Blethering Crafts

Update from the Editor

2012-02-06T21:49:00.000Z

Hi Folks,

Christmas has been and gone and so has New Year...oops! Its a bit late but I do hope everyone had a great time!

I am terribly behind on things over here for a variety of reasons but I just wanted to say that your support, comments and viewing are all very much appreciated. I also wanted to let you know that I am slowing things down a bit at Blethering Crafts as I am busy, busy setting up my own creative adventure and working hard on new work (once I have gone live I will post up a page letting you see my own creative work!), however until then interviews are still going to be posted, but maybe not quite as often as in previous months!

Once I have managed to sort out the life/work balance I intend to post up more regularly. If you know of any crafts people that you think would be great to be interviewed and shared please do get in touch. The e-mail is bletheringcrafts@btinternet.com

Anyway, I look forward to sharing more happy finds and creative lives.

Tash

Kuniko Kanawa

2011-12-05T23:04:00.001Z

Q So who is Kuniko Kanawa ?

Kuniko Kanawa is Japanese, a professionally trained authentic Edo Tsumami Kanzashi artisan as well as a certified Kimono consultant of All Japan Kimono Consultant Association.

My works can be seen at:

http://atelierkanawa.com

http://www.etsy.com/shop/AtelierKanawa

http://www.youtube.com/atelierkanawa

Q Where in the world are you based?

I was born and raised in Japan and currently live in the Unites States.

I work in both countries, but mainly in the United States.

Q When did you decide to become a maker?

I do not remember if there was a particular moment that I decided to become a maker. I would say it just happened like it was my destiny, directed by my ancestors, which I am very honoured to live for rest of my life.

As I was studying Kimono, I became more and more into pursuing our traditional culture and felt the strong need to preserve it by discovering that it is rapidly disappearing due to us becoming too westernized. Our traditional culture is the core of our soul. I just could not let us loose it, for our ancestors and future generations. Somebody must carry.

By the time I realized, I end up obtaining a certification of Kimono consultant and became a professionally trained Edo Tsumami Kanzashi artisan. At the same time, I studied Bingata, and Japanese classical dance. Again, I must have directed to this life by our ancestors.

Q What made you choose the materials that you work with?

Definitely being Japanese made me choose Kimono (silk, cotton, rayon), Chiyogami and traditional natural dye to work on.

For dichroic glass, I fell in love with the finished look after melting it in a kiln. Fused glass is amazingly beautiful. So I thought it will be perfect for Obi-dome (Obi belt holder).

Q What other materials would you like to work in?

If I am to work on any new materials, I would like to work on glass to make Japanese glass beads.

Q Where do you get your inspiration from?

I certainly get inspiration from beautiful Mother Nature. Living with enriched seasons, such as Spring, Tsuyu (transitional rainy season between Spring and Summer), Summer, Autumn, and Winter definitely inspires me.

I also get inspiration from other traditional Japanese cultures and other types of Japanese artisans who strive themselves for “Kami – waza” (神業：an act of Deities), meaning the feat beyond human power.

Q What motivates you?

Respecting how our ancestors strived to carry traditional Japanese handicraft motivates me.

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?

I have a fabulous studio at my new home, surrounded by protected forest by the state.

Q Crafts in the 21^st Century – what does this mean to you?

Crafts in the 21^st Century means, “No roots, no future”

This is the time for Artisans to once again look back the history and respect traditions, to be truly creative. No profound understandings of roots, no authentic art.

Q How do you sell and promote your work?

I mainly sell through my online shop.

I sometimes attend craft shows.

Some resellers such as museums sell my work.

For promotion, I deal with press, YouTube, Facebook, twitter and MySpace and so on.

Q What does your typical working day look like?

Wake up in the morning.

Perform simplified “Misogi” (禊: a purification ceremony (performed with water); ablutions) before visiting Shinto shrine

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%A6%8A

Pray for Shinto shrine, to appreciate nature, our ancestors, and our traditional culture.

Take my Kishu dog (the oldest/ancient breed in Japan) for a walk in woods

Have breakfast.

Take care of some housework

Work in my studio

- check e-mails from my customers or any purchase

- prepare shipments.

- draw new designs.
- make new items or custom orders.

- take pictures of pieces

- post new items in my web shop.

- Edit my shop or official website if necessary

Q What is your working style?

1. Morning person, but can be a night person as well

2. very organized

3. mixture of traditional and contemporary

Q 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...

1. Be always respectful to authenticity and ancestors who carried that art with all of their lives

2. Be modest

3. Be free

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?

Hiroshige Utagawa (Ukiyo-e artist)

Hiroshi Matsuda (Kanazawa Japanese Umbrella artisan)

Q likes and dislikes?

Likes:

1. Living with Nature

2. Visiting world heritage

3. Singing

Dislikes:

1. Noise

2. Smokers who lack the manners

3. Terrible customer service

Q What do you do to relax?

Hiking in Mother Nature

Taking a bath, ideally Hot Spring

Chilling by a Japanese pond at home

Claire Partington

2011-11-15T21:33:00.001Z

Q So who is Claire Partington?

I’m an Artist working in Ceramics

Q Where in the world are you from?

I live and work in North West London, UK. My roots are further north, but I’ve been a Londoner for nearly twenty years. I like the ever changing diversity of London and I have my family here.

Q When did you decide to become an artist/ maker?

I was always making stuff as a child and I left school to study Art, it was pretty much an automatic impulse. I moved to London to do a Fine Art degree at Central Saint Martins, specialising in Sculpture, but I found my year group very serious and disjointed and I couldn’t really gel. I took a year out, and went back into a much more relaxed group, but by then, I was more interested in the practicalities of life and I’d lost interest in making my own Art. Obviously, I was still very interested in Art and Design and, once I left full time Education, I eventually found jobs in Museums and Galleries working in Exhibitions both as a technician and exhibition organiser.

Q What made you choose the materials that you work with?

I always looked forward to Pottery lessons at School, most probably because we had an excellent if somewhat anarchic teacher who had some of his vinyl collection in the studio and let the students choose what music to listen to, so it was a bit of escapism from the norms of school life (I still have the Funkadelic record he gave me). It’s also a very rewarding medium – instant gratification, even though ceramics has a number of processes, the initial modelling stage can be very quick.

I returned to making Art and ceramics in particular, because I had a career change from Art and Exhibition work to Music. In 2003, I got a job at a Mute records archiving their back catalogue and I started attending a Ceramics Workshop in the evenings at Kensington and Chelsea College (which was just a short walk away) and I stayed there for about five years.

I think my return to making, especially in ceramics was prompted by the detachment from the Fine Art world, so not having the pressure of finding some conceptual reason for making Art and returning to auto pilot. Although my work is Fine Art and obviously has a lot of cultural and historical references, it’s primarily produced for my own enjoyment.

Q What other materials would you like to work in?

As a sculptor, I’ve tried all sorts of media. I do add a bit of mixed media to my ceramics here and there and I’m going to continue with that, but at present I’m sticking with clay.

Q Where do you get your inspiration from?

A lot of my work is based on folk and fairy tales, so they are illustrations and I’m inspired by some of the illustrations from books I remember as a child. I started making a few figures based on illustrations by Russian Artist Ivan Bilibin, who had such a beautiful style.

I’m a magpie for decorative styles and I was lucky enough to work at the V&A Museum, which is such an inspirational place and fantastic resource for makers. I also did a Post Graduate Degree in Museum Studies as I’m fascinated by the need for people to collect and classify “stuff” and display their collections. There have been so many “golden ages” of European collectors and I love the European appropriation and misinterpretation of the “Exotic” in period interiors and applied Art and Design.

Q What motivates you?

This comes back to that automatic, spontaneous urge to make things. I always have ideas flying around and it’s a shame not to realise them.

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?

I work from home and a studio. I have young children, so most of my work is done in my kitchen in the evenings and I have a studio space at Kingsgate Workshops in Kilburn that I get to at the weekends.

Q Crafts in the 21^st Century – what does this mean to you?

Well, it’s a totally different beast from my perception of Craft from twenty years ago. I guess as someone outside of a Craft background I have a very stereotypical and withering view, a lot of brown – large wooden jewellery and brown ceramics, all obviously hand made and a bit wonky.

However, a lot of the work I see today is really design led rather than purely materials led and often very slick, maybe it’s a return to the high standards and diversity set by the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 1800’s early 1900’s or maybe there’s just more opportunity for Craft makers to show their work.

I have to say, I don’t consider myself to be a Craft practitioner, rather someone working in Applied Arts, as my background and work is Fine Art, but I think that reflects the change in how craft is considered generally.

Q How do you sell and promote your work?

Initially, I made a conscious decision not to sell via Ceramics fairs and Craft galleries as I didn’t feel my work or myself would sit well in that environment. I’m represented by the James Freeman Gallery in London. I recently had a show there for the whole of June 2011 and they are very active selling at Art fairs like the AAF.

I’ve just been selected to be a member of the CAA, so will have work available from them and I have a website showcasing some of my work and I get a fair amount of interest via that. – www.clairepartington.co.uk

I also want do more curated shows, where the theme, rather than the media or price range is the reason for inclusion and I may show my work in a few group exhibitions in the coming months. See my website for any updates on exhibitions.

Q What is your typical working day like?

As I said before, I have young children, so I generally only work in the evenings, when I can get three or four hours of uninterrupted time. I can carry out research, like museum visits with my kids in tow, but I like to get out to the studio for a full day of work at the weekend.

Q What is your working style?

It’s historically influenced and uses a lot of traditional techniques and materials, but there are a lot of contemporary urban references thrown in due to my environment and personal influences. I’ve been making a lot of large figurative vessels so I would say predominantly historically influenced figurative vessels. I’m currently making a large pair of porcelain figures of Louis XIV and his wife and I’m going overboard on decoration.

Q 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...

Do it yourself

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?

I’m really inspired by amazing skill, and there are hundreds of beautiful unattributed objects in the V&A in all mediums. I’m fairly new to the world of the Ceramic Artist and it’s only in the past few years that I’ve taken an active interest, but I really like the work of Matthew Groves and Sophie Woodrow. They are very different in their styles, but both heavily reference historical and literary themes. Their work is highly finished and excellently executed and, as with my work, their work has an appearance of age.

Q What music do you listen to?

It’s so diverse, it’s hard to say one thing. The only thing that curbs my listening choice at the moment is my six year old son – we can’t play anything too obscene, and he objects to random noise.

Music has always been a passion, from school, through college, I always had Saturday jobs at independent music stores. My first Full time job was at the British Library National Sound Archive and then, much later, I got to work at Mute, which been responsible for some awesome electronic noise.

Q 3 likes and dislikes?

Likes: Monsters, Pitt Rivers Museum, Lego

Dislikes: “Wonky” craft, Rushing, Doughnuts

Q What do you do to relax?

Go to the studio!

Liam Carey - Merlin Glass

2011-11-07T10:36:00.001Z

Liam Carey at Work

Q So who is Liam Carey?

A quiet, introvert, eccentric artisan. Non competitive, always liked taking things to pieces to see how it works. Dreamy, passionate and loving!

Q Where in the world are you?

Located at my glassworks in Liskeard, Cornwall, England

Glass Blowing in the Studio

Q When did you decide to become a maker?

At the age of 16, I went to Liskeard Glass and within a week fell in love with the craft and art of glass making. At the age of 21, I took the opportunity to take over the glassworks and renamed it Merlin Glass.

Love Handles

Q What made you choose the materials that you work with?

Glass is a fascinating material and difficult to learn, which I was attracted to.

Q What other materials would you like to work in?

I work with other materials namely Metal and Wood; I would like to do more with other metals including Silver.

The Furnace known as The Glory Hole – temperatures can reach up to 1100°C

Q Where do you get your inspiration from?

My designs are made from inspiration, form and nature. Living in Cornwall it is surrounded by rugged coastline which has stimulated my thought provoking process.

Scent Bottles with Stoppers

Q What motivates you?

I like design evolution and the evolution of the making process, assessing it, looking at it and improving it, seeing what evolves and what is not obviously there before you get there.

Chequerboard Door Knobs – Frosted and Clear Glass

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?

My glassworks is located behind my house, so a big building in the yard!

The Glassworks

Q Crafts in the 21^st Century – what does this mean to you?

The internet has the opportunity to reach out and connect with people in a way which has never been seen before. This could provide more opportunities to engage the crafts directly with customers.

Pears

Q How do you sell and promote your work?

When I started off the glassworks was open to the public where visitors would come and watch me make and have the opportunity to buy from my shop. When I started making the glass door knobs I closed the public access to the glassworks.

Now I sell my work through our shop, internet www.merlinglass.co.uk, architectural ironmongers, exhibitions and marketing. I have advertised through many different sources and more recently we have become involved in social media and often get asked for editorials. Word of mouth and reputation also has lead to a lot of sales and interest in my work including commissions.

Individually handmade Edwardian style solid glass cupboard knobs.

Q What is your typical working day look like?

If the furnace is on my whole lifestyle revolves around the furnace. I like to make at night, I find it quiet, trancelike and enjoy the flow.

Apple Green

Q What is your working style?

I like to listen to music and then my work time kind of flows. I plan what I am going make and work through, after making so many I have a break and then get back to it.

Millefiore – Decorated with Glass Beads From Murano in Italy

Q 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...

Believe in yourself, open your eyes and mind to imagine what is not there, don’t be afraid to experiment.

Glass Donut Pendants for Jewellery Making

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?

Picasso and Mary Martin a local landscape artist.

Daisy Door Knobs

Q What music do you listen to?

Boards of Canada, Tinariwen, loved listening to John Peel - RIP, Gotan Project, Air, The Fall, Mazzy Star, PJ Harvey, Nirvana, King Tubby, Augustus Pablo, lots and lots more.....

Decorative Glass Flowers

Q likes and dislikes?

Likes - Cycling, the weather, mountains, hand painted old cars.

Dislikes – dog poo in the street, aggressive driving, cheap sausages! Horrid plastic windows in beautiful houses.

Flower Vase – Combining Opaque and Transparent Glass

Q What do you do to relax?

A going to the beach, spending time with Darcie rose, swimming, cycling, walking,

Wave –Blown Glass Vase – 10cm high

Shellie Holden

2011-09-16T10:38:00.001+01:00

Wall Paper - Mounted Paper Textile Approx. 60 x 115 cm

Q So who is Shellie Holden?

I am an artist/maker, wife and mother brought up in Lancashire, trained originally in embroidery at MMU, Manchester then later at Goldsmiths University, London. I lived in London for 11 years before relocating to Wales two years ago, having been drawn to living by the coast.

Behind Clouds - Framed Paper Textile - 41cm x37cm

Q How did you decide to become a maker?

Naturally progressed from a background steeped in creative and practical endeavours. It seemed the most obvious and fulfilling direction for me to take.

Text Book

Q What made you choose the materials that you work with?

Low cost/low key/reclaimed- freedom they gave to be experimental and non-precious with the opportunity to turn them into something unique and valuable because of the labour and investment of time spent in the making.

Extracted Teeth Book and Neckpiece

Q Are there any other materials you would like to explore and work in?

I have recently been producing a series of laser cut paper textiles and this has led to an interest in working with more precious materials such as silver and copper as this would enable me to produce more robust pieces hat could be used for both interior pieces and body adornment.

Bookworm

Q What are you currently working on

Several projects - one of which involves looking after my new-born! I’m catching moments in-between to work on pieces, including the project described above. I am also completing a piece for the ‘First Anniversary: Paper’ exhibition, 5th May- 31st July 2011, at Unit Twelve, Tixall Heath Farm, Tixal, Stafford, ST18 0XX and also for an exhibition at Newport Art Gallery and Museum, Wales, with Fibre Arts Wales, a textile group that I am affiliated, 30th April - 11th June.

Q Where do get your inspiration from?

Difficult to pinpoint exactly - my surroundings, attitude to life, experiences and chance occurrences. Perhaps something someone has said, or something I have seen that triggers a response or reaction.

Q What motivates you on a cold winter’s day?

Being in my home. I collect and acquire pieces of furniture, objects and textiles which I enjoy refurbishing, restyling and reinventing. This is an on-going project, which I see as part of my creative work. I like the idea that objects can evolve and change, but can also be timeless when mixed with traditional and contemporary styles.

Stitched and Constructed Textile Painting - Dimensions 92cm x 92 cm each

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?

I have a studio from home in the loft of our Victorian property. It’s a unique space, which has slanted walls and an original fireplace. I have furnished this with tables and chairs I have acquired over the years, each which has its own story. They just happen to fit perfectly around the edge of the room leaving me a big open space in the middle. I love walking to the top of the staircase and entering the room. It is my sanctuary.

Q What is your working style?

It is very much about collecting and collating, reclaiming and reinventing. I approach my work with an idea, which I then aim to convert into visual objects/pieces through a process of experimentation with materials and techniques.

Q What does a typical day look like?

Varied - Some days/weeks I am able to devote entire periods to the production of new work, which I find deeply gratifying and inspiring. Other times I am distracted by domestic chores, and other projects, which perhaps take me away from the immediate task of making although give me the time and space to process ideas and consider new or different approaches, which are equally valuable to my work as a whole.

Stitched and Constructed Textile Painting 2 - Dimensions 50cm x 40 cm

Q Crafts in the 21^st Century – what does this mean to you?

Versatility, vitality, diversity - breaking the rules, revisiting traditional materials and techniques, experimenting with new technology. Less about trying to categorise, more about (effortless) originality.

Q How do you sell and promote your work?

I am a member of CAA, London, Fibre Arts Wales and Textile Forum South West (TFSW). I’ll be showing work at the two exhibitions due to open (mentioned above), and am hoping to sell work directly through my website soon.

Q 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...

Perseverance, persistence and passion!

Corsages - hand made in fabric or paper. Approx. 10 cm circumference

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?

Wide and varied including photography, sculpture, painting, textiles, mixed media….. Includes Jeff Wall, Cy Trowbly, Sarah Sze, Jonathan Callen, Louise Hopkins, Joseph Cornels….My husband recently brought me an exhibition catalogue featuring photographs by Robert Polidori which I am currently looking at.

Q What music are you listening to at the moment?

Wintermusik by Nils Frahm, The Blue Notebooks by Max Richter, Music for Egon Schiele, by Rachel’s, Found Songs by Olafur Arnalds……

Q What do you do to relax?

Fresh sea air (and a swim in the sea in summer) always helps.

Ordnance survey of England, Kingsbridge and District (third edition) sheet 150, 1908-9 - updated in London 2006 Dimensions and Ordnance survey of England, Cornwall and Devonshire 1919 - updated in London 2006 - Framed Stitched Drawing 75cm x 87cm

apologies from the editor

2011-08-22T03:45:00.000+01:00

Dear readers if you are experiencing issues with the images not showing please bear with me. For some unknown reason the images have suddenly disappeared and i am now in the slow process of relocating them and re uploading them - this will take some time to resolve.

My apologies in the meantime and fingers crossed things will return to normal as soon as possible.

Li-Chu Wu

2011-08-09T14:24:00.001+01:00

Q So who is Li-Chu Wu ?

Li-Chu is a Taiwanese jewellery designer maker who based in the UK.

Q Where in the world are you from?

I was born in Taipei, Taiwan.

Untitled (Necklace – Paper and Sterling Silver)

Q When did you decide to become a maker?

I trained in Jewellery Design and Making at Fu Jen Catholic University and graduated in 2006, then completed a Masters in Jewellery, Silversmithing and Related Products at Birmingham City University in 2009. I am now working independently as a jewellery designer-maker in Design Space.

Floral (Necklace – Paper)

Q What made you choose the materials that you work with?

Multiple layered paper interests me with its subtle movement and tactile qualities. I aim to recreate the link between the material and its original source in the natural environment and intend to show the values of material itself.

Untitled (Series of Three Bangles – Paper and Sterling Silver

Q What other materials would you like to work in?

Paper, metal(silver, gold), gemstones

Q Where do you get your inspiration from?

Natural forms, processes and movement inspire her to make a collection of paper jewellery.

Landscape II (Three Brooch Series – Paper and Sterling Silver)

Q What motivates you?

People who love my Jewellery, my families and friends.

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?

Both, I like to work in front of the bench and really enjoy the time while making jewellery. However working with paper needs a tidy place, therefore I always finished the paper part at home before I go into studio for my bench work.

Q Crafts in the 21^st Century – what does this mean to you?

Contemporary, chose what you like, make everything possible.

Pebbles (Nine Brooch Series – Paper and Sterling Silver)

Q How do you sell and promote your work?

I sell my work in exhibition, trade/retail fair, on my website - www.lichuwu.co.uk and Esty.

Q What is your typical working day look like?

Get up at 10am, checking e-mail and work on computer, cooking, go to studio, bench work, go home at 6pm, cooking, stay late for the part of paper work, go to bed at 2pm.

Untitled (Ring – Paper and Sterling Silver)

Q What is your working style?

No rules or principles.

I spend a lot of time on exploring the nature, spend a lot of time on thinking and drawing but work efficiently while sitting in front of my bench.

Untitled (Three Rings – Paper and Sterling Silver)

Q 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...

Be creative, be motivated, and love what you do.

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?

Noriko Ambe

Q What music do you listen to?

Indie music

Blossom II (Brooch – Paper and Sterling Silver)

Q 3 likes and dislikes?

Likes: Kings of Convenience, chocolate, my little pet

Dislikes: spring onion, things that didn’t go well as I expected, shortage of money

Untitled (Necklace – Paper and Sterling Silver)

Q What do you do to relax?

Go inline skating with my iPod

Grassland (Brooch – Paper and Sterling Silver)

Benedicte Bodard

2011-07-18T04:35:00.001+01:00

Q So who is Benedicte Bodard ?

Benedicte Bodard is that French girl who never felt that she was at the right place and went to live in California at the age of 22 where she eventually worked as a wardrobe stylist mostly on commercials. She always liked colours, shapes, prints, patterns…

Q Where in the world are you?

9 years ago, for my husband’s work, we moved from Los Angeles to Barcelona. The economy was booming and there were constructions/remodelling being done all over the place. I started seeing with great dismay hydraulic floor tiles way too often thrown away in the dumpsters. I just could not believe that such beauties would have such a fate.

Q The work you make uses found tiles, what is that attracts you to these tiles?

I believe in recycling just about anything in life. I love leftovers and the idea of turning them into a new dish. I like the idea of passing over some clothing or furniture you do not need/use and I totally believe in the conservation in architecture. Something had to be done, these tiles cannot go away forever ?

Q How do you source the furniture that you transform?

I find the tiles and depending on the quantity, the state, the style they have, turn them into a console, a frame, a bench and so on… Sometimes, people ask me for specific pieces but usually I am the one who comes up with new designs. Just by looking at a tile I usually know what I would like it to be placed on.

Q What are you working on at the moment?

Right now I am working on a table to ship to Malaga, a night stand with drawer and some really amazingly sweet and extremely rare little tiles with a flower print that I will turn into coasters, I am growing impatient…

Q Do you having an arts background?

No not really but always took some Art History classes as I worked, always went to Art galleries, Museums and I love Architecture.

Q Where do you get your inspiration from?

I look at magazines, Art, I look at patterns, contrasts, anything can light a spark but in general I know just by looking at a tile and its composition as a floor.

Q What motivates you?

Nobody does what I do, it is a very physical work, the tiles are heavy, dirty and it is a challenge to turn them into the finish product, really a lot of work that I am willing to do just for the love of the tiles. They are way too pretty to be thrown away and I might as well turn them into some useful objects so that people want to have them in their homes. They are part of Barcelona’s heritage and can be up to 150 years old.

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?

I have a studio where I keep the tiles and work, it happens to be downstairs from where I live therefore my home is like a showroom. The “dirty” work is done in the studio, the “assembling” work is done in my home.

Q Crafts in the 21^st Century – what does this mean to you?

A woman/man aged 20 to 75 working at night while everyone is asleep because it is what he believes in, what he relaxes with and loving every moment of it (or almost). The antithesis of made in China.

Q How do you sell and promote your work?

Ah that part !!! you mean one is supposed to make a living ! Well like many, this is the part that I have the most difficulties with. I have a web page : www.mesabonita.es and if you like what I do, please feel free to order from it. I ship all over the planet. I also do some markets around town, this allows me to meet local people and make them somewhat aware.

Q What is your typical working day look like?

After I take my daughter to school, it is not rare for me to go and pick up some tiles in some dumpster or go to talk to some workers about upcoming remodelling projects. I clean up the tiles that I need, make some phone calls. Sometime I go and visit the person who makes the frames, the aluminium guy… My customers, I often see at night or during the week ends, lots of them like to come as a couple to decide on a style of tile. At night, I work on the internet.

Q What music do you listen to?

My taste in music is fairly eclectic, depends on my mood : Brazilian, African, Classical, French classics, Latin, Opera… When I need to concentrate on some idea, I need the silence though.

Q 3 likes and dislikes?

The Likes: Having friends over, travelling and visiting new places, a day at the beach doing nothing but looking at the sea.

The dislikes : Pretence, greed, tripe!

Q What do you do to relax?

Look at the sea, play with my daughter, cook for my friends, listen to music, walk, look at Architecture…

Jilly Edwards

2011-06-29T09:58:00.001+01:00

A Journey of a Lifetime 2000. Photo: Wayne Baillie

Q So who is Jilly Edwards?

I was born in Essex, but almost immediately moved to live in Newport, Monmouthshire. Another move to Bristol at 6 years of age, where I went to school and art school, the West of England College of Art. I loved drawing and painting but opted for the textile course, and was fortunate to have a painter for my weaving tutor, Anne Barron, who understood my desire to develop as a fine art weaver rather than a cloth weaver.

After Bristol I moved to Bath, Somerset and after several jobs to ‘earn a living’ I started teaching at Sydney Place, the foundation and adult education department of Corsham School of Art and Newton Park College (now both Bath Spa University).

Another move to Yorkshire in 1978 brought me nearer to Edinburgh College of Art and the renowned Tapestry Department, and after a visit to talk with the tutors Fiona Mathison and Maureen Hodge I opted to do a year long course in the Tapestry Department. This was the most life enforcing time, confirming that this was the area I wanted to be in. The department challenged and encouraged you to find what it was you wanted to do and how to do it with a strong underpinning with drawing and research, something that never leaves you.

From 1981 I have worked in my own studio, where ever that has been, sometimes in a room my home or a studio with other artists, or recently in a castle! But now in my own studio, an eco build with a sedum roof and wall pockets of herbs, tomatoes and alpine strawberries.

Barley, 1973. Photo: Jilly Edwards

Q Where in the world are you based?

I now live in the heart of Exeter, surrounded by Georgian and Victorian townhouses. The home and studio are in what was the office/garden of a disused print workshop.

It is an eco house and studio, built of light weight blocks and painted timber cladding, the studio has a sedum roof, the main house has solar and pv panels to provide hot water for the under floor heating and water, insulation and double glazed doors and windows also provide reduced bills and we have a wood burner for the very cold days!

Matthew’s Summer Garden, 1980. Photo: Wayne Baillie

Q When did you decide to become a maker?

Having left WECA in 1969 I took an assortment of jobs to ‘earn a living’, but making my own work in every spare moment. I was offered a studio space in Bath in exchange for helping in an Architects practice. A great way to learn about building!

This really encouraged me to strive for what I wanted to do, and not just a ‘job’. Not an easy life, but fulfilling.

Sense of Summer 2000. Photo: Wayne Baillie

Q What made you choose the materials that you work with?

I believe it’s to do with the ‘hand’ and the ‘feel’, when you have got to the point of the research and drawing that you can say, ‘this is what I want to work on’ you begin to know what materials are right for the interpretation.

The natural fibres, like wool, linen, cotton, etc. are really ‘delicious’ to work with, they answer all questions when in the hand making it so easy to create what you want, I would never say I won’t work with a particular material, but it has to be ‘right’!

A Splash of Blue – Detail, 1993. Photo: Wayne Baillie

Q What other materials would you like to work in?

I have been experimenting with a Japanese nylon filament, that has a memory! So when you take it off the loom you can shape it and it holds its own shape, its not easy to work on, rather hard on your fingers, but the results are exciting. I have also been learning to film and edit, so interpreting my ideas and thoughts into layered short films. I am returning to ideas about having tapestries ‘Off the Wall’, ideas that I tried at Bristol, more sculptural shapes.

Shadows and shapes, 2010 Photo: Mei Lim

Q Where do you get your inspiration from?

There is an underlying inspiration from the landscape, but more about the colours and shapes than a traditional interpretation of landscapes. I have been inspired by my itinerant life, journeying and travel and how I record these stories as I travel; recently it has been about more local journeys and life around me. Exeter is well placed, with the sea 20 minutes in one direction and Dartmoor or Exmoor 20 minutes in other directions and both are accessible with public transport.

A Splash Of Blue, Full Work - 1993. Photo: Wayne Baillie

Q What motivates you?

To be happy

Ma, 2001. Photo: Wayne Baillie

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?

Studio and Home are three strides apart, but I go to work in the studio every day.

Textures of Memory. 2005. Photo: David Westwood

Q Crafts in the 21st Century – what does this mean to you?

This is a challenge, but not insurmountable, it’s a question of seeing what is relevant. What Crafts offer is the opportunity for people to see and buy work that is individual and perhaps one off. If finances are tight then people are going to be selective about what they choose to buy, but this looks like being of an advantage to us that ‘make’, so people want something that is special and they can treasure.

The Arts Council ‘Own Art’ should be promoted and made simpler to enable patrons to purchase from the artists on the interest free purchase scheme, where you pay over the year in equal amounts on Direct Debit, up to £2000.

Traveller's Samples #7, 2009 Photo: Mei Lim

Q How do you sell and promote your work?

I have a website – www.jillyedwards.co.uk , but primarily it’s through exhibitions. I have exhibited in Europe, USA, Australia and Japan and with many exhibitions in groups and solo in the UK.

Through these exhibitions and Open Studios I have established a wide list of people that like to be kept informed and who have bought small pieces and then come back and commissioned work, both private and commercial/public clients. People love to meet the artist and see where and how you work, so I have found that Open Studios lead to many different opportunities.

Traveller's Samples, 2009 Photo: Mei Lim

Q What is your typical working day look like?

Into the kitchen for breakfast and then into the studio by 09.00. I do the paper work/emails/ letters and banking first so it’s out of the way! Then the days are divided between drawing, painting, photography, filming and working at the warp face! So no day is the same, unless you have to finish a piece of work. It’s a real privilege to work for yourself, but you quickly learn that you have to be disciplined.

Bundu Stones 1998. Photo: Wayne Baillie

Q What is your working style?

I don’t know that I have a working style? I love looking and seeing other artists, but mainly in other mediums.

Ma – Detail, 2001. Photo: Wayne Baillie

Q 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...

Go for it!

Follow the Path of the Heart 2005. Photo: David Westwood

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?

I love a variety of other artist/makers. But from many areas, but my favourite painters are Agnes Martin and Howard Hodgkin, Sculptors, Anne Truitt and Richard Deacon, Ceramicists Edmund de Waal, Laurel Keeley, Gillian Lowndes and Lucie Rie.

In my own medium, I love Susan Mowatt for the sheer quality of content through to the finished item and Naomi Kobayashi.

Q What music do you listen to?

My music listening is very eclectic, depending on my mood. I can listen to Bach Cello Concertos, played by YoYo Ma to the Wildbeasts. I can listen to anything played on a cello and I became enthralled by Japanese Flute music

Work in Progress, Around the Red Hills, 2011 Photo: Mei Lim

Q 3 likes and dislikes?

Likes: Sea, Space and Chocolait

Dislikes: Cold, Caves and Politics!

Around the Red Hills, 2011 Photo: Mei Lim

Q What do you do to relax?

Being with my family and friends. Going to see our son in Manchester and seeing his life and friends is a real joy and means I can go back to my work knowing that he is very capable, and creating his own art, he is a graphic designer. www.dr.me.com

Going off to the seaside or up onto Dartmoor to make a sandcastle or climb to the top of a Tor it blows away any cobwebs and puts everything into perspective.

Taking a homemade picnic and a flask of hot peppermint tea, to just enjoy the simple things of life.

Jilly Edwards working on Around the Red Hills, 2011 Photo: Mei Lim

Editors Note:

Check out the What's On section to find out details of Jilly’s current Solo Show at the Ruthin Craft Centre in Wales, UK.

Martin Janecky

2011-06-13T10:32:00.001+01:00

Q. So who is Martin Janecky?

He is 31 years old glassblower/sculptor/teacher who lives in Prague, Czech Republic, working and part living in Fairbanks, Alaska, traveling and teaching all over the world :) Loving his craft.

Q. Where in the world are you from?

I’m from Czech Republic, growing up in different part’s of Czech, while we were moving from place to place with parents for they job’s in Different Glass Factories.

Q. When did you decide to become a maker?

I don’t think I ever decided to become a maker, I just did it. Working in Glass and making things became my life at an early age, and my unwavering desire to master the material kept me engaged in the process until it was my way of life.

Q. What made you choose the materials that you work with?

I start blowing glass in my father’s factory, I was 13 years old,. I was never pushed into to glass, but it was always around me. When I was 13, I spent every day in his factory. As a kid, I was most interested in hanging out there because it was like to be an member of big family. I never questioned why glass, once i start, i never stopped.

Q. What other materials would you like to work in?

I must say i never have worked seriously with any other material other that glass but I last 3 years i start to paint just for fun and relaxation also photography; it allows me to capture small moments around me that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Q. Where do you get your inspiration from?

As you can see in my work, I loved the circus and circus theme. It continually inspires me. I enjoy trying to capture the movement and expression in glass; a material that is constantly moving, and can imitate a living thing. Conversely, if there is a form that I am uninspired by, I lose interest in the material and it becomes very difficult to work on.

Q. Can you tell us a bit about your working process?

I use a technique of glass sculpting that was developed maybe 15 - 20 years ago that combines traditional glass working techniques with contemporary tools and methods that allow me to sculpt the inside of the bubble as well as the outside. After I'm done with a rough shape of the piece i open one side of the bubble and using torches to preheat parts of the piece i start going inside the bubble and sculpt what ever I'm working on. I work from the inside as as well as on the outside. pushing and pulling the material where ever i want it to go.

Q. What motivates you?

Just being able to do what i do better. Every time i work on some series i find new things, little techniques, Little tricks, that i trying to apply to the next thing i do and pushing the idea to reality.

Q. Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?

I currently make work out of a studio in Fairbanks AK, and while gaff or teaching workshops at various schools such as Penland School of Craft, Corning Museum of Glass and Pilchuck Glass School. During the time that I am not working I spend time at home in Prague.

Q. How do you sell and promote your work?

I am fortunate enough to be represented by Habatat Gallery in Michigan, so within the US, they are responsible for scheduling shows and selling my work.

Q. What does your typical working day look like?

I wake up at 5.30am and get started. I consider this the beginning of my workday because although I am not in the studio yet, I am thinking about the work I will make. Once I get to the studio, it takes about an hour for all the equipment to get hot, during that time I set up the torches and prepare for the day. Once I gather my first bit of glass, I spend the next 4 to 5 hours making parts. I may make the arms and head of a figure, or other smaller adornments that will complete the final sculpture. After lunch, I blow and sculpt the main figure and attach all the components, which usually takes me another 3 to 4 hours. After that I clean up the studio and go get some dinner.

Q. 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...

Follow Your Passion; only make things that you are passionate about, if you compromise your creativity for financial gain, or anything else, the work loses integrity. At that point the work is nothing more than a job; difficult, non expressive, and bland.

Q. Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?

there is so many but I admire the work of Frantisek Tichy (1896 - 1961), a Czech painter and printmaker. From the artists today is sculptor Tony Cragg, painters Petr Nikl, Michal Ozibko, in glass Preston Singletary, Ivan Mares, Martin Blank.

Q. 3 likes and dislikes?

1.Art in general in any form, good friends, life

Dislikes:

Lazy people, long flights and bad drivers.

Q. What do you do to relax?

When I'm at work i work all the time or i travel to teach or visit different schools and glass museums. i try to schedule my year so can spend time at home in Prague, that's where i relax, i hang out with friends, seeing music and theatre and drinking beer at the pub "U Parlamentu” :-)

Linda Wallace

2011-05-30T22:31:00.000+01:00

Linda Wallace

Q So who is Linda Wallace?

First and foremost, I’m an artist.

Before throwing caution to the wind and going to art school in my forties, I was a registered nurse, a business owner in the Canadian High Arctic Islands, a traveller and lived aboard a sailboat for three years. From childhood, I’ve been attracted to cloth and fibre, to stitching, spinning and knitting, to drawing. During my four years at the Alberta College of Art and Design, I explored Japanese natural dye techniques, drawing, painting and sculpture. Then I was introduced to tapestry and life changed.

While my primary medium continues to be hand-woven tapestry, I explore other textile media and work both traditionally and conceptually. In addition to textiles, I also create drawings using fine graphite lines. No matter of what medium I choose to express an idea, the true medium seems to be ‘time’. I am incapable of making work quickly. The methodical building up of a tapestry image, the repetitive acts of hand stitching, the slow emergence of imagery from the layers of fine graphite lines on paper are integral components of ‘who’ I am.

I’m also part of the global tapestry community. A member of the American Tapestry Alliance, I was Co Director for three years and remain on the Board of Directors. This organization, with over 500 international members, gives community to artists often working in isolation. In addition to ATA, I also belong to the British Tapestry Group and interact with tapestry weavers in Australia, the United States and New Zealand.

Beyond the ‘art’ and ‘craft’ worlds, I’m a feminist filled with curiosity and passion, forever researching, learning, questioning, seeking to understand, and using both art and the written word to communicate. I welcome the opportunity to take the role of advocate, to mediate the spaces between the worlds of science and academia and the experiences of individual women. I exhibit and give talks at scientific and philosophic symposia as well as in galleries and textile conferences.

I’m interested and engaged: in my work, in the worlds of art, craft and culture, in working with those promoting a greater understanding and appreciation of ‘contemporary tapestry’, in theoretical writing, in finding threads of concept and trying to follow where they lead. I love to travel, to read, to visit friends whenever I’m not actively working in the studio.

Q Where in the world are you?

Canada. In particular, I live on an acreage, in a rural area on the East side of Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

"...frayed..." 16" x 22" x 2.5" 2010. (photo Tony Bounsall)

Q When did you decide to become a maker?

I’ve been a maker since early childhood. Because I grew up in a family where art and textiles were constant components of daily life, there was never a conscious ‘becoming’. That said, both art and craft were avocations as I pursued careers in health care and business. In my forties – I changed all that and became a full time art student and then artist.

Q What made you choose the materials you work with?

Interesting question! I’ve not really thought this through before this.

There’s a two-fold attraction to luscious yarn: both the visual appeal of colour, texture, light reflectivity and the tactile reward. The ‘feel’ of a yarn is important, the way it ‘looks’ is important. There are conservational factors for some of my work. For the buried/decomposed work, my interest is in the concept and in the reactions of textile and earth.

When I sit in my studio, pull my chair back from the loom – my eye travels across the baskets of yarn on the floor, lingers on the sheen of linen and silk, the richness of the colours. And, I experience a great, simple joy.

For my non-tapestry work: some of the decisions are conceptual (found, domestic linens), some are technical (H pencil and smooth, hot-pressed paper). The rest of the selections are aesthetic and concept driven.

But …. Textiles. Always textiles. They form such cultural touchstones and societal expressions. They project layers of meaning, by a focus on aspects: historical, contemporary, process and material. They are a visual and tactile language. Textiles are deeply imbedded in my sense of self.

"Evolve" 11" x 15" 2009

Q. What other materials would you like to work in?

Metal! I’m always flirting along the edges of the world of metal and have woven with stainless steel. I’d love to find ways of integrating metal and textiles.

Q Where do you get your inspiration from?

The simplistic answer would be ‘everywhere’. I’m intensely visual and see the world in terms of line, form, colour, pattern, and texture. I read: art/craft theory, scientific theory, cultural and feminist discourse, novels. …and they all mix together. I have great online artist friends, with whom I discuss ideas, concepts and thoughts. I listen to women’s voices and remember women with whom I interacted during my years in the health world.

To narrow it down from ‘everything and everywhere’, I would say nature: it’s patterns, cycles and processes, aspects of society/culture/history and the lives of contemporary and historic women. From those components, ideas form into concepts I want to share and building on those ideas, I develop symbolic imagery to express a layered narrative voice.

'Homage to Aubrey" Photo Taken at a Scientific Conference in Alberta, with Aubrey de Grey.

Q What motivates you?

I’m truly driven to create. Even if I knew the finished objects would never be seen, I’d still make work.

But, I do enjoy sharing what I’ve created. Exhibitions, and knowing a deadline is coming up, do increase my progress to completed pieces by imposing focus.

‘Ideas’ are really my biggest motivators. I read, think, discuss, sketch and eventually a concept will gel in my mind, telling me it needs to be expressed. My processes of hand weaving tapestry, hand stitching and drawing are very slow, allowing me ample time to develop new ideas.

Dis/Connect – Drawings and Cartoon for the Tapestry Currently in Progress

"Dis/Connect" Detail. Work in Progress. This tapestry will measure 30" x 48" and is the first large tapestry Linda has woven in a couple of years

Q. Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?

Both. I have a studio space in my home. It’s a separate, dedicated space but is attached to the house I live in.

I’ve always found a place to work – even when I lived on boats (we’ve lived on several). The workspace has an effect on the medium and the size of the pieces I make – but I always create.

When I travel, I take something small to weave or stitch and my small sketchpad goes with me everywhere.

Linda in Her Studio

Q Crafts in the 21^st Century – what does this mean to you?

Can you hear my giant sigh? I alternate between engagement with the patriarchal binary systems of ‘high’ and ‘low’, with the perceived marginalization of ‘craft’ and, within craft, ‘textiles’ and within textiles, ‘hand woven tapestry’ and … ignoring the entire convoluted issue.

When I’m busy in my studio, everything else fades away. When I’m interacting with other tapestry weavers, with other craft artists, when I’m sending out exhibition proposals or attending symposia/conferences, the importance of the issues reasserts itself.

There is reality to the existence of barriers impeding recognition in the fine art world: as an older woman, working in textiles, making work that is slow and hand woven/hand stitched, I sometimes doubt I have the energy to also battle for a place where ‘art’ and ‘craft’ are considered equal. I can rail against pejorative perceptions of the ‘decorative’, the ‘domestic’, the ‘feminine’ or I can use my time and energy to make the best work I can, present it to the world professionally and just keep on going.

"Re/Genesis" 4" x 20". 2008. Private collection.

Q How do you sell and promote your work?

Up to this point I am not represented by a gallery, nor do I have my own website. The former may never happen, the second, I’m working on.

I apply to have my work purchased into public collections and respond to anyone who expresses an interest in my work. Because I exhibit regionally, nationally and internationally, a wide range of collectors see my work. The quality of the exhibition is important to me and I’ve been honoured to have work accepted into the last four American Tapestry Biennial Exhibitions. The catalogues, accompanying these prestigious shows are used to highlight my work within the context of the international tapestry world. My work has been written about in several magazine articles and that increases the recognition as well.

For those interested, and I apologize for the lack of a much needed website, I offer the following links:

http://www.americantapestryalliance.org/AP/ArtistBio/WallaceL.html

http://www.americantapestryalliance.org/Members/Feature/FeatureLWallace/FeatureLWallace1.html

http://www.transhumanism.org/gallery/lw.htm

My email address is: yellowcedar@shaw.ca and I’d love to hear from anyone, if they have questions or want to know more about my work.

Opening Reception: Dialogue: Tapestry and Human/Nature, South Broadway Cultural Center, Albuquerque, NM

Work Shown: "...hanging by a thread...." and "...threadbare...." These pieces are currently on exhibit in the American Tapestry Alliance Biennial 8, at the American Textile History Museum, Lowell, Massachusetts.

Q What does your typical working day look like?

If I’m not traveling, I work pretty much every day. I’m an early riser and the first thing on my schedule is checking emails over morning coffee. As part of a working board, running the American Tapestry Alliance, there are a lot of email discussions and tasks to be done. Once the slate’s clean I go to the studio and begin working. I have pieces at the concept/design stage, several pieces in progress and others waiting to be finished or mounted, and usually have a drawing under way. I spend most mornings in the studio and often return in the afternoon.

My personality doesn’t suit ‘organized and methodical’ so I rarely work on one piece for more than an hour. I’ll reach a point where I feel the need to step back and will move on to another piece, another way of working. Weaving, stitching, drawing. At some point I try to make a daily sketch entry in my journal – those small, impromptu drawings form the base for many more elaborate works.

Periodically, I am back at the computer having conversations, doing research, having ATA discussions. Most days include some time settled into my studio wingchair with a book.

I rarely work in my studio in the evenings but will often take some stitching with me and make productive use of time in front of the television.

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)

Oh, I just can’t answer this. If the designation is ‘favourite’ then it’s impossible.

There are artists who have had a pivotal influence on me: Jane Kidd, Aino Kajaniemi, Sue Lawty, Kay Lawrence, Dorothy Caldwell, to name a few.

I love going to contemporary galleries and there is just so much work, by so many artists, all mingled in my memory. There’s no way I can winnow out particular favourites – they all feed my soul. The world is rich with great artists and I am in awe when I encounter those who soar above the rest of us. Quite often the names fade but the work stays with me.

One of the bird series, on the loom.

Q What music do you listen to?

I have eclectic tastes and the selection process depends on my mood and the kind of work I’m doing. It can range from Gregorian chant to the Janis Joplin to Leonard Cohen. Some genres I dislike and never listen to: opera, country/western, heavy metal.

There are times when I crave a sense of calm and peace and others when I want to be bouncing in my chair, head bopping to the beat, smile on my face. I have music to suit both needs.

Often, I prefer no music at all.

Q 3 likes and dislikes?

Likes: sunshine, solitude, silence (okay, and chocolate)

Dislikes: getting rejected from a juried show, constantly figuring out how to use new technological gizmos, day timers

Q What do you do to relax?

Curl up with a good novel, take my dog (chocolate toy poodle) for a romp, daydream over a good cup of coffee.

"Dance Like There's No Tomorrow" 2008. Private Collection.

Behind the Scenes with Emma Walker of craftscotland

2011-05-05T10:23:00.130+01:00

Emma Walker at Work

Q So who is Emma Walker?

I am Chief Executive of craftscotland, the national organisation for craft in Scotland, and I am also a Board member of the Arts Marketing Association (AMA). I’ve worked in audience development – which essentially means providing lots of opportunities for people of all backgrounds to experience the arts in lots of different ways – since I was 18 and I am immensely passionate about equality in the arts.

I’m from Seaham, County Durham and whilst I had the best childhood I could ever wish for, the arts was not on my radar until I left home to go to university in Leeds. My careers advisor at school told me, after typing a few random things into a computer that, amongst other things one of the careers that was a perfect match for me was a refuse collector. I can’t imagine any of my fellow schoolmates being told they could make CEO of a national arts-based organisation, and one day I’d like to address this.

Its Not a Desk Job! Unloading Shelves at Timespan for Meet Your Maker Event

Q Can you tell us a bit more about craftscotland?

craftscotland is the world’s first audience development agency for craft. The ‘world’s first’ bit might sound a bit like marketing spin, but I think it is hugely important to recognise what a gigantic step forward this is for the promotion of craft in Scotland and wider afield. Scottish Arts Council’s vision to create a new, accessible platform for Scottish craft through the power of audience development should be applauded.

We work with designers/makers, curators, galleries and craft retailers to position Scotland at the forefront of a global craft revolution. We want to build a brighter and richer future for craft by creating new craft fans, inspiring new makers and developing opportunities to show and sell craft.

A Year in the Life of craftscotland - 2009/2010

There is lots of work to be done on re-positioning craft and reclaiming the word for what it really means. When I joined craftscotland two and a half years ago, craft was positioned by the craft sector as an elite, inaccessible art form. Craft exhibitions were marketed to other people within the craft sector, but not to the wider world.

Then there’s the press…. craft was positioned by the press as this twee thing that Granny’s do in front of the television. There’s been a definite shift in how craft is presented as a result of organisations like craftscotland and smaller maker collectives popping up over the past couple of years. Crucially, there’s a much greater sense of everyone working together too which is great for business and also lots of fun.

Reading American Craft Magazine – all part of researching Crafts in a Global World

Our work revolves around the three principles of audience development – research, marketing and engaging with the public – and we use these principles to support and grow the craft sector by working with new and existing craft enthusiasts. We operate on a local, regional, national and international level.

Networking Like a Trooper for Scottish Craft – Pitching to Lewis Wexler at his Gallery

Through our audience development work we run exhibitions and events for both the public and the sector, often working with partner organisations such as National Museums Scotland, Timespan, the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh and the Collins Gallery. Our marketing campaign The C Word was the first national cinema advertising campaign for craft, and the advert has gained worldwide exposure and interest.

Ultimately we want people to buy, see, commission, enjoy or visit craft inspired by and made in Scotland. We have 1500 makers on our directory and more than 250 craft venues such as shops and galleries so there’s plenty of choice.

Opening at craftscotland’s AGM, 2010, Edinburgh City Chambers

Q With the current economic environment in Scotland and wider afield, what future challenges is Crafts Scotland facing?

The challenge is being able to adapt to change and to adapt to it quickly. A couple of weeks ago I went to the All About Audiences conference in Manchester which focused on how the arts should adapt resiliently. The quote from the conference that keeps wrestling its way to the front of my brain is from Charles Darwin (he wasn’t at the conference obviously, but he was cited a few times!). Darwin said: “It is not the strongest of species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one most adaptable to change.”

The challenge for craftscotland is adapting successfully to the inevitable changes that are happening as a result of the terrible economic climate we find ourselves in, questioning the needless changes that are being made by governments and funders and never losing sight of why we are here in the first place.

The craft sector and the public are not here to justify craftscotland’s existence – the day we stop making an impact is the day we shut up shop, so I am constantly scrutinising the changes we are making to ensure that they are wise business decisions, that they are helpful to the people we are here to support, and that they have an element of creativity about them too.

Makers, Jilli Blackwood and Leah Black Hard at Work at Meet Your Maker Event, NMS

I’m confident for our future as we have a great team, we are working with one of the most creative craft sectors in the world and we have an excited audience who wants to discover more of what Scottish craft has to offer.

I am passionate – honestly very passionate – about spending the taxpayer’s money creatively but responsibly, and I know we do this. We are operating on low costs but the return on investment is significant and increases each year. Creative Scotland is hugely supportive of what we do and we are introducing a number of income streams for craftscotland later this year which will bring in money for us to reinvest in the sector and the charity itself.

The createscotland Team at COLLECT 2010

Q Social Networking, new and electronic media are key elements of craftscotland’s public profile, offering audiences a more intimate and friendly interaction with the organisation, how will you take this further?

Well, the new website is much more than a facelift. It’s going to provide new ways for audiences to interact with us and crucially with each other. The craft sector is a tight knit community and we want to offer people the opportunity to respond instantly to things on the new website, and to engage in lots of conversations as a result of an image or a feature that is posted.

We’re watching the monthly web stats with interest at the moment as the number of people who are accessing our website using a handheld device is on the increase month by month. This is great news as we are currently in the process of developing an i-phone application and craft trails for download onto mobiles.

craftscotland at Collect 2010

Last year we developed an e-invitation for our stand at Collect 2010 which included a teaser film of the makers creating the work we would be showing on the stand. We sent it to our international database of contacts who then passed it onto their own friends and contacts. As a result of people forwarding it we received an invite to do a show in Philadelphia. The guys from Philadelphia weren’t able to come to Collect, but by using digital media we were able to engage them in what we do and reap the rewards for other makers.

Picking the Brains of American Makers at the Philadelphia Show Recce

Q What is next for craftscotland?

2011 is a huge year for craftscotland. Later this month we open UNITE, an exhibition in partnership with the host venue, The Collins Gallery. The exhibition showcases the most makers we have ever had in one exhibition – 38 in total – and examines our role of uniting, championing and inspiring the craft sector.

In May we will be presenting 12 makers to the international collectors market at COLLECT, which is an annual Crafts Council event held at the Saatchi Gallery. This is the fourth year we have been involved but this year we are in the main area of the gallery for the first time with a larger stand. We are also taking six makers on craftscotland bursaries, which is a new thing for us. We don’t have funding to do this but it’s such a great opportunity to share our experience and skills with emerging makers. The bursary makers receive training, networking opportunities, tickets to the show and accommodation in London.

Collect 2011 - A Sneak Peak!

August is a big month for us. craftscotland is changing, or perhaps expanding is a more appropriate word…. and from August there’ll be even more ways to get involved and communicate directly with us and the craft community. We are rebranding, redeveloping our website and creating a membership scheme in consultation with makers. All of these things will be launched in August so it’s going to be a busy summer.

One of the most exciting things happening this year is our American launch which is happening in November, and almost three years sooner than I had anticipated. After being invited to participate in the 35th Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, we have just this week confirmed the 25 makers who we will be taking to the show as part of the Guest Country programme. It’s a hugely prestigious show and participation is by invite only so we are honoured the Committee in Philadelphia have invited us to take part – particularly as it is the 10^th anniversary of the Guest Country programme.

Meeting With Donna Davies from SOFA in Philadelphia

We are also launching an American website showcasing Scots in America, and Americans in Scotland whilst we are there and we are currently in talks with American partners to do work in Washington D.C, Chicago and New York.

Christmas feels like a long way off!

Meeting with Etsy in Brooklyn

Q What made you choose arts management as a career?

I didn’t. I wanted to be lots of things while I was growing up, from a teacher to a paranormal abnormal psychologist for NASA but I wasn’t even aware that careers in the arts existed! When my first term at university was coming to an end and I realised I needed to make some cash over the Christmas holidays I applied to the usual places – ASDA, Top Shop, Miss Selfridges – but soon realised it was too late and all the student jobs had gone.

Then someone recommended I should apply to be an usher at the Empire Theatre, Sunderland which I did and after watching Ant and Dec running around on stage with Snow White 87 times over the Christmas break I realised that there was something quite special going on in the auditorium that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I went back to do a placement in the marketing team the following May, where I realised that the je ne sais quoi I couldn’t put my finger on during the pantomime was the audience reaction – each audience reacted to the panto differently and I loved it.

Later that year I got a job at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, where I watched the great Jude Kelly in action. She was Artistic Director at the time and just being around her was hugely inspirational. When we won the Olivier Award for Singin’ In the Rain, she brought everyone into the auditorium with the award and told us that ‘WE won this together.’ She then went on to talk about her experiences on Question Time and I remember sitting there at 18 years old with my mind being completely blown with the different kinds of achievement this woman had had.

So I guess my career in arts management has a little bit to do with watching Ant and Dec 87 times, and a lot to do with an inspirational, powerful woman sitting on the side of a stage telling me that anything is possible.

Stepping Out in Washington DC for Meetings with The Torpedo Factory Craft Studios

Q What does your typical working day look like?

It’s a cliché but there really isn’t a typical day for me, but I can tell you about today which is one of those lovely days I get to spend in the office. I’m having less of those at the moment so whenever I get the chance to stop and not dash about I relish in it.

This morning I had the first viewing of the Collect 2011 film which promotes the twelve Scottish based makers we are taking to the event at the Saatchi Gallery next month. I then had a meeting with the team and our designers who are working on our new branding.

This afternoon I’ve been working on the stakeholder plan for craftscotland and liaising with a potential funder for a project we are doing in America. Then there are emails and phone calls to deal with. The phone calls I make and receive are the most varied I’ve ever had in any job – I’ve spoken to Newsnight, the Food and Drugs Authority in the USA, a couple of makers and an interdisciplinary scientist already today.

Q Where do you get your inspiration from?

Ooh lots of things. I have a Helen Keller quote which I have carried around with me in my diary since I was 12 which goes: “One cannot consent to creep when one feels the impulse to soar.” Just saying it out loud now makes me feel excited and like anything could happen today. I look at it at least once a day. A family motto is “Shy bairns get nae sweets.” Anyone who knows me will know I am not afraid to ask. One of my Board, Caroline Notman, once said to me “She who asks timidly invites refusal” which struck a chord with me so Caroline’s quote is now sitting next to Helen Keller in my diary.

People inspire me. My team are experts in their own fields and also hugely passionate about their roles. I’m constantly learning from them.

And there are places too. I think about New York at least once a day, probably more, because New York is the place for me where anything is possible. Manchester is the same for me. Edinburgh inspires me – we moved to Edinburgh because we wanted to live here. The jobs came later, and I think that’s the best reason to move anywhere. Scotland on the whole is hugely inspiring though. In fact our Collect stand this year is inspired by a trip to Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute which I took with Joe Pascoe, the CEO of Craft Victoria (Australia).

I also play music to inspire me and I do that thing where I find a new tune and then I play it constantly until my boyfriend is driven round the bend by it. At the moment it’s The Black Oil Brothers from Chicago and a great Scottish based band who are going to be playing at our wedding, The Moonzie Allstars – I’ve been late for work on a couple of occasions after dancing to both of these bands on a morning and forgetting the time, but I find a good dance first thing sets me up for the day more than breakfast news ever could.

And then there is the Wizard of Oz which pretty much encapsulates all of the above. There are people, there’s music, there’s some great quotes… in fact now I think about it, I’m wondering if Dorothy Gales’ family motto was also “Shy bairns get nae sweets.” She told the Wizard what she wanted, didn’t she? Not being afraid to live your life in Technicolor is hugely inspirational.

On the Beach in Shetland after the Rural Craft Forum

Q What motivates you?

Remembering how I felt when I first discovered the arts, and more recently when I discovered craft. The idea of creating the opportunity for others to feel this way when discovering Scottish craft or a particular maker or a particular exhibition is what motivates me to do the job I do.

The Scottish craft sector and the international craft sector at large have an unbelievable pot of yet-to-be-explored potential which is great motivation. Breaking new ground, doing things differently, bringing new people to Scottish craft are all things to get very excited about.

I think about where craftscotland and the makers we represent could be in ten years’ time as much as I think about where we are now, and the seeds we are sowing throughout 2011 are the start of that process. Flicking between the two time zones – the present and the future – in my mind is the kick up the bum I need to make sure we are all on track to succeed with the ambitions of the future as much as the ambitions of today.

Then there are the things that motivate my ego too! Being the first CEO of craftscotland – in fact the first member of staff – is something that brings me a great amount of pride. I was 27 when I took the job on and could never have hoped for the first two years to be as successful as they have. I’m certainly not wishing my life away but I do sometimes imagine a day say, in 2060 when I am turning 80 and craftscotland is in its sixties and I can think ‘I played a huge part in that.’

The responsibility of planting the roots of this organisation so that craftscotland is around when I am not, is the ultimate motivation and a source of great pride.

The First craftscotland TV Campaign Promoting Crafts in Scotland

Q Crafts in the 21^st Century – what does this mean to you?

I still have a lot to learn about craft’s history, but from what I do know I think the 21^st century is a really exciting time for craft. In the past it seems to me that craft was understood by most to be one thing and one thing only. For some it was collectible, for others hobbyist. For some it was about conceptual, gallery based craft, and for others it was producing small batches for retail. For some it was about the skills passed down from history, whilst for others it was about digital technologies. For me craft in the 21^st century is all of these things, and everything in the middle, and everything we haven’t even thought of yet.

There’s definitely more opportunity for craftspeople now and therefore more opportunities for the public to engage with it. Heritage craft is too often referred to as if it was thing of the past, and I would love for more organisations to include the more established disciplines. The Heritage Craft Association are brilliant at what they do – for me, if it is being made today it’s contemporary.

Opening the Meet Your Maker at National Museums Scotland

Q 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...
Anything is possible.

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?

For me it’s not about having a favourite artist (or musician, actor, writer and so on)….my enjoyment of the arts comes from the overall experience of the work. I know this sounds like the politicians answer, but I honestly don’t have a favourite maker, or even a favourite type of maker.

However my most treasured piece is my engagement ring, by Marianne Anderson who is based in Glasgow. It’s a gold patterned band with a Mabe pearl and it was commissioned during Collect 2009.

My boyfriend, Mick, gave it to me when we were staying at the Timespan flat in Helmsdale when craftscotland were preparing to open Meet Your Maker exhibition last year. Every time I look at it I’m reminded of a beautiful place and a beautiful time in my life, and the person who I love more than anything in the world.

It makes it more special that I know who designed it, how it was made, where it was made and so on. I didn’t know a thing about craft before I came to craftscotland and certainly wouldn’t have thought about having a craftsperson make the most precious possession I own. There is something very wrong about that, but it is a perfect example of the situation craftscotland is working to resolve by informing and exciting the public about Scottish craft.

We are taking it one step further for our wedding rings. Hannah Louise Lamb and Donna Barry are two jewellers based in Edinburgh. They have just launched a new workshop where engaged couples can spend the day in Hannah and Donna’s workshop and create their own wedding rings under the supervision of the experts. It’s going to be so special to have a wedding ring made by Mick but to an expert finish, and his will be made by me – poor lad!

Q What music do you listen to?
I’m a big reggae fan, but I also love northern soul and folk and I’m a bit of a closet cheesy pop fan too.
The best place to listen to music is Letham Nights, a music event held every six to eight weeks or so at Letham Hall in Fife. It is where I first heard The Moonzie Allstars and The Black Oil Brothers, and it’s where I go to let my hair down.

Q 3 likes and dislikes?
Likes: tortoises, whisky, David Dimbleby

Dislikes: Eric Pickles MP (for irresponsibly and ignorantly referring to audience development as a ‘non-job’), flying (I’m terrified), people who are nasty or unhelpful for the sake of being so.

Q What do you do to relax?

At the moment we’re organising our wedding for this September which is surprisingly relaxing for me at the moment but we’ll see how that changes as we get closer to it! Spending time at my parents with my Grandma and my fiancé is the ultimate haven from work for me and they aren’t shy about telling me to turn the laptop off either. I’m a massive Liverpool fan too although watching Liverpool play can barely be described as relaxing.

Thoryn Ziemba

2011-04-11T08:57:00.001+01:00

Self Portrait – Thoryn Ziemba

Q So who is Thoryn Ziemba?

I am a 33-year-old artist living in Santa Fe, New Mexico; who works primarily in glass. I recently moved to the high desert from Tennessee, where I finished a B.F.A. in glass at The Appalachian Center for Craft. Upon graduation I received a Windgate Fellowship.

Vacant 1

Q When did you decide to become a maker?

I can’t remember ever making a conscious decision. Though I can remember my mother turning off the television and telling my siblings and I to, ”do something creative”. Being a “maker” has always been a part of the way I think of and identify myself.

Anima (vacant)

Q What made you choose the materials that you work with?

One of my best friends, Joseph Hobbs, helped to start a non-profit art center in Pensacola, FL and was in charge of the glass shop. Because hot glass is usually a team sport he asked if I would be interested in helping him and learning to work with hot glass. I was very interested. I started the next day and was really caught by glass’s natural abilities as a sculptural material. After touching hot glass, the rest of the world had the volume turned down a little bit.

Parallax View

Q What other materials would you like to work in?

I can’t think of a material that I wouldn’t like to learn or use. Though I think you might see me venture into bronze casting in the future.

Q Where do you get your inspiration from?

Mostly I am influenced and inspired by the human condition, but I owe a ton of credit to authors like Phillip K. Dick, Neal Stevenson, and Jack Kerouac for helping me to think outside of my box. I would be leaving a significant part out if I did not mention music. Music has always played a tremendous roll in my life.

The Ghost Recants

Q What motivates you?

The work is first; it is where I get my batteries and what recharges them.

People like Curtiss Brock, He is an amazing artist, professor, dog trainer, mentor, and hard labourer. He is the kind of person that wakes up at 5am and goes to bed at 12:30am. He is an inspiration and an example of what an artist should be.

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?

Both. I have a few different spaces in my home that I work in: drawing, painting, and making maquettes. Although the majority of my work is done in the studio; making blanks in the hot shop and cutting them up in the cold shop.

Tiger Blues

Q Crafts in the 21^st Century – what does this mean to you?

To me craft is fundamental, but I find that labels like art and craft are not very useful to me. They seem to be parts for building boxes.

Q How do you sell and promote your work?

Mostly it is all self-promotion through my website and blog (thorynziemba.com and thorynisaround.blogspot.com). I also have a circle of collectors and patrons that have become good friends. I am currently in discussion with a few galleries, but I love working with Glassworks in Louisville, KY.

Another Modern

Q What does your typical working day look like?

Part of thing I love most about being a working artist, is that there is no such thing as a typical day. As an example; yesterday, I worked for a few hours in the morning building equipment, then worked in the hot shop making pieces for a project, took a lunch break at my favorite taco stand, and then finished my day doing a demo at an opening. Everyday is a new challenge, and for me that is ideal.

Q What is your working style?

When making my own work it is very trance like and thusly kind of hard for me to describe. I spend a lot of time drawing but don’t bring drawings or models into the studio with me. It draws rolled eyes from academic art circles but the truth is I work very intuitively.

Armor(ed) Orison

Q 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...

Perspective is reality.

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?

Livio Seguso, Swoon, Ray Caesar, Silvia Ji, Elizabeth Turk, Paul Marioni, Caravaggio, Cai Guo-Qiang, Richard Tuttle, Richard Serra, Richard Deacon, Jun Kaneko, The London Police, Paul Desomma, Marsha Blaker and a whole lot more.

Perspective Deviation – Drawing

Q What music do you listen to?

I think the list might be shorter if I named music I do not listen to. I carry a ticket from the first Bob Dylan concert I went to in my wallet. Right now my most listened to artists are: Charles Mingus, Spoon, Jason Isbell, Theolonius Monk, Count Basie, Lykke Li, Grizzly Bear, Beck, Mos Def, Bon Iver, David Bowie, The Flaming Lips, Flying Lotus, The Knife, The Rolling Stones... You get the idea.

Female Form Study – Drawing

Q 3 likes and dislikes?

Likes: travelling, art that changes my worldview, and the love of my friends and family.

Dislikes: the idea that there is one truth or one way, delays (I am slightly impatient), and

modern society’s lack of value in culture.

Q What do you do to relax?

My main day wind down is standard family time stuff. My wife and I cook dinner together and discuss our day. On the extraordinary, I love to hang with my friends and cut loose. I call it, “pushing the reset button”.

Split Your Cloud

Joan Baxter

2011-03-21T10:45:00.001Z

Joan Baxter Weaving

So who is Joan Baxter?

I was born in Edinburgh and went to Edinburgh College of Art in 1972. I discovered tapestry weaving there and gained my Diploma and Post Diploma qualifications in tapestry. Having seen tapestries from Eastern Europe that were completely different from what was being made in Scotland, I decided to try to do some further post-graduate study there. I got a scholarship from the British Council to study at Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts for two years...it was a fantastic opportunity to see a completely different world - Poland was still an unknown place to the 'west', still firmly behind the Iron Curtain when I was there in the late '70s. Returning to the UK, still feeling ill-equipped to survive as a maker, I was very fortunate to get a job as a weaver at West Dean Tapestry Studio, where they were weaving a series of large tapestries from drawings by Henry Moore. While I was there I also made work by Hodgkin and Piper. In 1984 I was invited to work for a year at the much larger and more commercial Victorian Tapestry Studio in Melbourne, Australia. I view the eight years I spent as a studio weaver as an indispensable part of my training. I not only honed my technical and interpretive skills but learned all aspects of working to commission, dyeing and good studio and professional practice. Most importantly it gave me confidence in my own abilities. The only problem was I wasn't doing much of my own work. In 1987 I was offered a rent free studio in rural Nottinghamshire by a charitable foundation and since this co-coincided with a commission to weave a very large tapestry for tapestry designer Marta Rogoyska, it seemed a suitable time to set up as an independent maker. Over the next few years I worked incredibly hard establishing myself as a designer, weaver, teacher and bespoke dyer. In a modest way I was successful, selling most of what I made, gaining some prestigious commissions and at one time in the mid 90s employing 4 weavers. I exhibited work widely both in the UK, in Denmark and in North America and was active in promoting and teaching tapestry wherever I could. In 2000 I inherited a tiny house and 7 acres of land in the far north of Scotland. I had been longing to return home to Scotland for many years so was very happy to move back to the landscapes that have inspired my work throughout my career. I have continued to weave tapestries to commission and for sale as well as teaching master classes and short courses, writing and giving occasional lectures.

Midwinter Naver

Where in the world are you?

I live near the village of Brora in the far north of Scotland....its about an hours drive north of Inverness, half way to John'o Groats and the Orkney ferry. My home and studio lie on the edge of the crofting township of Doll, just where the farmland turns to woodland then the heather-clad hills and secret upland lochs of the interior. Mine is the last house before the old droving ford over the River Brora, about one and a half miles inland from the main A9 and the sea.

When did you decide to become a maker?

My dad was a very talented landscape painter so I was exposed to the visual arts from birth and drew all the time as a child. I was also exposed to textiles early, my grandmother was a tailoress and I loved playing with the fabrics, threads and buttons of her trade. As a teenager I made all my own clothes from remodelled jumble sale finds chosen for their interesting fabrics. I went to art school not really knowing what I wanted to specialise in, except I knew I didn't want to be a painter. During my first year I was introduced to tapestry and I knew immediately that this was going to be my medium and my destiny and I have never deviated from this decision. Tapestry combined the best bits of painting...narrative, colour and scale with the tactile, experimental and seductive nature of the materials. It also had the added allure of rarity and subversion.....the tapestry department at Edinburgh College of Art was the only place in the UK you could study tapestry as a subject in its own right and at the time - the mid 70s - it was very cutting edge and very cool. We felt we were part of the bough wave of something very exciting.

Migdale Kilt

What made you choose the materials that you work with?

For those who don't know what tapestry is, it is a very ancient weaving process, to this day carried out entirely by hand with the processes and tools largely unchanged for millennia. We can see beautiful ancient tapestries made in Coptic Egypt and pre-Columbian South America in museum collections, and we have many large scale tapestries made in Europe from the middle ages onwards in collections like the Burrell in Glasgow and the V and A as well as in stately homes around the country. A tapestry is basically a woven picture, a decorative wall hanging, constructed entirely by hand, with no function other than to adorn ( and in the past draught proof) and to show status and wealth. In Europe since the middle ages wool has been the material of choice for making tapestries for both warp and weft. It is readily available, very durable, takes dyes better than most other fibres and holds its colour well over long periods. It is firm enough to create a strong surface yet soft and pliable enough to be easily worked. It is the most stable fibre in a damp European climate and probably still the most suitable for tapestry. Until recently I used wool exclusively in my work - maybe with a very small amount of silk, linen and cotton...but I always used a cotton warp as I couldn't find wool warp at the thickness I wanted. Many of the high quality materials once commonly available before the industrial revolution and the advent of man-made fibres are now rare or unobtainable - really good quality woollen warp and high quality, high lustre, tightly spun worsted woollen weft are difficult to source. If you want yarns that are of anything like the quality of those used in historic tapestries, they have to be specially commissioned from the 'last spinner who still has the old fashioned machinery and still knows how to use it' or imported at vast expense from Scandinavia where they understand the need for high quality materials. Fortunately I have recently found a good wool warp and it has changed the way I work. Given that it is so hard to get the quality of wool weft that I want, I have embarked on a period of experimentation with materials new to me...hemp, linen, cotton rags, twigs, cut up digital photos...after 20 years of a very traditional approach to materials. Its liberating and exciting but nothing so far approaches the beauty and durability of wool.

Sheneval

What other materials would you like to work in?

Tapestry is such a labour intensive medium that I feel I don't want to make time to work in other media. Also because I am skilled in my own medium, I find it frustrating to work in areas where my ambitions outstrip my technical abilities. Having said that, I'm starting to want to collaborate with artists in other media on specific projects - marrying my strengths and knowledge with other skilled people, so this might be the answer to broadening the scope of my work.. I'm in the middle of a project with a choreographer, projecting dance videos onto textured woven panels. I'm drawn to video as an addition to my textile work but although I have recently bought a video camera, I find my computer is too old to support the editing - so I will have to wait until I can afford to upgrade before I can start to work seriously with it.

Where do you get your inspiration from?

My primary source is landscape and the stories, myths and histories that spring from landscape. The landscapes of the far north have a particular minimal beauty and are strongly atmospheric. The inspiration spark can come form anywhere - rarely simply from a pretty view, much more often something complex and nebulous, more of an emotion or a feeling than a visual idea. If I am making a piece about a particular place, then it could be about the archaeological layers present in the place ( see Sheneval). Sometimes I try to capture a moment in a landscape (October Clothscape), the quality of the light, the textures of the land. In other pieces I am inspired by more general themes to do with belonging to a landscape (Migdale Kilt) or the ghosts of people who once lived in landscapes that are now empty of them (Hallaig, Midwinter Naver). Most recently I have been inspired by the past two exceptional winters - the sheer, stunning beauty, the quality of the light, purity of the colours and the otherworldliness of it all as well as the reminder of how vulnerable we are (Winter Skyline).

Winter Skyline

What motivates you?

This is a hard one to answer. I have persisted to weave what I need to weave for almost a quarter of a century, with little hope of recognition beyond my own small tapestry pond and with very little financial reward. I have designed my life in order that I can continue to weave more or less full time. I live from my work but its not what most people would call a living. Before I moved north, I was certainly a workaholic, spending up to 60 hours a week working with no outside interests except my visits to Sutherland for inspiration. Now I live a more rounded life and weave for fewer hours but I can't imagine ever not weaving - its what defines me, I see my life through it and my life is dedicated to it because that is where my talent and fulfilment lies.

Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?

I work from a studio I built onto my house about eight years ago. It is 7m x 5m, with a tall pitched roof to accommodate my largest loom. It faces south and looks out onto a sweep of grass, a small loch fringed by birch and willow with pine-clad rising ground beyond. The studio, as well as having passive solar heating from large south facing windows, has a third of its north facing roof glazed so the light is fantastic and I rarely need to use artificial light during daylight hours. You can see a 360 view of my studio with some audio clips at: www.vasutrail.com and click through to studios then Joan Baxter.

House and Studio

Crafts in the 21^st Century – what does this mean to you?

I think there are encouraging stirrings of a re-awakening of interest in quality, skills and experience (over youth and novelty and those who can draw the most attention to themselves). Collectors of craft are quite rare and critical appreciation of craft beyond an obsession with how things are made is also unusual. The recent exhibition 'The Age of Experience' was exactly the kind of educational exhibition that we need to see more of. It featured work by mature craft makers, most of them approaching or over 60, with a whole lifetime of making behind them. It was a great way of demonstrating that quality materials, great design, technical skill and experience are what makes beautiful and highly collectable craft objects. In the long run I think this is what people crave - something that finds the balance between concept, function and execution. This is all encouraging as I have felt like a lone voice crying in the wilderness about the joy of making and materials and the need for skill and beauty, all the way through post-modernism and the YBA movements that have valued and celebrated other qualities. I'm concerned about the lack of technical knowledge and practical craft skills in those who are teaching the younger generation in schools and universities and the difficulties facing craft makers - usually sole traders with precarious and fluctuating incomes - in being able to take on and train apprentices. These two things combined make it very difficult for anyone setting out on a career in crafts to acquire the whole range of skills needed to practice successfully.

Clothscape

How do you sell and promote your work?

I promote my work mostly through exhibitions and my website. The UK is not a particularly good environment for exhibiting tapestry so I have always needed to exhibit much more widely, in North America and mainland Europe, particularly Scandinavia. I have had three solo exhibitions, two in England and one in Denmark, a number of small group exhibitions with other tapestry weavers in the UK, Japan and Denmark and have been juried into quite a large number of big touring tapestry exhibitions in North America and Europe. It is quite hard to exhibit in mixed exhibitions although I have recently participated in craftscotland's Meet Your Maker and will be part of their UNITE exhibition in the Collins gallery in Glasgow in April/May so that is a hopeful sign. I do not tend to sell much work from exhibitions. My sales come about mostly through personal contact, through my lectures, my teaching, via my website, via local or regional promotions like Open Studios. I could spend loads more time than I do on promotion and still not get any sales, so I decided long ago to just keep on exhibiting, talking, writing and teaching in the hope that the person who doesn't know they want that tapestry yet, will find it. I long to be represented by a gallery or an agent but this will never happen in the UK, I am too old, the wrong gender, too rural and working in the wrong medium to ever be cool enough to earn them their commission. Website: www.joanbaxter.com

What is your typical working day look like?

Working for myself and from home means that work and life have a habit of blending into each other. This is especially true in my situation as my husband and I do a lot of time-consuming self sufficiency stuff on our land as well as both being creative makers. We grow and process our own timber for heating and grow most of our own vegetables and soft fruit. I spend some time every day weaving or designing in the studio which will add up to around 35 hours a week. What I do each day is dependent on factors like the weather, the time of year, what stage in the making process I am at and whether or not I have students or Open Studio days. Except in the depths of winter, I usually get up very early. Sometimes I go straight into the studio and weave for a few hours, sometimes I fire up the laptop and do emails and sometimes I go for a walk or a bike ride. After breakfast and a few domestic chores I go into the studio and weave through until around 5pm. If the weather is good I might take breaks outside during the day...maybe a half hour of weeding in the veggie garden with a cup of coffee or a walk in our woodland with a saw. If I am designing or working out ideas then most of that is done in my head and with the help of my camera on long walks or cycles in the surrounding countryside. I don't usually weave in the evenings unless I have a deadline or I have been out during the day. Often I'll work on the computer for an hour or two and in the long light of summer I'm often out walking or cycling, looking at things.

Atlantis Again

What is your working style?

My own ....I have no idea what that is!

3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker

Just do it!

14 Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?

I'm interested in what other makers are doing but I'm rarely as moved by what they do as I am by music, film and writing. I admire the films of Tarkovsky...his ability with layers is stupendous, likewise the many-layered short stories and poems of George Mackay Brown. If I had to choose a favourite maker it would be ceramicist Lucie Rie. She managed to combine function with art in her work and I admire her modesty. Several painters were influential in my early work - Chagall for his magical narratives, Turner for his abstractions and his atmospheres and Mark Rothko for the stillness he creates with violent colour. My favourite tapestry weaver is still my teacher, Maureen Hodge - dark, passionate and mysterious work that always moves me..

Hallaig

What music do you listen to?

I tend to listen to the same two or three pieces of music for a month or two then move on to something else. The music informs the work to some extent, I can always remember what I was listening to when I was weaving a piece. I can't really generalise about my musical tastes they are pretty eclectic. In the last couple of years my significant music has been Martyn Bennett, Jan Garbarek, Aarvo Paart, Talvin Singh, Nitin Sawney, Thomas Tallis, Brian Eno, Faithless, Joni Mitchell and the Afro Celt Sound System

3 likes and dislikes?

Like cats, chocolate, walking. Dislike ugly modern houses in the landscape, mobile phones and marmite

What do you do to relax?

I spend time exploring my local landscapes in great detail on foot and by bike. I'm very interested in archaeology, especially the remains that surround me in the landscape I live in. I like nothing better that to be walking in my local hills in search of iron age settlements or bronze age burials. I find it all endlessly fascinating and inspiring. I like the practical aspects of it all - seeing how iron age people took advantage of shelter and damper or dryer areas of land in their farming by observing the faint remains of their field boundaries or seeing how pre Clearance communities interacted by finding the remains of their track ways and river crossings between the ruins of their settlements. I like working my land - I especially like clearing scrub and having fires. Otherwise I spend time with friends, read or watch television. I like C4s Unreported World, music and travel programmes, anything sumptuously visual and I'm really enjoying 'The Killing' the Danish detective story currently being serialised on BBC4 on Saturdays ...the most intelligent drama on telly for decades.

Choreography

Caroline Schofield

2011-03-15T10:44:00.001Z

Posthumous Memory – selected for CCOI & GANS exhibition Tread Softly

So who is Caroline Schofield ?

I am a Textile Artist working in Endangered Studios and a member of Filament, a group of Irish Textile Artists who exhibit individually and as a group. This year we are working towards an exhibition in Airfield, a farm in the heart of Dublin. We have been given funding for this project from the Crafts Council of Ireland and DunLaoighaire/Rathdown Arts office.

Layers 800 – Detail, Overlooking Kilkenny Castle

Where in the world are you?

I live in Kilkenny, Ireland. Kilkenny is a centre for Arts & Crafts with many Artists and Crafts people working in the area. It also has the Crafts Council of Ireland Headquarters and Gallery, Butler Gallery and an amazing Arts Office with one of the best Arts Officers in Ireland (in my opinion!).

When did you decide to become a maker?

About age 4!

Layers 800 – Commission Kilkenny Courthouse, String and Fleece

What made you choose the materials that you work with?

I mainly work in Textiles. I love the feel of them and being able to manipulate the fibres. My great grandfather came to Ireland as a master dyer, my grandfather and dad worked and my brother works in the Textile Trade. It’s in my blood.

What other materials would you like to work in?

I’d like to learn how to weld to combine other materials.

Woodstock – Detail of Public Art Hangings made with the Public

Where do you get your inspiration from?

I think ideas come from my own experiences in life but they are backed up with reading and research.

What motivates you?

Chasing down an idea! I love working with an idea and exploring it.

Installation – Unravelled Drawing

Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?

I work in Endangered Studios in Callan. http://endangeredstudios.com These artist studios are based in buildings that are to be re-built/constructed. When I started there, there were no windows or heat but I needed to work outside of home to take myself seriously. The building was to become a health centre but when funding fell through (due to the Irish economy) our studios became a bit more permanent. We now have windows and heat! It’s still very basic but it suits me as I have a large bright space and there is only ideas and work there.

Crafts in the 21^st Century – what does this mean to you?

I would like to see craft and art on the same page. This language is still problematic in Ireland. I also hope it means that sculptural textiles is given as much recognition as sculpture in traditional hard forms.

Side by Side – selected for CCOI Exhibition at the Hunt Museum

Q How do you sell and promote your work?

My work is one off and installation based so exhibiting, and submitting work to curated exhibitions, and looking for opportunities with my Arts Office and Crafts/Arts Council.

Last year I was shortlisted for a large commission piece, Layers 800 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2GmGy0mXTE That came from doing a public art training project with Chrysalis and Kilkenny Arts Office.

My website : www.carolineschofield.ie

Ebb & Flow – Selected for Sculpture in Context - Fleece and Cotton

What is your typical working day look like?

Hectic, with three children I work around them but that means I am always working.

What is your working style?

It can be chaotic when I am chasing an idea but once a piece has to be made it head down until the piece is finished.

Mourning Pots – Hunt Museum

3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...

Believe in yourself,
Know your craft inside out,
Get a good camera.

Reflected Growth – selected for Sculpture in Context - Cotton, Rust and Manipulated Fabric

Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?

Alice Maher

What music do you listen to?

Everything....but I love Opera and Choral Music.

Woodstock – Training for Real, Public Art

3 likes and dislikes?

Likes:

Exhibitions
Lecturers who open my mind!
Curators (good)

Dislikes:

Politics, specifically Irish Government Parties
Lecturers that I need a dictionary to understand!
Curators (who believe they are more important than the work showing)

What do you do to relax?

Eat meals with my family and friends, read, play badminton.

Swimmer – Oil Paint and Pieced

Troy Lacey

2011-02-21T11:43:00.000Z

Troy with her work

Who is Troy Lacey?

I am a dreamer. I feel life has many twists and turns that are unexpected. The one thing I can depend on is my imagination. Being and artist allows me to explore my inner self.

I have studied acting and fine art in college. I have written movie scripts and I produce fiber art.

When did you decide to become a maker?

My parents nurtured my creative side. They searched for a School that would concentrate on enhancing my personal abilities. I attended Highland Hall School in California. The creator of the Waldorf School was Rudolf Steiner. The goal of the Waldorf School is to enable students to choose their individual path through life.

Bubble Purse – Felted and Crocheted

What made you choose the materials that you work with?

I love natural fibers. When I spin wool, I think of the history of the animal. There are farmers that can examine fleeces and know if the ewes were healthy through their cycle of life or recovered from some illness. Being at one with the environment puts life in perspective. I am recycling nature to create my personal story.

What other materials would you like to work with?

I would like to learn more about printing on textiles. I think it would be interesting to add a block print to my felted projects or knitted pieces.

Felted Bowl- Raven Eating Sumac

Where do you get your inspiration?

Post-Impressionism has always inspired me. Vincent Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin and Pierre Seurat began a moving force to change the perception of what painting should be. The Vibrant colors they created and the raw passion in their work has influenced me in so many ways. I also admire Andrew Wyeth’s ability to capture a moment in time with such clarity.

What motivates you?

I think of new ideas when I workout. The constant movement clears my mind and produces clarity in my life.
I can also access a plethora of on line sources, magazines and books to provide inspiration in this field.

I have been living in Nashville Tennessee for many years. I visit farms and enjoy the beauty of the southern landscape. I love selecting wool to spin or felt. I also socialize with fiber enthusiasts once a month at a spinning meeting.

Hand Spun Yarn – Romney Wool

Do you create your work in a studio at your home base?

I am lucky to have a studio at my home. I truly like the solitude and the freedom of closing the door to the outside world so I can concentrate on my work.

My husband Mark Lacey also is an artist and constructs amazing guitars in our basement. He has sold his instruments all over the world. Many books and magazines have featured Mark’s guitars.

Wall Hanger - Crocheted

Crafts in the 21^st century – what does it mean to you?

So many Schools in the states do not emphasize creativity in their curriculum. I have noticed children are fascinated with computers or a simple rock. You give a child a smooth grey stone and he will play with it for hours. The rock is allowing the child to access his imagination.
Many children need a certain magic and calm in their lives so they can enjoy the simple things and not take them for granted.

We as a society should embrace the gifts we are given. The process is the key not the destination.

Lady with Turban - Felted and Needle Felted

How do you sell and promote your work?

Many of my textile pieces have sold at art boutiques. I have attended numerous art shows. Once a year I sell my hand spun yarn and roving at the Middle TN. Fiber Festival represented by Three Creeks Farm.

I am currently selling my work at Laurel Leaf Gallery, the Artisan Market and Ewe And Company. I am a member of the TACA guild. I have joined Ravelry and Etsy on line stores. Spinning Web is the name of my Etsy shop. My main website is www.berggrenfibers.com.

Mohair Scarf - Knitted and Silk Pods

What is your typical working day?

I listen to smooth jazz and drink my java to wake up. I usually work on different projects during the day. I will hand card different types of fiber to make a custom color. I will use the wool I just carded to needle felt a wall composition. Sometimes I will spin the fiber to make a purse. My goal for the year is to finish one major project. For example, I would like to illustrate a book and use textiles and watercolor as my medium.

Mud Dauber – Hand Spun Wool, Crocheted, Felted and Needle Felted

What is your working style?

Contemplating an idea is the first step. I ponder about colors, texture and theme. The process has started and all I need to do is enjoy the ride.

Three words of advice for an aspiring craft artist/maker….

Follow your own path and intuition!
Complete your goals!
Enjoy being in the present!

Stick Bug Vessel - Felted and Needle Felted

Who is/are your favorite artist(s)/maker(s)?

I am always amazed to see my husband carve a guitar from a block of wood. Not only is he an artisan he also is a technician. His guitars sound astounding.

I admire Lacey Guitars, Frida kahlo, Klimt, Hokusai, Lexi Boeger, Lisa klakulak, Chad Alice Hagen, Lynne Vogel, Jacey Boggs.

Two Felted Scarves -Gauze and Silk

What music do you listen to?

Jeff Beck, Pat Metheny, Acoustic Alchemy, Santana, Lee Ritenour, Maxwell, Rippingtons, Stevie Ray Van, Robben Ford, Al Jarreau, George Benson, Earl Klugh.

Three likes and dislikes?

Likes - Kindness, Uniqueness, Self-confidence.

Dislikes - War, Greed, Arrogance.

Two Felted Purses - Silk and Merino Wool

What do you do to relax?

I enjoy a glass of wine or a chocolate stout. I watch a movie or read.

Kate Anderson

2011-02-18T02:58:00.003Z

Kate in Studio

Q So who is Kate Anderson?
I was born in London. After a foundation year at Hammersmith College of Art I completed a three year B.A. course within the School of Painting at Maidstone College of Art and Design, graduating with a 1st Class Honours degree. A few years later, having worked as an Art Instructor at a Grammar School and various other jobs to earn a living, I was awarded a Post-Graduate Commonwealth Fellowship in Sculpture to India which was taken up at the University of Viswa Bharati, West Bengal. My artistic background lies in painting and sculpture, the interest in modern mosaic came much later, and it evolved in some ways from both these disciplines.

Q Where in the world are you?
I now live in rural Dumfries and Galloway in South-West Scotland. I work from my studio near Kirkcudbright, as well as still teaching some courses in painting and mosaic at colleges and centres in Scotland, Cumbria and elsewhere when time allows.

Shadow Play – mosaic with natural wood frame

Q When did you decide to become a maker?
There has never been that conscious decision, and although the techniques that I use are quite distinct in some ways, they are very much part of the wider way I have lived my life. The route ideas and recurring themes are integral to my other activities whether written, painted, or constructed. I have never differentiated between Fine Art and Craft, because for me, personally, that would be negative. I can’t remember a time since early childhood when I haven’t been exploring these elements and combining them in various ways. I am unhappy with categories in general. I think with experience you gain the integrity to draw the boundaries where they need to go.

Surface Traces 2

Q What made you choose the materials that you work with?
I had been teaching painting and drawing courses at colleges in Oxfordshire and was asked if I would also run a mosaic course. In the past I had worked on large 3-Dimensional work which had sometimes used mosaic techniques, so I agreed. The appeal of using materials like vitreous glass, ceramic and smalti began to grow. It took a lot of experimentation to adapt these and other mosaic materials so that they worked in a way that suited my objectives. I have never been interested in the purist approach to Mosaic that is trying to produce something like the Romans or making purely decorative pieces. I needed to adapt a wide variety of base materials to make the kind of mosaic that was distinct as my own.
I use hand-painted ceramic when I want a painterly approach to surface and texture. I also combine the traditional, perhaps stone or gold leaf, with the more unexpected such as resins in some three-dimensional work.

Where Shadows Go – triptych

Q What other materials would you like to work in?
I’ve got a fairly wide base of materials that I use already; it’s more a case of finding further interesting combinations when the need arises.

Q Where do you get your inspiration from?
History, myth, the written word. I am fascinated by the language of symbols and how we use (and abuse) them. Visually, I have always been absorbed with Shadow Art from the earliest cave paintings to Shadow Play, Goethe and the European illustrative influence.
Travel when it occurs is inspiring. Somehow the mind starts spinning to a different rhythm and ideas and memories get recycled in vibrant way.

Where Shadows Go – detail

Q What motivates you?
The need to re-organise my experiences and give them concrete expression. Modern life is highly confusing. So much is trivial and wasteful. Works are small testimonies to what I think and feel, I am a fairly private person who needs to communicate, and I love the selective, fining and perfecting processes that happen gradually on larger undertakings in whatever medium it is I tackle. Imagination is crucial to all my work. Like travelling the processes allow you to move down new paths of discovery.

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?
I work from my studio in the grounds of my house unless I need to work in situ elsewhere.

Studio at The Smithy

Q How do you sell and promote your work?
Some of my smaller work is shown in galleries locally and further afield. The nearest is the Scottish Showcase Gallery in nearby Kirkcudbright. Regionally I am one of the artists who exhibit annually in the Spring Fling Open Studio Event. This is Scotland’s largest and most popular studio visiting scheme, and provides artists and makers with good promotional support. I have shown work in exhibitions in England, Scotland, France, and America amongst other countries, and various websites such as Axis and Craftscotland add to my own in further promoting my work.
Most of my income is from commissions of various kinds. Last year one was from Sulwath Connections here in Galloway. Often they are private individuals. A collaborative mosaic that I made with equine artist Peter Howell sold to an American collector at the Saratoga Arts Festival two years ago, this being an unusual venue for my work. My solo exhibitions are usually theme based and take several years to build up. I am a member of BAMM, (British Association of Modern Mosaic), and I exhibit in some of their shows.

Q What is your working style?
Definitely lateral! I like to approach large pieces of work from a wide angle and slowly move in. Where quite a challenging idea is involved I need to treat it like an excavation, gradually honing in on the most important components. My sketches for mosaic work are all about direction, the way the pieces will ‘move’ visually, and if there are multiple panels how the colour, lines and reflective elements relate to each other. I like the research involved in literary based pieces, but I also work in the semi- abstract which needs intuitive judgement.

Mini Screen 2

Q 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...
To be: TRUE TO YOURSELF!

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?
No one favourite, artists too numerous to mention but including Bruegel, Samuel Palmer, Gaudi, Herge, Mervyn Peake, Anselm Kiefer, Desmond Kinney, Dale Chihuly and the work at the Sharmanka Kinetic Gallery in Glasgow………the anonymous builders of ancient British sites and Early Gothic Architecture.

Q What music do you listen to?
An eclectic mix! Brahms, Ghulam Ali, Spanish Sephardic music, Ry Cooder, Arvo Part, some old Rock, Kurt Weil songs to name but a few.

Q 3 likes and dislikes?
Likes: Cats. Green. Reading.
Dislikes: Celebrity culture, pillar-box red, the expression: At the end of the Day!

Q What do you do to relax?
Cook. Walk.

Saratoga Collaboration with Peter Howell

Related websites:
http://www.andersonsart.co.uk/
http://www.spring-fling.co.uk/
http://www.bamm.org.uk/
http://www.showcasegallery.co.uk/
http://www.axisweb.org/
All Images & work copyright Kate Anderson, the Saratoga image is also jointly copyright of Peter Howell. Photography by Euan Adamson.

Andrea Graham

2011-02-07T02:17:00.001Z

Adaptations (detail image): Wet Felted Finnwool and Silk Fibres.

At the Canadian Guild of Craft in Montreal.

Q So who is Andrea Graham?

I am a full time artist as well as a wife and mother to three boys. I have a home studio which allows me to be available and keep everything running smoothly. I am active in my arts community locally, provincially and nationally, connecting with other artists and promoting fine craft.

Q Where in the world are you?

I am in village in Ontario, Canada with Toronto and Montreal 2.5 hours away in opposite directions.

Adaptations 2

Currently Touring Europe with International Felt Exhibit - "The Climate is Changing"

Q When did you decide to become a maker?

I decided to become a full-time maker 10 years ago. I found the craft of feltmaking shortly before and joining an artists in business group was the catalyst in making it my official “job”.

Q What made you choose the materials that you work with?

I spend my early art years feeling like I was not good enough. There was not a medium that I felt I could truly express myself creatively, one that I could immerse myself in with every sense. The materials restricted me. When I found feltmaking, I was able to experience the material with every sense. The fibres are tactile, malleable, colourful (or not) and smell close to the land. It was completely intoxicating and had me addicted. The versatility of the medium was like an open door to my creative soul.

Liberatio Captivus: Wet Felted Finnwool on Wood.

Currently touring with FiberArt International (USA)

Q What other materials would you like to work in?

There are many breeds of wool to explore, and infinite combinations, all with a story to tell. My friend, mentor and author, Christine White, speaks of “Fibre Dynamics”. Through her I have learned that each wool has it’s own language and, with every experience, I gain a deeper understanding of the medium. I feel little need, at this point, to seek other materials.

Q Where do you get your inspiration from?

The materials are an inspiration to me, architecture, photography, forms in nature, destruction and decay. I try to live each day with my eyes open and inspiration is something I am never short of.

Big Pods: Installation for Andrea’s Solo Exhibition "Adaptations" (8ft tall)

Q What motivates you?

Deadlines! I have commitments to galleries and clients that I must meet to maintain my image as a professional business person. My other work often is set aside until it cannot be contained any longer. I often wonder if this tension and anticipation is part of my necessary process.

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?

Both. My studio is in my home. I have a large space in the basement with all my materials, sinks, a window and large high tables. It is my sacred space. The children know there is no fighting, no sneaking up on me and no nerf guns allowed. They respect this… most of the time.

Andrea with Big Pods – Adaptations Solo Show

Q Crafts in the 21^st Century – what does this mean to you?

Being a mere 10 years in the world of craft, I am just a babe. I am not sure if I can answer this with any educated or historic perspective. This being said, as an Ontario Craft Council board member and active crafts person, I can say I am frequently awed and moved by the work I see in craft right now. There is both technical and design excellence and, on the other side a strong movement in conceptual art expression in craft medium (with less focus on the execution/craft excellence) and the DIY movement. I proudly consider myself a craftsperson and strive to achieve technical excellence, good design as well as concept. I think “craft” is at an interesting time as I our ideas of “function” evolves. By this I mean our changing perception of what we “need”.

Q How do you sell and promote your work?

I sell my functional craft in a couple of galleries and sculptural work at others and I accept commissions. I promote my work through exhibitions, my website (www.andrea-graham.com), and in magazines and books.

Adaptations 3: Collection of Wet Felted Sculptures

Q What is your typical working day look like?

“work” as an artist includes computer work, correspondence, applications, photographing work, reviewing contracts, packing to teach, developing workshops, etc. What “work” I do is determined by my schedule which is often set a year in advance.

Q What is your working style?

When in the studio, I get distracted easily and often take breaks or switch gears. I used to think this was a lack of focus, but now know these are necessary breaks in my creative process. I just know it will take me lots of time to get something done.

Specimens: Wool and Silk on Clay

Q 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...

First and foremost: Commit. Commit to your craft. When people ask, “What do you do?” Tell them without reservation. If you don’t believe it, how will you convince others?
Back it up by becoming the best you can become in your area. Make a “bucket list” of who you would like to learn from and make it happen.
Treat your craft/art as a business. You are a small business owner. Get a tax number and march into the local business development office and ask what support/education they offer for small business owners. Connect with your arts community. Enter shows. Get involved, but not so involved that you have no time to create.

Unearthed: Wet Felted Finnwool

Image by Tracy Olan. On exhibit at the Canadian Guild of Craft in Montreal

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?

There are so many around the world in so many different fields. I love political work and work that possesses terrible beauty such as in the photography of Lana Slezic. I also love land art which is practically synonymous with Andy Goldsworthy. I also love the architecture of Frank Gehry and Michael Graves. The technical excellence of Jorie Johnson is what I strive for in felt.

Q What music do you listen to?

I listen to very little music. I am a public talk radio junkie.

Exposed: Superfine Merino Wool and Karakul Wool Locks

Q 3 likes and dislikes?

Likes: good food, red wine, time with my family.

Dislikes: clutter, telemarketing calls, excessive noise.

Q What do you do to relax?

As with most people, I have to think about what “relax” means to me. With 3 boys and a busy life what do I do to relax? I think being in the studio and giving myself permission to create something that is not to sell, not to show, but just to play. That is relaxing.

Harvest: Andrea’s Installation Piece

Performed on the International Day of Felt (FeltUnited 2009.)

Image by Tracy Olan

Anne Doble

2011-01-31T23:20:00.001Z

Anne Doble

Q So who is Anne Doble?
I am a self-taught designer-maker, running my own business, Artinkulate, from home. I have arrived at this place in my life via the long way round, you could say. Having gone straight to Boots the Chemist from school, I was a Dispenser there for several years, and then worked my way up to Sales Manager. Having spent about 24 years with them I was suddenly made redundant. With 12 weeks to find a new job I ended up working in Operating Theatres, initially washing, sterilising & packing the surgical instruments, then going to Uni & doing a Diploma of Higher Education in Operating Department Practice, which was mainly working as an anaesthetic assistant.

The next part of the master-plan was that I should have a nervous breakdown in 2007, after which I found that the only thing I was able to do was to work for myself doing something in which I had some natural ability. Enter Artinkulate!

Abstract Bar: Layered melted plastic.

Q Where in the world are you?
I live in Portknockie, a picturesque former fishing village in NE Scotland. I was born in Ealing, West London to a Scottish mother & an Irish father, so I’ve always considered myself to have well & truly Celtic blood coursing through my veins. My mother’s immediate family, the roots of which are in the Rothes / Mulben / Cabrach areas, were from Elgin. Though brought up in London, I always felt as if I was just treading water & fully intended to move myself up here as soon as I had the opportunity. I now feel at home. About 2 years ago I decided to try & make a living from my natural aptitudes instead of trying to reshape myself to suit the conventional employer.

Silver Shell: A melted design using a shell charm & a tiny pearl.

Q What made you choose the materials that you work with?
I mainly use a product called ‘Stampbord’ on which to create the designs. The designs themselves are created using any combination of: pigment & dye inks; acrylic & watercolour paints; mica pigments; melted plastic; fibres & anything else I can think of to create the effect I’m looking for. I make it up as I go along, so no one can tell me I’m doing it wrong!

I chose Stampbord because it has a chalk surface, which is perfectly smooth & accepts the inks & paints I use beautifully. The chalk also allows for greater versatility than plain paper or canvas, in that, once the ink is dry I can etch it off again to create white highlights or patterns within the design.

The melted plastic is another medium I love to use. It’s so versatile & the colour possibilities are endless. I find I can convey the mood or message I intended surprisingly well with this medium.

Aurora Borealis: an example of inks which have been etched into to create my mountains & moon.

Q What other materials would you like to work in?
I think that Polymer Clay will be the next addition to my creative portfolio. I never fail to be amazed by what it can produce in the right hands. From what I’ve seen & read about it I feel it would suit my creative style perfectly. I can’t wait to get some tuition & get started!

Patchwork Heart: Made by re-melting off cuts of plastic into a new shape.

Q Where do you get your inspiration from?
My somewhat twisted thought processes come into their own in this area! I’m a very visually inspired person. My mind tends to convert emotions & other intangibles into
images & colours.I’m constantly inspired by the ever-changing sea & skyscapes with which I am surrounded up here. As I’m walking Elsie, my little Westie, along the coastal paths, I’m converting what I see into melted plastic or inks! I use words a lot too; to title my work; for words & phrases that are an intrinsic part of a
design; for children’s poems which I incorporate into the Name Plaques I make for them.I love words, etymology, quotations etc.

My brain doesn’t seem to simply accept a word as it was intended; rather it hears many permutations of that word simultaneously & creates a new meaning for it or twists into another word entirely. For example, I was working with the radio on in the background & a song called ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’ came on. Without even trying, my brain presented it to me as ‘Red Snails in the Sunset’ & a whole series of new designs was born! It can be a subtle nuance that someone places on a word which leads me off down another path, a song, an advert, an overheard conversation, a mispronunciation, anything that I can hear or read really. I just love the unexpected nature of this process, the not knowing when or where my
next glimmer of inspiration will come from.

Faded Dream: An experiment with inks & embossing enamel.

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?
Both! I have a home studio, with a sea view, which is always inspiring.

Q Crafts in the 21st Century – what does this mean to you?
The increased emergence of artwork from people like me, who are naturally creative, but not necessarily professionally trained. The possibilities & opportunities for us seem to be increasing all the time, & may I say, thanks in no small part to the type of work that Tash Goswami is doing here with her Blog. (Thanks Anne!)

Q How do you sell and promote your work?
I have my own website (www.artinkuklate.co.uk), but I primarily use Craft Fairs, House parties & word of mouth. I also have albums of work on my, Artinkulate Keepsakes Face Book page, LinkedIn, & on sites like Central Station.

Red Snails in The Sunset

Q What is your typical working day look like?
If I’ve got quite a few orders to complete, I would start mid morning & complete most of the initial stages, break for lunch (if I remember!) or at least have a cup of tea & a biscuit, then resume work, to either continue the groundwork or complete the finishing touches to the morning’s work. If it’s a warm, sunny day I might even stop for a break out in the garden with an ice cream! When I decide I’ve done enough for the day, or am at a convenient stage to stop, I’ll pack any unnecessary equipment away & take little Elsie, who has been waiting patiently ( or otherwise!) under my workbench, for a walk. Then I go indoors for the evening & think about what I might be able to find to eat.

Treble Clef: Inks & mica pigments sprayed over a template, then selectively embossed for a holographic effect.

Q What is your working style?
Relaxed yet organised! I have to use planning lists to survive. If it’s not on a list it’s probably doomed!

Q 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...
Self-belief against the odds
Organisation
Keep an open mind

Coastal Rocks: inks & watercolours which have been etched into.

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?
I like Jo Heckett’s work in porcelain keepsakes & trinkets & Alita Porter’s (Doric Dragons) imaginative polymer clay creations.

Q What music do you listen to?
My passion is for vintage reggae music, from the 70’s & 80’s: Dennis Brown; Gregory Isaacs; some Bob Marley. The music is so all encompassing & hypnotic, especially if you lie down near the speakers & feel the music through the floor! I also like ‘old’ soul music: Marvin Gaye; Stevie Wonder; Sam Cook, that sort of era.

Portsoy Harbour: one of a set made for a local Café (behind the red door!)

Made from a watercolour drawing which I’ve cut out & applied to the background.

Q 3 likes and dislikes?
I like to be made to laugh, to be in the company of dogs (I just love them to bits!), & I am also quite partial to Galaxy chocolate.
I detest smoking, liver & celery.

Q What do you do to relax?
My relaxation activities include: listening to my music; losing myself in a good period drama & meeting friends for coffee, cake & catch-ups

Seahorse Fossil: A melted plastic design, using an inked up charm

Spirit: I made a base of several layers of embossing enamel. Upon heating it a ‘face’ emerged, so I added some hair to accentuate it.

This is the kind of serendipity that I get very excited about!

apologies from the editor

2011-01-26T07:38:00.000Z

Apologies if you are eager to read the next interview - but having been laid low by a pretty grim chest infection, I have not posted this week - normal business will resume this coming Monday!

thanks
Tash Goswami
The Editor

Matthew Cummings

2011-01-17T13:42:00.007Z

Q So who is Matthew Cummings?
I am a sculptor, painter, and video artist, currently in my last year of graduate school for glass sculpture at Illinois State University (one of the oldest glass programs in the US). My undergraduate education was at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky majoring in painting and glass. After college, I attended the Appalachian Center for Craft and then travelled throughout the eastern half of the United States studying under various glass blowers.

Matthew Cummings Sculpting a Figurative Form in the Hotshop at Flame Run Studios

Q When did you decide to become a maker?
I guess that I was always a maker, but I decided to pursue art as a career during the summer of my junior year of college. I had cut down on my obligations in order to start focusing more on art classes. I spent the summer in Italy (Firenze and Roma) studying sculpture firsthand. The rich cultural heritage was invigorating, the art was inspiring, and I decided then to dedicate my life to art-making. That decision is simultaneously exciting and terrifying to anyone who gives it serious thought. There is no certainty in your future other than the knowledge that you will enjoy what you are doing. I considered becoming an architect as I did well in math, enjoyed being creative, and this seemed a more “respectable” career choice at the time. But my love/compulsion to make objects with my own two hands made the decision to become a sculptor inevitable.
On Perception – 9 Units, 2010 (Solid-Sculpted and Coldworked Glass,13" x 10" x 3")

Q What made you choose the materials that you work with?
I discovered Glass in college, we have a great program at Centre (headed by Stephen Rolfe Powell), and I just happened upon it there. I initially went to Centre to play basketball so the physicality of glass instantly drew me in. It almost seemed like I had been training my entire life to work this material. It is very physical, requiring a great amount of teamwork, focus, and coordination.

For the latest series that I am working on, the On Perception series, glass is an ideal medium. The work is about the frailty of cognition, and the primary sense that we use to approach cognition is vision (think of Plato’s Cave, and the Cartesian Theatre). So I make objects that manipulate the perception of graphics in order to invite the viewer into a contemplative state which hopefully becomes a metaphorical experience. Lenses, facets, and frosted sections in the glass manipulate vision in an analogous manner to the way that point of view, social surrounding, and state of mind affect your decisions.

As for painting and video, I enjoy translating my glass sculptures into another material and seeing what occurs. For example, in video I can enhance the ephemeral or atmospheric qualities of the glass pieces through the video’s temporal nature and manipulation of light on a large scale.

On Perception – Form Theory, 2010 (Solid-Sculpted and Coldworked Glass 14" x 12" x 8")

Q What other materials would you like to work in?
I would love to work with stone, and there are some new resins and plastics that have really exciting and intriguing qualities. I have seen some Resin Castings that are almost as clear as glass. But for now, the qualities and processes of working with glass fit my vision, and my temperament.

Q Where do you get your inspiration from?
Philosophy, Particle Physics, Microscopy, Literature, Astronomy, Music, other Artists. Two books I have been reading lately that really influence the work are James Elkins - Six Stories for the End of Representation, and Daniel Dennett’s - Consciousness Explained. Images of CERN experiments and images from Bubble Chambers are both extremely beautiful aesthetically.

Philosopher (Black Void), 2010 (Blown Glass with Filigrana, 28" x 14" x 14")

Q What motivates you?
Art and Craft! Other artists, designers, and craftsmen absolutely motivate me. On the rare day when I have free time at home, I love watching art documentaries and sketching, working on new designs or ideas. If I ever have “writers block”, I read an art book or watch a show about an artist, and that does the trick, even though that tends to send me in another direction entirely. Art 21 is a staple, and the new Basquiat documentary Radiant Child is fantastic, as well as, Exit through the Gift Shop by Banksy.

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?
Glass is strictly studio based, the equipment I use is just too big, messy, and loud. The paintings and videos vary depending on size and complexity. I really like to paint at home, because I can watch cheesy old horror movies while I wait for the paint to dry. It has nothing to do with the work, just a personal preference. I especially like Killer Clowns from Outer Space.

Working Process - On Perception: Interrupted ( Coldworking)

Q Crafts in the 21^st Century – what does this mean to you?
This is such a wonderfully messy subject! With the advent of Design Art, the line between Art and Craft has become so indistinct. In this technological age, the handmade is becoming essential again, not for practical means, but for natural needs. When something is made by hand, it has character and a warmth that is rarely felt in machine made objects. We respond and need this at a very basic level. We will always have crafts, we need it.

Q How do you sell and promote your work?
I sell my work exclusively through galleries, both glass and fine arts galleries. One of the main considerations for galleries that I choose to work with is the level that they promote their artists. It isn’t always that you sell a piece, but where you sell the piece and to whom. That is one of the reasons that I don’t sell work out of my studio. But when I do a show with a gallery, I am very involved (probably more that the gallery would like!). I prefer to set the show up myself (I consider every exhibition an installation in its own right), and I participate in any PR event they set up, be it interviews, demonstrations, or lectures.

I regularly show with Morgan Glass Gallery in Pittsburgh, Chapman Friedman Gallery in Louisville, Marta Hewett Gallery in Cincinnati, Prism Contemporary in Chicago, Vespermann-Cooper Gallery in Atlanta and Fusion Glass Gallery in Florida. I also have a Facebook Artist Page under Matthew Cummings Sculptor that I use as an informal blog with lots of images of new work and the processes behind making the various pieces, and all my finished pieces can be found at matthewlcummings.com.

On Perception – Interrupted (Solid-sculpted and Coldworked Glass, 2010 30" x 7" x 7")

Q What is your typical working day look like?
For one, I cannot multi-task. I hate it. I prefer to devote a full day to the hotshop, coldshop, painting, or video. So I go through periods where I only sculpt glass in the hotshop (where glass is sculpted in its molten state), only grind glass in the coldshop (where glass is cut and polished at room temperature), or metal work the stands for the glass. In the spring and fall, I prefer to coldwork, summertime is for painting and video, and winter is best for the hotshop.

On an average day, I sleep in til 9 or so (definitely a night owl) go straight to the glass studio, not big on breakfast. Drink a lot of coffee, and try not to break anything in the two hours it takes me to really wake up. If I am lucky, I will spend the rest of the day listening to music and working on a single project.

Gestural Pair (Teal and White), 2008 (Blown Glass with Murrini, 36" x 25" x 14")

Q What is your working style?
I am a perfectionist, but I try to remember that something handmade is indeed handmade and not mechanically perfect. Those slight deviations in each mark or cut gives the piece its soul or unique character.

Q 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...
I couldn’t narrow it down to three, so here are four and a half “words”.
1) Be Persistent; in making work and in applying for exhibitions.
2) If you do not respect your own work, no one else will.
3) Schedule shows as a young artist, even if it is at the local community art center or the coffee house. It makes you produce work, and helps to build your portfolio.
4) Take good photographs, they are not just crucial, they are your future! And here is a freebee... hot glass burns!

Glass Structure featured in Search Installation, 2010.

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?
Lino Tagliapietra, Tobias Mohl, Daniel Clayman, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Takashi Murakami, Terry Winters, and Julie Mehretu.

Q What music do you listen to?
Well, it is probably easier to say what I don’t listen to, Country and R&B. I listen to everything else though. Mostly Indie Rock, Pop, Electronic, but also a lot of older Funk, Folk, and Rock, and then some Hip/Hop and Rap to even it out.

This is what is getting the most play on my iPod right now: Kid Cudi, Menomena, Phantogram, Sleigh Bells, Muddy Waters, Peter, Bjorn, and John, Lykke Li, TV on the Radio, Big Boi, The XX, Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys, and Beastie Boys The In Sound from the Way Out.

Photograph Still of a digital projection shown through the glass structure, 2010.

Q 3 likes and dislikes?
Likes - Cooking. Hanging out with my wife. Having a pint with friends and arguing about the state of glass.
Dislike - Waking up in the morning (doesn't matter the time, it is always too early). Having to deal with rude people. The television show Jersey Shore.

Q What do you do to relax?
Watch the dumb box (TV shows). After a day of thinking about what I am working on, working on it, planning the next day, dealing with the business side of making work, I need some time to turn the brain off. When I actually have more than an hour to relax, I go see my better half, Stephanie. I am living in a different city than my wife right now, so I drive to where she is, work on a painting during the day, then we cook dinner together and drink some wine.

Philosopher (Red), 2010 (Blown Glass with Zanfirco, 32" x 10" x 4)

Vivek Das

2011-01-11T01:21:00.005Z

Q So who is Vivek Das?
I am Vivek Das, a metal-smith & enamellist, jeweller and basically artist.

Faces of Indian Women - Enamel on Copper

Q Where in the world are you?
Originally I am from Howrah, west Bengal (east of India), later on I settled near Mumbai, western coast of India. Mumbai is India’s most busy commercial city which never sleeps. Fortunately I stay little out of Mumbai, so I sleep well!

Man with Pet Cat - Copper and Lead Sculpture of 24" height. Patina Finish.

Grass Grazer - Enamel Painting on Copper 7" X 8" Brush and Sieve Method.

Q When did you decide to become a maker?
My father was initially a key maker later turned jeweller. In my time (1960s) there used to be no jewellery institutions in India. Students used to learn this profession from their father and uncles starting from a tender age of around 10. Same way I learnt jewellery making from my father and stone setting from my elder brother. I also learnt jewellery designing from my cousin. By the time I finished my schooling I was already a jewellery craftsmen as all my spare time I spent in my father’s workshop which was attached to our residence.

To increase my skill I joined one and only arts & crafts institute in my city, Sir J.J. School of Art, where I learnt various metal forming processes & techniques. Here I got introduced to Enamelling which fascinated me and I decided to learn more about this process. Unfortunately I found there was no permanent faculty available for this subject. Fact is, that I was the only student who took admission in this class. I was very disappointed, but could not divert my mind to anything else. So, school library became my teacher. There were hardly 10 books on this subject & materials listed were not easily available in Indian market. Half of the written matters were difficult to understand and no one to ask from.

But immediately after graduation I started a faculty and started teaching students. For more than 25 years I trained students. I have developed some colours and also designed small furnaces suitable for enamelling. I had to develop these for myself, my students and other enamellists of this industry, as good enamelling furnaces are not available in India.

Teaching - I periodically visit native crafts people at remote villages to conduct design and technical development workshop. I stay with these people for 15 to 21 days. These are Indian government projects.

Teaching - Demonstration of Enamelling in a Jewelery Making Institute.

Q What made you choose the materials that you work with?
I like to work with metals and Enamelling is the method to add colours & brilliancy, Here the canvas is metal and paints, glass enamels, and it is permanent. It can stays for centuries. Enamelling is such an expressive medium which can be used on miniature form that is intricate jewelleries, in crafts, 3-D objects like sculpture and of course very impressive medium for fine art painting.

Lady with Flower Vase - Copper and Lead Round Sculpture with Enamel Patina Finish. Front and rear view.

Q What other materials would you like to work in?
I like mix media, I like to work with various kinds of metals like gold, silver, copper, aluminium, lead, zinc etc. I also love to paint on canvas with acrylic but I do not find this medium much challenging as enamelling. Wall painting and torn kite paper collage is my favourite hobby.

Fossils - Enamel Painting on steel 12" X 12" using several layering of colours brushed, sprayed and grinding method.

Q Where do you get your inspiration from?
When I start drawing a lines, images automatically starts floating on my canvas. Sometimes I get emotional with these images & start developing gradually. Enamelling medium is very technical. One must follow the step by step process along with putting your thought onto the canvas (here metal sheet). Unless you fully get engrossed with technique along with creative thoughts, things go wrong. It is amalgamation of technical process and thought process. Continuous layering of powdered glass colours which are some times opaque, sometimes transparent and fixing them by firing in red hot furnace after each layer of application. Firings are done sometimes 6 to 12 times or more, until you are satisfied.One of the big fights between our artists and craftsmen society today is that other mediums than oil are believed to be craft & are of lesser art value.

Couples in Garden - Enamel Painting on Steel, Stencil Method. 9" X 10".

Q What motivates you?
To survive working with this difficult medium is a challenge itself, I accepted this successfully and i am happy in my life.

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?
In the beginning I used to work at home. All my studio and workshop materials were dumped under my double bed. Fortunately I got a small piece of land and now I have enough space for a Repousse workshop and Enamelling studio where me and my wife work. One part is also used for Furnace manufacturing.

Inside My Studio - my enamelling work bench.

Q Crafts in the 21st Century – what does this mean to you?
Recently a new generation of craftsmen are emerging who are extremely creative and talented. They have developed their art expression techniques and concepts to such an extent that only a hairline distance remains between crafts and fine art. Examples of this community, one can see in website bletheringcrafts@btinternet.com. Thanks to Tash Goswami. (Editors Note: Thanks Vivek!)

Faces of Indian Women

Q How do you sell and promote your work?
In previous days I used to work with architects and make artefact for home decor. Now I paint and exhibit in art galleries. Also buyers contact me through my website http://www.das-enamel.com/.

Q What is your typical working day look like?
As mainly I paint with enamel on metal, I behave like an artist. Everything depends on mood. Mostly I work by night when no noise, no phone calls, no disturbances. Daytimes I am busy with teaching in various jewellery institutes.

Girl Playing With Pet Cat - Enamel on Copper 8" x 8".

Q What is your working style?
Although I like textures and colours, I also love stylised figurative paintings. Faces are my one of the favourite.

Mother Mary and Jesus - Enamel on Copper with a Hand Forged Copper Frame.

Q 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...
Believe in yourself.
Do what you want to do.
Stick to your own ideas.

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?
My teacher and metal smith Prof. Nagesh Sabannavar, hailed from south India and was finest Repousser I have ever seen.

Wall Piece – Sun - Copper Repousse Oxidised Finished 24" X 24".

Q What music do you listen to?
Classical instrumental and semi classical vocal music (Indian).

God Ganesha. Mixed media 24" X 48" copper repousse' enamelling and mosaics. Green area is patina finish on copper.

Q 3 likes and dislikes?
Likes: Cooking, kitchen gardening, travelling.
Dislikes :Noise, Crowd, politics.

Q What do you do to relax?
Meditation especially the Vipassana method, (to look at myself) this is the method Gautam Buddha practiced and gained Bodhi (the truth).

My Workshop from Outside – I work downstairs and live above

Seasons Greetings

2010-12-27T01:13:00.001Z

Dear readers there will be a 2 week break in posting up new makers and interviews. A new interview with Enameller Vivek Das will be posted on Monday 10th January 2011. May i take this opportunity to wish you all seasons greetings and the very best for 2011.

Tash Goswami, The Editor

Anu Raina

2010-12-21T14:25:00.002Z

Anu Raina Collection - Fashion Show – Sept 2010

Q So who is Anu Raina?
I am an emerging Textiles Artist / Designer.

Q Where in the world are you?
I am based in Toronto, Canada.

Fall 2010 - Screen Print Fabric

Q When did you decide to become a maker?
Having moved to Canada in July 2004, and with the arrival of my second child in 2005, I took a break from my career to take care of my kids. In July 2008 I happened to visit the Crafts and Design wing at Sheridan College. I was completely blown away by the creativity and the talent of the graduates. I felt challenged and knew it was my calling. I enrolled in the Textile design program right away. It’s a 3 year intensive program. I got an advance standing for the first year and graduated in June 2010 with High Honours and a Top medal.

Silk Screen Print Scarf

Q What made you choose the materials that you work with?
My work is mostly Textile based but not completely restricted to them. For me it’s more about expressing my inner self, medium just becomes a tool to achieve this goal. But Textiles do work like a blank canvas for me where I can go crazy creating different textures with free hand drawing and many other printing techniques that I learnt at Sheridan. The beauty of Textiles is that you can cut, sew, manipulate it and actually wear your own art work.

Burnt Holes Silk Dress

Burnt Holes Detail

Q What other materials would you like to work in?
I do like to work with discarded materials. One of my recent Autobiographical pieces titled “Chapter 2, Page 1” was made with discarded embroidery punch cards and fishing line.

Chapter 2, Page 1 – Mixed Media

Q Where do you get your inspiration from?
I get inspired by anything / everything around me but mostly by my own journeys in life.

Q What motivates you?
A strong urge to transform my emotions into a visual language.

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?
My work is mostly studio based. After graduating from Sheridan, I got lucky to be selected as an artist in residence at the prestigious Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. It’s a very inspiring place and I get to share the studio with incredibly talented people.

Anu Screen Printing at her Harbourfront Studio

Q Crafts in the 21^st Century – what does this mean to you?
Craft to me is art perceived by heart and conceived by hands. I believe it is not bound by time. It’s a timeless endeavour. Ingenious handcrafted objects have been unearthed by archaeologists from the prehistoric times.

How do you sell and promote your work?
As I have just started, I primarily promote and sell my work via my website and a few boutique stores in Toronto. You can see my work on my website / Blog ( I share my inspirations and concepts on my blog) http://www.anuraina.com/

Hand Dyed, Silk Screen Print Scarf

Q What is your typical working day look like?
There is no typical working day for me as I don’t have a 9-5 job. Making art is fun and I love to have fun any time of the day.

Q What is your working style?
My working style is very abrupt and impulsive. If I don’t feel inspired I don’t work for days but when something inspires me, it just consumes me completely. My work tends to be complex, layered and sometimes obsessive. For example I recently made a piece of wearable art (a jacket in the shape of a stealth bomber) with over 10,000 staples and actually ended up spraining my wrist.

Stapled Series - (jacket, shoulder bag and back pack bag)

Stapled Jacket – part of the Stapled Series

Q 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...
Passion / Perseverance / Faith

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?
There are different things I admire about different Artists / Designers. I love Canadian Fibre artist Dorothy Caldwell’s work. There’s something very spiritual about it. http://www.ccca.ca/ I love the lightness and beauty of Virginia Johnson’s prints. I wish I could inject some of it in my own work which tends to be on a heavier side. http://www.virginiajhonson.com/ I love the weaving techniques of Caitlin Earskin Smith. www.scattermint.com. I am inspired by the dedication of Arounna Khnnouraj to her craft. (she is a mother of two kids as well) http://www.bookhou.com/ I feel spell bound by Ray Materson’s work and admire his courage http://www.raymaterson.com.%20i/ totally love the inventive approach of Canadian artist / designer Denis Gagnon. http://www.denisgagnon.ca/

Staples – Detail

Q What music do you listen to?
I love listening to Alanis Morissette, Joan Osborne, James Blunt, AR Rahman, Krishna Das and Rasa by Kim Waters.

Q 3 likes and dislikes?
I love simple hearted people, hot soups and my family. I abhor slugs and Potato bugs, falling sick and missing a bus.

Q What do you do to relax?
I cook for my family, surprisingly it works like a complete stress buster for me.

Clothing Show –Sept 2010

Janice Parker

2010-12-13T12:43:00.003Z

Bribing a Magpie

Q So who is Janice Parker?
A lady of “mature years”- whatever that is? Slightly demented but happily married fifty-one year old mother of two (clean your room Adam!!)

Q When did you decide to become a maker?
I’ve always drawn and made “stuff” but never in any really focused way until quite recently. In 2006 decided to do a degree in Applied Arts at Glyndwr University, Wrexham, where I had to opportunity to work with ceramics, glass and metal. I had a great time, made a lot of good, like-minded, friends and finally found my passion – working with ceramics and metal.

Q What made you choose the materials that you work with?
Like a lot of people – just fell into it. In my second year at uni I was mainly making jewellery with copper and silver, but in the third year I began making up stories and sketching little people in various situations. I tried reproducing them in various materials - wire, paper, textiles – but they didn’t have the true feel of my illustrations so I decided to try hand building and slip casting with porcelain and then applying the sketches in the form of ceramic transfers – which is how I work today.

Princess Bed

Q What other materials would you like to work in?
I am a bit of a mixed media type person and do use paper, wood and textiles to produce little one-off narrative pieces based on fairytales. I do enjoy printing and am hoping to get time to explore this further.

Q Where do you get your inspiration from?
Mainly from day-dreaming! The “Time Thieves” series all started from me watching some magpies in the garden when I was washing-up. Over a couple of weeks the story in my head just grew – I’m still adding to it all the time.

The Princess Bed

Q What motivates you?
Not money – although it’s necessary. I just have this need to be making and using my hands – like a lot of makers I get “itchy” fingers if I’m not working.

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?
I have a workshop space, where I produce the ceramic pieces, in a Gallery/Artists Workshops run by two lovely friends. It’s on the side of a hill with panoramic views of the Cheshire plain – it’s a great location but sometimes the sitting on the deck looking at the views (drinking wine) interferes with the production rate! On the downside, I make the metal components for my pieces at home in a little, cold shed full of bikes and garden equipment – some you win some you lose.

Q Crafts in the 21^st Century – what does this mean to you?
Difficult question. To some “crafts” is a dirty word and conjures up images of knitted tea cosies. To me it means the use of traditional skills and techniques to produce contemporary works. I’m not an “artist”, I’m a maker and proud of it.

Thieves of Time - Detail

Q How do you sell and promote your work?
I am quite new to this so I started by attending a couple of trade shows which got my work seen by a lot of galleries. It was quite an expensive option but I feel it was worthwhile as I am still being contacted by galleries 6-7 months after the event. Janice’s website can be found here: www.randomjanice.co.uk
Links and Galleries where my work can be seen: Mickerloo Gallery,Cheshire, Design GAP (online site), The Lion Gallery, Leominster, Hereford, Iapetus Gallery, Great Malvern, Worcs., ntAMa Studio Gallery, Todmorden, W. Yorks , Cambridge Contemporary Crafts, Cambridge, Chapel Gallery, Ormskirk, Lancs, Sussex Barn Gallery, West Dean, Chichester, W. Sussex, The Craft Centre and Design Gallery, City Art Gallery, Leeds

The Thieves of Time - Detail

Q What is your typical working day look like?
Four days a week I leave home about 8.00am for the Gallery – I do the set-up in the Café! Then after several coffees/fags I start work on the ceramics – this could be slip casting the larger pieces or hand building the figures and houses. I don’t have a set routine – just see what I fancy making that day or finishing off jobs like glazing or applying the transfers. The workshops are closed on Tuesdays so generally I do a little bit of housework (bare minimum) and then work on the metal pieces in the shed. I also work down the shed at the weekends if I’ve got a rush on with orders – can be pretty much full time some months. Must be mad!

Q What is your working style?
Illogical and unstructured.

Q 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...
Experiment, Persevere, Enjoy.

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?
My favourite artists are the painter Jenny Saville and sculptors Rachel Whiteread and Doric Salcedo. I love makers who work with narrative themes and make me smile such as Samantha Bryan, Julie Arkell and Robert Race. A young maker who I admire is Helena Sharpley – her wire scenes are amazing.

Magpie on Stand & Man and Peanut

Q What music do you listen to?
Quite a mixture – I love Pink she just makes me want to dance. I also listen to Keane, The Killers and Maroone 5 ( music to slit your wrist’s to according to my daughter). At the moment I am mad on Muse and Plan B – played very loudly in the car. My secret pleasure is a bit of Michael Buble.

Q 3 likes and dislikes?
I like my cat, hazelnut chocolate and smoking. I dislike earwigs, the smell of kippers and smoking!

Q What do you do to relax?
I love computer games – Zelda rocks! I also like going to the cinema by myself and consuming large quantities of popcorn whilst watching some god-awful rom-com – bliss.

The Thieves of Time

Artists Statement:
Based in Chester, Janice is a contemporary artist/maker who combines various materials and techniques to produce three-dimensional imaginary worlds. She is drawn to the kitsch and quirky – things which make her smile such as automata, robots and flying plaster ducks.

In the past she has used resin, fabric, felt, wood and copper to realise her ideas. However, her most recent work is constructed from slip cast and hand built porcelain to which she has applied her own illustrations in the form of transfers. These porcelain pieces are then further enhanced by the addition of patinated copper and wooden elements. The design of the individual pieces harks back to the tradition of 17^th Century Staffordshire flat-back figurines.

Entitled “The Thieves of Time, the Magpies and the Star Machine, these pieces depict scenes from a tale from my imagination. The Thieves of Time control the movement of the stars and the production of “time” – they make the world go around. Having trapped and trained magpies (rewarding them with peanuts!) to steal items concerned with timekeeping - watches, clocks, egg-timers, etc – they then extract the tiny bits of time still contained in the mechanisms by putting them into their star machine. These stars shoot out into the universe and thus replace the time we humans are frittering away.

Amanda McCavour

2010-12-06T16:23:00.004Z

Stand in For Home – 2009/2010 (Thread Installation 8ft x 10ft x10ft)

Q So who is Amanda Mc Cavour?

I am an artist working and living in Toronto, Canada.

Q You work in textiles but is there any other medium you work in or would like to work?

I like printmaking and working on paper with pencil and pens. I've recently been making thread work about lined paper and folds (see folded fortune image), so maybe this is bringing me a step closer to working with paper.

I studied drawing, printmaking and installation when I went to university. I was in a drawing class that was trying to expand our notions of what drawing was, so in this class drawing could be anything that used line. I thought that thread would be an interesting line to use in drawing and thought that it would be even more interesting if I could create a thread drawing that was just line. So I did some research and found a water soluble material that would allow me to sew into it and then dissolve the base.

Since what attracted me to thread was drawing, I think I will return work on paper, drawings and sketches. Printmaking is something I would like to do more of as well.

Stand in For Home – Detail of Wallpaper

Q How would you describe your work?
I would describe my work as being drawings that are made out of thread.

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?

Right now I am creating my work from home studio. In the past little while I have worked in a couple different studio environments. I recently completed a three year residency at Harbourfront Centre's Textile studio in May 2010. Harbourfront's studio was a shared space where I worked along other craftspeople and artists.

Since then I have gone to do another residency in Dawson City, Yukon, where I worked in a historical home called McCaulay house. After returning to Toronto, I have been working from my home studio, which consists largely of a big wooden table, my sewing machine, lots of thread and many other small random items and materials.

Home Studio

Q What does your typical working day look like?

I guess there aren't too many typical days for me. There are other days that I spend writing, or visiting galleries, or installing work. As for days spent in the studio making work, things change a lot depending on the type of project that I'm working on. Sometimes I do a lot of drawing before I start sewing, while other times I will not have to do much prep work at all.

When I'm at home and working on pieces, I spend lots of time sewing on my sewing machine. My work requires a lot of sewn lines overlapping to hold the work together and recently I have been working doing bigger installations, so this translates into a lot of time with the sewing machine running. Some people say this sounds a bit like a helicopter, so I try to not work too late but as deadlines approach, my end time usually gets later and later! So, I wake up, drink coffee, answer emails, sew, take a break, sew some more!

Three Tangles

Q What is your working style?

I am a bit of a night owl. But maybe I am not a morning person because I stay up too late! I like it when my work space is organized but there are times when things get out of hand. I like it when the dishes are done before i start working.

Its hard for me to work on more than one project in a day, I have recently discovered. I think it takes me a bit of time to get into working, so after I start one thing, I don't really want to move onto another project. Long stretches of working time are something I really like. Big chunks of the day to actually get into the work. I find it hard to work for just an hour.

Compound Tangle

Q How do you sell and promote your work?

Some of my work is sold though a gallery here in Toronto, Lonsdale Gallery, http://www.lonsdalegallery.com/. I also have a website http://www.amandamccavour.com/.

Q What is your greatest achievement to date?
I think my greatest achievement was a piece that I made titled "Stand In For Home" which I made with the support of the Toronto Arts Council. I made this piece for a show at Harbourfront Centre's Main Gallery which was curated by Patrick Macaulay and Melanie Egan called "It's a Big Deal".

This installation was a thread rendering based on part of my kitchen in my previous home. I am interested in the vulnerability of thread in relation to the home, as both things feel temporary and fragile. Making this piece required me to re-visit, remember and re-create a space that I called home but is no longer mine. This piece is a stand in, a synthetic, re-created version of home.

Creating this work combined two different bodies of work or projects that I had been working on; my life sized self portraits and small diorama pieces that I had made with Metal Smith Margaret Lim (see forest image). The scale of the first series and the layering of the second really came together in this piece.

Compound Tangle – Detail

Q Crafts in the 21st Century – what does this mean to you?
I graduated from a fine art program at York University. I had always been interested in Craft and craft materials. It was at school that I began working with thread, but it wasn't until I was awarded a residency at the Harbourfront Centre's Textile Studio, after I graduated, that I was able to work with other artists and designers working in the same craft media as myself, along with other materials such as glass, metal and clay.

I think that my experience working in that craft studios at Harboufront changed my perception of what craft is. I think craft in the 21st century means a community of people and makers. A group of people making work and challenging materials and processes.

Forest – Collaboration with Margaret Lim

Q What music are you listening to at the moment?

I'm listening to the new Arcade Fire album "The Suburbs".

Folded Fortune

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?

There are too many! Here are a few...
Kristiina Lahde's and her cut paper envelopes
Dorrie Millerson's small lace sculptures
John Dickson's mixed media sculptures
Kathryn Ruppert-Dazai's narritive knitted pieces
Do Ho Suh's fabric interiors
Marianne Lovink's plastic botanical sculptures

Hard Twist – Gladstone Hotel

Hard Twist - Detail

Q What do you do to relax?

I like to go for runs or bike rides and I try to make time for these things each day. I like to go on walks around the Junction, where I live in Toronto to look at vintage and antique stores with a cup of coffee in hand. Eating food with friends is always nice and going swimming in lakes in the summertime has got to be in there too!

Hands

Lizz Aston

2010-11-29T02:59:00.004Z

Macramé Repeat 3 – detail 2009
(Paper Fibre, Free Motion Embroidery, Polyester Thread, Burnout)

Q So who is Lizz Aston?
I’m a fibre based artist, currently in my second year as an artist-in-residence in the textile studio at Harbourfront Centre. I was originally born and raised in the greater Toronto area. Growing up, I had the good fortune of being accepted into an amazing and forward thinking high school for the arts, Cawthra Park S.S.

The time I spent there, immersed in a specialized arts program came to inform the beginning of my life as an artist working within a crafts-based medium. After high school I went on to study fashion, worked as a sheet metal apprentice and developed my skills in a number of other avenues. It wasn’t until I eventually went back to school for Crafts and Design at Sheridan College that I finally realized there was a larger identity at play in the work I had been making all along.

Crochet 2010 (Paper Fibres, Free-Motion Embroidery, Cotton Thread, Burn-out.)

Q Paper features heavily in your work, what is it that excites you most about this material?
My current body of work employs the use and manipulation of paper surfaces in an attempt to reference a series of ideas inspired by traditional knotting practices. In my work I am interested in exploring the implications that these two material practices carry in combination with one another and the tension or relationship that may exist as a result of this juxtaposition.

Through my work I am interested in exploring the multifaceted relationship we have to paper and its archaic practices, as I work to discover this material through an in depth examination of its inherent transformative, resilient and simultaneously ephemeral qualities. This convergence of ideas along with an innate love of discovery through material process can be seen as the ever present theme that propels my work forward.

Crochet 2010: Paper Fibres (Free-Motion Embroidery, Cotton Thread, Burn-out.)

Q Is there any other medium you would like to work in?
I am currently at the beginning stages of learning to work in metal at the jewellery studio down the hall from me. I’ve really enjoyed revisiting this material on a much more refined scale, working alongside a fellow jewellery-studio resident Alisha Marie Boyd at the Harbourfront Centre.

I am also currently about to begin working on a collaborative group show entitled Studio Remix, in which six craftspeople pair up to teach each other our respective material processes as we work in one another’s studios. The end result will be an exhibition at the Ontario Crafts Council, a prominent Canadian craft gallery in Toronto, in August 2011. For this exhibition I have been paired up with a wonderful ceramics artist by the name of Sylvia Nan Cheng. I’m very excited to begin working in this new material as I feel it will open up a lot of new doors for me in the ways I approach making my work.

Antiquated Notions 2, 2009 (Paper Fibres, Free-Motion Embroidery, Polyester Thread, Burn-out.)

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?
I work primarily out of the studio space at Harbourfront Centre, but tend to carry my work around with me wherever I go. I have also been known to cart my sewing machine along with me to my day shift at the bar I work at, in lieu meeting rapidly approaching exhibition deadlines!

I feel very lucky to be surrounded by such a great community of artists, musicians and makers both at the studio and at my work in Kensington Market. If anything, bringing projects along with me to work adds to the atmosphere of the already oddball Kensington market crowd I have grown up with over the years.

Degraded Muffin Cup Forms, 2010 (Paper, Muffin Cups, Burn-out.)

Q What is your typical working day look like?
Wake up. Drink coffee. Get to the studio. Read 35 emails. Eat a bagel from Tim Horton’s. Write an extensive to do list. Freak out about how much I have to do. Put on some good tunes. Cross off the list one by one. Laugh with my studio mates. Get some research, samples or a project a little further along to completion. Take a break. Look at the list again, before going home and thinking about what’s left to do tomorrow.

Q What is your working style?
Anybody who has ever worked alongside me in the studio would tell you that I am driven by an incredibly compulsive need to work on meticulous, fragile and generally insane, labour intensive projects that would make any normal person go cross-eyed and give up.

I love spinning delicate paper into thread, burning tiny holes into paper surfaces to create a network of lace-like structure. Counting the threads in finely woven piece of linen and binding it back to create larger patterns of negative space, as well as crocheting thousands of tiny structures before starching them into intimate little sculptural forms and so on.

Wavering Paper Formation, 2010 (Paper Doilies, Beeswax, Burn-out.)

Q How do you sell and promote your work?
I am primarily focussed on creating work that is intended for galleries and exhibitions. I tend to use exhibition deadlines as an avenue for which to research and explore new ideas and directions in my work. I also have a website which I am currently in the process of updating, as well as a blog which I began in the summer.

Q What is your greatest achievement to date?
All of the decisions that have lead me to exactly where I’m at in my life right now. Being afraid to take risks, living with the fear and just doing it anyways...

Paper Bark Grouping

Q Crafts in the 21^st Century – what does this mean to you?
As makers, we are constantly engaged in an ongoing dialogue that exists in the creation of meaningful objects; challenging the application of traditionally learned skills, to expand upon a greater definition of art and design.

Contemporary craft continues to evolve as it has become a celebrated practice that is of-the-moment and vital. This marks a turning point for a community of makers, whose work charts out and advocates a larger discourse in the ever evolving landscape of contemporary art and design.

Crocheted Sekishu Fibre Hatpin/Brooch

Q What music are you listening to at the moment?
I listen to a lot of 1960’s, punk, psychedelic, garage rock and shoe gaze. As well as medieval, folk, jug and blues. There’s also a really amazing local music scene here in Toronto with a diverse range of bands such as the Hoa Hoa’s, the Saffron Sect, Flowers of Hell, Planet Creature and the Constantine's. As well as bands like the Born Ruffians, Sports: the band and the Meligrove band....Wow, I guess you can tell I’m plugging all my friends? But really, it’s worth a serious listen.

Q 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...
Self-discipline, the support of family and friends and a deep passion for what you do are essential to living an inspired and successful life as a craftsperson.

Sekishu Paper Fibre/Yarns

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?
To name a few: Jeannie Thib, Jean Shin, Tara Bursey, Shary Boyle, Arounna Khounnaraj, Eva Hesse, Doug Guildford, and Catherine Heard, as well as the larger community of crafts people and artists that I have been acquainted with here in Toronto over the past couple of years.

Q What do you do to relax?
Meeting up with friends in Kensington Market for a pint, listening to good music, cooking and sharing good food with the people around me, is an essential part of my day to day life. I am especially looking forward to a fun and wholesome winter full of Mixed CD Swapping on Sundays, impromptu dinner parties and home-made Soup Trades.

Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition - July 2010.

Kate Malone

2010-11-22T11:47:00.004Z

A Starburst Tall Lady Gourd, 2010
Crystalline-glazed stoneware, Height 56cm (22") Diameter 34cm (13 3/8")

When did you first discover a passion for working in clay?
At school at the age of 12 or 13. The big comprehensive government school had a ceramics department, thank heavens.

A Pair of Fun Atomic Candlesticks, 2010
Crystalline-glazed stoneware, Height 29cm (11 3/8") Diameter 21cm (8 1/4")

Q What other materials have you or would you like to work in?
I have had a few pieces converted to Bronze, and I have blown and cast glass and would like to paint more seriously.

Bronze Drinking Fountain, Castle Park, Bristol.

Q Your work is well known for being large scale – what is the biggest piece you have ever made?
In one piece it was 1m20cm all and 1m wide and 1m deep.. but the largest public piece in many sections was 16m x 5m tall. I am just about to start a project 56 m long and average 3m tall.

THE WALL OF A THOUSAND STORIES

Ceramic installation for the Children's Library at the Royal Jubilee Library, Brighton. Made over a period of a year and a half 2003-2004 and comprises 91 wall pieces that are hung on the back wall of the children's library space. The wall is 16 meters by 8 meters.

Q Each of your pieces seems to have a personality – does this develop in the design stage or during the making process?
It develops on both, I have an idea, and make sure one piece follows the original, but then having started others at the same time, I let them develop in the process.

Secret Garden, 2010
Crystalline-glazed stoneware, Height 67cm (26 3/8") Diameter 56cm (22")

Q You have become very famous in the world of Ceramics – what are the keys things that brought you this success?
Luck, hard work, determination, perseverance, tunnel vision, addiction to clay, a fabulous partner who is there in support in so many ways, a fabulous art dealer with generosity and vision and style, being aware good photography is paramount to show people what you can do, talking and connecting where ever possible and working and aiming to share the progress of the field of ceramics with as generous a spirit as is possible, this attitude, tends to have the same response… not that I do it for that reason.

Monumental Forest Fern, 2010
Crystalline-glazed stoneware, Height 80cm (31 1/2") 65cm (25 5/8") Depth 60cm (23 5/8")

Q Organic forms feature heavily in your work, what else inspires your work?
People, places, travel, history, friends, TV, magazines, life.

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?
Andrew Logan, Zandra Rhodes, Axel Salto...

Monumental Fennel, 2010
Crystalline-glazed stoneware, Height 85cm (33 1/2") Width 60cm (23 5/8") Depth 57cm (22 1/2")

Q You have just finished a solo show at Robilant & Voena Gallery, London, what is next?
See my web site for the details about the Robilant Voena show… now the run of international shows with my international art dealer, Adrian Sassoon, (see his web site for the dates and details), but as well as some 5 joint shows for him next year I have a huge public commission and two large pot commissions for clients in the USA… I also have plans to try to work with industry and to paint more and to make a DVD teaching film for sale from my web site…

2010 Solo Show at Robilant & Voena Gallery London

Q You are very generous in sharing techniques, glaze recipes and your working processes – what is the thinking behind this philosophy?
To further the field, openness encourages a drive to forward and progress, I want people to be a success and this makes the whole world of ceramics a more exciting place to work and learn….

Q Crafts in the 21^st Century – what does this mean to you?
Anything goes now, same as art, it all comes in circles, but ever faster turning and reinventing… but the paramount thing for me is that the standard of excellence advances, with new technology and adapting to change….

A Tutti Frutti Baby Bad, 2008
Pebble-glazed earthenware. Height 12 cm. (4 3/4") Diameter 14 cm. (5 1/2")

Q What is your greatest achievement to date?
Being a mother and in a partnership with my daughters dad for 27 years…. And being very happy… but that’s not my achievement, it is their patience…

Sliced Heart Pillows, 2002
Pebble-glazed earthenware and Crystalline-glazed stoneware, clay press moulded. Studio edition, repeated in different glazes. Diameter 11 3/8" (29cm)

Q What is your typical working day look like?
Live and work in the same building, Awake at 7, Up around 8, daughter to school, then clear house a little and start work around 10, chase my tail and try to wake up… breakfast at 10 … good lunch with assistants at around 2pm, get into gear,,,, daughter home form school fusion of homework and cooking and continuing to work, family to bed around 10 I often work on into the night.. now it is 2am, working on tax accounts, the worst part of the year,,, as im late to bed, ill probably sleep to 8 am – just able to wake to say bye to my daughter to go to school, ,,,then the process starts again…

Medium Sliced Triple Pea Pod, 2000
Pebble-glazed earthenware, clay press moulded.

Q What is your working style?
Chaotic and cyclical…. Periods of making, then glazing, then clearing up!

Q How do you sell and promote your work?
Exclusively in collaboration with Sassoon and his office of staff…also recently did some u tube weekly diaries, they were great fun to do and i hope to do more... have a look at the YouTube kate malone ceramics, and find the 8 video diaries, and one by the Robilant & Voena Gallery...

An Acorn Box, 2010
Crystalline-glazed stoneware, limited edition 11 of 30, Height 23cm (9") Diameter 16cm (6 1/4")

Q What 3 words of advice would you give to aspiring makers?
self-motivate, listen to mistakes, persist..…

Q What music are you listening to at the moment?
Jacques Brel and Anthony and the Johnsons.

Q What do you do to relax?
Make pots, cook, cycle, travel, party, tai chi and tv… swim when I can, do the ironing!

Editors Note: Kate Malone’s Work is also housed in these following Public Collections:

The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
British Council Teapot Collection
British Council Touring Collections
Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds
Crafts Council, London
Arts Council, London
The British Council, Manchester and Bahamas collections
Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester
The Cleveland Arts Trust
Paisley Museum & Art Gallery, Paisley
Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol
Gallery Oldham, Oldham, Greater Manchester
Stoke-On-Trent Museum, Stoke-On-Trent
Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, Norwich
York City Art Gallery, York
Geffrye Museum, London
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
McManus Galleries & Museum, Dundee
Contemporary Art Society, London
Harley Foundation Collection, Welbeck, Nottinghamshire
Ulster Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Musée National de Céramique, Sèvres, France
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, USA
Boise Art Museum, Boise, Idaho, USA
J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, USA
Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Montreal, Canada

Charan Sachar

2010-11-15T15:07:00.004Z

Dancing Diva (This wall sculpture is a part of a series inspired by the songs and dances seen in Bollywood movies)

Q So who is Charan Sachar?
Charan Sachar is the potter behind Creative with Clay. I have lived in India for a significant part of my life where my mother ran a boutique designing clothes for brides and bridesmaids. The colors, fabrics, embroidery and designs I came across then have a strong impact on my work now.My work also reflects my love for Bollywood movies and my fascination with life in India. I strive to give life to clay, decorating it with Indian influences keeping functionality and uniqueness in mind.

Pottery has given me the much needed respite from the monotony of everyday life. Working with clay and giving it form feels as satisfying as organizing and bringing peace to all the chaos that is there around you. My goal is to continue to work with this medium to create art work which is cherished for life.

Bollywood Inspired Hand-built Tumblers (stoneware with slip decoration)

Q India features heavily in your designs – are there any other cultural influences in your work?
For having lived in India for a significant part of my life, majority of my influences do come from India. However I was born and brought up in Kuwait for first 16 years of my life. We were raised in a very Indian atmosphere, but the middle east influences do creep into my work. I enjoyed writing Arabic as it was so fluid and just like drawing. The intricate patterns seen in mosaic work also makes an impact on my work. Interestingly, I have noticed that same patterns which I thought are Indian, are very similar to Chinese and African too and mean different things. The same texture is the rising sun in one culture or fish scales in another. Textures and patterns in general do impact my work greatly and I keep my eyes open to everything.

Q You work in clay but is there any other medium you work in or would like to work?
I have worked in several mediums, like painting, pin thread, crafting from recycled material, cooking etc. I knew I always wanted to work with clay and had always been trying to get there. Every now and then I go get attracted to cooking, calligraphy and wood carving. With all the things I would like to do with clay, I don’t know when I will try to accomplish something else.

Big Sassy Funky Salt Pepper Shakers Dancing (porcelain, hand-built with slip trail decoration)

Q Do you create your work in a studio base or a home base?
I have a studio at home where I create my work. When we purchased our home, my first priority was to have a studio space. We did have to convert a family room on the bottom floor of our house to my studio. I love the space and planned it with potential of growth. With almost 6 years in, it has worked work really well and I am now hunting for more space. I should be good for a few more years and then may be expand into my garage, if my wife lets me. LOL!

Q What is your typical working day look like?
I work full time as an engineer and my studio time revolves around every single free minute I can get. So I really can’t stick to a fixed everyday schedule. Having said that, I am very disciplined about what I need to get done on a monthly/weekly and daily basis. I keep a calendar for that. Usually after work, I take a break and get into the studio in the evening. My pre planning helps in determining what I will be doing in the studio that day. After I complete my work, I leave the studio in clean enough state so I don’t waste time cleaning when I work next. I would rather clean when tired at end of day, than clean when I am excited to make pots.

Tea Light Candle Holders (wheel thrown, stoneware with slip decoration)

Q What is your working style?
With clay, it is all about timing. And with my decoration technique, timing is everything. The pots need to be at the perfect stage for alterations and attaching handles. With my slip decoration, if the clay is too wet, it is hard to get clean patterns. Too dry and the slip decoration pops out. To overcome this, I need to be really organized and need to divide my process in stages.

First is working with wet clay, i.e. throwing on the wheel, extruding or slab work depending on what I am making. Next day is trimming, adding handles, hand-building/altering the extruding work and the day after is the slip decoration or carving, which is the most time consuming. So once I have touched the wet clay, I need to keep on my toes to make sure the pots are at the right stage for every process. This is followed by the bisque firing and then the glaze firing.

Sassy Teapot with cups standing with attitude (stoneware with slip decoration)

Q How do you sell and promote your work?
I sell my work at art shows and in galleries across the US (You can see my show schedule and the galleries that carry my work at http://www.creativewithclay.com/). I also sell online at http://creativewithclay.etsy.com/. Majority of my promotional work happens through facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Creative-with-clay/66752007515), my blog (creativewithclay.blogspot.com) and through forums. All of these have their pros and cons. I do enjoy the interaction with my customers at all times.

Q What is your greatest achievement to date?
I don’t think I have reached any great achievement yet but I have been very happy on achieving some of my goals. In the last few years, I have been doing art shows which I only dreamed of doing. I had been visiting these shows ever since I got started in clay and thought some day I will apply to these shows and will sell my work here. I feel very fortunate to get into these shows on my first application and getting a great response. This has mostly been possible with support and encouragement of friends, family and my customers.

Bowls - (wheel thrown with slip trail decoration)

Q What music are you listening to at the moment?
I am a big Bollywood fan. I will listen to everything and anything Bollywood. Lately I have been enjoying songs of Once upon a time in Mumbai, Action Replayy, Aisha, Raajneeti... The list goes on.

Q 3 words of advice for an aspiring Craft artist/maker...
Focus, Determination, Discipline and enjoy every moment with this gift you have

Large Cookie Jar - (stoneware with impressed decoration and glaze)

Q Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?
This list is going to be long and it would be very hard for me to list everyone here. Also I wouldn’t want to leave anyone out. So I am going to let this question go!

Q What do you do to relax?
Good question. I wish I had an answer to this since I hardly get time to relax. I do watch a Bollywood movie. A good 3 hours forces me to sit in one place and not work. That is the only way I will not work. But thinking about it, I am still taking in inspiration for my upcoming work while watching the movie. So it is not totally relaxed time.

Oval Lidded Trinket Box

To view video demonstrations of Charan’s Slip trail techniques and decoration process please click here:
http://creativewithclay.blogspot.com/2008/09/slip-decoration.html
http://creativewithclay.blogspot.com/2009/05/process-of-decorating.html