#makingmatters - crafting the future
Ceramics - Craft - Creativity
My mother taught me to make things; to knit, to sew, in the way she’d been taught by her mother...so my early view of craft was that it was something every-day and practical.
I applied to art school in my mid-30’s, inspired by the ‘new’ Glasgow Boys (and Girls) and German Expressionist painters and printmakers like Käthe Kollwitz. I was redirected from Fine Art/ Painting to Ceramics, discovered I ‘knew’ clay and that I could use it to express my deep affinity with a culture and heritage that had making and the land at its core (I’m first generation ‘off the island’; the grand-daughter of a crofter weaver from the Isle of Lewis).
For me, Craft is the keeper of tradition and the subverter of tradition; makers can innovate, commentate and challenge. I find endless fascination in our multitudinous approaches to craft and its ‘shape-shifting’ across boundaries and barriers – and artificial divides between design, making objects and making art.