When Richard Jones unloaded his latest arrivals from the kiln in time for Open Day at his Possum Creek studio he couldn’t have been more pleased.

“It looks like a sea of bowls,” says Jones.  “The celadons did really well on the raku clay, and the shinos did all sorts of weird and wonderful things – as shino does.”

It was Jones’s partner Jo Immig, who coined the word ‘plowls’ for the fabulous double-fired three-glaze plate/bowls above.  “We use them all the time now,” says Jones.  “They’re wonderful for eating off.  I was very pleased with this batch, the copper reds can be quite tricky and can end up bright blue if the firing doesn’t work!”

“These cups, or glasses are porcelain inlay on raku clay,” says Jones.  “I carve the design- sometimes quite random-and fill it with porcelain. When it’s partially dry I scrape off the surplus to reveal the design. I started doing this as an experiment and discovered it was called Mishima in Japan.”  For Jones part of the appeal of pottery is the constant experimentation.  “It’s led me to creative places I could never have imagined when I started,” he says.

Jones call these his ‘star bowls’, and says they are reminiscent of his galaxy paintings. “I’ve stocked up for the Open Studios day,” he says.  “I love it when people visit me here where I live and work – it’s all about getting back in touch with nature.  There’s the roosters, Sebastian, Rupert and Alisdair; the brush turkeys – if you’re lucky the koalas – sometimes a python curled up asleep, and hundreds of bird varieties.”

“Each piece –  including the five dollar pieces will save several hundred rainforest trees in Sumatra thanks to Kelvin Davies and the Rainforest Trust,” says Jones, and for him the Open Day is not just a chance to show off his incredible range, but with every bowl sold, he knows one more piece of rainforest has been saved.

Richard Jones studio is at 56 Gittoes Lane Possum Creek and will be open this weekend, Saturday and Sunday from 10.00am to 4.00pm.

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Australian native Blue Banded Bee

 Life in the city, in the fast lane, living on sugar, white flour and caffeine, rushing, oblivious of others, from one meeting to another, playing nonstop with the iPhone, cuts us off from real life, and from our original nature, writes our Political Potter Richard Jones…

British philosopher and writer Alan Watts commenting on the human experience put it like this:
 “As it is, we are merely bolting our lives—gulping down undigested experiences as fast as we can stuff them in—because awareness of our own existence is so superficial and so narrow that nothing seems to us more boring than simple being. If I ask you what you did, saw, heard, smelled, touched and tasted yesterday, I am likely to get nothing more than the thin, sketchy outline of the few things that you noticed, and of those only what you thought worth remembering. Is it surprising that an existence so experienced seems so empty and bare that its hunger for an infinite future is insatiable? But suppose you could answer, ‘It would take me forever to tell you, and I am much too interested in what’s happening now.’ How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself as anything less than a god? And, when you consider that this incalculably subtle organism is inseparable from the still more marvelous patterns of its environment—from the minutest electrical designs to the whole company of the galaxies—how is it conceivable that this incarnation of all eternity can be bored with being?”

“This is a Flame tree I planted years ago, covered in these brilliant red flowers. Above, half way up, is a mistletoe bush and another baby one has established further down. The Mistletoe bird a regular visitor. On the right of the flower is a self sown epiphytic hanging moss. The pumpkins have doubled after two nights of rain and another shower is on the way. I just went for a walk through the young forest. It’s damp and lush. The sandpaper figs are heavy with fruit and the endangered Small-leaved tamarinds are covered in flowers as are the Silky oaks- with masses of orange blossoms. It all changes so fast after good rains…”

Here in Possum Creek we constantly experience the subtle, gentle movements of nature, whisper of leaves, ever changing shadows through the trees, distant calls of the whip bird and kookaburra, cheeps of finches and buzzing of bees as they busy themselves on numerous fragrant blossoms. 
If you put your ear to my studio wall you can hear the hum of many thousands of bees going quietly about their business. We could never separate ourselves again from this existence to live amongst the raucous sounds of traffic, smell of car fumes and hoards of rushing strangers and where birds are a rare sight, let alone other wildlife.

Alan Watts is right, every second is a precious jewel to be considered and relished and not just “gulped down”.

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Our political potter ponders the never-ending inter-connection in the animal kingdom.

Give us this day our daily flower photo – this beautiful orchid is attached to the orange tree next to the verandah.

I had two encounters with pythons over the past few days.

One was curled up at the edge of the road as I was off to meet friends at the Mullumbimby farmers’ market. I turned the car around to shoo it off. It didn’t move so I picked it up and saw that it had a little blood on its mouth but otherwise it was very active. I pushed it into a shopping bag and took it to the side and it gripped my arm tightly as I unloaded it, hoping that it will recover from its injury.

When I returned home a couple of hours later, Jo told me that there had been a big kerfuffle in the veggie garden.

Lucy Longlegs, our brush turkey Bruce’s new girlfriend, had broken the rules and entered the enclosed veggie garden. She then fluttered up into the overhanging mulberry in a big flurry. Jo went to investigate and saw a large python curled up exactly where Lucy had been scratching up mulch.

I went to have a look with Jo and replace all the mulch and there was the python stretched along the fence.

I’ll warrant that Lucy won’t go back in there. The others never do.

Peace now reigns (for the moment).

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