About
I am interested in making abstract sculptural work primarily using clay but also using other materials alongside. I am inspired by exploring our relationship with the built urban environment; our response to climate change, how we relate to each other in cities and how large buildings take on an almost spiritual quality in how we understand ourselves. In addition to the MA degree show at UCLAN I have developed the presentation of my work on social media; mainly instagram. Whilst I am interested in exploring options for selling smaller sculptural work I am also keen to maintain a non-commercial focus on the work. Going forward I am wanting to look at the potential for locating my work in the outdoors and potentially make larger scale, site specific pieces. I am also interested in further exploring more intuitive and ‘in the moment’ making processes and developing options for running some courses to support others to make in this way.
Project overview
Vulnerable Urban
My project explores the inevitable - and already visible - degrading of our lived urban environment as we become increasingly overwhelmed by more extreme weather events; excessive heat, increased rainfall and high winds. The urban environment; with ever taller sculpted buildings engenders confidence and a sense of stability - effectively these buildings have become the new cathedrals of our age. What if our urban space, our most lived and populous environment, becomes ‘disrupted’, ‘fractured’, and is increasingly less inhabited as nature start to assert and re-establish itself. The consequences of the current environmental situation are so large - and the extent of our human agency seemingly so limited - that we appear to be largely abdicating ourselves from any significant emotional (and practical) involvement in this struggle. I am interested in how I can use clay and its intrinsic properties as a material at the heart of our environment and daily lived experience to question and explore how best to develop a more honest, open and urgent engagement with these issues. In terms of the making process, I have been interested by the American ceramic artist Peter Voulkos who brings an energy and spontaneity to his abstract expressionist work. The making is as much part of the work as the end product. Voulkos is intuitive and responsive and his energy and physicality is directly and obviously transferred to the work. I have also explored Patricia Shone’s approach and specifically her attitude to making: she says ‘my biggest secret as a potter is that I don’t think about the process very much before I start’. She does however have a deep understanding of clay and a range of skills to bring too, what is clearly a dynamic process. I have explored a number of ways of making and reflected on the properties and opportunities each of these gives. I have looked to combine techniques such as slab building with thrown and altered surfaces or hand-building with part thrown vessels. I have experimented with a wide range of materials (including different clay bodies, oxides and glazes) and have also incorporated, at different parts of the process, a number of ‘additions’.Alongside this I have explored different firing options; primarily using reduction firing but also exploring some of the possibilities of using a saggar.
Tall building
green city
Grey City
levelling up
