Thoryn Ziemba

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

Kate Anderson

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.

Karen Akester

  Boyracers: Cast figures glass; wood; metal

 

Q. So who is Karen Akester?
I graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1993 with a BA (hon) in Glass. After graduating I gained valuable experience working in a commercial glass factory in Cambridge. A highly pressured environment, it was hard work providing daily hot glass making demonstrations to the general public, however it provided limited creative opportunities and I left to return to Edinburgh. After several years working as an illustrator, I returned to eca graduating in 2002 with a Master of design in Glass. Since then I have continued to work as an artist and a glassmaker, exhibiting in Britain and abroad. Much of my work has been the result of Artist Residencies which can be intense and stimulating and previous fellowships include Wheaton Arts at the Creative Glass Center of America 2003, the Gulbenkian kiln forming residency at North Lands Creative Glass, Caithness 2006 and Edinburgh College of Art Glass department (pt) 2004-2009. 
 
Q.How did you decide to become a maker?
As a child drawing and making models kept me out of mischief! It has been a natural progression and I can’t imagine doing anything else?
 
Q. What made you choose the materials that you work with?
I had applied to Edinburgh College of Art to study Illustration and whilst there was introduced to the Glass department. It was amazing, I was so excited by the work I saw and immediately selected it as my ‘second subject’. After the first workshop I was totally inspired and knew that this was something I wanted to learn full time and applied to swap departments. That excitement hasn’t left; I am fascinated by process and materials and find glass an ideal material to exploit as it has so many chameleon qualities. Its unpredictability also means your constantly learning and discovering new things.

  Entymology kids: Cast figures glass; leather; metal

 

Q. If you didn’t work in glass what other medium would take your interest?
Wood, stone, metal my long term plans are to incorporate more of these materials into my work.
 

Q. What are you currently working on?
I am currently exploring metal casting looking at patination and old tin toys and I am continuing my explorations into pate de verre (glass paste).

Q. Do you have a studio base or a home base?
I model make at home and hire workshop/studio space as and when needed.
 
 

Kinder transport: Cast figures glass; wood; metal

 

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

I think that Britain has a wealth of talent within the crafts be that glass, ceramics, jewellery, weaving etc but what I find really disappointing is the current attitude towards these disciplines at College, University level. Often cited as lack of funds or applicants, we are witnessing time and again the closure of glass and ceramic departments throughout the UK. With Art colleges opting for a more generic art degree and the freedom to express ideas in any medium… (all fine) the technician will see to the rest?! But what they don’t seem to appreciate is that they are taking away the opportunity to learn valuable skills. The process of making your own work can only have a positive impact on your creativity. If these options aren’t available I think we are really starving future creative industries.I hope that councils, schools and colleges will see the light and start reinvesting in these unique disciplines. 
 
Q. How do you sell your work?
Through my website http://www.karenakester.com/ exhibitions and more recently through the Bullseye Gallery http://www.bullseyegallery.com/
 
Q. What is your working style?
My methods of working are repetitive, labour intensive and meditative. Constantly evolving and changing through the making process the pieces often develop their own narratives, which can be unpredictable and exciting.
 

Only 2 can play: Cast figures glass; wood; metal

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

Q. What inspires your work?
I am a bit of a hoarder, collecting old photographs, toys, fabrics, prints anything that triggers an emotion. In the last few years I have worked on a series of group sculptures where I try to encapsulate a specific moment in time-usually springing from a childhood memory.
 
Q. Who is/are your favourite artist(s)/maker(s)?
It is really difficult to narrow this down to a short list, as there are a lot of people I really admire: Louise Bourgeois; Caravaggio; Michelangelo; Brancusi;
Nicola Hicks; Hussein Chalayan; Vivienne Westwood. (My list could go on and on!)
 
Q. What do you do to relax?
Watch old movies and read.

 Smock dress: Glass