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An artist and former newspaper proofreader, who has taught pottery in a prison, colleges and at ANU, Tony Flynn admits his has not been the typical career path of a materials scientist.
He began his career as an articled clerk in a solicitor’s office, before joining The Australian as a proofreader in its Sydney offices in 1969. He left the media behind to train as a potter, studying the subject at what is now the National Art School.
His life as a potter saw him firing domestic pots, cups and plates in the kiln at his Gunning home for the first half of the 1980s, before he began producing purely decorative, non-functional ceramic pieces in 1985.
In 1989, he took on a part-time teaching role at the ANU School of Art, which he held for 12 years. During this time he also taught pottery to inmates of Goulburn prison.
His curiosity about the nature of changes in the firing process that allows the production of ceramic items led Mr Flynn to do a Master’s on the topic on 1998 and was the first step on a road that was to take him from the studio to the lab. He soon realised that if he was to understand what was going on, he needed to adopt the methodology of science.
“Over the past eight or nine years my thinking has become more and more that of materials science. I have not always thought like this, but as I went further into my MA it became obvious and I found I enjoyed it very much,” he says.
Despite being a Master of Arts, the degree saw Mr Flynn spending most of his time on the other side of the ANU campus in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, and for his PhD he has completed the move, basing himself in the Department of Engineering.
Mr Flynn is investigating ways to use firing temperature to control the size of the voids in ceramic materials — voids which, as a potter, he used firing to eliminate. The ceramics he is producing are lightweight, porous and very strong, allowing gases or liquids to pass through them or for a second material to fill the gaps and further increase their strength.
While he says (notwithstanding the water filters) he “hasn’t made a pot for eight years”, Mr Flynn hasn’t turned his back on artistic endeavours, but has simply “mothballed” them for the time being.
Pictured: A shallow platter form, black-fired with sgraffito and gold leaf decoration. By Tony Flynn
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