Craft Fairs and pop up shops..

Here's some of the Christmas Decorations I've been making for the St George's Hall Christmas Fair and the Dot Art Pop up Shop in Cavern Walks..

They come in their own box and I think they're rather nice! The orange one is made from terracotta and the white one is made from porcelain.

The Willow Pattern plates and mugs are due to be delivered on Monday so fingers crossed! It's our first large order, 50 each of the plates and mugs and I've got nice boxes for them and I think they could be popular. Really hope they are!

I've got some old stock of Ghosts and Clouds as well which I hope to sell over the next few months.

I'll post some pictures of the Craft Fair and Pop up Shop soon...x

Capstone Gallery

Capstone Gallery work.

The show is up in the Capstone Gallery, a nice space in the foyer of the Capstone Theatre. The university has given me four display cases to exhibit new work using the extruded clay process that I developed during my placement there.

The last image is the Gloriana piece in my living room where you see it more clearly.

The exhibition looks really good and I'm very pleased with it. It's my first exhibition for quite a while and although it's fairly small scale, I'm pleased to be part of the university's Biennal programme.
It's on til January 2013.

Capstone Gallery Work

I've been invited to exhibit at the Hope University's Capstone Gallery in September. It's part of my recent AA2A placement in the Ceramics Department and allows me to develop some of the work I was exploring in the department earlier this year.

I've been making new work, using the lace technique and some work with coloured slips. Some pictures of some of the work in progress here.

Sheldrakes Panel Finished

A few pictures of the finished Sheldrakes Restaurant wall panel. It looked fantastic and although it took most of the day to put up, it was worth the great comments from the customers who were walking in and out of the foyer where we were installing it.

The restaurant has amazing views across the estuary so well worth a visit.

A massive job but hope it leads to more work like this.

Southport Ceramics Studio

Since leaving Southport College after they closed the ceramics department down, me and Don Parkinson, who ran the department, have been planning on opening our own independant pottery workshop. We manged to buy some of the equipment from the college, rent an industrial unit and we have now been open for a few weeks now.

Many of our ex students from the college have been coming in to use the space and it's been going really well.

We are planning to open officially in the summer and advertise courses for the public.

It's had such a great response from our students who are working in there and we have lots of plans to keep improving and developing the space so watch this space!

More panels..

Some of the finished panel surfaces - coloured with paint, enamels, sanded back and waxed.

Sheldrake Restaurant Panel

Hello, it's been a while since I last posted on here as I've been working on a large scale commission with a friend of mine, glass and ceramics artist Leandra Holder. I was waiting for the client's approval of the work we had done so far which we got a couple of days ago when the interior designers and restaurant owner came over to the workshop in Southport to have a look at the panel.

The restaurant is on the Wirral and overlooks the Dee Estuary, it has amazing views and is currently undergoing a £750,000 refit. Our panel will be the focal point as it will be in the new foyer area.

The panel is a little under 5 metres long and is made from panels of textured clay and dozens of handmade glass pebbles as well as beautiful rope effect ceramic sculptural forms and a specially written poem all by Leandra! She's worked incredibly hard on the panel.

It's based on the restaurant's location and has references to the sea, sand dunes, marshland and rivers. It looks pretty stunning at the moment and still has a little way to go before it's finished. The restaurant refit opens in three weeks time so we have lots to do!

                                                              The original design

                                                Detail of glass pebbles and rope effect

                                                                          The wall..

                                                            Preparing the clay panels

                                                               The map of the panel

More ruff stuff

Finally fired some of the first ruff pieces which I'm playing around with different configurations. I'm probably going to frame them and sell them as wall pieces, I think that'll work best.

The larger, elongated piece will be fired soon and is a copy of an Elizabethan lace collar. I really like the shape and will make some more like this.

New studio and more ruffs

So, finally found a new studio. Lovely and warm and quiet. Great. It now means I can crack on with the lace based work, the Willow Pattern design which is slowly taking shape and getting my new website up.

Hope Placement update and some lovely birds.

It was my first day back at Hope today and over Christmas I've had time to think about what I'm going to make there.

I've been looking at medieval clothing, especially intricate lacework and ruffs. Using the very fine extruded strings of clay, I intend to make intricate 3D forms based on these designs. Think it will be very exciting, very labourious and technically tricky but hopefully worth it.

Over Christmas we went to Wolverhampton Art Gallery and saw these amazing ceramic phoenix style birds from ancient China. They were made as roof ornaments but deserve to be seen up close.