Underwater I experience space with my body. I’ll see a school of fish gathering and moving together and I’ll exclaim, ‘This is architecture’ - Antoine Predock

I love the architectural shape of fish - they are primal, extraordinary, fantastical and either silvery or nightmarish….

Textile as inspiration for texture

‘Besides surface qualities, such as rough and smooth, dull and shiny, hard and soft, it also includes colour, and as the dominating element texture….Like any craft, it may end in producing useful objects, or it may rise to the level of art.’ - Anni Albers talking about textiles but to me this cross over to ceramics and clay.

Images for inspiration are taken from wherever the eye is strongly drawn to, be it colours, Russian folk art, 11th century Spanish tin glaze ceramics, shapes natural or man-made, mythical creatures, Orthodox icons or indeed it could be natural materials like stones or shells - it’s an idea for a starting point…..

Russian traditional folk art always turns around the same familiar themes, easily recognisable heroes and characters. Marked by great vivacity, boldness and zest these themes cross many mediums; wood, textiles, lace, metal work, ceramics…..

The Fire-bird features often in Russian fairy tales and myths:

‘……About halfway through the night he thought he saw a light in the orchard. It grew brighter and brighter, until all the trees were lit up. Then he saw that the light was coming from a Firebird, which was sitting on the apple-tree and pecking at the golden apples.
    So he crept up very quietly to the tree and caught hold of the bird by the tail. But the Firebird spread its wings and flew away, leaving only one tail feather in Prince Ivan's hand…..’

Certainly there are echoes of the “Phoenix” from other world cultures. In the Slavic cultures this bird was always described as a red bird with gold plumage. In Christianity, the Phoenix is often a messenger of the gods (a witness of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of forbidden fruit!) But the firebird has even older roots than Christianity; it was connected with the cult of the sun and the revival of new life.

Beautiful feathers from its tail were sought, and many heroes wanted to catch it as a symbolism of one’s wish to fulfil one’s desires. The Slavic Firebird finishes it’s life in the autumn, and is revived again in the spring to make people happy with it’s singing and beauty. Sometimes Slavs imagine the Firebird not as a flaming peacock but as a falcon, a symbol and epitome of masculinity, strength, valour and courage. A warrior of justice from the skies, an angel.

Khokhloma – the firebird motif

Rural folk painting from ginger bread boards to wooden and ceramic toys, khokhloma motifs recall  lush grassy ornaments in cinnabar in the ancient sacred manuscripts of painted or beaten icon frames representing scenes from Saints’ Lives with their golden curled leaves weaving against the scarlet or black background.

RED
GOLD           
BLACK                                  

These are profound symbolisms for decorating sacred church vessels and the dishes and cups used in monasteries and nunneries as well as icon ornaments, and they stand for:

Red = Beauty
Gold = Spiritual Heavenly Light
Black = Gracious Grief Cleansing the Human Soul

17th and 18th century Khokhloma starts to produce art after devastation of the Mongolian Invasion, thereby the East and West are forever entangled.  

I have experimented with life drawing directly on to the clay with slips and oxides. These are studies for platters decorated with a human figure - there is a lot of energy and movement when you draw directly on to a clay surface.

I am drawn to spoons; Russian wooden ladles, Balinese horn spoons, brightly coloured Khokhloma painted spoons with berries already nestling inside them like an anticipated feast. Curvy, utilitarian - they are ‘feeders’ but I like making them out of ceramics because the material gives a delicacy and suggests ‘impermanence’ - tap too hard and they are broken. They are hard to make, hard to fire and hard to use without a little accident sneaking in…..but oh so so lovely to hold and taste and drink out of.

Leonard Cohen’s free verse poem captures the spirit of the spoon

“Our instructor made a perfectly symmetrical spoon using purple heart wood, with curves like a woman, always one step ahead of us. Choose your wood. Draw. Draw again and again. Your first idea is never your best. Then gouge out the bowl, saw, whittle, rasp, the tools get finer until at last, after weeks of rubbing coarse and fine over every inch of your spoon, into every cranny, polishing, polishing, he nods that you're ready to oil it. When the unit was completed, he put them in the art case in the entrance to the school with a little card next to each one where he'd calligraphied the maker's name. They shone like trophies.

Of the many objects we made in those classes - ceramic wind chimes, soap stone people, wooden shore birds, we even used styrofoam as a medium - the spoon was the only utilitarian one. Some made the bowl long, the handle short. Every year the instructions were the same, but the results varied widely. Allison was a willow wand of a girl reflected in her svelte, curved spoon. Izzy's fanned out at the end of the handle into a polished scallop. Howard's stout utensil had a large bowl on one end, and smaller one on the other. Mine was a ladle in the shape of a quarter note, which I gave to Doug, the only Buddhist I knew. I made him promise - it was a utilitarian object, and I made him promise he would use it. Stir the sauce, dip the syrup. 

I visited Doug years later. I saw the graying spoon next to the icon on top of a dull book case. I wanted to take this neglected thing back home and put it in my kitchen drawer. Doug, I said, Doug, you promised you'd utilize this utilitarian utensil.

I do, he said, plucking it from its dusty entombment. Waving it around in the air, and then motioning as if spilling something out of it, he said, I use it to pour honey on Buddha.”

I love surface decoration on clay be it slip, glaze, stencil, mono print, textured inlay - clay is a ‘surface’, and a very malleable one at that. You can tell a whole story with just a suggestion of an image, or a colour plus there is the advantage of the clay speaking for itself too

Hand building - be it slab, coil or hollowing out method of karinuki, are some of my favourite techniques. Unlike thrown objects they keep each imprint and touch, are slightly uneven, bent, creased, wobbled. They epitomise wabi-sabi - the clay comes through and speaks for itself.

Here are a few projects through their building stages.

2 part mould joined together, this piece is made from flax paper clay which is very light and malleable. The idea was to have as round a shape as possible, hollow on the inside.