return to ceramic heaven (Cj)

Steve and I are going to briefly talk as part of the Pairings Symposium at MMU (UK) tomorrow, Friday 22nd October, about our 'pairing' / collaboration with Amanda out here in Ahmedabad - and give a small insight into some of the work we've been doing. A daunting prospect given that none of us have actually finished anything just yet!!
We hope too that the technology doesn't let us down and Skype helps us to communicate clearly, without delays, from India to Special Collections...

So I returned to Laxmi, and fired all of the cups decorated by the children in the Pol, which were amazing...  Watching as they were fed into the mouth of the furnace, I felt anxious, scared that something may go wrong, worried about how the pieces seemed to be precariously balanced on top of one another, wondering again what is it that drew me to work in this way...

Whilst waiting for the kiln to work it's magic, we chatted with Deepak about all manner of subjects from the differences in ceramic materials used by different religious groups in India to telepathy, but my mind was constantly returning to the kiln, and thoughts of the kids faces if something went wrong...

And, telepathically or not, I asked if I could check on the kiln and the pieces had just started to re appear on the chainmail belt, shiny, glistening and renewed...

And so, with cups packed beautifully, and armed with yet more pieces to decorate, we returned to Arts Reverie once more, with just a small delay caused by an altercation with some striking rickshaw drivers...

more images from the return to ceramic heaven here...

supplies and ghost dancing - Cj

Saturday was a more productive day, with supplies of cutting mat, paper, pens for myself and supplies for workshops with children all purchased in a well stocked, cheaply priced art shop across town.  Steve also managed to order his print proofs for his flag project.



Lokesh found this bag for me - connecting directly to my 'chai' project.  The imagery has a beautiful quality, printed simply in black on brown paper it is the beginnings of something I am thinking - silhouettes and imagery of tea drinkers?
Waiting for Steve and Lokesh outside a tool shop, I met a rubber stamp maker, which has set my mind off on another tangent.  Paper cuts and stamps, woodblock prints and tea cups - how do these things join, meet, intertwine?  I'm painfully aware of time here, and it's running away from me every minute - how do I create something of value in an environment which is so rich already?



Lokesh also arranged for us to meet Mayur Lekhadia to see if he could fire the tea cups I want to decorate with the community in the Pol.  He introduced us to his chosen method of transferring imagery onto ceramics - sublimation printing - which involved using a 'hacked' printer to print with ceramic inks, and then a compact heating unit which was shaped to fit a standard mug, simply taping the image to the cup and heating to 200 degrees sealed the image in (seemingly permanently).  A fast process and high quality finish on the piece, but immediate application to my own work is limited due to the shape and scale of the compact heating unit.  Great potential for investigation though!
At this point I should really explain a few things - Lokesh is helping and supporting our (Amanda, Steve and I) separate and collaborative projects within the overall 'the pol project'.  We are writing a blog for the project, and you can read all of our posts on there, some of mine may be repeated from here, some may be duplicated, all are in development!!



We rushed off to meet Marie Alamir and Mali Genest for dinner at mirch masala - the best food I've had in Ahmedabad!!  Great choices by Lokesh, and we also got to see a catalogue of the beautiful work of Mali...



On the rickshaw ride back we stopped on Ellis Bridge and I felt so strange standing in the middle of a bridge, with cars, trucks, rickshaws, bikes flying past on both sides.  Amazing...



Back in the Pol, Amanda joined in with the street dancing, and thus ensued a series of 'ghost dancing' images - enjoy more on flickr...

arrival and orienteering - Cj

I travelled overnight and arrived having 1 hour sleep, so I've spent the day following Steve and Amanda's itinerary, observing and documenting what I saw on my walk through Dhal ni Pol - and then getting a very early night!!
I've started uploading my pictures to a collection on flickr, and today's images to a set.  I'll include the set address at the end of each post.

The use of blackboards is common within the Pol as a bit of a 'community news' - apparently you can tell the health of a Pol by how much is written on the blackboards...  Could this be used efficiently or even well in the UK?  Would this work within small communities or city centre locations?

The light quality within the Pol is amazing - the stark contrast between light and shadow provides an ever changing colour palette of inspiration...

Coincidences - Amanda

Yesterday I went to fetch CJ from the airport and to video her arrival. I'm collecting lots of different material for the piece I'm planning to show in Dahl ni Pol a couple of nights before I leave. Whether this fragment will be included or not I'm not sure yet.

Steve and I have been here several days now. Helped by our colleague Lokesh Ghai we have made contacts, bought supplies and played around with materials and ideas. But neither of us have got around to setting up the blog we promised in our research proposal. CJ got straight onto it and by the end of her first evening there was no reason not to blog.

One thing that stands out is coincidence, synchronicity - call it what you will. There have been a few examples, but I'll restrict myself to two in this post to avoid stretching credibility.

Coincidence number one
I came on board the Pol Project later than CJ and Steve. As we were talking about how my interests would integrate with theirs, I mentioned that my only other visit to India had been a six week trip to Ahmedebad with my sister in 1980. She'd won a travelling scholarship and I'd gone along to keep her company.

As we discussed the Pol Project, Steve explained that he and Kate Egan were working on an additional installation taking a woodcut by "someone from Pethapur Village - a master wood block cutter called Mr Gajjar" as their ispiration.

I emailed my sister. I had a visual image of a house several storeys high with a number of young apprentices sitting at floor level carving blocks - but I couldn't remember his name or the name of the village.

Ant sent me the transcript of her diary entry for that day:

Sept 27th 1980
Pethapur village, about hour bus ride and 5 mins rickshaw from Gandhinagar. Blockmaker Shri Maneklal Mistry Gajjar the beeba-wala. Made a master craftsman in 1979, has up to 10 apprentices. They come from the local area, about 20 apply, then a committee from the All India Handicrafts (?) come from Bombay and he sets the applicants little tasks to do in front of the committee and about 6 children are selected to train. They are paid 80rps a month by the government. Maneklal provides the wood and anything the apprentices make belongs to him...(cont.)

Mr Gajjar is so well known that it would strange if Ant hadn't arranged to see him, given that she was researching Indian textiles - but it was great to discover I had this connection to the project.

Coincidence number two
On our second day here Lokesh took us to see Debashish Nayak, the Advisor to the Heritage Programme for Ahmedebad Municipal Corporation. While we were in his office he mentioned a book about the old part of Ahmedebad called The Walled City by Esther David. The following day at the bookshop Crossword I bought it, happy to discover it is a novel - the only one I can afford to read on what is definitely not a holiday. Just as we were leaving the shop, Lokesh stopped momentarily and asked me to give him the book.

A woman who had just stepped out of an Auto was walking towards the bookshop and Lokesh was approaching her.

"...and these are my colleagues from Manchester," he was saying as we caught up with him "and Amanda just bought a copy of your book."