water objects – echoes

water objects – echoes, Louise Boscacci & Toni Warburton,
The Cross Art Projects, 2017

ground water, potable, The Drip Gorge, Goulbourn River, Ulan (for Julia Mullins), 2013, ash glazed, wood fired ceramic, coal. Photo by Silversalt Photography

Some years back I asked the poet Mohan Rana for a poem about water that I could write on a ceramic cup.

During a residency at Cudgegong Cottage near Gulgong I experimented with china clay dug from their quarry and made some cups. On this one I brushed the words of the poem with cobalt blue pigment and the felspathic glaze fluxed and dissolved some words where the pigment was thinner. I was disappointed until I realised that the surface of the cup was like the faded shirt in the poem.

The Colour Of Water

(To Jane)

Rain falling, day after day,
as if trying to clean off
our permanent stains,
but all it does is discolour
this well-worn shirt,
and wash the memory
of all the passing seasons
from the walls.

This is not summer
nor autumn nor winter:
sometimes I recognize myself,
then forget.

Maybe after so much rain
all colour will be washed out
and my shirt then be the colour of water.

[8.9.2008]

– Mohan Rana

Translated from Hindi by Bernard O’Donoghue and Lucy Rosenstein

https://www.poetrytranslation.org/poems/the-colour-of-water/original

Study for Riparian thicket
ceramic, photo by Silversalt Photography

Toni Warburton, water container, 2017. After Mrs Davies’ adzed burl bucket seen at the Mirlirrtjarra Art Collection, Ngaanyatjarra Lands, Warburton Ranges WA. Log impressed container, buff clay painted with ochre terra sigillata, midfired.