landscape VESSELS
each tree vessel I make responds to the time I have spent studying and connecting with a specific tree. An intimate moment, where I choose to listen to the tree’s wisdom and essence of being. Not only do the physical attributes speak to me, such as bark texture, branch formation, folds and crevices; it’s about the energy dialogue between us/
from Crab Apple trees, to Poplars, to Scotts Pine and Sequoia, the choice of exploration and understanding is endless. The variety even within each species never ceases to inspire me/
often I form the grounded base on the Potter’s Wheel, throwing stoneware clay while remembering…then I build upwards in coils, blending, pressing, cutting and folding. Coiling conjures the same concentric circles which represent a tree’s life, much like each coiled layer represents a moment in making time in my own life, in my studio/
The completed form is finished with wild clay slips which I forage from various locations on my travels. The inner space of the vessel is covered with a water tight glaze for functional use/
every tree vessel is unique, some even made incorporating woven willow and wire to suggest reaching branches; each one is marked with my signature ‘S’ on the base
landscape VESSELS
where land meets sky, river touches earth, and trees sprinkle their wisdom across the undulating hills – there is no end to the inspiration that feeds the creation of my landscape vessels/
geology, rock formations, and the earth’s minerals, have always fascinated me. As a young child I would forage fossils at Severn Beach with my Father; and in my latter years, I hike every day exploring the landscape on the Mendip Hills near my studio/
the first vessel I made was inspired by the work of Ewen Henderson, who I was fortunate to interview during my BA (Hons) Ceramics, many years ago. He too was inspired by landscape, and enjoyed the freedom of hand-buildiing, considering matters such as memory, invention and metaphor/
my memory of landscape is not only visual, but energetic; the feelings and sensations that arise as I walk and explore, seep into my being. This informs both the way I make and what arises from the Potter’s Wheel. I always start by throwing the base, enjoying the reassuring force of centrifugation, and then allowing freedom and chance to intervene as I add coils of varying clays and hand-build in layers. Every fissure, crack and covolution tells a story; every texture and colour connects to a visceral memory/
some landscape vessels are reduction fired (in a gas kiln) to enrich the glazes and slips; others are barrel fired in my garden. Every tree vessel is one of a kind, one of land, one with nature/
