Blast from the Past

Back in Tbilisi. I spent all day travelling in a marshroutka - public minivan with a set route, this one starting out from Mestia at 06:30 and dropping me off close to where I'm staying in Tbilisi, late at nearly 20:00. LONG day - why do Georgian intercity marshroutka drivers favour bad Russian pop as their loud music of choice?! One of Life's Big Mysteries.

Below, before I return to the regular programmnig of Svaneti photos, are some samples of my art from many years ago.

Top: Madonna and Child, before I fired it. This and #3, Japanese Piece, are from lumps of porcelain which I rolled around and threw from one hand to the other on my canvas clay table, until they told me to STOP because they were finished. M&C, unfortunately, cracked in the low-temberature 1st (bisque) firing, even though I'd hollowed it out and dried it as carefully as I could; it's quite a large piece, with walls too thick. So it was never high-fired. Japanese Piece did make it to the high firing. In both cases, the canvas of the table slowly dried the surface of the porcelain in a chaotic way, causing it to wrinkle and crack naturally. This was a favourite technique of mine when I was active in clay more than 20 years ago in western Canada.

2nd: Embracing Technology. This originated as a liquid porcelain slip casting from the first face I cast in plaster, in my last year of high school, also in Western Canada, 1985-86. Here, half of the face's skin has peeled away as it sleeps, revealing circuitry underneath; an electronic "bug" has crawled to the human side on reconnaissance. Wires sprout straight from its brain instead of hair from its scalp. What was I thinking.

3rd: I called it Japanese Piece because it seemed to have a form which could have originated in that country, whose pottery - and many other art forms - I revere.

Bottom - My younger sister Angela and I at an exhibition of mine - screen prints from primitive monochrome computer art originals, 1986, western Canada. Back then, I had hair.