Irish hands on Chinese clay

At last - Fuping! The residency has started and thirteen Irish makers are up to the elbows in Chinese clay. It is a jubilant, confusing, chaotic time. The Ceramic Art Village is a vast complex of museums and hotels spread out among groves of apricot and persimmon. It's a madly grandiose dream and far bigger than we had imagined. The museums are monumental brick structures with massive domes and undulating curves. They are organic in shape and also in their cycles of construction and decay - there is a sense that if a building falls down they will just build another one. They were built to house the collections of ceramic art made on previous residencies, which ranges from the spectacular to the refreshingly panicky. It's a tough call - the brief is to respond to the Chinese experience, to shape this into an idea executable in clay, and to complete a body of museum-quality work with five weeks.

A few anxious lost-in-translation moments regarding the sourcing of equipment and materials. Our interpreter bombarded by anxious people urgently requiring clays and glazes and plaster moulds and throwing bats and internet access and coat hangers and fresh fruit and pouring slip and information about the firing ranges of kilns (she went somewhere else for an hour or so after that).

But all is well - time and urgency work a little differently here. We are treated like royalty - luxury far beyond the experience of most of us, let alone most Chinese people - so it seems a little churlish to fuss about the availability of Ethernet cables and extruders. On the other hand, we are expected to put on a good show. And so the see-saw of expectations and understanding continues. But all is well. Spirits are high and mud has not been slung. It is, as Alex said, great to be taken so seriously, because 'at home people think that you're a bit of a fool to be working in ceramics'...