Blogger space limit hit so moving to wordpress.

I've hit the limit for images in Blogger, everything changes - time for an upgrade so I am in the middle of switching over to wordpress, i'll have my blog, news, updates and photos in one place. Bare with me while I tidy up & organise it . Balnacra.wordpress.com

So long Blogger it has been fun.

meanwhile here is my latest blog report. http://balnacra.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/community-resilience-sustainability-and-water/

Pottery Class for Ceangal

What is Ceangal ?

As part of this there has been a series of event classes run in Gairloch by volunteer tutors. Here are some better pictures and more information on the Ceangal blog

History > skip if you know the story>
For those of you who don't know Pottery is my what I was trained in. I went to Art college in the 80's full of Pre-Raphaelite idealism, the painting tutor clique at the time liked sort of flat primitive looking fish, outlining and frying pan ego-centric muddy coloured rubbish. I didn't, so threatened with failing grades if i didn't chose a design subject to specialise in I huffily opted for the pragmatic, earthy, skill set of pottery to learn, figuring I already knew how to paint the way I wanted to anyway. So after college with babies underfoot, i realised I couldn't afford picture frames, so painting was still sort of out of reach. With the infallible logic of youth I set up a pottery business instead, my first wheel costing only £10 !
Fast forward to my second shop & studio by 2005 business was getting tough, i needed to rent out my space and take on some emergency waged employment. And that was that. I haven't really played with clay since then and have gone off on my visual art adventures instead. ( wow 15 years reduced to a paragraph? impressive ).

So I was a little concerned with this pottery class, would I remember how to do it ? or would I be beset with woe that I can no longer do pottery ? ( no room at house & I had to sell my big kiln ).
Of course it was all fine, very relaxed and enjoyable, clay is so therapeutic it uses a completely different bit of the brain for most people and it circumnavigates all the usual creative performance angst people have ( ' I can't draw ' etc). Everyone started off with thumb pots and sure enough they soon diversified into some lovely designs, with laughter and some very strange sound effects !

Much fun, I'm looking forward to seeing the work fired ( Thanks to Pat at the school ) and getting up again for a get together on the 8th May to see all the other work that has been getting produced.

Spring round up, catch up

I must apologise to blog followers for my absence, its been that crazy time of year!
I was busy running Hi-Ex - The Highlands International Comic Expo
then I was running a country day.
This was for Kirkton Woodlands and Heritage group.
Which I was doing a lot of voluntary work for, some of which is chronicling the building of two new crafts workshops.
I've now got a part time post with the woodlands group which will allow me more time to organise events and training as well as do the marketing type things like twitter for the woodlands group.
and the facebook group for the treehouse, the woodlands group and....

Are you all linked out yet ? I haven't started on the Boot Sale coming up or the South West Ross Arts & Eats trail which I'm building a new website for and designing this years leaflet (more tweeks next on job list).

They are of course right when they say all work and no play makes Vik a dull girl, It has been a slog of late, with too much work going on to think, consolidate, plan or review. During that time there has been none of my own art going on, all my energies have been focused outside on projects and others. That is the end of that chapter though and the primed empty canvases are now calling out to me. Work Life balance is realigning. Maybe its been something like this ?