1. 1. SKILL I have significantly developed my throwing skills and now feel much more confident on the wheel. IDEA I enjoy the process but rather than seeing it as a means to an end, I see it as the start of a process of construction.

2. Carina Ciscato at Collect ‘17
Gordon Baldwin at Coca York
2. CONTEXT I feel inspired by the work of Gordon Baldwin I saw at COCA York as well as Carina Ciscato at Collect ’17 who hand-build with thrown forms. Unlike slabs the clay holds some of the energy and motion of the wheel and has a springiness and tension to the touch. IDEA I’m interested I the idea of a piece showing traces of how it was made.

3. 3. IDEA Idea of trace and memory was important in café society project
3. IDEA Idea of trace and memory was important in café society project. I wanted to create mugs for a café that would be a piece of home in Cardiff for when I felt homesick and missed the wild, rural landscape of North Wales. I hoped to saggar fire them with combustibles from home so the surface holds a physical trace of the landscape. I focused on throwing a particular shape – a mug I remembered from home, but when I found a picture of it afterwards I realised my memory of the object was different to reality.

4. 4. IDEA This idea of the unreliability of our senses was further explored in Constellation - New materialisms. We drew an object from touch then from sight and it made me think about what I think I know as opposed to what I actually know.

5. 5. SKILL/CONTEXT I enjoyed the screenprinting field lab where we learnt about colour theory and played with the placing of colour. I’d already been interested in learning how to make coloured slips and thinking of the clay more as a canvas for painting on but the field project inspired me to work more in colour, especially for the pop art oil lamps.

6. 6. SKILL Influenced by the paper stencils we used in the field screen printing I learnt how to use the laser cutter to cut my own paper stencils for the pop art project, with crisp sharp lines to suggest advertising graphics and mass production. Also with these oil lamps I began exploring the idea of building with thrown forms.

7. Lisa Krigel
7. IDEA Realised with this technique that I was interested in the theme of balance. It’s something I have explored a bit in the past, exploring how the body balances on my foundation course. CONTEXT I came across Lisa Krigel’s stacking forms at Made in Roath and became interested in the compositions of balancing dirty dishes in the kitchen. CONTEXT My constellation essay examines the philosophy of balance in relation to eastern philosophy and the ceramics of Bernard leach, looking at balance creates harmony in art as well as everyday life.

8. 8. CONTEXT After coming back from France and playing games around the dinner table I wanted the centrepiece to be interactive or a kind of game. However, I was much more interested in taking a process driven rather than schematic approach, so worked through playing with the clay.
CONTEXT Wouter dam inspired forms.

9. SKILL Going back to the idea of trace, I like work that shows signs of how it has been fired as well and am drawn to more experimental firing techniques such as raku, the pit firings we did with Mick and over Easter. I like the firing being an experience in itself not just something that has to happen. Reading about mindfulness and Eastern Philosophy has made me not want to think of any part of my making process as a means to an end, but as a wholesome experience to be enjoyed of itself.