The Dream

One thing I have always loved is sharing a passion with other people. 

For 20 years I worked as an English teacher, and got to see week in week out people who didn't "get" something having a moment of realisation, or discovering a text that changed their life, midset, or ambitions. 

I also enjoyed teaching evening classes in ceramics, watching people play with clay, seeing them shape the physical embodiment of their idea, or even coming up with an idea having arrived blank! 

Now I am on the lookout for a new place to live. And on its "must have" list is space for a small studio, space for some learning/playing/discovery group sessions, and space for people to camp or stay.

The dream is to set up regular residential ceramic experiences, of two or three or four days, and get like-minded people together to create and play.

Maybe Cornwall? 

We'll see. But the dream is beginning to take shape.

Inspirations

As I am playing with new shapes, and enjoying seeing how they interact with the older pieces from my first foray into selling ceramics (over 20 years ago!) it has made me reflect on what my original inspirations were.

I strongly remember being deeply struck by the beauty of Brancusi pieces when flicking through art books in the early stages of secondary school. It led me to chase down opportunities to see pieces in the flesh. I loved the stripped back simplicity, the clean beauty of the pieces.

The dimensions, the sleekness, and the interplay between shapes withing the piece (without fussiness, with harmony) stuck with me.

This I think is also what drew me to Lucie Rie, once I moved onto ceramics. I saved up to buy a massive book of her work, and pored over it often. As with any artist, not every piece was a favourite - the volcanic pieces people seem to love never touched me at all. But so many pieces felt so "perfect". 

Naturally this led me on to Hans Coper, and he became (and remains) my firm favourite in the whole of the art world. I grew up outside Norwich, so was lucky enough to be able to visit the Sainsburys Centre which had a great collection of Coper and Rie pots. It felt like Coper managed to take thrown work in directions it never knew it could be taken in. And he created beauty in chunky pieces, slim pieces, fine, bold... He seemed to be able to do whatever he liked, and it always worked! I particularly loved seeing his work grouped, feeling like a family. This is something I've taken to doing as well, trying to create harmony between pieces. 

When I am coming up with ideas for shapes, I work in simple 2D line drawings. When I have drawn one shape, the next has to "fit" on one side nto the previous shape. And so a chain of shapes emerges. Often only one from within the chain will be made, but sometimes (as with the pieces on the front page of this site) I'll make tessalating pieces.  Other times I'll make a series of similar pieces, deviating slightly from the original each time to see where the piece can be taken. I enjoy the challenge of turning a 2D idea into one that works in 3D. It always presents challenges, and often the transition points between the two known sides are what "makes" the work for me. I seem to have developed an unwritten rule (previously unwritten!) that nothing should have more than 3 elements competing, in terms of shape and direction. When I have made pieces that go beyond this, they have ended up in the recycling bucket - they begin to feel too fussy, lacking in the beautiful simplicity I so admired in the work of these great artists.