WATT'S TOWERS in LOS ANGELES, Calafornia

On March 21st, My partner Ryan and I set off for a great adventure! Our plan was to buy a car and travel through the United States for 3 months from Los Angeles up to Canada, for where we have a 2 year working visa.

So, we arrived in LA and thankfully had our good friend Melissa to stay with while we got ourselves organised and saw some sights. One of the places that I was particularly interested in seeing was the Watt's Towers. Built over a period of 33 years from 1921 - 1954, by an Italian immigrant named Simon Rodia. It is a collection of 17 interconnected structures, two of which stand more than 30 metres high.

With no real restrictions to property borders at the time, Rodia worked with every spare moment to construct this installation of sculptures around his house. He bent the metal rods on the nearby train tracks and cemented in shards of glass and broken pottery that were often given to him as junk. He worked from instinct and had no real plan of what it would eventually look like, other than the boat like sculpture at the front which is reminiscent of how he travelled to America.

It's been a long time since my last post - BUT I HAVE BEEN TRAVELLING AFTER ALL!

Sorry folks, it got a little hectic there for awhile at the beginning of the year with our plans to move to Canada in March and then continuously travelling for 4 months, so I haven't posted for some time now. Anyway, it's great to be back on the internet and now I can FILL YOU IN!

OASIS - An exhibition as part of the HERRING ISLAND SUMMER ARTS FESTIVAL. January 2010 - Ceramics Victoria Inc

Before I left for Canada in March, I was responsible for organising and curating the OASIS exhibition on Herring Island for Ceramics Victoria Inc. Although trying to coordinate this exhibition at such a crazy time of year was challenging, it was a lot of fun and a great success!

With the help of Jen Mizuik and Leah Jackson, the exhibition went up in the first week of January and was open to the public for 3 consecutive weekends including the Australia Day holiday. We had about 30 artists of all skill levels exhibit their ceramic work alongside each other. The 4 awards that were given out for the exhibition were the Sculpture Award of $500, the Top Shelf Award of $300, the New Members Award of $200 and the Northcote Pottery prize.

The exhibition turned out to be a great success generating a high number of visitors and sales. Turns out that January was in fact a great time to put on an exhibition!