Lone Beiter Art Summer 2023

Posted on by Lone Beiter

Quarterly Newletter. If you would like to receive future newsletters by email, please forward me your email address to: news@lonebeiter.com

Welcome to my Newsletter no.1. Summer 2023 – July 30th.

First of all a Date to remember: Clay/Works Dublin Castle Printworks Exhibition July 31st to August 25th. More about it later, and invite attached.

Then to a couple of photos from recent events which actually might have been when I last saw many of you: 

Féile na Bealtaine at Dingle Marina Exhibition May 2023

Open Studio Gallery weekend here in Ballyferriter. June Bank Holiday weekend

Sand-Ripple Spraoí

Since then I have been head down – literally – studying the ever-giving world of tidal sandripples. Béal Bán beach is nearby and serves as my main field for study. The surprising and delightful pattern formations that happen here constantly are due to many different factors: location on the beach, proximity to estuary, sand grain size, recent wind speeds and direction, and so on.

To better understand under which conditions certain patterns may form, I like to spend as much time as possible walking in the shallow water while the tide is pulling out and watch the formations happen live in action.

This research (PS do you remember the weather we had in May and June this year?😁🌞❤️) culminated in the main event and major  excitement when I finally took new plaster casts on the beach during the early summer. Each one will be an important addition to my source material to work from and will last a long time if I use and store it carefully.

 It had been several years since I last did one. They are big, heavy, bulky and also fragile and difficult to store, so I only make new ones when I absolutely need to or see a pattern that really excites me. A lot of planning goes into choosing the section and deciding what size and shape to make it in, i.e round, square or oval, depending on whether there is a specific intended use. I often have many failed attempts before finally catching one, much like fishing I guess 🙂 

Triangular Pyramid form – Tetrahedron

“A Glimpse of the Future” 

One of the new plaster casts of the ripples on the beach has provided me with the surface patterns on which one of my new large sculptural pieces titled  “A glimpse of the Future” is based. 

They will be shown in the big annual “Clay/Works” exhibition in Dublin Castle Printworks by Ceramics Ireland members. The exhibition will be open every day from Monday 31st July until August 25th. I attach the official invitation. You can also check www.ceramicsireland for more information.

“A Glimpse of the Future I” 55cm tall.

Natural Environment under Pressure

These pieces are a further development of the “Meeting of Waters” pieces that I showed in the May exhibition and that were kindly sponsored by Kerry County Council that awarded me their Creative Work Development Bursary 2023. 

In this ongoing project I am exploring flowing organic forms within geometrical structures. The work is an expression of the sense that the natural environment is under pressure.

Base form for “Meeting Waters I” 2023

“A Glimpse of the Future II” 40 cm tall. Part of the Clay/Works exhibition in Dublin.

Ripple Wall Pieces

The largest of my wall pieces – up to 65 cm diameter – are most often unglazed and stand very sand-like with their raw clay surface, often with a bit of the original sand having transferred to the clay surface from the plaster mould. 

The pattern on the pieces changes subtly during the day as the light gradually moves around and hits from different angles. Just like it happens on the beach 〰

“Reflections” 65cm diameter

Glazed Ripple Wall pieces

In the last year I have been playing around with various types of sandripple patterns with brightly coloured shiny and pooling glazes in circular wall plates between 20 – 40 cm diameter. When this kind of glaze is covering the surface it is the thickness of the glaze, the deep dark pools of runny glaze that accentuates the shapes and movement.

“Explorers”

“Mo Cheoil Thú” 15cm length    “The Followers” 12 cm      “Dord Fiann” 13 cm        

And now to something completely different. I call these my Explorers. Most of them so far have been small miniature pieces down to 7 cm in length, but vary and some are much bigger and up to 50 cm in length.  They are inspired by Scandinavian Bronze-age art. Thousands of ship-renderings have been found, some on bronzes and some on rock. They are mystical like anything from this age, and we can only make educated guesses about their original meaning. I like to let my imagination flow and make three-dimensional expressions of them, and inhabit the boats with characters that resonate with people and events around me. 

Tomáisín

Those of you who are familiar with Clogher beach might also know of the rock carving of a tall ship on one of the rocks that are only accessible by low tide. The journalist and folklorist Seán Mac an tSíthigh collected a story that this was made by a young boy called Tomáisín Ó Catháin before the famine time – so almost 200 years ago! Fascinated by this, I took a clay impression of the carving, partly to record it for the future, worried that it may eventually fade by the tide and other damage. 

I then made plaster casts of the clay impression (which of course was a negative of the image with the carved line protruding) so I can try out different ways of showing the original fascinating inscribed image in a ceramic version. That probably sounds very confusing, but such is the world of mould- making, you constantly have to juggle between positive and negative versions of a form or image. 

Here are some examples of high-fired ceramic wall pieces in this strand of work that I call “Taibhreamh Tomáisín” – Tomáisín’s dream.

  1. Direct imprint which results in the negative imprint. 41 cm x 33 cm.
  2. Positive image, as close as possible to original carving. 47 cm x 38cm
  3. Front detail, framed. 20 x 20 cm

That’s it for now, thanks for reading my very first newsletter, the next one will be in October with details of other projects and upcoming exhibitions. In the meantime I will post regularly on the social media mentioned below. Bear with me on my website, it needs a makeover, I am trying to come to grips with how to juggle all the different platforms.

You can see more here:

Enjoy the rest of the summer!

Lone

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Published by Lone Beiter

Sculptor and ceramicist

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