I didn’t have time to dig my vegetable patch last winter, too much rain, and too much work in the studio. I approach the weedy mess in the spring and look down to where I had been growing courgette plants. The successive heavy frosts of the winter had worked on the stems to reveal their inner structure, a chain mesh of fibres of incredible beauty. I gathered these stems and pressed them into a slab of fresh clay. An impression of an object that in a few more weeks would decompose and return to the earth, had been captured on a slab of clay soon to become “fired earth”, terracotta, terre cuite. Transposed to live another life.
Courgette stems, pinecones, magnolia fruit, ferns… plant fragments gathered in my garden or during my walks, are used to make abstract textures on slabs of clay, which are then constructed into vases. I explore forms that leave the maximum space for these imprints, restrained shapes but with subtle movements. The vases are glazed inside, mat outside and the textures are enhanced by painting on and rubbing off thin layers of coloured slips.Sold from L'Atelier des Neuf Portes or exhibitions :
Tupiniers du Vieux Lyon, 8 et 9 septembre 2012 www.tupiniers.com
Pots, Plantes et Paniers, Poterie de Sampigny, 71 www.poterie-fresnais.fr
Les Journées des Plantes de Courson, 91 www.domaine-de-courson.fr
photos : peter white, jane norbury
vases 2007-2009
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