On Friday night we held the opening of the Clayspace Daylesford Annual Ceramics Exhibition. It's an exhibition open to all of our members and showcases ceramic work from across the Central Highlands region and pieces from beginners right through to masters.

After a day of organisational madness and nervous creative chaos, which included being told we had no power (lucky we had those big bright west facing windows!) and having four of the artists deliver their work an hour before the guests arrived, we managed to pull everything together at the last very last minute.

 And before we knew it, the place was packed! Red stickers were going up, the wonderful local band Mana was playing (with the help of a very long extension lead), the champagne was flowing, and smiling happy people were all about.

But the pots were the stars...

From beginners...

To masters.

 and everywhere in between.

We screened the video we made to accompany our pozible campaign and in doing so launched the project and threw ourselves at the mercy of the crowd funding gods. Its a beautiful short movie, you really should watch it :) but there will be more about the campaign in my next post.

It was a truly beautiful night, filled with all of our favourite things- beautiful art made with  passion, lovely friendly happy excited people, music, community and of course food and wine! Oh and this guy. He's local visual artist Kevin Smith and he's a bit of a legend. He had ten years using this amazing space as his studio back in the day and the stories he told were killer. Thanks Kevin!

And thank you to everyone who contributed to this magic night, from organisers and artists to everyone who has been through the exhibition in the intervening days and shown their love! The overwhelming support and positivity surrounding this event has made us wonder why this space isn't a permanent artist run gallery space? 

HELLO!

Hello and welcome to the Clayspace Daylesford Blog! We are bunch of potters, or ceramic artists, or just clay enthusiasts, from a picturesque small town in rural Australia. Obviously, this is our very first post, so I thought I'd spend some time talking about who were are (as a group, I'll introduce the individual artists later...) and why we do what we do.

In 2010 we came together to create the Daylesford Regional Ceramics Cooperative- a not for profit organisation with the aim of providing support, resources and community to anyone interested in the ceramic arts. We are a group of ten or so core organisers plus around fifty members from across the region.

We are passionate about our relationship with clay. Its a wonderful medium to work in for so may reasons. Obviously its tactile and sensual. Its earthy and grounding, and we believe it can be quite transformative and healing. Its uses and applications are incredibly diverse, creating an art form that is ever evolving and expanding. Potters are forever learning and growing, forever experimenting and expanding their knowledge & skills. I am constantly astounded by the remarkable things some artists manage to do with clay.

That's an attractive prospect don't you think? You could never be bored, you will always be learning? Its important to stay curious & keep learning I right? Pottery also comes with an incredibly long and remarkably varied history which is fascinating to discover. Carrying on this art form allows you to feel connected through the ages to potters throughout time- a lovely feeling in itself. The prospect of travelling the world and finding little potting villages is pretty attractive too- and I'm sure you will see a lot of that on this blog in the future.

Okay so there's some reasons why we love it. I guess because we love it so much we want to share it. We want to share it amongst ourselves, discussing our own work and our own progression, but we also want to share it with others. Living in a small rural community, although its very conducive to making art, can sometimes feel a little bit lacking in the arts department. We want to do our bit to share our passion and our knowledge with the community. We want to teach kids. we want to introduce it to adults who need something creative in their life. We'd like to use it help heal, perhaps for a group with dementia, or social or mental health issues.

It can be expensive thing to get started in too, so we hope that by sharing resources, like our kilns, studio space and other equipment we can make it more accessible and doable for anyone wanting to get their hands dirty and have a go. 

Lastly, we know that as a group we can achieve great things. 

In the next few weeks we will be launching a new and exciting project, and I will be bringing you studio tours and insights into the artists behind Clayspace Daylesford .Thank you for joining us on this journey. Anyone who would like to get involved, or wishes to contact us for more information can email us at: clayspacedaylesford@gmail.com 

Photography in this post by the wonderful Tim Burder