As the Crows Fly is very much looking forward to being part of the Make 17 exhibition at Devon Guild of Craftsmen this year, as well as being featured artist on their publicity for the event. Really excited about this. The private view (see below for details) will be on Friday 17th November from 6-8pm so if you are in the area please do come and meet us as it should be a lovely evening. Otherwise the exhibition will be running from Saturday 18th November until Sunday 7th January 2018.
Introducing a new set of bone china wares that I’ve been sketching, colouring, getting printed into decals and firing onto some beautiful Stoke-on-Trent bone china ware. Here are some shots of the finished pieces, followed by an explanation of the work in progress.
The flexibility of being able to accurately reproduce detailed drawings on ceramics using this method really inspires me – it’s a completely different approach from the handmade pieces and I love it as it allows me to produce consistent products that all work together.
This little lot has been in the pipeline since July so it’s great to be getting it ready in time for all the Christmas events this season.
Here are a few snapshots of how the designs begin, on paper. Sometimes in the garden with tea and sunshine, sometimes in the studio using blooms and seedheads gathered while walking.
I love this process. It makes me feel so connected to the work I do. It also allows me to be creative with the raw materials. Currently I am creating a couple of tea towels to go with the above designs. Because I can manipulate the images in whatever way I want to I am free to put them together in new ways. I got really inspired by the Fifties in the colouring and style of the drawings so I took it a step further for the Dandelion tea towel and turned elements of the sketch into a colourful repeat pattern.
It’s at the printers right now, so here’s hoping it looks good on unbleached cotton!
The experiments with colour block brights and layered leopard print effect glazes are coming along too. I’m really excited by this range and once a few firing difficulties have been ironed out I’m going to be making this my primary product I think.
I’d never really tried doing anything with out surface illustration before – that is my area of expertise and what I’ve always loved doing. Having the freedom just to think about shape and colour and the graphicness of the 3D objects themselves is really exciting to me and a bit of a breakthrough in my practice. Refreshing not just to simply see the vessel as a canvas for mark making.
My new porcelain hand thrown wares are building for the market season, as well as winging their way soon into the Platform Gallery in Lancashire for their Northern Star winter exhibition and Found Gallery in Dunbar in time for their winter show.
The Peapod and Dandelion versions of these thrown ceramics have cemented into the two designs I’m happiest with so it’s just going to be a case of trying to get faster at throwing them… Since getting back from sabbatical in July there has been a lot of work in the pipeline, building on the designs I began work on in Spring, and it’s satisfying to see it finally in the outcome stage.
As the Crows Fly 