Last year in Beirut I discovered ceramics at Namika Atelier in the borough of Kantari, collaborating with ceramicist, Hala Barakat and artist, Katya Traboulsy. My role was to sculpt on and re-model Hala's elegant ceramics. Katya paints and draws on these and many of Hala's other ceramics. These mostly quite small vases, cups and containers were successfully glazed and fired. So for the past nearly three weeks I have returned to Lebanon,.Hala and Katya have generously continued the collaboration, helping me technically and with encouragement to make a dozen urns - containers in various sizes with lids. I leave Lebanon today. In a few weeks time the pieces will be glazed and fired by Katia and
I have developed a fair control of techniques which enable me to print a black-and-white photograph onto glass and make it stay there. But, for better or for worse, I am not a machine. I am a slob. Sometimes I am inconsistant in the cleaning and preparing of glass to receive the light-sensitive silver emulsion. The emulsion may be applied in irregular thickness. The developing chemicals may be of imprecise solutions or be too warm... or too cold. When I recently printed this portrait of a Lebanese art collector, photographed in the Bekaa Plain in May, a part of the image came unstuck in the wash bath. Massaging it gently with a finger, the entire image was eventually detached from the glass
