All change

Unfortunately we found out the other week that the CUC building, which is where we have our studio, is closing just after Christmas so we have to move. We had all thought about moving anyway and had been talking to a new organisation that has just taken over some buildings across the road about renting a space from them. We should be hearing from them in the next few days so fingers crossed.

It means I can't make any new work until we move into a new space which is a bugger but can't be helped. I've been making some new iron clocks just to see if they'll work, here's one that has only been biscuit fired.

Hope placement update

Spent another day at Hope ceramics department and made some test pieces, this time I coloured the clay with black stain and made some extruded shapes. Still not sure what I'm doing with them but I'll have to decide soon!

AA2A

Hello

Just looking at the Artists Acees into Colleges blog and realised that there is a vote for the best artist on the scheme..so if you fancy a vote then pop along to the site and vote! For me, obviously.

http://aa2a.org/artistvote

x

AA2A

These are a couple of images of test pieces I've been making at Hope University as part of the new Artists Access into Colleges scheme.

I had a good day today, just playing with my mini extruder, all above board, it's a genuine piece of ceramic equipment! Anyway here they are:

Electric Rabbit

The finished bunny head! I wore this for Tranny Hotel, a weekend long event that my partner, Adrian, co-produced at the Adelphi in Liverpool. It featured international trans gendered artists, performers and musicians taking over various rooms in the hotel. On Saturday, Adrian led a tranny trail across town from the Adelphi to Alternative Miss Liverpool where I donned the rabbit head and light up outfit. The weeeknd was amazing, too much to go into here but it was a great, intense and exhausting time, totally brilliant, met some fantastic people and the surreal Adelphi was the perfect place for the event! We shared the hotel with a tribute night to Stan Boardman, Elvis Presley(ish), a boxing match and Rod Stewart(ish)!

On a complete change of pace, I start my first day at Hope University as artist in placement tomorrow and my third day as an unemployed ceramicist as I left Southport College on Monday. A sad day but postive about future plans...

A tutor at Southport College who is leaving the college the same day as me has set up her new blog which will follow her journey to start her own business. She makes the most amazing cup cakes I have ever eaten and deserves your support as her mystery journey begins!

http://make-ilivetomake.blogspot.com/?spref=fb

Well, the Dollman Disco Alice in Wonderland After Show Party was a success. I wore my white rabbit head which got a strange reaction from most people. It was my intention to greet people as they came in but I soon realised that a man dressed in a suit and freaky rabbit head is something that people really want to avoid and pretend not to acknowledge! I was pretty much ignored at first until I started to dance about and then all I could see were camera flashes!

The head was a bit easier to wear than I thought and I was pretty happy with it. Alternative Miss Liverpool is on this weekend so it may make another appearance ....

You're Fired!

My first proper bisque firing of my rabbits went smoothly over the weekend, a big relief!

It's quite scary to watch the temperature of your kiln going up and up over the hours but it went well so phew!

Picture of my new space on the first floor, nice view of the skateboard park which just makes me feel old!

Rabbitrabbit

A friend of mine, Gary Sollars, has been asked to host the after show party for the Alice in Wonderland exhibtion at Tate Liverpool next Thursday.

Gary's famous Dollman Discos are always amazing and wild and some of the guests really make the effort to dress up. We have a few of the Alice characters coming along and I thought, with my Ghost rabbit figures in mind, that I would be the White Rabbit for the evening hence several days frantically creating a huge mod roc and foam rabbit head! I've made a few heads before but not one this ambitious.

Watch this space for the finished piece... fingers crossed!

Finally...

My winning design for the Merseyrail Art on the Network competetion last year has been installed at my local railway station, St Michaels.

I won the prize about ten months ago so why it has taken so long to put a few vinyls on a rain shelter is a mystery but it looks nice.

When I was taking photos of it this morning, a couple of tourists were taking pictures of it and seemed to like it and it will be weird to see it every time I get the train into town.

I'm working with a designer to redraw the image and make actual plates to sell so watch this space!

Have I Got Nails For You..

My good friend, Kitty, is almost at the end of a year long project to get her nails painted every week with images from that week's news! It's a brilliant project and she hopes to get funding to put on an exhibition showing all the designs. She has asked friends of hers to paint some of the images and I was asked a few months ago to do them and I did them again last weekend when she came to stay.

It takes around 3 hours to paint them and is incredibly fiddly and she is very patient!

Some of that week's news included the death of Gaddafi and the eviction at Dale Farm, quite a busy news week.

Have a look above and let me know what you think about my effort..

Some great news on Wednesday. I was accepted onto Hope University's Artists Access in Art Colleges scheme which mean that I will have acces to the university's amazing ceramics and 3D facilities until next June! It will give me the opportunity to work on my Tanglebox project, discuss my work with the other students and staff and generally get a new perspective on my work. Brilliant.

The Unusual Suspects - we had to move studios today, to the floor below which was a bit of a pain, hence the yet unfired rabbits waiting to be moved!

I'm planning to fire them this Sunday - fingers crossed.

And for those of you who think spaghetti is boring..... I saw this at an exhibition at the CUC a couple of years ago and thought it was one of the most beautiful sculptures I had ever seen, amazing.

Apparently there's no glue or hidden supports, just 100 per cent spaghetti!

The 6 foot animatronic bears and cellophane wrapped gnomes are particularly spooky...

These are some images from the fantastic cafe from a department store in Liverpool called Lewis'. The whole strore is now closed but it once had a hair salon, ballroom, restaurant, cafe and a whole floor that was permanently set aside for the Christmas grotto.

When it was threatened with closure a few years ago, someone was brought in to sell the old fixtures and fittings and we were given a two hour tour of the floors that had been closed to the public for many years. It was an amazing experience seeing the store frozen in time and the incredible 50's ceramic murals in the cafe.

It's now part of a shopping centre redevelopment which is just what the city needs, more shops....

I wanted to share these pictures of ceramic spacemen made by an old friend of mine, Michael Czerwinski. An extremely talented artist and good friend. I like these spacemen so much that it almost hurts! They capture a 50's look of what they thought astronauts would look like and wouldn't it brilliant if they did! Kind of innocent and quite camp ... he's going to do space dogs next and I know that they will be brilliant and the most desired things I have seen for ages.

I am of course very jealous and exactly the same amount proud too!

Lighthouse - made as part of the Artists Product range and sold at Tate Modern.

Slipcast porcelain, LED light, plaster base and random pottery knick knack

somewhere

My new studio space at the CUC building in Liverpool. I'm part of a newly created studio group called Threshold Factory which nutures artists from different disciplines through encouraging collaboration and support.

I'm sharing this space with Strange Case Collective who are prop makers and two silk screen printers who make hand printed T shirts and clothes. It's a very exciting phase in my life and I'm really looking forward to seeing what the future holds for my work.

You can look at my previous work on this site

www.turrell-watts.com

I'm planning to build on my experience of working to commission and develop some batch production retail work that I made for Tate Modern like the Lighthouses...