Afterword: Arriving home in San Francisco

Seems impossible to capture in story the full influence of our combined residency in Den Bosch at the .ekwc. Drawing from the strengths discovered, and the exchange, Sarah and I meet for a working dinner when we’re back in San Francisco. We’ve not had a chance to brainstorm an appropriate title for the work during the flurry of tasks and exchanges.

We are entering the piece into the Taiwan Ceramics Biennale 2007 and begin to reconnoiter how to create a life for the pieces we’ve sorted as inside/outside panels, artist proofs and experimentations.

Dinner at Fire Fly is a delight. We refine the title from “Ties that Bind Us” to a simple, stand alone description with a taste of poetic nuance.

Ceramic Skin: Transforming Light and Space

Pearl is a natural

Somehow we fit into our last week pottery projects with Pearl, shopping, family visits, dinner and much appreciated from Sarah’s family. Each aspect of the exchange and shared work enriches the experience and connection.

Collaboration seems fluid when each is willing to express our personal inner dialogue. Learning how the other listens’ deepens the connection.

Continuous learning is possible on this topic.

Side Tracks: Plaster Room

Recognize that .ewkc has so much to teach concerning casting. I regret not selecting a less familiar path when we elected to use plastic clay for our slabs. I may have learned how to use plaster and slip while here. In an attempt to learn the basics, I make an outside panel and cast a plaster slab. Watching Marlise is a great beginning place. Hope to retain the essential details when I again attempt working in slip/plaster.

Reflections on Combined Residency with Koos and Staff:

Wednesday, a day of “Rest after our Final Presentation, Sarah and I meet with Koos de Jong, director of .ekwc, Marianne Peijnenbur, staff advisor and Anouk Rooth, PR intern. When we asked what would they tell us, we’re told the meeting is for listening only. They want to know our experience.

Koos asks good questions. He first wanted to understand the shift from our initial idea when applying to .ekwc, our expectations and then the reality of our experiences.

We closed in early on conceptual idea – arriving in June with a clear direction and proposed design solution; make a translucent panel for an architectural skin, Use space to define an experience using light and surface.

I had a base understanding we’d use porcelain either as a slip or as a slab. The particulars of scale, how we’d manage to achieve flat, thin translucent “ceramic skins”, and what was possible, eluded me.

In my mind, we “Stop Experimentation” when we came in June for the longer of our two stints at .ekwc (nine weeks) Day one upon arrive in June, I attempted “scale” – the panel weighted 3 – 4 x’s the final panels, was not translucent, but demonstrated could make “large panels” _ 30 x 50 cm.

However, even the last panels we made less than one week from the final presentation, uncovered subtle shifts in working methods, hand positions, details and potential refinements. During our talk with Koos, I sketched a diagram attempting to define the profound transformations of being in a combined residency. {see adjacent pdf}

Visit to Wienerberger: Sustainable Brick Manufacture

Often in the last weeks we find ourselves “off track” or not working directly on the panels. These side ventures keep us fresh and energized.

.ekwc has made arrangements for us to meet Geert Segers from Wienerberger. As Geert Segers states after I describe our project working with bone china, making translucent panels 1. 8 mm in thickness, we move tons of clay each day.

Our journey to the factory one day during our last week at ekwc, reveals a deeper understanding of how sustainable Wienerbergers’ practices for processing clay, creating building materials and a vision to lead in providing solutions for the Netherlands commitment for zero carbon foot print by 2010 is evident in all facet of the factory tour.

As well, we see first hand a large dike, and begin to decipher the landscape in a renewed eye to water management. Everywhere, one can now decode the dikes from simple canal banks, to the small bumps between rows of trees lining a marshy wet land between the two parallel lines.

Packing: 3.5 cubic meters of fragile bone china

Packing begins in earnest early on Thursday morning. We have several staff advise us over the weeks to set out to pack 76 extremely fragile panels. Nothing has prepared us for the monumental task, nor given us confidence that our strategy for packing will provide safe passage.

We plunge forward, gaining confidence, methods and a reasonable progression toward completion. We leave behind all the offering bowls I’ve made, and multiple panels. At 3AM, we take multiple seconds panels to the trash receptacle. A cathartic activity after the stress of uncertainty, fatigue, endless meters of bubble pack and tape.

Final Presentation Night Arrives:

Since we are on the top floor in the far back studio, we place a vase of flowers, a few ceramic pieces done during down time in the studio on tables at the top of the stairs. Yoko’s studio display is staged on the top of her packing crates. Brilliant use and representation of the transient nature of our time at .ekwc. Meeting everyone will continue to influence for years to come.

The center is a buzz with friendly faces, mostly inside participants and local individuals who are familiar with the center.

Sarah, Yoko, Zhei Fei, and I have prepared a meal that we begin with shared bowl soup. Then we eat and share tales into the night. A wonderful closure to the days leading up our final presentation.

Nature of Collaboration:

We talk a good deal about collaboration. We’re struggling to understand the best practices for sharing information, contacts and connections.

I believe each of us brings resources acquired over a lifetime to our project. Each exploration completed during the thirteen weeks, the networking from Sara’s time as an architect, my year at the ornamental iron works, as well as our family orientation yields the days events. We bring intention to the focus of today’s task, yet our backgrounds can turn a simple exchange into a loaded miscommunication.

Steel Cables: Hanging the final panels

We find the task of building the steel cable structure more detailed and nuanced that anticipated. We’ve come a long way to simplify the design and connections, but the shop offers only fundamental tools to complete the task. A drill press, simple cutting tools for the cable and a vise grip with a design that grips without adjustment no matter the diameter of the material one wants to hold.

Setting up the cold rolled rods, requires a gig, simple rubber o rings one finds in faucets. These rings allow us to space the cables acting as stops as well as hiding the PVC grey pipe. The use of plastic pipe helps to reduce the shipping weight, as well as makes assembly more pleasant. The sound of metal on the bone china is a worse sound than finger nails on a chalkboard.

We each climb ladders when we hang the cables and level the system. We are suspended between the need for alignment on the outside panels to create a clean gap of 2cm between the cable and panels and the hand made nature of our panels. In the end, we are able to shim the panels and change out only a few to obtain an overall calm effect.

The best shim material we discover is white foam with grooves, used for weather stripping. A trip to the hardware store across the canal from .ekwc, affords another view of Zuid Willemsvaart. Funny how as simple a shift to across the street can change one’s vantage point.

Graphic Design Comes in Handy:

We compose an announcement to post as an invitation sent out by .ekwc and to offer as an introduction to our work that evening along with all the details of setting up and finishing our project.

Yoko Inoue

“Water Gets No Enemy: A Wishing Well” I explore the hidden connotations of banal commoditized objects that construct the emotional layers of life, compassion and personal attachment.

At .ekwc, I created a series of work made by combining porcelain casts of commercial plastic water bottles purchased at local supermarkets and mass produced Buddha statues that I found in the exotic-souvenir shops and discount stores in Den Bosch. This work explores the amorphous border between commercial corruption and spiritual purity.

Unifying these two things through the casting process allows base and spiritual notions about them to compete and intertwine. Through the forces of globalization, everything is a commodity for sale, even water, which was once considered sacred and a common heritage. Nothing remains without price tags. Through this work I hope the viewer might regain a deeper understanding of water, its transcendent nature, as the essence of life itself.

I wonder how human consciousness is given shape by images.

Carol Koffel _ Sarah Willmer

“Ties that Bind Us” features the Hand, Mind and Heart of the makers. In an age of increased social isolation, globalization and explosion of digital technologies this installation transcends the perfection of machine made ubiquitous products.

Three to six bone china panels, 35mm x 60mm, are suspended from steel cables creating an architectural skin and interior divider. An “Outside Skin” with finger rhythm hammered surfaces becomes a plane to capture and telegraph lighting conditions. An offset parallel plane of “Inside Skin” drapes as if shifting winds ripple fabric that binds humans.

The translucent interior divider has a metaphysical presence and highlights the unique physical characteristics of ceramics; fluidity, translucency and tactility as an architectural skin.

One Day in the Life of .ekwc Kiln Room

The kiln room is buzzing with activity, heat rising into the three-story space, warming most of the building. We’ve taken to eating dinner outside, as the kitchen is stifling hot.

Thinking and taking time to be quite and still when stacking a kiln is essential. Ly creates a culture of stillness and slow attention to detail that I hope to hold always. She is a wealth of information and potential solutions to the multitude approaches seen daily or yearly in the center.

Ly and Bart survey the scene and strategy for transferring his large mural pieces. He’s made these in an open studio zone on the first floor on large canvas. The idea was to transfer these to the kiln stack – leaving the canvas to burn. Yet, when he worked with the clay englobe – he’s gotten it on the canvas, preventing successful firing without damaging the kiln shelves.

Pieka and Madekia are stacking the biggest kiln. Since the top shelves are far out of reach, Ly styles an ingenious cherry picker from a huge plastic bucket, long nylon straps and the hand forklift. Creative solutions abound as we each solve the delicate task of maneuvering dry clay pieces not yet fired.

Yoko’s kilns are stacked and unstacked in succession so one can hardly track the details of how many pieces she’ll have for the final installation. Our final presentations occur on the same evening, at opposite ends of the building.

Remembering the Details:

Our photo shoot went well. Cox, our photographer has an excellent eye for detail and composition. We complete the photos in the morning, manage to unstack the kilns and participate in others progress at the center.

RE-Entry into Life OutSide .ekwc:

Home to sort details and start up life after the cloistered existence in Den Bosch. No longer are my days focused on a single unifying journey. As I retrace the week leading out from the last blog entry to our final presentation, packing and departure from the combined ekwc residency I recognize how many thoughts and experiences I’ve gained. Time shifted somehow during the combined residency, and I hope to look out from these new lens ground during my thirteen-week commitment.

Among the diverse self directed work I’ll start seeds for the following action: final presentation for the Lighton Grant, re-model my garage for ceramics completing the transition from ID consultant, help Rachael with her TIC unit, commit to Thesis Prep course at AAU, move my mother into an Alzheimer unit in New Jersey, enjoy friends, explore the city’s offerings, etc.

August 30, 2007

August 30, 2007
@ 30,000 Continenal flight 1702
returning home from placing my mother in an Alzheimer Unit

Cultural re-integration confronts me as I arrive in San Francisco, change out Euros for green dollars of the same size, color and net worth. Never one to translate either millimeters or Euro, I’ll re-enter life in the tree lined, hills, cloudless skies and wooden structures where I inhabit a Victorian built in 1892, full of my possessions.

Almost three weeks have passed since I landed at SFO. I traveled in a daze on one hour of sleep, searching for my flight information only based on a confirmation number.

I arrived at the gate with two liters of wine and one half liter of Jeneve. Shocked as the attendant placed these into the refuse bin. Where had I been? What was I thinking? Since the Jeneve was in a special ceramic bottle featuring a photo of the bridge at the corner of Zuid Willemsvaart, I returned and fished it out of the trash, emptying the contents over other’s absent mindedness.

Gathering steam and process

Full day of kiln stacking – two – arrangements for photography and obtaining additional pieces of metal to assemble the piece tomorrow. We’re preparing for a photo shoot on Friday morning. Guess somewhere we’ll fit in unloading the kilns – as we have a portrait shoot and a product shot completed.

July 30th August 1st - Post Published

Went to open Microsoft Word and hesitated to write a blog entry. But reconsidered, as I realize there are zillions of cultural, artistic germs and details, I will in short order forget.

The photos I take almost daily will remind me – but writing works to keep memory alive. Emails with close friends and family keep the connections open. I sent Leslie –a textile designer an invitation for an open – being held July 31st; and never noticed it was for a NYC gallery.

Informal Discussions are Fertilizer:

Hela (her folding bicycle is 40 years old and called a gazelle) came into our studio, a new part time assistant – on Tuesday to inquire about our work. She stayed the better part of an hour – exchanging conversation. We talk of art – then arrived at the question – What is art? Close to the question I shared in Amsterdam at the gallery Binnen – What is beauty?

I remain committed to defining what I call universal concepts. Yet, I discover along the journey each individual frames concepts biased on their personal lenses.

Talked about luminosity with Jacob – after his participant chat. I wrote/sketched two pages of notes I hope use as stimuli for future explorations. When discussing the chat with Sarah later, she observes Jacob is a blend of inventor, artist and designer.

teaching Bart

We sat down at 8:40 and www.blogspot.com is in Dutch - Had to go to my computer.

Three Weeks Sprint to Final Presentation

As I return to Holland from a much-needed rest in Italy – another side story – I can sense the need to bring closure to all the mini decisions we’ve made over the past 12 weeks.

I understand in principal each facet, and now continue the perspiration to bring to completion a polished piece.

Submitted the Announcement today to the PR arm of EKWC so they can post it to their mailing list. Here ie the text.

“Ties That Bind Us” is an installation featuring the Hand, Mind and Heart of the makers. In an age of increased social isolation, globalization and explosion of digital technologies this installation transcends the perfection of machine made ubiquitous products.

The translucent interior divider has a metaphysical presence and
highlights the unique physical characteristics of ceramics not obtainable using other materials: fluidity, translucency and tactile surfaces.

A cable system hangs thirty-six bone china panels, 35mm x 60mm, creating an interior divider of two parallel architectural skins. A structured “Outside Skin” where finger rhythms hammered the surface and subtle vertical hole patterns become a plane to capture, transmit and telegraph lighting conditions. And the offset parallel plane of “Inside Skin” drapes as if shifting winds are rippling the
fabric that binds humans; no matter the cultural bias.

A collaborative project by Carol Koffel, visual artist, and Sarah
Willmer, architect, during a combined residency at EKWC,
s'Hertogenbosh, Holland.

Completed in 2007

We do not have contacts here in Holland – so we can rely on their world to learn more the next steps.

Off to Philips Lighting Center tomorrow to learn more about potential method for lighting the installation - then meeting on Monday with Simone Maase – that teaches at Eindhoven University, works in clay as well as lighting.

Sharpened a metal punch today to solve the issue with how best to drill accurate holes in the metal pieces, etc.

Up late waiting to close the damper on the Kiln # 7 – and electric kiln – that has a special catalytic system so one can burn out any material. Me – I just selected it since it is the smallest one. I am running experiments for how best to fire the bone china breast molds – to retain the form. I’ve made boxes as shrink slabs (may not work as these are not from the same clay body) and to hold material to block the bone china from collapsing.

One experiment is to use Alumina Oxide - which will not stick to the back of the breast mold – the other is sand. Will take photos as I unstuck on Thursday night or Friday morning.

Stack Kiln #1 again to test another alternative method of making the outside panels. The top loop collapsed without support – and the insertion of a tube is not too clean. This time I’ve inserted a small slab before turning down the loop. I think it is the best solution – but before going forward, I want to fire three to see the result.

More later, it is now past midnight and Kiln # 7 should be at 500 degrees C; time to close the damper.

Hard to capture the wind, constant shifting of the sunlight and the sense of discovery when one rides out into the countryside, no map, or plan. Maybe these reveal some of my experiences, alone pacing myself for the nine-week residency. Past the halfway point now. The Church Bell struck 10 PM. The June night where I captured the fading sun – is now around 10 – 15 minutes earlier. Thank goodness I do not wake each day at 4:30 or so any more with the dawn birds. There are no longer dusk birds singing.

I will return tomorrow with the jig I’ve concocted of wood to seek Aries’ ideas on how to make it more accurate. The holes I am drilling do not always hit in the center of the cold rolled steel rods, since Arie has a studio in the garden for working steel. He built a small studio space for Corry, with quaint steel doors.

Dedication to Liefde

Riding in the “Brook” where in ancient times the town’s people could flood the wetlands for self-defense, I took a self-portrait while riding. I thank Dallas both for teaching me that is possible, but also for the wonderful transition in my expression, as the second photo is dedicated to his presence in my life.

Found out that Lief - meaning willing in middle English - is also a Dutch word meaning sweet. It can become a verb by adding De making the meaning love. There are poems screened on the second story walls of many buildings in Den Bosch. Near the catherdral, there is one about love, that I should photograph. I've always wanted to screen print words on my walls.

Next supplement to production work, will use the screens I've brought along from SF.

A women in the last house, came outside asked of my purpose. I told her the front entry was beautiful. and I was from San Francisco. Then I continued to explore. There was a sign across the small alley that caught my eye. It announced this was the site of a pottery in the mid 1780’s. The women emerged from her home to say; you cannot read that plaque.

Turns out she works in clay and is does stone sculpture. Her husband, grown son and I shared coffee and stories of life.

Country Visit

After morning papers, miss the quotes from the Artist’s Way – but find writing / drawing in my journal good breakfast companionship. My cloistered life is settling into a rhythm juxtaposing production, artist exploration and venturing into the local countryside, working a bit after dinner; welcoming the evening light. Studio 9 is illuminated by an emergency exit sign and my computer screen.

I rode father today and arrive across a canal into a small neighborhood. As I was taking a photo of several houses – a brass doorknocker, modern Dutch version of lace curtains, and a sweet garden entry.

Past the Halfway Point

Woke this morning and realize my deep exhaustion despite nine hours of a good sleep. Discovered I need to pace production studio work. Completed the 100 Kilo’s of Bone China mixed in January today as I completed the last inside {if the firing of these goes well} production panel. Also discovered an “extra” section cut off from each slab, is perfect slab for a series using my plaster breast cast. Alternating production work with series of art concepts. Allows my mind to flow.

I retired the lace found in April at Shelly's wedding tonight. The photo taken shows the oil staining and clay penetrating all the pores of the fiber. The composition is remarkably like the most recent breast draping. Sensual and Suggestive.

Way past midnight - still connected via technology, people and places.