Lucy, how did you get into working with clay as a medium?
I started at secondary school, in a very ceramic-focused art department. I learnt on a kick-wheel. I came back to it in 2017.
Have you always been a full-time professional artist, or did you have another career prior to that?
I have spent my working life of thirty years being a professional singer, mostly singing in ensembles within the early music field. I am still singing, and am a member of New College Chapel choir.
What does an average day look like if you’re spending it making?
After breakfast and admin, I head to my studio shed and see what needs be done. I’ll start by preparing clay - wedging and weighing out for whatever I’m throwing. Other pieces might be drier and ready for trimming, handles attaching or decoration applying. I’ll move work in progress around and plan kiln loading in my head, or it might be a glazing day. I can just see my husband working in the house so occasionally indicate tea time using semaphore.
How do you choose a new piece to work on? Do you have a bank of ideas/
sketches/reference material?
I am lead by what I want to use! A really good mug in three sizes, a comfortable multipurpose bowl, large serving dishes. Teapots. Decoration is continuously evolving, and shapes evolve subtly between batches. I do make sketches of new shapes and look at and buy others' work as reference but I’m more of a three dimensional thinker and sort of sketch as I go on the wheel. I particularly like lidded pots. Sometimes I will just play around, and this has resulted in a small sideline making chickens and other birds.
What other things take up your working hours, and do you enjoy any of the more mundane aspects of art life?
I hate admin! And marketing, an essential part of a maker’s life, is something I really need
to work more on this year. I also find recycling clay quite dull.
Do you do any teaching, and if so do you feel like it contributes something to your
own practice? Or brings other benefits? (Other than financial ones!)
I’ve taught singing for 15 years, and am just starting to teach potting more regularly. Very
different energies needed. All teaching though helps you to hone your own technique in
that you need to examine and codify what you do before you pass it forwards.
What sort of art, and which artists, inspire or influence you?
I am drawn to many different artists in all sorts of media, but I think the unifying
attractions are strong use of colour and form. Potters I admire are Richard Batterham,
Lucie Rie, John Jelfs, Mayumi Yamashita, Tricia Thom, Yo Thom (not related). Japanese
cooking ware.
What other things inspire your work? (Or just make you happy?)
Texture and colour in nature (when I get round to it, I want to develop a lichen yellow
glaze), Wes Anderson films, a really crisp blue sky against Oxford limestone, music for
every mood and time. Audio books in the studio are a constant - nothing too scary, I do
like a really long classic, my favourite book is Middlemarch.
How has your style developed over the years, and why?
I started by making highly decorated objects that came out of textiles and sculpture that
I had made before, and because they often did not translate well through the brutal
ceramics process, I realised that I really prefer simpler stronger tactile things to use.
Also that I am not a good representational artist, and that bold marks are more
successful.
What sort of response do you hope your work provokes in people?
I hope my work is picked up, handled, and used with pleasure every day. I hope it gives
both visual and tactile joy. I really enjoy customers sending me pictures of pots in action,
and love people coming back to buy more to add to their collection. This in the
knowledge and encouragement that my work changes and develops form year to year,
but they see some continuous thread that they enjoy.
Have there been moments/interactions with people that you’ve felt have validated
your decision to pursue a career in ceramics?
My coming back to clay has largely been self taught, but I did an intensive week’s
course just after Covid that propelled me forward and gave me a real confidence boost.
Six months later I’d built a bigger shed and bought a kiln.
If you could go back and meet your younger artistic self, would you have any
advice for them?
Practise more. In either music or art. I’m a terrible procrastinator - be more organised.