Pottery In The Gardens

The weather has been lovely recently and with family visiting over Easter, we had a perfect excuse for a day out in Durham. There's plenty to see and do in this charming, historical city but the most enjoyable part of the day was when we visited Crook Hall.

We first discovered Crook Hall and its gardens a couple of years ago. We were enthralled by its quirky charm, the medieval rooms in the house, and outside the themed gardens and the pond with its water lilies.

But this time there was more. We found the gardens taken over by strange objects dangling from trees or lurking in the undergrowth. There were ceramic torsos hung against the stone of the walled garden, and animals and strange shapes next to colourful plants. These were all part of the "Out of the Earth II" exhibition of ceramic works by artists from NENPA, the North East regional group of the Northern Potters Association.

The hundred or so items on display were for sale and they ranged from pieces of thrownware to sculpture. We were tempted by many of the unique objects and enjoyed discussing where we could put some of them. But as we're still tidying up our back yard following extensive renovation work to the house, we weren't able to buy anything on the day we visited. Hopefully, the good weather will hold out, allowing us to finish the yard and return to Crook Hall to buy a couple of the works before the exhibition ends on 22nd May 2011.

Here are more pictures of the exhibits.

Find out more about Crook Hall or NENPA.

Vicky and Vince,

Love Your Art

The Art Of Geometry

When you think of art, you don't normally associate it with mathematics. But an artist we met recently combines her skills in both art and geometry to create distinctive carved ceramic works. We met Halima Cassell at the preview of her "Dreams Made Manifest" exhibition at Darlington Arts Centre and again a few days later when she gave a talk about her work.

Easily recognisable, her unique style comes from her observation of patterns and their transformation into three-dimensional forms. She takes inspiration from the patterns she sees in Islamic architecture and Asian and African designs.

A versatile sculptor, Halima occasionally works in bronze, stone and wood but her favourite material is clay. Using a variety of clays from around the world she first makes the basic form then calculates, measures and marks a geometric pattern into it and finally carves out the three dimensional pattern. The resulting pieces have individual colours and textures and are described by Halima as "faceted forms"; they reflect light and produce shadows creating a sense of movement as you walk around them.

As we browsed around her exhibition, we were delighted to see that almost all of her pieces had names (we've lost count of how many times we've visited exhibitions where everything was labeled "Untitled"). Halima told us she usually comes up with the names herself but on the odd time she gets stuck, she simply invites a group of friends around, opens a bottle of wine and by the end of the evening, somebody has usually come up with a great name for the anonymous piece.


Halima is a remarkably talented artist. Her imaginative ideas and observational skills combined with her dedication to quality and precision make her work popular around the world. Yet she remains down to earth, friendly and accessible to her fans (which now includes us); she can explain her work equally well in both a technical way and in a simple, jargon-free way that even we can understand. We look forward to our next encounter.


Halima's web site is at www.halimacassell.co.uk.



Love Your Art

Vicky and Vince

Name That Sheep

By the way, did I ever mention that we collect sheep?

One of our sheep has pride of place high up on the bookshelves in our living room. It's a hand-made pottery ram that we have owned for a few months. It has a quite individual personality and we felt it was crying out for a name. We often give names to pieces in our art collection. In fact pottery firms sometimes do this too, for example the whimsical "Ewe And Me" sheep characters produced by Border Fine Arts. So how do you go about choosing a name for a ram?

We began by trying, unsuccessfully, to find out more about the ram. The sticker on the base suggested it might be a studio piece or possibly sold in a shop. We Googled but failed to find any information on the internet. If you've come across Trinity Pottery or Stuart Taylor, please let us know as we'd love to find out more about this sheep.

The spirally horns and long thin nose are its most distinctive features. The wavy wool coat is represented by spaghetti-like strands of clay built up on the main body of the sheep. It is finished roughly and unglazed giving a rustic texture that helps to create its interesting personality. Our lack of information about this ram gave us the opportunity to create our own story about his origins. His long, thick, brown, curly coat and his imposing horns evoke an image of an upland sheep in a cold, harsh, mountainous environment like the Scottish Highlands. We can just imagine him sheltering from a snowy blizzard behind the wall of a ruined castle.

After looking through a list of boys' names in a dictionary we drew up a shortlist of those with a Scottish origin. We toyed with Hamish, Angus, Fraser and others but finally settled on Alistair as his name and we think it suits him very well!

Love Your Art
Vicky

If Toucan You Can Too

We've been back to Croft village hall where Fran Connelly and Petra Lloyd were exhibiting their artwork as part of the North Yorkshire Open Studios event. For a couple of weekends, artists across North Yorkshire are throwing open the doors of their studios or holding exhibitions and demonstrations of their work. These open studio events are a great way to meet up with your favourite artists or get to know about some new ones. We were able to chat with Fran and Petra about their work and see a broader range of the things they do.

We mentioned Petra's toucans in a previous blog and were delighted to see an even wider selection to choose from than last time. Petra was half way through making one of her ceramic toucans. She explained to us about the clay, how she shaped and carved it and how it was fired using a process called Raku. The Raku firing is a technique, developed in the Far East, that extracts oxygen from the glaze, allowing the metals within it to form unique and distinctive colours such as blues, greens, copper and bronze. As we listened to her explanations, Petra thrust the half finished toucan into Vicky's hands, encouraging her to work at some of the carved detail around the eyes. This kind of interaction with the artists makes these events really interesting and fun. We were so impressed with the way the toucans were made and the wonderful end results that we just had to buy one. We look forward to it landing on on top of our display shelves next week.

The way that Petra's toucans and other ceramics were displayed alongside Fran's gorgeous, dramatically-coloured pastel skyscapes (yes, we bought one of those too) created an attractive display. The mix of different styles worked very well together.

Unfortunately we were not able to visit any of the other open studios last weekend but if we are free next weekend, look out for us.

Find out more at http://www.nyos.org.uk.

Vicky and Vince,
Love Your Art