It is an honour for me to be asked to speak to you today. To be among friends with similar aspirations, similar challenges, there is a camaraderie here to be valued and enjoyed.

There is a history to these woodfiring events that has grown over the years. I well remember the 1986 event where I was dressed up in someone's trailing leopard-patterned sleeping bag, had long pink rubber gloves pushed on to my hands, and wearing an alfoil tiara. Kevin Grealy was not confident that I could remember my speech as I dubbed Owen Rye with some raku tongs and anointed him Duke of Rye, Bourbon and an endless list of whiskey names. Owen had also drawn up a table of woodfiring potters and their kilns, a survey which I know has doubled or tripled since that time.

Then there was the mayoral chain that was made from bent cones and reverently placed over the head of the organiser of the conference. I think that decoration has been lost, now somewhere languishing in northern NSW. Perhaps the cones from the firings here at Sturt can be strung together and hung around the neck of Paul Davis and another batch fashioned into a medal for Megan Patey. But these insignia have to be handed on to the next willing woodfirer/organiser at the start of the next woodfire conference. Who will take it on?

We have a comprehensive program in store for us this long weekend encompassing theory, practice and debate. I asked Colin, my live-in encyclopaedia over many years, about theory. He replied that it was once a theory that the earth was flat. Well, we have moved on from that one and theories today are influenced by current trends in films, in technology, in ceramic practice. Art and culture are linked together. Life is not static but dynamic, fluid and constantly changing and as new ideas develop, so too does the potter's practice. Reading Alain de Botton's The Architecture of Happiness, and his description of developing an appreciation of rough deformed pieces of pottery, puzzling blobs of unformed matter and ill-matched sets of crockery in colours of black, grey and brown, I understood what he meant even if I did not altogether like the descriptions. He was talking about wabi, the Japanese concept of an aesthetic ideal, a concept which has for a long time been a favoured one of the woodfirer who ascribes to the natural beauty of clay and fire.

It is all in the way we look at things. We, those of here I mean, look at woodfired works with pleasure and enjoy them aesthetically, and we expect others to do the same. Our task then is to enlarge the perspective of the others. We see the unique beauty in woodfired ceramics and seek to find ways of communicating that vision to a wider audience. And I believe we are succeeding.

This is the third weekend in a row that I have been involved in conferences. The past weekend I was present at Australian Stories, narrative ceramics, held in Dubbo, not so far from here, an extremely successful exhibition and forum engaging the attention of ceramic artists and collectors from all over Australia. The weekend before that I was in Montpellier at a ceramics and glass film festival organised by Ateliers d'Art de France. Twenty four films were in competition and the jury was composed of Juan Artigas of the famous Spanish ceramic family, two film directors from Paris, a glass artist John De Wit from the US, a representative from UNESCO, one of the sponsors, and myself. For two days and one night an audience of 1800 sat in the large auditorium and cheered and booed as they saw fit. The Clay Film award went to Jackson Lee, from China, someone many of you know. His film told the story of a pottery workshop, Tao Yao, near the Yellow Mountain in China. The making of the pots and the rhythm of the work were climaxed by the firing of the dragon kiln. I am sure that everyone here would enjoy that film. Jackson's film also took out the heritage award while a film on Grayson Perry won the contemporary award. Ceramics is certainly alive and well if you consider the size of that audience, although Grayson noted in his film that ceramics is in an endangered position. Not here at Sturt today I would say.

If woodfiring is a matter of taste, we who are here today have acquired it. We seem to experience what I have read of as 'an inner sensation' when we look at the objects on exhibition here. Is this a sensation that can be learnt? Can we promote it in others? It is not something that is logical or even rational, so it must be art - an aesthetic response. Can we create new ways of looking at things that challenge others' perceptions? I think that we have our own voice and expression and we are here for the long duration.

Craft as a concept is coming back into fashion. Three books, all of scholarly intent, have been published so far this year, one from the UK, one from Canada and one from the US. All seem to find meaning in the processes of craft. There is an emphasis on process at the expense of the object created, a return of interest in traditional skills, and a return to 'slow' methods of consideration and making. This is a 'turn-around' that surely favours the woodfire potter. Kevin Murray's review of Thinking Through Craft, published in Object magazine writes "What we have with this book is a conceptual framework for connecting the noble quest of craft practice with the wide world of visual art." Something to keep in mind for the future indeed.

Wood firing conferences are all about learning. So I thought I would pass on a few tips, things I learnt from my firing last month.

1. Old iron-bark fence posts will generate significant heat but not much in the way of ash deposits.
2. Wattle branches on the other hand will give enough runny ash when stoking the side-stoke holes to fuse pots to each other and to the floor of the kiln.
3. If you know approximately how long you will be firing, say 70 hours, start the firing at a time when you think what hour might be a good time to finish the firing.
4. Invite someone like Chester to visit at a time near the end of the firing when your energy is low, a sure burst of life to encourage flagging spirits.
5. Make sure the wadding ingredients are clearly labelled in their bags and are not confused with felspar, for example (sorry Ken).

And another tool for the workshop you might like to acquire - I have just added one to my pottery equipment, and this might be of interest to over enthusiastic woodfirers, like me, and is available in selected hardware stores - a small jackhammer - now indispensable to my ceramic practice.

This conference has all the marks of being a great success: the people, the program, the exhibitions, the venue. I wish it and you all, a rewarding event.

Janet Mansfield
April 2008

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