves, chilli, tomato and red radish for my salad lunch. When I gazed down the road, I saw a truck parked in the village driveway with what looked like a load of oak firewood. I was hoping that it was for me, as I was promised it in time for tomorrow’s firing. Later on in the day it disappeared?  I was hoping that it was moved up to the kiln area and tipped off into the kiln shed. I had to walk up there this afternoon in the rain to check, and, Yes, it is all in there. So everything is ready for the 2nd firing tomorrow. I will have a couple of the other residents calling in on me to keep me awake through the graveyard shift.

I spent the middle of the day cooking 3 meals to pack away into plastic food containers for the firing, as it will go all day and over night, I’ll need food, as it’s my firing. I’m not at home now. So can’t just slip into the house to make a cuppa and make a sandwich.

I’ll need to be here with the kiln most, if not all of the time. No time to go back down to the studio to make a meal. I made chick peas in tomatoes sauce, brown rice with tuna, and stir-fried veggies with brown rice and tofu. I also have 2 bananas, an apple and an orange. That should see me through. People who drop in the watch the firing often bring stuff. last firing, Uhkwan dropped in with a box full of ice creams for us all to share. Most welcome on a hot afternoon in front of the kiln.

I’m always so surprised, when I cycle into town along the road through the valley. to see just how economical and thrifty the local farmers are here. No useful space is wasted. They go to the trouble of hand cultivating the small gap of soil along the curb and guttering, to squeeze in just a few more plants. This is all hand weeded, as there is no room for a cultivator in these narrow beds.

They all have bigger crops of rice and soy beans in the big paddocks and paddies, but can’t bear to see a good piece of dirt go un-cultivated. These are nearly all grandmas and grandpas doing all this work. The average age of the Korean farmer is almost 70 years old. As it is in Japan. That compares to 58 in Australia and the USA and 59 in the UK. Whereas it is 45 in China.

It seems that with the Korean economy doing well, all the kids want professions in the city? Not too many young couples are staying on the farm and even less are having children. The population is shrinking. They just aren’t that many children about. For instance, the school at the bottom of the hill that I cycle past on my way to the shops has only 10 students this year. I can’t see it staying open for much longer with those numbers?

Poetry and Madness 6. – First firing unpacked

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We have just unpacked the first of the wood fired kiln firings. It didn’t turn out well. I was disappointed, but well prepared for the result. I had spent the first month here making pots from one particular clay body, it turns out that it isn’t at all suitable for my purpose. Everything that I made from it either cracked in the bisque firing, or if it survived the bisque, it either had invisible, hair-line cracks that I couldn’t see, or new cracks were formed which opened up in the glaze. So everything that I made in the first month has gone to the kiln gods, all cracked, sometimes spectacularly so in the glaze. A tragic combination of several things combined .

I’m reminded that a bad workman blames his tools!  I can’t get away with that. I’m fully responsible.

I had to make an installation of ‘3 inseparable pots’!  

However, there were some nice pieces in the kiln, but not enough to justify a show. I had 6 large jars and 12 smaller ones, half of each cracked. I’ll need a better firing next time round to get the bulk of the work for a show. Luckily, all of that ’sus’ clay is now gone. All my remaining jars are made from a different batch of sericite. It turns out that I’m the first and only user of that first batch of clay. There are only 3 bags left. No one else will touch it now! Bummer batch. 

Although this is a set-back, it wont stop me trying to get a good result.

You have to concentrate on the positive, look for the up-side, even if it is a little difficult to see in a dark place. I’m lucky to have got what I have. The forms are good, elegant, open mouthed, small footed, well rounded, and the glaze well melted. The glaze is a mix of the local sericite porcelain stone of the clay body and ash. A believe that it is a very authentic approach to a cultural icon. My interpretation of an ancient concept of aesthetics. My pots are not pure white and unadorned, but rather boldly showing their wood fired heritage. A good but limited outcome. No hammer needed here just now.

Only half the work in the kiln was mine, as I shared the space in the kiln with the other residency artists. They were waiting for me to arrive to fire the wood kiln, as they were keen to have the experience included in their time here. No one else here at the moment wood fires. Just me. They have all seen the kiln standing there and wanted to experience a firing of it. Most of them are making hand built sculptures, some quite delicate. They wanted to limit the firing to lower stoneware temperatures, in case their work slumped. I want to fire a bit higher and longer. We agreed on cone 8 over, starting cone 9. We only reduced lightly to minimise the smoke and the chance of bloating the larger dark, irony clay sculptures. I stopped at cone 9. Next firing will be all my work, so I will fire hotter and longer. Hopefully using local Korean Oak hard wood. That is if it gets delivered before I have to leave? If not, it will be another dirty pine firing. I only have 3 weeks remaining, so fingers crossed!

I just managed to fit this firing in for the previous residents. One left the next morning and hasn’t seen the results, only photos that we sent to her. 2 others waited the extra days to stay for the unpacking and then drove off with their hot pots. Only one of those scheduled to leave that day stayed on to help with the cleaning up. Always the same person! There are just 3 of us left here now, with the new residents arriving in the next couple of days. I leave in just 3 weeks, along with the artist from Taiwan who is next door.  Almost a clean sweep.I have plenty of work to pack the kiln again, but there isn’t any ‘Korean oak’ hard wood in stock. I’m waiting for a new delivery. I don’t want to fire with pine again. It’s filthy, it isn’t the life I want to live. I can’t be proud of firing like that. Making huge plumes of black smoke from my kiln. I know that it is my particular problem. I own it. No one else here that I know thinks like this, everyone who wood fires makes smoke. But I’d feel better if I fired with minimal smoke. At home in Australia, I have also fitted a scrubber to wash out a lot of the PM 2.5 carcinogenic carbon particulates as well. Again, it’s my philosophical issue. I won’t call it a problem again. It shouldn’t be thought of as a problem. It’s an issue. An issue that needs to be recognised, accepted, and dealt with. Eliminating pollution should be normalised at every point of our day to day experience. I can only do my bit and promote my research to as wide an audience as I can reach. The solution lies in community action, and whole of society engagement.

I am fully aware that potters kilns are not even equal to a pimple on the arse of World War Two, when it comes to the amount of carbon pollution we generate. But nevertheless. It all adds up. Getting rid of the ever increasing number of diesel 4WD SUV’s would be a lot more effective. They are scheduled to be phased out in the next couple of decades, starting in 2035, or so I’ve read. 

Janine and I have never owned a diesel, and don’t ever intend to. We replaced our petrol engined cars when they came up for renewal with electric models. We now drive as well as fire all our electric kilns, on our own solar. 

I’ve been telling people here that this is how we live and they stare at me as if I’m lying to them. “NO! That isn’t possible!” Well actually yes, it is, and I’m doing it. Here are my photos. This is my web site. Here is my card. That is my book in the shop over there. Check it out. It is possible. One resident said “No Way!” my reply was ‘Yes Way!” He laughed.

Don’t let people who are poorly informed by facebook, with no real knowledge, or worse, possible ulterior motives, dissuade you. Look for yourself. Do your research! False information and lies are being disseminated by questionable actors in the media all the time, saying how we can’t stop using, coal, oil and gas, even while many countries are now successfully producing over half of their energy from renewables. There is steady progress. Until a few years ago, they were still burning coal briquettes here in this little village for cooking. Progress is happening, but it is glacially slow. No one wants to make the change until it is forced on them. Because change may affect profits? Analysis that I’ve read says that not doing anything will cost us all way more than fixing it.

Children and the elderly are currently dying of heat stroke in France and Europe. Flash floods in Spain, fire storms in California. Glacial melt causing a massive landslide obliterating a Swiss village. All made worse by carbon pollution and global heating.

Crisis, What crisis? We need to do more faster. If not now. When?

So the smoke from my kiln is probably immaterial in the bigger picture, but I still believe that every effort matters. We all need to do what we can.

Korean Moon Jar interview transcript.

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<Interview Questions>

Q1. You are known around the world not only as a potter, but also as a kiln builder. What fascinates you most about building kilns?

Initially, I just wanted a way to get my pots fired. But kilns are very expensive pieces of equipment, so I decided to learn how to build my own, as I couldn’t afford to buy a commercial one. I learn a lot over the first few years, and found that I could build very good quality kilns for my self. However, my friends and colleagues all wanted me to build kilns for them, too so I started a kiln building business as a side project to help me to pay the mortgage. I’ve found it hard to make my entire living from just selling pots its too unreliable.

As time went on, I realised the carbon debt that I was building up, so I decided to try and find ways to minimise the damage that I was doing by making my ceramics and selling kilns. So I have spent 50 years developing my low emission/no smoke wood firing designs. One other aspect of wood firing besides the aesthetic qualities that are specifically inherent in the process, Which I love and admire so much about the fired surface, is that wood fuel is a carbon neutral fuel. This is so important these days in our carbon constrained, globally heated society. In a very small way, I’m trying to make the world a better place through my work.

Q2. Tomorrow, your new works will be loaded into the kiln here in Yanggu. What thoughts and emotions do you have before a firing?

I am always a bit anxious. There is so much at stake. So many hours have been spent making this work. I always hope for the best, but I am also ready to accept that there will be some disasters as well. There is two months of work at stake here. Am I mad? or is there some kind of poetry being created here? I’m hoping so! However, Nothing is perfect. Nothing is ever finished, and Nothing lasts!

Q3. You have worked with clay from many places around the world. What makes Yanggu clay special to you?

I was so impressed when I came here for the first time 10 years ago, to find a place with such a strong unbroken tradition and history of porcelain making going back 700 years. However, the main thing that struck me was the amazing quality of the porcelain clay that is found here. It is so responsive and beautiful to work with, but also it can be so beautifully subtle when it is glazed and fired.

Q4. After spending time as an artist-in-residence at the Yanggu White Porcelain Museum, what has inspired you most here?

Besides the clay. It’s the people! The management, the staff and the other residents. It is such a collegiate environment. Everybody working in together but while also working independently on their own projects.

Q5. You have often expressed your admiration for the Korean Moon Jar. What first drew you to it?

I first saw images of moon jars when I was a ceramic student at Art School and was impressed with their beauty, but didn’t really understand them and their inner meaning and symbolism until later. I was brought up in a family strongly influenced by Buddhist/Quaker values. A very thoughtful and spiritual environment. As I matured and found my own way in the world. I developed an interest in living not just an organic and wholesome life style, but an environmentally sustainable one as well. It was at this time that the spiritual side of making art came into focus for me. It was about this time that I re-discovered the Korean moon jar, and finally understood their special place in the world as a symbol of not just beauty, but also spiritual content. So I started to read up on Confucian philosophy and found that I already had so much in common with this way of thinking and being, from my childhood upbringing.

Q6. What do you think the Moon Jar can teach people today, in our modern and fast-paced world?

I believe that all the tenets of Confucian philosophy are just as important today as they ever were. If not more so! We need to slow down, and consider our actions and their implications for the world as a whole and the others in it. We are desperately in need of a more ethical, calm and considered approach to life. Modern politics has failed us in this regard. It has been corrupted by commercial interests.

Considering the simplicity, restraint and elegance of the Korean big white jar helps to create a state of mind where the really important things in life become more evident. Because the most important things in life are not ’THINGS’!

Q7. Your exhibition will open at the Yanggu White Porcelain Museum this October. What do you hope visitors will feel when they see your work?

I would like to think that they might feel the sense of respect and calm that I have tried to embed in the making of these simple, elegant objects. However, I am reconciled to the fact that most people will rush past them without really seeing them, just as I did, before I stopped to consider the essence of living a well examined life. I have tried to live a life of minimal consumption and ethical values. I try and do everything that I can to be independent, self-reliant, organic and sustainable. Whether of not any of this is conveyed in the final work is probably doubtful, unless they read my artists statement.

Poetry and Madness 5

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I think that I have made my last big jar. There may be a few more smaller size jars to come, to use up my leftover turnings, after I have re-cycled them. As I will have to clean out my studio, back to spotlessly empty in a few weeks time. I can’t leave anything behind. So waste not!Recycling turnings as a thick slurry out in the wind, before pugging.

I have been finding that it is just too dangerous for me to keep flipping 10 to 15 kg bowls over, whilst held out in front of me, doing the top-hatting technique. Too much stress on my lower back, arms, shoulders and solar plexus. I was afeared of getting some sort of hernia. 

Earlier, a week ago, I had a minor miss-hap on the bike. Riding down into the village of Bangsan, (2km.) to do a little shopping in the micro-market. So called because it’s much smaller than a mini-mart. They stock nothing fresh, just dried and canned goods, but they do have fresh milk.

I was just coming to a gentle halt outside the shop, when my tyre got caught in an invisible, perfectly sized, small groove in the gap between tarmac and curb. I was almost stationary, but as I arrived at a slight angle to the kerb, it flipped me off my bike sideways, causing a rather nasty stretch of my solar plexus muscles and around to my rib cage side. I thought that it would just mend itself and go away if I ignored it and didn’t stress it any more. And it has – very, very, slowly. I can do everything except lift heavy weights out in front of me, or swivel sideways!

So I have made the last few big jars by coil and throw technique. Years ago, I developed my version of this technique, a form of throwing without water. A sort of hand building on the wheel method. I needed another way of making larger work back then, After I damaged myself during the re-building the burnt-out pottery that we lost in the 1983 fire. My wrists and arms were so damaged from jack hammering out stone from the footing trenches, and then followed that up spending a few months pounding 4 inch nails into solid hardwood frames. My wrists have never been the same since!

So I’m back to the gentle basics of coiling. Something more appropriate for an old man with a worn out body. I pinch on the coil, evenly, all around the rim. Then with the wheel turning very slowly, I allow the coil of clay to pass between my fingers and thumb, very gently and slowly thinning it a little and coaxing it up wards. I repeat this slow, gentle, thinning process, until the clay is ’thrown’ into the correct shape. Finishing it off with a metal rib to smooth out my finger marks. If I use a heat gun to warm it, and have it rotating in the door way in a gentle warm breeze, I can add up to 6 coils in a day and finish the jar off. As there is no water used in the process, the clay stiffens quickly and is ready to take another coil every hour or so, if the weather is warm. Which it has been here.

Not the traditional way here, but my way, and the one that works best for me at this time. Creative variation?

We had a demonstration here yesterday of moon jar making by a well respected maker. I did notice though, that he only used 6 kgs of clay, kept the demo small, and only made a very vertical version of the shape. All well thought out and considered variations to make the demo easily achieved with little chance of a collapse or any failure in public. He was definitely not pushing any boundaries! he was beautiful to watch, very skilful and assured.

This demo was all part of the 20th birthday celebrations here at the Yanggu Porcelain Museum. There is something happening every day, all week. I don’t go into town for everything. I have too much to get done here in the studio, but I sometimes go in there for the afternoon session. 

I had just about run out of coffee, and was thinking of how to buy some more. It’s a problem here. Everyone drinks instant. Just a few of us want percolated real coffee made from roasted beans. The problem is that no one sells coffee beans! You can’t buy roasted ground coffee, or roasted whole beans. not here in Bangsan from the micro mart – not too surprising for such a small village shop. BUT, I can’t find it in the near by city of Yanggu either. Not even in the big supermarkets there. You can only buy whole roasted beans online from Seoul. I can’t buy online from Seoul, as I don’t have an on-line account. I can’t get an account without a bank account. I can’t get a bank account without a resident visa. I can’t get a resident visa…..

So I asked my neighbouring artist in Studio 4, to buy it for me, and have it delivered. Everything arrives next day here. It’s an amazingly efficient service. But, My lovely neighbour has now left. Her time was up and she has gone. She was so busy in the last few hectic days here cleaning and packing up, that she forgot to order the coffee for me. So what to do?

Fortunately, the artist in studio 2 is back. She has been away for the past few weeks. It just so happens that her mother is a chef and has run a restaurant, so her daughter has borrowed her mini coffee bean roasting machine. She gets the raw beans from her Mum too. She suggests that we do a batch together and share the result. I’m in! It is such a very cute little machine. I want one! It sits on top of a portable camping stove. It has a tiny motor to keep it rotating slowly. It takes 2 cups of beans at a time. We roast them until the outer ‘paper’ shell cracks and get blown off with a gentle ‘popping ‘ sound. We continue until there is a continuous crackling/popping sound and smoke starts to come out of the opening. Then it’s off with the gas flame and pour the smoking dark beans out of the roaster and into a food sieve or woven basket, and shake and pour the hot beans from one to the other through the air, blowing on them to cool them down. It takes a few minutes and smells so amazing. I always say that the best part of coffee is the smell of the freshly ground beans in the morning! This is it, turned up to eleven! We have to do it outside on the verandah, otherwise the smoke would take us out.

My garden is growing very well, I have been harvesting lettuces, rocket, sweet basil and cucumbers, so far. And I have my first tomato turning red.

I planted this garden for all the residents. So salads are on the menu everyday in this hot weather. My cucumber plants have climbed up their stakes and reached the fence, from now on they can grow along the fence rail.

Everything has grown so much faster than I imagined it would. I have planted more seeds to take the place of the vegetables that I harvested. as soon as a space becomes available. It’s the smallest garden that I have ever tended., but its quite appropriate. It’s such a cute little garden, It’s so poetic !