Art For Grabs: World Refugee Day (6 & 7 June 2015)!

Heads up folks! If you’re in KL, there’s a market coming up!

SILENT AUCTION FOR A GOOD CAUSE: Let There Be Light : Here is a pure and simple 8mm rudraksha mala, with rutilated quartz markers and clearl quartz crystals that I made today. I will sell this mala by silent auction at my stall at Art For Grabs this weekend and all proceeds from the sale will be contributed to a refugee related cause (still doing research in this). The bidding begins at only RM80!

And then the following Saturday, I’ll be holding a Mala Making Workshop ❤ more details on fb (click to see more details!)

Finding My Way Home…. First crop of Labyrinths and Yoga Plates

It’s been a time of staying at home, with nice big bags of clay, pottering with my fingers and palms to shape these labyrinths which fascinate me, and drawing new yoga asanas onto paleo/caveman platters. These are about the most ideal things to make right now from home, because they are sturdy enough to withstand the bumpy ride from house to Gaya’s kilns without too much stress. And I like how substantial they are in the hands, and plonked onto a table surface. Still more to come in the next firings – but I wanted to share these first!

The Way is Paved with Stars – Star Labyrinth with Face (Woodfired) – 16cm across

Standing Forward Bend Long Platter (Woodfired) – 36.5cm x 16.5cm

Mermaid Round Platter (Woodfired) – 29cm across

Camel Platter (Woodfired) – 19 cm across

 

Shoulder Stand Long Platter (Woodfired) – 12.5cm x 30cm

Seated Forward Bend Long Platter (Wood Fired) – 12.5 x 30 cm

 

Baltic Labyrinth (Woodfired) – 31cm across

Silence is the Language of God – Labyrinth (Woodfired) – 19cm across

Clover Labyrinth (Blue Glaze) – 24cm across

Baltic Labyrinth (Hagi Glaze) – 31 cm across

All Roads Lead To Om – Labyrinth (Blue Glaze) – 25 cm across

Baltic Labyrinth (Black Gold Glaze) – 27.5 cm across

PS: All are available for sale. Message me for more details 🙂

Raku with Candone Wharton at Gaya Ceramic Arts Centre

In September 2013, Gaya hosted a workshop with Candone Wharton focusing on surface textures and raku firing. It was an engrossing experience and quite revelatory for me – I found that I love working with textures and pattern, and what better way to do it than with the batik stamps used here in batik production! Personally I love Candone’s work, so I let her work influence me in all its textural glory 🙂

Days 1 & 2: Tried making boxes like how Candone does. She creates a weave pattern entirely with practiced hands, using nothing but a cake decorating metal edge.

Red Top Boxes

Om Box

Day 3-6: Because I love to throw on the wheel, I worked with combining thrown forms with textured bits

Pedestal Platters

Bullet Vases

Turban Pot!

Day 7: Went crazy with all the stamps in the studio and made this!

And here’s a pic of me plucking pieces out of a piping hot kiln:

You can see the fire from pieces smoking in the tray at the back!

Home & Living Feature – Bread, Clay, Books and Soaps!

Sketches done, now to print! New yoga drawings

The first wave of yoga drawings I came up with was years ago, back when I first started practicing yoga in Kuala Lumpur. That was probably 2007 or 2008. While I continued to practice, I wasn’t that inspired to draw more… pottery was my focus for most of the time. But having to travel (which was a joy and a huge privilege) meant that I was away from the wheel for more than 3 months, with good chunks of time in my hands and I started drawing and painting again. It seems to have opened the flood gates, and I am happy to share with you three new yoga drawings that will be coming out as prints in my etsy shop in the next week! Here are pictures of the originals, untouched up and wrinkled paper and all.

Warrior One

These days I love coming up into warrior one. Just don’t like holding it too long because my knees start hurting! The effort it takes to sweep my arms up is what inspired the spiral shell background for this. And I love the courage of Paulo Coelho’s words ‘From now on everything is sacred’.

 

Kurmasana / Tortoise

The tortoise goes into his shell and looks inwards at his world… I wanted a sense of the spaciousness that comes from looking inwards. And eyes everywhere on my back. That’s what tortoise feels like for me!

 

Hanomanasana

Sigh… this is a purely aspirational drawing. I am still way far away from hanomasana. But I am visualising it 😉

 

Next, I want to share with you the mandalas I drew while I was at Lanserhof, Austria!

 

 

You Mustache Me Again…

These moustaches are lacing up their shoes and going everywhere! Now bicycle label Zakky from Singapore has taken them up and given them a preppy sporty makeover and they are available via them or my etsy page.  Zoom zoom zoom!

Wave Platter, Ice Cream Cups and other little things…

Thinking of the sea and clouds with my fingers, these came about…

…with a dramatic interior…

these little containers were wood fired:

 

Toro black dog was the inspiration for this last one 🙂 All these pots will be for sale this Saturday too! 

 

 

Big News: Open House Pot Sale! June 8, 2013

That’s right! I’m hefting back 60+ kgs of pots and would love you to have you over. Just for one day, at my home studio. Come chat, browse, catch up, have a cookie, smell some soap and make faces at Maykeme’s creatures!

Meteoric – pots from the belly of a wood-fired kiln

It’s been really quiet here, and that’s because I’ve been gleefully up to my arms in clay and sand for the past 3 weeks, assisting in a wood-kiln build at Gaya Ceramic Art Centre in Ubud, Bali, and then making pots to fire up the kiln with!

With other participants, under the instruction of experienced wood-kiln builder and ceramicist Gyan Daniel Wall, I got to heft, chisel and mortar in raw clay bricks to form an anagama kiln that was essentially a large clay vessel to hold pots, flame and fire. We had all the fun, and Gyan and the Gaya boys did most of the hard work 😉 If you’re curious about the process, here are some pictures from Gaya Ceramic Art Centre’s facebook page.

Among 7-8 potters over the course of 5 days, we managed to fill the Gayagama with a load of fresh (and in many cases still wet) pots. And then we started the fire.

The pots that emerged from three days of intense firing were remarkably different from that of a gas firing. Instead of applied glaze, they were gifted with a natural finish by wood ash settling and subsequently melting at high temperatures. They were burnished by flame that traveled and squeezed in between a cargo of tightly packed pots. They bloomed with white sparks and grew organic textures, with a vocabulary of rust, orange peel, toast, moss, iron and gray stone. Crystals formed onto, and carbon infused into parts of the clay as it vitrified. Imagine the pleasure of opening the kiln and bringing out surprise after surprise.

I brought back many of the pieces I made…

The cup above has become my favourite water mug of the moment 🙂

More pictures of the inside of the kiln and some great work by all the potters who participated in the workshop here.

Little Red Market is Tomorrow!

There is so much to pack! *faint. I’ll be bringing two special new prints for viewing and you can order your edition there and then (they’re big and slightly precious, so I won’t be bringing stock). Looking forward to a day out!