a whisper caught in the breeze…what are the trees saying to each other? Every tree trunk vessel I make speaks to the precious time I have spent connecting with trees in a woodland. I’m curious about the relationship between trees, how they form communities and support each other through the hidden mycelium network underground/

Peter Wohlleben, in his book ‘The Hidden Life of Trees’, describes how a family of trees will still nourish the stump of a felled parent tree (through the underground network), out of respect and ‘love’. Trees hold so much wisdom and learning for us – my belief is that they act as beacons of light in our world and are custodians for our planet/

each tree trunk vessel is made from several constituent parts, thrown as separate cylinders on the Potter’s Wheel and then blended together creating a column. I enjoy the unpredictability when fusing sections, welcoming off-centred alignment, listening to how the clay wants to bend and move, and honouring the tender connection I previously made in the woodland with each tree/

specific bark textures are replicated using layers of wild clay slips, oxides and glaze. Embodying the spirit of the tree is essential in this process, so I allow my ‘self’ to step aside and surrender to the intuitive flow of remembered sensations. I scratch into the surface, re-apply slip, blend, sweep more sticky slip across the surface, hold, bend, cut, scrape…it’s an interplay of many dimensions in time, past memory, present knowing/

finally, the inner space of each vessel is covered with a water tight glaze for functional use; not only is this practical, it’s also a reflective surface from which light energy can reflect upwards and outwards, acting like a ‘beacon’/

each tree trunk vessel is attuned with Reiki (universal life force energy) to raise it’s resonant frequency and then marked with my signature ‘S’ on the base/