Canberra Young Arts News
Cristina Baratinskas-Goodman
In December 2006, Caroline Nott, Peg Archer and I were escorted
around the graduating exhibition of the students of the ANU
School of Art by Valerie Kirk, Head, Textiles Workshop. Our
happy task was to select a student to whom we would award
the ADFAS Young Arts Award.
After considerable discussion and a little agonising, we agreed
that Cristina Baratinskas-Goodman from the Ceramics Workshop
was the most deserving of our funds.
Cristina works in bone china and makes fine vessels with delicately
carved walls.
“It is traditional for bone china vessels to be fired
on their rim – which is why the rims of old cups are
painted gold,” Cristina told me. “I fire my works
on setters so the forms stay in shape, especially when the
walls are heavily carved.” She makes these herself from
stoneware.
Cristina uses bone china because it is pure white, translucent
and takes colour really well, unlike the porcelain clays she
has tried. She builds up the colours, layer upon layer in her
work and uses shellac resist when carving.
This is a time consuming, and tricky process. She has a success
rate of approximately 50%. “Bone china is very hard and
temperamental. If it decides it doesn’t want to do something
it won’t,” she told me.
Before enrolling at the School of Art, Cristina worked for
many years and it took her three years to summon the courage
to leave a good job to become a full time art student, something
she had always wanted to do.
Cristina was awarded a BA in Visual Arts with honours in 2006
and this year will undertake a Master of Design Arts, a new
degree at the School of Art, using the rapid prototype machine
which produces positive forms in polymer which she intends
to use to make the moulds for her forms.
Bone china is very similar to glass, and Cristina also works
in glass. She is keen to put the two materials together and
will use the ADFAS funds to assist her experimentation.
Christina will give members a brief introduction to her work
at the first lecture in 2007.
Meredith Hinchliffe
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