Upcoming events this year:

I am very pleased to say that my work has been at the Jetty Gallery this year; 100 George St, Oban PA34 5NR. I look forward to continuing with this in the future.

My next exhibition is at Upfront Gallery from September 27th to November 12th 2023. This is a Northern Potter's exhibition. A great venue with good vegetarian food!

My big exciting news is that I am starting a Masters degree in Ceramics at the University of Central Lancashire (part time) starting September 23! 

I enjoyed a preview day at Uclan for the Northern Potters Camp this summer. A full day, I was pleased with my throwing tuition and enjoyed the demonstrations by Ruth King, Micaela Schoop and Hannah McAndrews and Doug Fitch.  A very entertaining afternoon!

I have been gathering thoughts and also material to incorporate in my work, from my recent trip to Iceland this summer. 

I had a great time, seeing different parts of the country with their stunning scenery. It was lovely to meet up with family and to immerse myself in the Icelandic culture for the trip of a lifetime. (photos).

Celestial Beings?

This exhibit is different in that it is not based around a poem.  In the last few years I have become increasingly interested in the shapes and forms of algae, microscopic plants. This is because my father was a Freshwater Biologist and I have been lucky enough to have access to the Fritsch Collection, in which every known species of algae in the world has either been drawn or photographed under the microscope.  This is sited at the Freshwater Biological Association at the Ferry House, Windermere.  The collection is now being digitised and will be available on line, sometime in the future, see leaflet.  (Please feel free to take one if you want).

I have made the most of this opportunity and find myself ever more drawn to the shapes and patterns of these amazing plants and animals.

For this year’s exhibit, I have chosen to do a display of some of the species of algae my father found in Africa when he was working on the big African Lakes, e.g. Victoria and Malawi. I hope to include a photo of him and my Mum when they were working there in the late fifties, when they were first married.

 I am trying a new technique to display this, also now in the digital age, decals. A decal is an image of essentially ceramic ink that is fired onto a tile, like a transfer.

There is a great precision in the drawings in the Fritsch Collection.  In my work I use scratched lines, using coloured slip (liquid clay) underneath.  This is called scrafitto and is a traditional slipware technique. I use a variety of different colours underneath, with clear or honey glaze on top. 

I continue to be amazed by the symmetry of the forms. I have discovered a new decorating tool, using the printer to enlarge images and then tracing the enlarged images and transferring to the tile.

The swirling of the algal images around a ‘sun’, made me think of celestial beings.  Algae may have originally come from the ‘soup’ out in space, their delicate forms orbiting like moons.

I left the brown and white tile unglazed as I liked the effect it gave of ancient paper (some drawings on this in the Fritsch Collection and also looks a bit like an old photo). If I had glazed it, it would have been transformed to shiny green! I preferred to stick with the former.  Also looks to me like asteroids or algae moving around in the primordial 

mud.

The brightly coloured vessel holds my Dad’s favourite flower, a foxglove, picked from the garden where they grow abundantly.

Sadly the work of the Frisch Collection was halted when the FBA moved premises. It is now stored in the Natural History Museum in London. Hopefully sometime in the future it will be revisited.

To download a copy just click on the flyer above and save or print it.