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Pinky & Maurice

Contemporary Ceramics

May 3, 2020 by Claire Atkins Leave a Comment

My Blu Byron

Just before Covid-19 hit the fan, I spent a day with textile artist Karin Hall of Blu Byron. Karin has more than 40 years experience teaching visual arts in Australian schools, and for the last five years she has been creating stunning clothing and homewares using plant-based indigo dyes from her backyard studio in Byron Bay.

Channeling my inner Byron Goddess in hand-painted Blu Byron blouse and scarf.
[Read more…]

Filed Under: blog post Tagged With: art therapy, BluByron, ByronBay, Claire Atkins, Covid-19, indigo, Karin Hall, pinky and maurice, shibori, tiedye, workshops

February 12, 2019 by Claire Atkins Leave a Comment

Helle Jorgensen’s Useless Objects

Helle Jorgensen is a diverse artist who, despite her love for classification, refuses to be pinned down or categorised, and instead calls herself an “investigator of materials”. Born in Denmark, she moved to Sydney when she was thirteen and now lives in the Tweed Valley on the NSW north coast with her husband Chris Newling and Harriet their adopted Hereford cow.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: blog post Tagged With: australian ceramics, Claire Atkins, Helle Jorgensen, Michelle Eabry, The Function Issue, Typology of Useless Objects

July 16, 2017 by Claire Atkins Leave a Comment

Making MOFO Pots : Serious Women’s Business

This year from October 29 – November 11, I have the ENORMOUS pleasure of leading a group of women on retreat to the Gaya Ceramics and Arts Centre in Bali. Under the tutelage of artist and Gaya Director Hillary Kane we’ll embark on a journey of creative daring to create BIG pots and BIG magic.

(This magical women’s retreat is now SOLD OUT. Don’t hesitate to contact me to join the waiting list. Meanwhile, check out the workshop schedule below and follow the links for fees and details.)

[Read more…]

Filed Under: blog post Tagged With: Bali, Big Pots Big Magic, Claire Atkins, creativity, Gaya Ceramics, HIllary Kane, inspiration, Pinky & Maurice, pottery, women's retreat, workshop

December 2, 2016 by Claire Atkins 6 Comments

Call me an Amateur!

The American painter Chuck Close, said, ‘inspiration is for amateurs’.

Famously, he’s never had artist’s block, because he simply trusts in the creative process. His advice for artists is to show up and start, and see where the process leads you.

We should draw comfort from this, we don’t need to feel inspired, or be in the mood to create. Art making is not a sacred activity, in fact every mark we make is a departure point, and every face, object, thought, or dream is ripe subject matter.

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Filed Under: blog post Tagged With: amateurs, australian ceramics, Chuck Close, Claire Atkins, creativity, curiosity, inspiration, Maya Angelou, Pinky & Maurice, Shaun Tan, travel, workshops

September 10, 2016 by Claire Atkins Leave a Comment

Multiply Life by the Power of Two

The ‘Power of Two’ is one of my all time favourite songs by the Indigo Girls. My sister and I would sing it together when we were younger and fantasise about driving around the country in a Volkswagon campervan being singer songwriter rockstars.

It’s a love song, but I catch myself humming it whenever I’m working alongside another artist or working on a community arts project, and if you think about it, all creative projects are labours of love, so a love song is completely appropriate. Like many potters I usually work alone in the studio, and I’m used to it, but there’s nothing better than bouncing around creative ideas with kindred spirits and running with them in full flight together.

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Vicki Grima, editor of  The Journal of Australian Ceramics – my new partner in crime 😉

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Filed Under: blog post Tagged With: adriana christianson, australian ceramics, Ayumi Horie, Ceramics, Claire Atkins, collaboration, Flying Saucer Show, Indigo Girls, North Coast Mud Trail, Pinky & Maurice, potter, pottery, power of two, Sugarmill Studio, the cup collaboration, Vicki Grima

April 22, 2016 by Claire Atkins Leave a Comment

Part II – Mai kumhari hu : I am a potter

For ten days in February 2016 I travelled through India to meet traditional Rajasthani potters with a small group of clay enthusiasts led by Australian potter Sandra Bowkett.

At the end of our tour, on the Yamana River between the Holy City Vrindavan and Delhi, Sandra asked me if I missed anything back home. Her words, and the adventure she led us on inspired the short story below.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: blog post Tagged With: Ceramics, Claire Atkins, crosshatched123, Delhi, I am a potter, India, inspiration, Mai kumhari hu, pinky and maurice, potter, pottery, Rajasthan, Sandra Bowkett, story, travel

March 1, 2016 by Claire Atkins 12 Comments

Forget passion, follow your curiosity – Conjuring Big Magic & Exploding Chickens

Last year, I was listening to Richard Fidler and author Elizabeth Gilbert on the Conversation Hour, and my ears pricked up because of how she spoke about the nature of creativity, and in particular how she talked about the cultivation of curiosity rather than preach a sermon on following your dreams.

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[Read more…]

Filed Under: blog post Tagged With: big magic, Ceramics, Claire Atkins, creativity, curiosity, Elizabeth Gilbert, exploding chickens, passion, pinky and maurice, pottery, Richard Fidler, The Conversation Hour, Tristan Bancks

November 19, 2015 by Claire Atkins Leave a Comment

All Fired Up!

I’m all fired up about the inspiring schedule Hillary Kane has created for the culinary clay workshop, ‘Food Meets Plate’, happening May 15 – 28 at Gaya Ceramic Art Centre, in Bali!

Places have been quickly snapped up by a diverse group of foodies and clay enthusiasts from around the globe. There is ONE place remaining in this workshop.

If you would like to join us, click here for workshop fees and secure your place. [Read more…]

Filed Under: blog post Tagged With: 14 days, Bali, Ceramics, Claire Atkins, creativity, Food Meets Plate, Gaya, Gaya Ceramic Art Centre, HIllary Kane, pinky and maurice, pottery, travel, workshop

September 22, 2015 by Claire Atkins 2 Comments

Creative Callings

Many of us spend our days alone in a studio, and as much as we relish the solitude and energy of our own creative spaces, many artists, writers and thinkers have long felt the creative benefits of travel. Simply placing yourself in a new setting can be enough to give you a creative boost. Even neuroscientists examining our grey matter have concluded that new sounds, smells, language, tastes, sensations and sights, spark different synapses in the brain and have the potential to completely revitalize the mind.

Last year I was part of a wood-firing workshop at the Gaya Ceramics and Art Center in Ubud, Bali. For two weeks we immersed ourselves in Balinese culture and worked intensely to produce enough pots to fill a fire-breathing dragon, and the results were like nothing we had ever made before.

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Gyan Wall and Hillary Kane pack the ‘Baligama’ – our fire breathing dragon

Next year I’m off to Gaya again, but this time I’d like you to come with me. From 15-28 May, 2016, I’ll lead a small group of clay enthusiasts to be part of ‘Food Meets Plate’, a workshop that will inspire any clay-lover with an interest in the intimate relationship between food and the vessel. The two-week workshop will culminate in a feast of the senses at Ubud’s International Food Festival! Tempted? Yes, much? Read on!

First, let me introduce you to Hillary Kane, Director of Gaya Ceramics and Art Centre and our inspiring workshop host.

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Hillary Kane

Hillary Kane is a potter, painter, teacher, mother, and nomad. Travel and work has led her to claim residence in several continents and innumerable countries. Inevitably, the artistic culture of each has imparted an indelible influence upon her work and continues to be an endless source of inspiration. Educated in the United States and France, she now lives in Bali with her husband and her twin daughters.

Claire Atkins: Hillary, you have such a great personal story and you really pack it in, when I met you last year I thought, what the hell have I been doing with my time? Tell me, how did a young American woman come to live, launch and direct a thriving art centre in Bali?

Hillary Kane: Seven years ago, I took a leap of faith and headed off from a tiny mountain town in the American south-west to Japan to follow my aesthetic calling in Ceramics. At the time, I would never have imagined that it would lead to establishing the Gaya Ceramic Arts Centre (GCAC) and a life thoroughly settled in Bali. 

However, my airline ticket was very deliberately one-way. I was ready to welcome the signs and serendipities as they came, and I found myself departing Japan after two months, swollen with inspiration, yet venturing toward another opportunity and another culture altogether.  I set foot in Bali aiming to spend a year teaching, when unexpectedly another door opened at Gaya Ceramic and Design. From the moment I met the studio crew and the effusively generous Italian founders (both ceramic artists themselves), I knew the connection was a strong one.  Within a year, together we were dreaming up an educational branch of their already well-established production studio.  After a brief residency back in Japan, I returned again to Bali to build my first Anagama and to launch the arts centre.

The GCAC studio was built a couple of years after, and now, four years, five kilns, a Balinese husband, twin 3-year-old girls, a house and a thriving workshop later, it really feels the Gods of this island have led me here for a reason.

GAYA

Looking out to the garden from the Gaya studio

What happens at the Gaya Ceramics and Art Centre?

Gaya Ceramic comprises a large production studio employing around 70 people who produce exquisite ceramic ware for top clients the world over, and across the street is the Ceramic Arts Centre, which is dedicated to education in clay.  There is always a lot happening at Gaya, it’s a continual cross-pollination and collaboration. At the Arts Centre itself, we fill the year with two-week workshops, two-month artist residencies, exhibitions, and a variety of weekly and private classes tailored to community needs. Each year concludes with an Empty Bowls fundraiser and Open Studio event. In between all of this are the endless activities of our own staff (who, one and all, get their hands in clay!).

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Looking into Gaya Studio from the garden

Why should someone travel half way across the world to make a pot or fire a kiln?

At Gaya, we believe that setting is everything, and that for many artists, the opportunity to immerse themselves in a different world, even for only two weeks, encourages growth, self-reflection, and a willingness to take the next step in their own work. When an artist is encouraged by a master ceramicist and surrounded by similarly enthusiastic participants, a workshop is an incredible time and place for development.  Even for those not physically traveling so far to come here, Gaya studio stands as a sanctuary for transformation: earth into Art, self into Self.

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Hillary and workshop student

Have you witnessed this kind of creative transformation and renewal at Gaya?

Catapulting one’s artistic self into an entirely new atmosphere foments intense creative inspiration. I see this throughout the year at Gaya especially with our resident artists. Three to four times per year, we host professional ceramic artists from around the world for a two-month residency program. There is no prerequisite of what each should make or spend their time doing. It has been an incredible experience to witness each resident take in, digest and respond to all the new stimuli of Bali. For some, inspiration taps from the intricacies of a cultural philosophy so different from their own, for others, from the visual explosion of a tropical ambient, some are more self-probing and introspective about identity and place in the world, others simply allow the remove from their familiar to generate great emotion, allowing it to well up and surface through their works.

One resident artist recently said: ‘It was as if I was just supposed to be here; one bit of visual information, one cue from the culture, one conversation just falling into place and leading me into the pieces I have created.’ Another was shocked at her proficiency, having come to Gaya with an intention to build rather abstract geometric forms, she gave in to an unexpectedly arisen urge to build figurative sculpture entirely dedicated to the pure emotion of parenting. It was the first extended journey she had ever made away from her early-teen children. For each, creating in this oasis of newness amounts to a unique, and utterly inspired experience.

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‘For some, inspiration taps from the intricacies of a cultural philosophy… for others, from the visual explosion of a tropical ambient…’ Photo Vicki Grima

Let’s talk about the upcoming workshop ‘Food Meets Plate’, what are your thoughts about the relationship between ceramics and food? 

This obvious stage of interaction is one that has endlessly offered inspiration to clay artists, and yet the question remains ever unanswered, ever re-interpretable. We have run this workshop theme twice as ‘Culinary Clay’ at Gaya – both times amazing, each time improving the experience upon the last. And what better theatre to ask clay artists to perform upon than one with the heady, aromatic, gorgeous and thoroughly tropical ambient of Indonesian cuisine?

What can participants expect from this workshop?

These two intense weeks will endeavor to inspire the contemplation of the intimate relationship between food and the vessel in which it is presented – in this specific setting upon the enriching and verdant Indonesian island of Bali and in the “foodie” paradise of Ubud.  We will have inimitable opportunities to meet with, learn from, and sample the genius of many local chefs who will unveil some of the cultural and gastronomic complexities of the archipelago, encouraging expansion not only of taste buds, but also conceptual perspective of the more formal design considerations of shape, texture, colour, and scale; where the food meets the plate.

In our final ‘Manifested Meal’ we will have at last a chance to display our inspired vessels in an exhibition/feast in one of Ubud’s fabulous new restaurant venues. Timed to coordinate with Ubud’s second annual Food Festival, our finale will be on display for the public to contemplate the fruit of our labors, and to feast their eyes upon the inspiration two weeks have manifested– though the participant group will privately enjoy the meal set upon their unique vessels!

Gaya_Ceramics_Bali_hands-on_wheel

Who should come, and will the workshop suit all skill levels?

This workshop is suitable for any level of experience in clay. While beginners may be focusing on honing their skills at throwing more traditional dinner ware, more advanced ceramicists may find this an ideal opportunity to break outside their own ‘box’ to experiment widely and discover something fantastically new.  This has worked to the advantage of all in the past – veteran clay artists inspiring for and inspired by those newer to clay alike. All participants will be encouraged to explore and will be supported technically, and otherwise by the Gaya studio team.

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l to r : Claire Atkins aka Pinky & Maurice, Sue McGuinn and Vicki Grima, HOT AS HECK stoking team

What else can workshop participants look forward to while we’re in Bali?

This particular workshop will be packed with explorations of everything culinary – and in Ubud, Bali, that could last a lifetime – but we will also have the opportunity to peek into some of the intricate and fascinating local ceremonial and artisanal culture, Ubud’s endless boutiques and throbbing nightlife (for such a small town!).

Thank you so much for chatting with us today Hillary, I can’t wait to see you and the Gaya crew in May!

If you would like to join Hillary and me for this incredible workshop and cultural experience, head to the workshop page now for Early Bird fees and details about securing your place. If you need more convincing, visit the blog next week when I speak to Bruce McWhinney, celebrated Australian wood-firing artist and the creator of the inspired guest house ‘Ubud ArtVilla‘, our workshop accommodation.

Filed Under: blog post Tagged With: artist, Bali, Ceramics, Claire Atkins, clay, creativity, food, Gaya, Gaya Ceramics and Art Centre, HIllary Kane, potter, travel, Ubud, workshop

  • PINCH ME small bowl by Pinky & Maurice PINCH ME $22
  • ETERNAL RETURN $24
  • Spooning by Pinky & Maurice Contemporary Ceramics SPOONING $15
  • Serve Forth Serving Bowls by Pinky & Maurice SERVE FORTH $65
  • Plate Up by Pinky & Maurice Contemporary Ceramics PLATTER UP $92

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Claire Atkins
We have been overwhelmed by the support and genero We have been overwhelmed by the support and generosity of our community to install the controversial signage for our play ‘SHIT’ on their lawns and front fences! Thank you! Thank you!❤️❤️❤️ #oceanshores #makethatshitpop #privatelawns #publicparks #SHIT #australianplays
Last week Byron Council caved under media pressure Last week Byron Council caved under media pressure and released promotional signs for our play they had impounded. However, unlike every other event in Byron Shire we’re not permitted to install signage for this multi award-winning Australian play along public road reserves. 
Our play, with its provocative title, is about three women who have grown up in Australia’s broken foster care system. Their story is hard to hear, but don’t silence it, these three women and thousands like them have been silenced their entire lives. We’re permitted to display event signage from private residences or businesses. Please get in touch if you live or work along a main road in Byron Shire and would like to sponsor a SHIT sign.
Our SHIT has hit a community nerve and promotional Our SHIT has hit a community nerve and promotional signage for our play has been impounded by council following complaints. Come see what all the fuss is about at The Drill Hall Theatre in Mullumbimby, 12-28 March. EVENT TIX in my profile link.
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#SHIT  #shock #gasp #theylikeustobeladylike #australianplays #australiantheatre
‘Out of control girls, angry girls, nasty girls ‘Out of control girls, angry girls, nasty girls are a sight to behold. They’re terrifying, electrifying, they’re everything girls shouldn’t be, and we hate them. This is a play about three such girls, Billy, Bobby and Sam. And you’ll never forget them’
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We’re in rehearsal, deep diving into Patricia Cornelius’s brilliant and brutal writing to perform in her electrifying play SHIT. Playing by public demand from 12-28 March at The Drill Hall Theatre in Mullumbimby, and reimagined by a stunning creative team, under the direction of legend Liz Chance. We sold out quickly last time, so hop on it. Event tix up there in my link tree.
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#australianplays #australiantheatre #patriciacornelius #SHIT #mullumbimby #drillhalltheatre #byronbay #actor
I’ve been lucky to work on some exciting new TV I’ve been lucky to work on some exciting new TV series this year. And as much as I love acting, I love working behind the camera too. I was so happy to climb aboard this project as Art Director. COURTESY BUS is a piss-your-pants-funny Australian comedy written by Brett Stephens @brettsixsixty, starring @mandy.nolan, Nell Schofield @nellyvision, Tony Barry, @ellensbriggs, @andysaunderscomedy, Liam Olsen and @jen.kyna. Each episode begins at the end of the night, and tells the hilarious and heartfelt stories of a riotous cast on their wayward journey home. Coming soon! 

#courtesybus #aussiecomedy #bangalow #bangalowbowlo #comingsoon #pissyourpants
When a woman swears, or spits, or screams, or shou When a woman swears, or spits, or screams, or shouts, or laughs too loudly, or fights, really fights, or fucks too much and wears too much lipstick or none at all, all we want to do is lock her up or cross the street. Out-of-control women are a sight to behold. They’re terrifying, electrifying, and everything that women shouldn't be - or so we're told. This is a story about these women. Their names are Billy, Bobby and Sam, and you will never forget them.
 
After a sell-out first season, Patricia Cornelius's multi-award-winning play SHIT returns to the Mullumbimby Drill Hall Theatre by public demand on 12-28 March 2021. Starring Claire Atkins, Kate Foster and Kate Horsley. Reimagined and directed by Liz Chance, with sound design by Paul Pilsneniks and choreography by Kate Holmes. 

Tickets: $27/$24/$20 Enquiries 0420986570 
EVENT TICKETS in the link. This will sell-out. Book now.

#australianplays #patriciacornelius #SHIT
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Recent Posts

  • Jack Doherty : Living Space June 3, 2020
  • My Blu Byron May 3, 2020
  • Helle Jorgensen’s Useless Objects February 12, 2019
  • Making MOFO Pots : Serious Women’s Business July 16, 2017

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