As Antipodean Encounters: Western Australian Artists and Taiwanese Culture and Tea Ware Exhibitions hit the Midland Junction Arts Centre, we got in touch with Lee Woodcock, one of the contributing artists to the Tea Ware exhibition and a regular teacher of pottery at MJAC. We spoke to Lee about the exhibition and his arts practice, and got a little hands on trying to make our own ceramic bowls.

Midland Junction Arts Centre is a beautiful heritage listed building managed by the Mundaring Arts Centre for the City of Swan. During their relatively short operation, MJAC have been a welcoming platform to a range of artists new and developed. They have a wide range of exhibitions and ongoing workshops and development programs.

The Antipodean Encounters and Teaware exhibition opened August 11th, with an accompanying workshop run by Lee where participants were invited  to learn to make their own teacups. Next in this program of events is the Tea Dao workshop with Henri Lebedev, an exploration into the culture history of growing, brewing and tasting tea, with a guided tea meditation to follow. The workshop takes place on Saturday the 25th of August.

"Tea and the sharing of tea is celebrated by many cultures in very diverse and often ritualistic ways. Tea drinking habits can be found worldwide. After water, it is the most widely consumed drink in the world. In conjunction with Antipodean Encounters: Western Australian Artists and Taiwanese Culture, MJAC is celebrating the teaware and the art of ceramics."
Participating artists:
Jenny Kerr, Claire Ng, Melissa Statham Ellero, Bernard Kerr, Lee Woodcock, Emma Vinkovic, Dee Parker, Alison Brown, Rie Yamauchi, Megan Evans, Amanda Harris and Denise Brown.
The Tea Ware and Antipodean Encounters exhibitions look to find a link across cultures through the enjoyment of everyday rituals. 

Lee bases his artistic practice around the unpredictability and sense of terroir associated with a wood fired kiln. 

"I make all of my clay myself, and try to source as much as I can from nature." he said, "The type of wood, time of year, placement, everything is a variable in a wood fired kiln. I expect about 50% of what comes out of my kiln to come out as I expected it to. It’s nowhere near as predictable as an electric kiln. You can’t be too connected to what’s in the kiln, you can think everything’s going perfectly, and still you’ll never find out for sure until you open the kiln."

Lee’s kiln spans around two hundred cubic foot and fits three hundred pots. When it fires, it runs for between seventy five and one hundred hours, all of which must be carefully monitored. He called his style of pottery "a never ending cycle of chopping wood, glazing pots, getting the kiln ready.” ​

Lee's teacup workshop on August 11th opened the Antipodean Encounters project, introducing a number of participants to the craftsmanship of clay as they made their own teacups and tumblers.

"I think people have a very strong connection with their morning tea or coffee. I make cups which fit into your hand, I find that connects you to what you’re drinking. when I make a teacup I grip it so it sits in your hand, it’s so nice to drink out of a style which warms your hands and fits nicely. "

As a self-taught artist, Lee started throwing pottery with a wheel he made himself. "I twist and bend my mugs, intentionally distorting them. It’s more traditional to try and be symmetrical, and beginners usually focus on roundness. I’m more interested in making triangular and square forms in the rim of my bowls."

Lee has been teaching for four of his five and a half years of pottery. "I’m lucky, I ride bmx and do gardening.” he said, “Most of the skills came fairly quickly."

"At the moment I’m doing a wheel throwing course across four wednesdays. We do three weeks of throwing then a final week on glazing. We’re looking into workshops on more sculptural works as well."

"We work on throwing with confidence, the hardest thing for beginners is the fear of the pot collapsing. We start without too much pressure to go as tall and thin as you can. They can refine their skills with practice, but getting the confidence on the wheel is the biggest part. “
Lee finished our interview by teaching us how to throw some rudimentary bowls on an electric wheel. We were surprised by the level of coordination and precision required, and came away with a new appreciation for the levels of craftsmanship behind many of the objects we encounter on a day-to-day basis. 

We recently collaborated with High Spirits Distillery to create a cocktail program around their Gin and Vodka with an emphasis on simple, accessible cocktails. Head over to High Spirits social channels to see the cocktail rollout. Today we want to talk about how you can start making quality cocktails with barely a trip to the shops. Here are our favourite cocktail tips, tricks and ideas:

A trip to your local hospitality supply store will give you well priced bar essentials like bar spoons, jiggers and cocktail shakers, but what if it’s 6pm and you want that Tom Collins pronto? 

We’ve all seen the DIY approach to cocktails exemplified through expensive converted mason jars, but the jam jar in the back of your fridge is just as perfect a cocktail shaker after a quick rinse, and the lid, cocked slightly ajar, becomes the perfect strainer. 

If stirred cocktails are more your style, we honestly can’t tell the difference between cocktails stirred with a fancy bar spoon and those stirred with a takeaway chopstick. And what about all that cocktail ice? Even if you’re missing ice mould, any tupperware container half filled with water will give you a great chunk of cocktail ice the next day: Wrap it in a tea towel and drop it a few times outside for great shaker ice, carve it into long strips with a serrated knife for impressive highballs, or crush it with a rolling pin for drinks needing pebbled or crushed ice. 

Don’t be put off by melon ballers and channel knives, all you need to make beautiful garnishes is any small, sharp knife and a bit of practice. Start with citrus twists, cutting small lengths of peel and trimming off the jagged edges. A coin or semicircle of citrus standing on the rim of the glass is perhaps the simplest of all garnishes, and still looks great. Just cut a wedge, coin or semicircle, and cut in a small slot for the glass. 

It’s worth looking at glassware the same way you would garnishes. It’s true that the right glass will elevate the taste and feel of a drink, but there’s no reason you should abandon the cocktail you want to make just because you don’t have the “correct” glass. We love hunting through op-shops and antique stores for interesting and unique glasses, but as you start out, you’ll be surprised at how adaptable the wine and water glasses at your home will be for the majority of cocktails. 

Shaking a cocktail dilutes, mixes, aerates and cools your drink. Some pretty in depth testing by Dave Arnold suggests that you hit a point of diminishing returns after shaking for more than twelve seconds. What matters is that those twelve seconds are of hard shaking. Technique doesn’t matter, just make sure you don’t let go of your shaker.

Stirring is usually applied to cocktails without a fruit juice element. As alcohol bonds immediately, stirring a cocktail simply dilutes and cools it. When stirring, try to stir in a quick circular motion, agitating the ice as little as possible. Around 50 rotations or 30-40 seconds of stirring should suffice. If you’re making your cocktail for yourself, taste your bar spoon to determine if your cocktail needs more stirring. 

For both shaking and stirring, be sure to use plenty of ice- around 2/3 of your vessel should be filled with ice. It’s also good practice to keep your glassware in the freezer while you stir or shake. 

To start making cocktails tonight, a good amount of citrus and simple syrup will play with almost anything in your liquor cabinet. Never buy simple syrup, just heat equal parts sugar and water over a stove, stirring until clear and fully combined. For some of the cocktails in our High Spirits program, we found ourselves running out at the last minute, and would mix a cup of water and a cup of castor sugar in a blender on high for a couple of minutes. The result is cloudy, but similarly delicious in cocktails.

By now it’s time you started learning some cocktail recipes. Like all recipes, cocktails are just a combination of balancing flavours, and the best way to get a handle for balancing flavours is with those is with three classic ratios:

Great to start out with and to introduce friends to new cocktails. Highballs let fizz and citrus take centre stage, with just enough alcohol backbone to keep the drink from feeling flabby. Many highball cocktails can even have the shaking stage omitted, and for the High Spirits cocktail program, we exchanged the shaking step for a gentle stir once the drink is built, in order to make the drink as easy to make as possible, without any specialty equipment required.

Sours are really popular on cocktail bar drink menus, and might be closer to what you have in mind when you think of making cocktails. A shaker or at least a shaking vessel is a must for sours, which need a lot of motion to coax together alcohol, sugar and cirtrus. Some sour recipes will use egg white to give the drink a fluffy head and a syrupy thickness. Others will also use a fine-strainer (a tea strainer often does the trick) to get rid of pesky ice shards (Sometimes you want ice shards, we're not going to tell you how to drink your drink, so if you're on the fence, try doing a side by side with one fine strained cocktail and one regular one)

While not technically a category, a lot of classic cocktails are derived from one original recipe for a stirred drink we now call the Old Fashioned. Here's a ratio which can make many a delicious and sophisticated drink. Stirred drinks are almost always a blend of alcohol and alcohol, only softened by their interactions and the gentle dilution and chilling from the stirring. High quality spirits are key.