David W Slack

Now sold.

Canopic Contemporary Prototype no 1. Black Stoneware. £280. Between making my next series of narrative illustrated pots, l’ve been throwing shapes intended to remain in their raw state and fired high to a delicious smoky charcoal due to an inclusion of Manganese Dioxide in the clay. Obviously I have well and truly draped myself across the silhouette of ancient Egyptian canopic jars here, but as I go along, in all my work I’m imagining the work to be confounding if it were to be pulled from the earth in a millennia or two. Some of these jars (although not this one) part low down the body, and as such are deliberately impractical for regular use. Except perhaps as a time capsule? Well, I’m not expecting patrons buy one of these and then immediately toss it into the Thames, but the idea certainly appeals. Anyone feeling bold?

Now Sold • On the pottery shelf today, The Hitch. (Front and back). Hand thrown black stoneware with engobes, slips and stains h13cm approx. £180.00. Another fired very high and held there for as long as I could stomach it, til all is vitrified, eternal, and slightly scorched (and in all the right places – I star-jumped involuntarily for two minutes).

Primrose, John and Victoria. Hand Thrown Stoneware Vessels with slips, stains and engobes. I’ve been conferring with the lovely people at the National Portrait Gallery and they have very kindly given me the green light to work on a pottery project in which I bravely, nay cockily, restyle the divine paper silhouettes cut by Hubert Leslie in his studio on Brighton’s West Pier in the 20s and 30s. Hubert made tens of thousands of these portraits and they are deeply redolent of their time, his subjects are utterly real, we know them, but there is a subtle stylisation in his clarity of line, Wodehousian and Cluedo-esque. My thing. I wanted to avoid  pastiche, I hate the idea of making something which is meant to look from another period (or even my own period when I come to think about it), yet I’m intoxicated by these very evocative images. So I decided to pluck these characters from their day on the prom, and set them firmly back down, recast in new roles in an entirely different landscape, (albeit in the case of my first three subjects, one in the imaginative world of THEIR time). They could be on their way to a fancy dress parade, they may be dreaming of another life, or we may just have a multiverse situation going on here. We will most likely never know. 

Touch ups and amendments visible here, but these are the final shots before I take them up to stoneware temperatures to see what occurs.

The first four pots pre final touch up and layers of illustration but now ready ready to face their last firing today, and for this final one, I’m taking them right up to stoneware temperatures to concentrate the black clay and perhaps get some unexpected burn off texture in the painting. Bit nervous about this one, it’s been four months of experimentation to get to this point so, one pot a month. Look at him go! Copious notes, photos and videos have been made, so should all go with a terrible bang today, once the tears have dried, I shall begin again. Sisyphus.

#studiopottery

#handthrown #stoneware #underglaze #illustration #abduction #noire #fantasy #screenprint #drawing #painting