Interview to the artist by Rachelle Gryn Brettler, from our Anniversary Book
I did not like school very much.The art room at school was the sanctuary. I was always drawing and making. I went on to Bristol and I chose to study ceramics as I thought it covered everything — soft things, hard things, sculpture. One of the reasons I chose ceramics is because it is a humble material.The most humble. And I liked that, being the hippy that I was.
My work is made from stoneware clay, then I mix colour into the clay. I can either colour it with oxide — I have got cobalt oxide which makes blue but I do not like using that because it is really poisonous. So, I buy stains and I mix them in. Even though I am not a very pastel type of person, my work is in pastel colours.With the technique I use, it is absolutely impossible to make very dark colours because the pigment is mixed into the clay and I do not want to mix too much as the consistency of the clay changes. I am not a technical kind of potter so I do not work with glazes and those technicalities. I only think about the colour. And then the form. I like the skin of the surface. I want my material to be quick and easy so I can just get on with the making.
I am more interested in concept than technique. My work is planned but not to the fine detail. I do little sketches and then make small maquettes.
Everything is hand built, with any technique that comes to hand to achieve the form — maybe adding a bit of clay in, or rolling out a piece of clay, or using a mould to start things off — and then those difficult shapes are all propped up with little scaffoldings of sponges in the kiln.
Burnishing brings out the iron in the body, creating marks and a little sheen on the surface. I burnish the form with spoons — I just go over and over the surface and it takes forever. I will do it all week, one hour a day. This finishing is very contemplative, during that action and time, I can think of the next piece I am going to make.The more I make, the more it is a chain reaction of ideas. The pieces then need to be fired at a low temperature, otherwise the burnish disappears.
I have experimented with different textures in my work. I wanted to try flocking, like the wallpaper, with its velvety texture. I found someone in London with a little factory that whatever shape or colour you choose, he can cover it in flocking. It is intriguing — the smooth stoneware and the soft flocking. I am a playful person and I like it to come through in my work.
My ideas mostly come from when I am at the opera, ballet, contemporary dance or a performance where I am sitting and allowing my brain to go liminal, as if my brain went on holiday while I am in that space. I am not thinking about anything but the music and the action on the stage which is all consuming and it allows my brain to be creative. It is something about the live music, and it has to be live. If I do not go to any performances I feel as if my creativity becomes stunted, but once I start going to a live performance, everything starts moving in my head.
I do think that we are inspired by everything. I am on the lookout all the time, and when you are in tune with it, then you are on the lookout even more. I may see a leaf on the ground, or the tangled twist in the handle of my shopping bag and I think that is a good shape. My project Conversations with Friends was inspired by my closest friends — I wanted to make a portrait, an abstract portrait, of one of my friends and thinking about their different characteristics and why I valued them. Tinkering around with that idea, I went on to make fourteen of them, I could not make twelve because of the Disciples, so I had to make fourteen!
Maybe it is being at a certain point in one’s life that you just do things for yourself. I have realised the older I get, I am more interested in concept than technique. For me, the technique is incidental which is why I am not really a pottery person, although I do call myself a potter.