Route 2

About the Artist

Three craft activities - Ceramics, Lino Printing and Pyrography, are exhibited in workshop and garden. Small stoneware sculptures, including figures and abstract subjects. Lino printmaking gives a wider variety of colour and shapes(musicians, and abstract). My pyrography is about burning a design, fitted to the shape of bamboo or wood artefact. Each craft has different challenges.

Craft work is my ‘happy place.’ I begun producing craft work from an early age, Gained a degree in ceramics (and weaving), at Farnham, West Surrey (1982). I took Art teacher training in Birmingham, with art therapy as a study and a placement. Since then I have worked mainly as a teacher for complex needs pupils, and have helped and / or run craft workshops in a variety of venues.

My recent ceramics are hand – built sculptures and tea light holders from grogged clay. Fired twice, the second firing (stoneware), is completed after my decoration, using either a glaze; or painting metal oxides onto the pot, then sponging to reveal texture and shape.

Soft lino cutting enables me to experiment with colour and design, mainly small prints, using watercolour ink, on paper. I cut stylised images, including musicians.

Pyrography offers a way of decorating flat and 3D household items, made from wood or bamboo. My favourite designs are celtic knot work or animals.

For fun, and as relaxation, I try other crafts, modelling decorations from air dried clay, mosaics, and jewellery making.