'Through The Porthole' would not nearly have been the success that it has been without the collaborations that have taken place between the local artists that live on the Capricorn Coast. I have received hundreds of images from local photographers, willing to have artists and student use their content as inspiration for the ceramic works that have been made.

Here's a few bird images from around Keppel Bay. Not all of these have been made into ceramic artworks but there are some you will recognise at the exhibition tomorrow.

With Animating Spaces Yeppoon and 'Through the Porthole' event only a matter of days away I thought I would let you in on a little secret…Sometimes 'Art Don't Work'.

Yes, that's right and all artists can relate to this, taking a project from an idea through to installation does not always run according to plan. In fact, there sometimes isn't even a plan at all - This is what makes an artist an artist. You start, you run into hurdles, your try something else and repeat this until it does work!

This particular artwork is the perfect example. It was one of the first works that I made for 'Through The Porthole' in early 2014 and finally, five months later I have just this morning unloaded a success from the kiln. The progression shows perfectly the stages that clay goes through, things that work, things that don't and of course the things that are sometimes out of one's control like cracking in the firing process.

But oh how good it feels when you open the kiln to find the work that finally worked like I did this morning!

With the seed planted for 'Through The Porthole' to culminate as an'Art Trail' it was time to take it to the people and as predicted the concept was met with an encouraging response from all key community stakeholders on the Capricorn Coast. It was time to gather the artists. I decided to engage a second key artist on the project and invited local indigenous artist Kim Warcon to work alongside myself to make a series of ceramic works. As an artist who primarily paints in acrylic Kim was most excited to explore the possibilities of clay and his traditional styles would broaden the diversity of works and create further opportunity for workshops.

With artists in place we needed content for the works and what better place to look than to local photography groups. An article in the local paper calling out for suitable images from photographers received a huge response, with the first photographer to respond offering access to his 3000+ images…we weren't going to have a problem here either! At this point graphic artist Clare Botfield joined the team to edit the images into suitable formats for transferring onto clay by artists on the project.

The project team was together; one coordinator, two key artists, a graphic designer, a rapidly growing group of photographers, art students from two local high schools and more to come…