The Extravaganza EP 1 - The Potter

This is episode one.

Now I feel very on the spot. You're on the spot. Welcome to the Extravaganza. Dan, would you like to introduce yourself?

Hello, Daniel Leone here.

Ceramicist, artist, bonsai extraordinaire.

Akil's master. Maestro. Maestro. Yeah, that's what that is, right? Here I'm making my piece of work in their Going Large workshop. Dan has been excellent. They're here at the Mawson Gallery, one of the cool people in Canberra, very creative.

And they just showed me some of their work they did with, what was it, a fire? Wood firing. Wood firing, yeah. And the chemistry that occurs is phenomenal.

And we were just discussing the overlaps of science and art.

What science do you know? What's on the boundaries of your understanding when it comes to pottery?

Well, that's a good one.

I guess you're in the field of kind of pyometrics

Um and it's kind of more akin to baking as well which would be the uh the glaze Making But yeah no the wood firing is all about understanding um flame path how the ash falls how The ash and the carbon and the atmosphere create certain reactions in the clay and we get all These different surface textures and treatments and um yeah like we were saying before it's very much science Meets art and exploration and play and ticks every box that's why i do it what part don't

You understand oh 99 of it it's one big guessing game the entire time you learn a little Bit every time you you get you get clues and hints but it's always random and that's the Best part And i've actually learned to make my work in conjunction with that randomness the volatility the that's it It kind of has led my practice yeah whereas other people try to force it a lot like They'll make cups or crockery and they're trying to make perfect work but you know there's ash and

There's really rough carbon and there's really there's breakages and there's all these problems in the kiln and Then when they get their work they're really frustrated because I tried to make a perfect cup and Now it doesn't work properly whereas and I guess that's how I kind of started but I thought What's the of throwing away half your work when these wood firings are so intense and labor intensive And you know we only get to do one or two a year that's how special they are

Yeah i was telling um akil it takes 15 people to fire this kiln and it's fired over A week straight constantly feeding it timber so it takes you know weeks of chopping timber it takes Shifts of people through the night um and then you've got to grind the bricks and the clean The kiln and it's just worked so much work so yeah to sit there and then throw work Away after the fact is heartbreaking i don't get it so that's why i work with slag i

Work with broken things i you know what i mean i i see what results it gives me And then i make my work after that so instead of fighting nature you started working with it At what did you realize you didn't have control and what was it like being a person thinking You had control and now getting I guess a state of mastery where now you can play with The truth of nature and art

What was it that was going on what's the journey there's surely a lot right like that's a Huge mental physical personal thing to go through yeah yeah you're definitely right about the journey part I Think we all are kind of born with the answer at when we're kids we we we start At the finish line but we take it for granted and we don't understand just how freeing childhood Is that you can make things and you don't care what other people think you're not influenced by

What your art has to be you don't but as you become older and you're told what good Art is and you know and you become a teenager and you're susceptible to pressure and all the Nonsense, you become, I think, all artists become a bit brainwashed as to what art must be.

And then I think the journey is really trying to get back to a state of freedom, get Back to a place of play, Get back to that childhood freedom.

But you want to take, I think for me, you want to take those elements of what it Means to be an adult in terms of mastery i don't know like if you ever master anything Really i don't know what that kind of means these days um when

I i hire people or look at people i see if they've got the ability to play within Their thing whatever they're doing and i consider that mastery whether they can play with it interesting now I suppose that adulthood childhood is that are you talking about the crafting the wisdom or the knowledge Like what's the difference between art and craft for you oh that's yes such a good question because That that for me is everything um there is a big divide and I think most most of

Us don't we talk about art that's good or bad and I don't believe art can be good And bad but craft can be good and bad so craft is the thing that you can really Teach and learn like you you you have to respect the material that is something i guess you Could master you can understand how material works you understand how the wood fires how the kiln works The hot spots all those things

You know craft a chair either works or it doesn't work how the chair looks the artistic and The conceptual side of the chair you know how i there is no good and bad in that That's completely subjective and that's like saying is green a good color a bad color well it's the Color green it makes zero sense but if it was yeah does that does that check out i'm Just chuckling because it just my my associative memory is really like a whole thing which is why

Conversations with me a wild and when you said what is green is green is just a thing It reminded me of seeing there was a cafe here in canberra and it was like a milkshake And one of the ingredients was green oh like matcha or something i don't know it was just Green i'm like okay what's green

It just made me chuckle because immediately i saw this and it just decidedly i was like what Is green just what is what is what is green and it brings up the sense of qualia And all that stuff as well which qualia is i feel like partially the reason why art can Either be good or bad because it fundamentally is the observed experience of somebody else looking at it I guess but i do want to go because that's a whole conversation in a stream that we'll

Get to but i do want to talk about something you said about mastery there again which was Like the craft can be mastered because you could understand it

We can understand how things respond react we can learn from each other as to like well i Tried melting this at this temperature and we can pass on that that information which is kind of How i see science and art merging is that mastery though well that's the funny thing i mean What does it really mean i mean yeah you can spend your life learning i don't know for Example you could learn one type of mushroom and you'll never know 90 of that in your lifetime

About that one type of mushroom you know um when i was doing my phd in nuclear physics There was this during my literature review where i was like i can kind of start to see Where all of the things that my professors and like supervisors were talking about how it kind of Would come together but it would take me over 10 years to scratch the surface of that understanding It was hilarious in in art school when um you know i had one of my glaze teachers

Greg daly is world renowned has written several books on it he goes to china and japan and Teaches them glazes um spent his entire life chasing alchemy and he and he's under he's the chemist Yeah really I mean and it's funny we we did like a whole semester on glazing and learning The chemical reactions and the components and all these different things and at the end of the class They're like well throw it all out the door because anything can happen anyway exactly doesn't this is

The clay and it's a good thing actually Miranda to explain to you that even though you see That little glaze on the wall you've got a different clay body it goes in a different part Of the kiln there's different at the way you applied it's different so it's just too random and That's why i don't understand why people this is why perfectionism is bullshit oh tell me more but We're in this and it's really it's a great conversation the art craft divide and mixing in perfectionism

Versus play and chaos and those things because we're at pivotal time in history where you know we've Got the we've got mass production we've got ai we've got the you know if i want a Perfect cup i can go and buy one for two dollars and it's but you know through most Of history somebody had to hand make that and so there was really this push of making how Perfect can you make a cup there was a really good measure because it was so hard to

Eliminate the human touch but now we're at a in history where we've lost the human touch altogether So some people are still stuck in the world of tradition and can't kind of pivot so when You go to these firings it's really interesting you get these potters that must be perfect and precision Because history and tradition has told us you need to be a master crafts person you know in There's the 10 000 hour fallacy there's all this you were still heavily influenced by the japanese culture

Of you know making one thing over and over and over and getting it perfect but it's funny Because that concept is special as that was right up until this in history is now redundant in My eyes yeah i'm noticing your definition of mastery is extremely different to mine mine being the one Where you can decide i notice that somebody's able to play as in the moment that i see Somebody starting to do things with

The chaos making something that is actually quote -unquote less perfect or rather it's less mechanical that's where I see it's mastery That's how I define mastery. When I look for mastery, I look for that.

Whereas from your discussion and your definitions, it has been, and maybe this goes to the nomenclature of, I guess, master and apprentice in pottery anyway, which is, I guess, closer to craft.

And you also meant craft as understanding, which to me, I don't value it. That I as an extremely educated knowledgeable person I'm just like well yeah whatever you know it's no Big deal knowledge understanding like science yes I can tell you it's science I can kill it with Science and I can actually kill it with science to the it becomes beautiful again well that's where It's like the true mastery I guess which is I guess why you said where it's like then Throw it out the door because anything can happen and that's why I like the the stuff that

You had with the fire right like the wood itself having silica within it becoming a glaze and Like it's a complex chemistry rather than a oh yeah it tells it tells a story of the Yeah yeah i think the funny thing is you say that you don't like craft i think we're Just we've reached that pinnacle in time where everything is so machined that everything is so perfect that We kind of take it for granted like you don't notice a bad cup like a bad cup

Until you drink from one till it's uncomfortable to hold till it dribbles down your face till it But we never experienced those cups because we're inundated with mass -produced cups no you're forgetting the cup That i made for me oh yeah yeah which i i so wish i got i got you Both to drink that while i was watching because i knew it wasn't gonna pour yeah it's funny I pulled out this teapot the other day i made in um uni um from a we did

A restaurant commission component and um i had a friend and it was a beautiful looking teapot this Is typical italian design it looks good doesn't work properly um and the um i thought oh this Is a beautiful teapot why don't I use this anymore so I had a friend coming over and I thought I'm gonna make her a nice cup of tea and I pulled it's got its own Little tray and I pulled it out and I went to go pour us both the tea and

It was such a bad pour just water went everywhere and we both just laughed and I was Like oh this is why I don't use this tea so you notice it you know you notice It when but it's a very with craft and be completely artistic and be completely conceptual and it's A privilege because through history you never got to do this like pottery wasn't art until like 100 200 years ago it was just it was like we need a cup you know what I mean

I need I need

It's weird it's just like yeah it's just like I need somewhere to sit we better make a Chair but we got to the where it's just like well now we've got so many chairs and We're so good at making them why don't we make weird chairs why don't what happens if we Take away a leg what happens if we get conceptual with this totally and so we're just at Such a weird in time where everything goes but everything's machined and we're trying to fight to be

Humans it's just a

Yeah yeah it's fascinating it's i don't know where i stand in it all i'll tell you that I love uh bow house as a i guess art thing as a canon it's a canon that's The word kadinsky right one of them yeah one of them yeah uh yeah yeah german expressionist i Think Yeah um and their whole thing form and function i love that concept of form and function and The where something can be so perfect and of such great form and function that it becomes art

Itself which is how i describe meos as art which i say it is perfection in its form And way and really is architecturally and a lot of effort has gone into its design but it's Absolutely not at all like your standard phone app doesn't have buttons down the bottom like if you Think it's got this crazy radio menu but that's all inspired from something else it's not like it's Completely innovative in you how much of your art is stolen oh all of it good answer there's

Nothing new under the sun um there's a very daniel element that i can't remove that's for sure The noses that uh Yeah, well, even that I've hinged from a – no, I don't think noses Or anything new.

What I try to steal, though, it's interesting. What I try to steal is not the design or the concept – oh, sorry, not the design Or the looks.

I try to steal the concepts and the philosophy.

So here's a big one. Like in indigenous culture there's a big especially with first nations paintings and things there was a lot Of people ripping them off do you know a lot of white people doing their own dot paintings Yeah um and stealing and so when i talk about taking from culture i talk about more like I think this is my understanding is that not that we're trying to replicate the work but we're Trying to pass on the philosophy what we're stealing is the appreciation stealing is the wrong word but

What we're copying is the philosophy so there's this deep appreciation say in first nations works for land For care of land land management for understanding territory for understanding those to to having pride of what's Around you and awareness to your surroundings that's what we're taking from it or like in bonsai for Example we're trying to make beautiful mutated stunted trees that wouldn't stand a chance in the wild and Then we put them in pots but what people don't understand is that they'll they'll just try and

Copy the Japanese they'll just try and grow things like this like a cedar right this isn't my Tree this is a client's I'm making a pot fruit but they'll try and copy the japanese but What the japanese don't want you to copy them they want you to copy the they want you To take the philosophy they want you to appreciate your native material and work with your native so That's why we're moving towards gum trees and casuarinas and that's how so that's how i steal i

Love i steal the concepts i steal the philosophy and i make my own work and they i Guess they're open for that to happen you know kind of but that's what we want isn't it Exactly yeah like i'm reminded of like for some reason in my life somehow i people look to Me as a leader somehow it just happens it's always kind of bothered me in a way it Comes with the height and i have always been like i've always struggled where it's like i don't

Want followers i don't want people to follow me i'm like don't you understand my whole philosophy is Like to try make you in your strength and you know in that example what do you think It is that people are following i have no idea i but i think i wonder if it's The same sort of...

I noticed that there are certain types of people that would be more likely to copy and follow Rather than really

Look for the truth behind it or being able to

Integrate within themselves as truth. There's this like meme I love. This is me taking the philosophy of a meme and like engaging it to myself. I love it so much.

It's like on my signal bio and like instagram bio yeah and i actually just recently like last Weekend i made an artificial life experiment based on this one phrase which is from the meme which Is and yet a trace of the true self exists within the false and the meme is um It shows a dinosaur yeah evolving into a chicken which turns into like chicken breast which turns into Chicken nuggets shaped like dinosaurs

Right it's also part of the reason why i have like a plastic dinosaur at home just it Reminds me it's like oh yeah that's fossil fuels that turned into oil

Central plastic dinosaur that's actually a dinosaur i love this and i think that like when i they're Nice reminders of um if there is something that has truly evolved and i think that's it whether It's an evolution or a copy i think that's the key aspect that i guess i'm looking for Whether people are just trying to copy a design and imitate something versus truly understanding it and then With that comprehension i guess once amongst the qualia qualia being their subjective understanding of something the fact

That my green is different to your green Once it's engaged into my being and then I try to recreate it based on that new truth I'll create a falsehood of what if I was trying to produce the other thing but if I Really integrated it within me it'll be an evolution and there's so in the artificial life experiment that I created it's on github if you're listening and you want to go look it up It's called Autograph It is based on a neural evolution Through augmented topologies algorithm for evolving neural networks

Something that I had a romantic obsession with it uses a genetic algorithm just like humans has a DNA sequence for each neural network then you test them and then you make a population you breed A new one etc it always evolves and the task that i've got them to do is that Neural network needs to take the image the actual image the thing that defines the neural network as Its input and then output the dna sequence that created that image and it's a continuous evolution experiment

That goes on forever that you can visit on your phone and it starts helping the experiment of Having these little neural networks trying to produce their true self out of the false their original dna Out of the false and that every single one that gets slightly better than the one before it As well because it is a genetic algorithm has a bit of the original genome of where it Was before that and it's always an evolution there's this other saying that like is stuck with me

As well which is evolution is amoral culture serves the genome culture serves the genome and for humanity To survive we must transcend if we do nothing

Then whatever culture is existing will service whatever nature of creation let's say it's like a set of A hundred different pots it'll continuously service it if that's the need if you need chairs you need This and that you need a cup that's just what it needs to serve and we'll continue to Evolve there we're just that's just we're getting more and more efficient and better so where is it At now well the transcendence is play if that's where i think it's like you get to a

Of mastery and play like i think when it's you've gotten to the of being able to do That so well the transcendental thing to do there is let's just mix up the algorithm a bit Because it's good enough we have the safety and it's fine um that we can actually inject a Bit more about humanity into it again which is like going to ai generated art always being imitation Always being a copy same

Thing our humanity is that a little bit of transcendence that we can provide to be able to Create it further and i think it goes through a lot of things do you see evolution and Transcendence as a linear thing that it's moving forward in a way or do you see is just Change it's just change yeah it's just change time and the directionality of it and all that sort Of stuff that's another thing that keeps me up at least once a quarter

Doesn't make sense anyway it was great chatting are we not chatting anymore we've been chatting for 25 Minutes have we oh oh time flies yeah um these are meant to be like 10 minute episodes We haven't heard from miranda oh yeah miranda's in the room oh that's the first name

That other voice you might be hearing they're not really in front by podcast world by podcast world And um thanks oh oh uh oh yeah uh daniel leone art instagram come and find me yes And you run classes here in this classes, Bonsai services, sales talks, demos classes, coffee tea, biscuits even a viable bathroom We've got it all here at the Mawson Gallery my thing is you should get me us and Go to getmeus .com bye everyone

The conversation was so good that we had to continue no we had we had to continue all Right welcome welcome back podcast world welcome pod back yes indeed you're saying back on stealing yeah yeah Roping back around um i don't really think you can steal if you see it as stealing you're An individual you're thinking individually because You're not really one person are you you're like a culmination of everybody and everything around you like It's easy to sit here and say this is my thing i made this out of clay and

It's your intellectual property but you didn't make the clay you didn't make the wheel you're on the Water in the clay came from you know it took hundreds of millions of people to get to This and then it's going to take many more people to fire it and to you know so I think our culture really heavily Puts the individual on a pedestal but there's no such thing there is no michelangelo there was the Church there was the community the country the everything around them the apprentices the paint makers that it

Would yeah i mean i was watching a documentary the other night on um egyptology and they dig Up these kings and queens and pharaohs and but it's not really

It's not really Tutankhamen, is it? It's more a representation of Egypt at the time And the goldsmiths and the calligraphers.

There was no Tutankhamen. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, I like the Chuck Palahniuk quote, which is in Invisible Monsters, which is nothing of me is Original, the combined effort of everyone yeah yeah yeah well what was that other i can't remember that Politician that said if i'm great it's because i stand on the shoulders of giants it's classic we Use that one in science all the time stand on the shoulders of giants right isaac newton said That was it isaac newton yeah yeah yeah it's very common but yeah we're just building a plot

It's a bit like okay ai stealing art artists are hating it right now you think ai is Stealing art that's what people are saying yeah let's see the narrative is like

So miranda's in the podcast now apparently

I'm gonna mic you up but the ai like these companies have taken all of this information and Knowledge and haven't necessarily attributed it it's interesting in the scientific world and the coding world we kind Of just accepted it that that would happen because we put our stuff into public domain to be Consumed in public domain for the good the fact that scientific knowledge is finally getting around paywalls it's Actually kind of good um as well so but then i think that because the artists themselves they

Have never really got under recognition or any i guess kickback and they're under a lot of stress Already in society this is just like why are you continuing to do this to us by like Well i just i just see it as a telltale sign that the individual has remained an individual In their minds there they don't see themselves as a collective as one with everybody else they still See them because if you're that threatened that someone else is going to take you out what are

You really threatened by there that you're you'll no longer be special that somebody else will get recognition For what the ego me wanted you know i've met artists that won't share their glaze recipes or Tell you how they do things and that's fine it's up to them it's just really it's disappointing Because and I was there at one myself where I was very protective and egotistical about my art But it is ego wasn't it it is and and not in a negative sense its ego is

In the literal meaning of me i we've identified with something and we don't realize that really the Ego never actually did anything the ego is there just observing it's necessary but it's

Weird that we would take something we create and then

We've got this external object we made i'm now going to attach my identity to it And i need prestige and i need honor and i need

Here's a really good example um when i was at furniture school back in 2019 in mitigong it Was quite a prestigious fine furniture school i had two i had many teachers some of the best Furniture makers in australia um two 80 year old guys and i won't say who they are But One of them was a very, both very traditional craftspeople.

One of them was very proud, very bit egotistical,

Wouldn't share some things, also could come over and be quite negative or very critical, sometimes good, sometimes A bit unnecessary. Necessary and he made some nice furniture this other furniture maker same age i would say a lot More accomplished had furniture made the speaker's chair at parliament house made i mean anything you could think Of furniture at the governor generals overseas would make some of the finest furniture in the world and Super accomplished like as far as you could get as a furniture maker in this life and could

Come over to a student who had just been there for a year and just come up and Be totally amazed, come over with eyes wide open and talk to you as if.

But you could see that it wasn't a pat on the back, that that was true mastery, that They could. Yes. When you reach the pinnacle and you realise that more is more, you know, why hide secrets?

Why harbour? And there has been many artists in the past that took their secrets to the grave and no One knows how to do it. And who benefits from that?

What the fuck's the wouldn't it be great if we knew how the pyramids were built aliens oh Yeah we do know right i thought it was giants but who knows all right giant aliens but Who and i mean imagine if the if we treated everything else like that in the world i've Got a cure for cancer but i won't share it with anybody i won't tell anybody imagine if What would the world be if we didn't share these things so why is art different that's the

Silly thing if i have in fact i think it's an honor that someone would want to copy Me when someone wants to put a nose on a cup i go fuck yeah let me show You how i do it yeah actually when you said you were impressed by my concept then you Did the same thing i was honestly so flattered yeah um it's and you can never copy anyone That's the funny thing no matter how hard you try to copy like the impressionists would copy they

Had just opened trade with Japan back in the, I think, late 1800s And they were getting, like, Japanese woodblock prints. So you had, like, Van Gogh copying Japanese art.

And you see it, but it's Van Gogh. No matter how much he tried to copy it, it was never going to be Japanese art. Yeah. I could try and copy you as much as I want.

I'll never be a keel. Yeah, yeah. You can't copy.

Have you even seen ai can't even copy itself i saw the funniest um it someone put in Uh a picture of the rock uh duane johnson and it said he said reproduce this perfectly exactly The same don't change a thing and just kept saying that and it was amazing how it could Never yeah i can't do it it just kept altering there's the same with us noise yeah i Could talk about intellectual property as well having being somebody that especially in the tech and innovation space

Like i can make intellectual property trivially that's the easy part it's easy to have ideas and have That concept and i remember that there were people that were like oh my god you should painted This this and they're stood on this pathway commercialize this i'm like you know it just came up Trivially it's fine the hard part is actually always the craft in fact to really you get the The value of it of that intellectual property but if you can share that process as well i

Think that's way too and it can only benefit you i mean if three people are working with The same medium or material or technology you're all trialing different things and you're bouncing that information off Each other the best and i've just learned it the best art collections i've seen bonsai whatever it Be uh the most communal the people that hide away in their backyard and refuse to talk to Anyone else their work unfortunately becomes a bit stagnant it becomes a bit predictable yeah that's that's right

Like you know there is a a good outcome usually from collaboration if you can learn to collaborate It's hard to it's funny that it's destroying your ego why do you think people go into why Do you think people need feel the need to like

Create an ego from it or to strengthen a personality though like whether they enter the science world Or oh isn't it weird they'll enter the science world but not share their science with other people Or sports people will go in and

I don't know where i was going with that one but um yeah i i'm sort of i've Had too many experiences of people with big egos yeah hiding research not letting it be reviewed or Trying to manipulate it in companies and business or i was going to say with sports people it's A made -up game and yet they'll cheat

It doesn't make any sense i don't understand this why yeah and it's a very western thing because Over like i was doing an art residency in indonesia a few years back and the individual almost Didn't matter the art was completely communal and they would have they had the same level of respect Like for super traditional batik or puppet making alongside street art and graffiti and even the graffiti artists Would go next to each other rather than over the top of each other there was this there

Wasn't so much a sense of self it was kind of more art of the people by the People for the people it wasn't i was um i went to see bangara recently on canberra love And in terms of like dance i find i personally find contemporary dance and dance my favorite art Form to consume yeah and there's nothing that quite moves me like bangara i was in tears from The beginning to the end constantly and i was trying to think like you know i've seen so

Much excellent excellent work what is it always about bangara like why is it there and like the Reason why i enjoy it so much as well is that i could i can't understand like i Always come out of it being like i just don't understand why this is moving me so much I just and i love being confused it's my favorite thing and it's pretty rare to be yeah To embrace the unknown i think that's the most scary it's the best thing about being alive right

It's the biggest hurdle what embracing the unknown well yeah maybe people want to know things for the Sake of ego but i i realized that that's a very human thing too right like we want To have some idea where what's going to happen in the future we don't want to just go Into the unknown we wouldn't just walk over into that paddock yeah not knowing what animals are there Or we want to have some concept yeah well we i think we might take it a bit

Too far you know oh all the time to the where it's like yeah you have to have Control an idea like of everything well you wrote put a background to art and that's why you Talk about like you become a master of play yeah you become a master of letting go and Just seeing what happens but people fuck around and find out yeah fuck around and find out i Love that yeah but and that's where this whole perfectionism thing comes in they have an idea in

Their mind and they can't let it go and they think that that's perfect and it is perfect In the mind but but the best things in life come from the unknown and i think the Perfection For me is i like to say perfection is how well we can handle ourselves during our mistakes

Yeah and perfection is achieved by completely taking the space which is available knowing the limitations of what That space is i found bengara what it is for me that i realized it's like because like At the end of it every time the last three bengaras i've seen i've been in tears i'm Like i just keep crying to the person next to you i'm like i just see this is How we could all be is what we could all this is it this is everything this is

Like all of the stuff and i could never comprehend and put the words to it but then This time around i watched it and then had a bit of time to reflect and i realized That it's because they their work unlike more western work which is very much still exploring and i Feel like the west is still exploring it Existential sort of concepts and finding hope there the the western work is now moving as well to I think what this bengara work is that i discovered is actually really about belonging they all of

Their work is they are truly masters not only of dance but of the understanding of belonging so Well that it comes across in their dance that to them it's completely integrated it's they're already hit The sense of belonging whereas now with contemporary western artworks and work and i guess the zeitgeist and Feelings people are really starting to move on beyond the absurdism and start to give people hope and We've gone beyond optimism a bit more as well because like

The we need to give people a bit more agency but then like for why and the for Why is the belonging

That bhangara they worked it out they've always known it i got a bit of a theory on This as well i think with any art form you can never hide the intention whether your intention Is to just make money or your intention is to play and have fun or your intention is Um to show off or whatever it be and bangara this is my kind of theory is that Because they're it's got that first nations push and it's all about appreciating culture land there's so much

You know that sense of belonging like you said you can't get away from that intention that's right And this goes to that and this is where and why i love that thing and yet a Trace of the true self exists within the false you can't hide that true originality eventually there's that Evolution there yeah and you can feel quality yeah feel quality when it's fully integrated and the ego Is no longer there yeah yeah

I still don't have a i guess

Answer to why people seek ego maybe they just stressed i think it takes a lot of luxury To be able to go through the process of being safe enough to i don't know i don't Know obviously got no idea what do you think miranda cognitive scientist here yeah stuff about ego we Can talk about it later i mean that's a whole other realm i think i think the the Ego is important it's important to have an ego in modern world as well it's funny that it's

Just dominated though yeah wise mind is like combining the rational and the emotional mind

So talk me through this where are you going with this where i'm going with my artwork well I put a hole here so that i can run a cable if i want to put some Lights through here and get like coming out and like probably some leds why would you not run The cable through the bum why would i not yeah i thought about it for a long time That's why i was sitting here yeah yeah and also it's a great butt cheeks it is like

They're really really nice you're right and it's too it adds a level of it makes it too Comical yeah and your work's not meant it's not what you're chasing so yeah just a nice little Heart there i might put a few hearts on the sides here like that's the boring part of The piece they can see I guess and yeah exploration I really like it it's coming together it Is this fits on now I'm happy gotta put the ear over here beautiful side yeah love it

The femur the grass puppy femur over here grass puppy yeah grass puppy and um i guess the The face

And what's even beautiful is like once it's all finished the work how you use this it then Just becomes a whole nother building material for the next thing whether it be food or plants or It's got to go like this that angle yeah not just straight Yeah, it's going to be so Much fun.

It's going to be fun. It's going to be super dynamic. You've just given yourself lots of options. Yeah. And it's definitely got the potential to keep evolving.

Well, you've done well to encapsulate everything you've been talking about. Yeah. It's cool to see ideas manifest.

Yeah. Yeah, they just sort of come out, don't they?

I have to wee -wee. All right. Thank you. Thank you, podcast world. Thank you, Podcast World, for the corollary. You definitely don't want to keep the mic on for that experience.

See you later. And now it's time for show and tell. And don't forget, you can purchase all of this art, and I recommend you reach out. Oh, yes.

All right, so if I was explaining it to Miranda. Yeah. So basically it's called a groundhog. In Japanese, an anagama. It's a very primitive very very ancient style kiln just powered by lots of wood it takes like A team of there's 15 of us um weeks of chopping wood and yeah powered over like five Days where you're constantly feeding it but yeah like i was saying it tells the tale of like The kiln so this pot was sitting in the kiln like this right whoa so you can see

See all this this is ash that Falls on the so wood would have been thrown on top of this it's burnt down into ash The ash has melted into a glaze and can you see all that see this yeah that's seaweed What oh what's up on this i put seaweed on my pots look at that and those little Orange blobs are like where the seed pods were seaweed and they explode and they cause flashing oh So that stains it orange yeah and then then you can see so there's mixed um ash glaze

As well that's carbon from the firing uh trapped carbon this is a halo caused so it would Have been sitting on the kiln like that yeah that's flashing caused by the fire so this pot's Really cool because you a bit of everything that's insane and then i use it i pair really Weird textural succulents and things that just contrast this dude this one so this was also had lots Of wood being thrown on top of it um there's different parts of the kiln but yeah this

Is right where we're feeding the kiln and all this debris is yeah ash and just crap so How is the kiln set up like when you say you're throwing it in is there you're literally Throwing it in and there's a fire there it's it's a good question it's a good question and I and i realize how disconnected the um pottery world than the normal person that is we're not Normal but yes i guess the best way to describe it so like i mean pottery basically it's

It's like an extension of a campfire that would have been the first kind of firing we got Some mud and we put in a campfire and then it evolved into basically building a building a Room to contain the heat to go higher like an oven pretty much so you can imagine it's A big hole in the ground probably the size of this half this house so a big kiln Yeah half in the ground and then half domed with like uh kiln bricks so you can actually

Like walk in but you're like this yeah and it's

Got it's a big dome they call it a dumpling kiln it looks like a big dumpling um And literally uh there's a door at the front you open it to throw fire to throw wood In and there's a bit of work on the ground but it's a very volatile spot because wood's Getting thrown in and pots do get smashed but that's why i put a big chunky pot in There um and then towards the back you've got shelves which have like cups and finer work so

They catch the ash and things but they're still usable so like um for example that was one Of the cups that came through the wood farm right oh wow that's so clean in comparison yeah Just like because different parts of the kiln i like the gnarly bits and no one likes those Parts of the kiln so i get i get free reign that was um so i've just done A gold repair so i can't let you touch it but um this was in the kiln um

And it connected to someone else's work and that's ash that's run down his work and he didn't Want it because there was a bit of a broken bit but i thought i'll repair it yeah It's like all the unique things it's like you won't be able to replicate it ever again so You might as well appreciate it and that's exactly right like you'll never get two pieces the same Like so this this these are the two pods this woman makes um i've just gold repaired these

For her she has a mold for these and she makes lots of these these are in two Different parts of the kiln same clay same everything so you can see that that's why it's so Exciting and look at this like look at that beautiful just drip of ash so you just never Know what you get it's sometimes they're duds and so you'll see a lot of red which is Like a lot of iron because this is iron heavy clay but the green see those green yeah

That's where the ash starts to form a glaze and then you get the flame path as well That creates so does the ash melt like when it when it forms a glaze is it kind Of melting into it a bit of both okay so it does melt but sometimes it doesn't and Then this is where it hasn't yeah yeah yeah yeah this is where it has and so that's Like the ash there some people will mix ash into glazes and make in fact some potters when

They pass on will have their ashes mixed into a lace it's a lovely touch yeah but you Also get flame puff so this is where the flames kind of come across the work yeah it Creates um so it's hard to know what you're kind of looking at a bit sometimes i think On first appearance you can be like oh it's a lot of browns or it's a lot of You know or it's poopy greens but when you start to learn what caused them it gets exciting

That's like oh it's got a cast yeah it didn't mean to but it's got a cast and Look this one's stepped in a pot it's got socks okay that's really interesting and they're just really Fun to use so so this is called wadding so basically because the kiln it gets full of Salt and ash everything The whole kiln becomes like an entire glaze, So everything sticks to everything.

So you have to use wadding to separate. See, this is how these are light. There was wadding there because if I didn't have it, it would just stick to the kiln.

So that was a bit of wadding, but it got stuck on.

I could take that off, but it looks like a cast. It looks cool. Yeah, it looks like he's got a little cast. And it fits well. They're cute, aren't they?

And they become fun to use.

So are these all, you would use them for pots for like bonsai or other plants?

Yeah, a bit of everything. Some bonsai. I'm into these kind of plants at the moment called codisiforms. So I was showing you that one outside. But see how it looks like a tree, but it's a giant succulent.

And this is called Codex. And so the plural for is codiceforms because it's not a type of plant. It's just a way they grow.

So you get all different types of plants, but they're kind of really cool because they're kind of Sculptural. Yeah.

Super textual and they look really funky in these pots. So it's like texture on texture. And you have these really soft blobby forms on like jagged, gnarly, ashy pots.

Super fun. Yeah, great. Contrast and you can tell just even just looking at this so this is like a quite ordinary Pot right especially when you've just been looking at yes it completely changes the experience and i've seen Some of the other bonsai has been like very like like i don't know tailored pots or things Well they can look very commercial can't they they're very very like you go to bunnings and because They are in in stock in they're a bit too perfect aren't they

It's funny like that