Earth, Water, Fire, Hands: Developing Your Creative Practice

Deep gratitude to Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice funding

Words cannot express the profound and deeply creative, challenging, joyful, grounding journey I have been on these last two years. An inkling to follow my newfound passion of ceramics was rewarded with a dream opportunity to undergo four residencies with clay by Arts Council England, who supports emerging artists in the creative industries with public funding to go and pursue their passion and up skill in their nominated creative field. 

I chose to work with the four elements of Fire, Water, Earth and Hands,  each focusing on a different aspect of the ceramic process. 

Earth, done at ICS Hungary Kecskemét, was an exploration of local and wild harvested clays from around the countryside. I played with different textural applications of clay, and ground up rock pigments and created a series of earth prayer bowls that were installed as land art in various green spaces around the city. 

Water, done at Laima Ceramics in Latvia, focused on the process of glaze-making,  where I learnt the basics of glaze formulations, using established glaze recipes and experimented with different glaze applications over fired and raw ceramic pieces. The output was a series of land art installations in a series of rivers I drew inspiration from.

Fire, done at Aqtusheti in the mountains of Georgia bordering Russia, focused on the wood firing process and the raw elemental energy of Fire. I explored the masculine energy of a South African totem animal (Lion), which culminated with a series of fire totems and a performance art work in the mountain landscape.

Hands, done at La Meridiana in Tuscany, focused on improving my wheel throwing abilities by working with the incredibly delicate porcelain clay. As I am very much a novice thrower, I gave myself the challenge of working with the most challenging of clays first, as a means of developing good solid wheel-throwing techniques at the highest possible level there is, at one of the most renown and professional ceramic schools in Europe. No small feat!

Below is a small video summarising the highlights, processes, and environments I have visited on this creative journey. Such a short video really cannot encapsulate all of the growth edges I experienced during this project, but gives you a sense of each place and process I worked on during my time with each of the residencies. I hold these experiences with gratitude and joy in my heart as I move forward on this exciting journey with ceramics.