2024 / 27 - Flightlines: collecting occupational folklore that weaves between and outward from the Wall of Women's ceramics CoCA, those stories that lie beneath more formalised accounts of ceramics practice – using tacit knowledge as both stimulus and prompt to explore lives lived with clay!!

Flightlines: Smalltalk -
In addition to conversations arising from CoCA’s Wall of Women we are revisiting the original Flightlines artists and the core themes they contain. This will lead to new conversations and new pairings to explore themes in more depth. So far this has included:

@myself__now_includes and @kimnortondesign in conversation about ‘Clay and Permaculture’. Surrounded by Claire’s beautiful garden, the catalyst for the re-wilding project: @bloomingwhiteway with @juderice.

2024 - The Performing Object: Ceramics as Performance – an Interdisciplinary Symposium Department of Drama, Theatre & Dance, Royal Holloway

Making Small Talk: working with clay has long been described as entering a conversation, an interaction between the nature of the maker and properties of the material. ‘Small Talk’ examines this sociality on a more nuanced level, by applying approaches commonly used in the practice of Oral History, to devise model of co-construction that can sensitize those involved to the nature of human interaction, and act as a register of the ‘smaller stories’ in the details of shared experiences.

2022 -

Flightlines adapts traditional oral history techniques to fuel conversations between ceramic artists and identify examples of ‘ensemble practice’ (Biggs, 2011), an approach that moves beyond the focus of the studio, in accounting for creativity that includes the entanglement of multiple, interconnected demands such as those of family, social/community, or wider global/ecological events. This multiplicity in creative practice can be found as a common negotiation for women/parent artists and yet, it is a model curiously lacking in recognition for its flexibility, ingenuity, resilience, and contribution in artistic terms.

The approach requires a shift in focus from understanding creativity as ‘owned’ by self-contained individuals, to practice shaped by relations and social concerns. The results document narratives that are rich in relational connection, a collection of conversations that are already mapping alternative routes through the field of ceramics, interweaving clay with permaculture / trail-running / trauma / wellbeing / folklore / midwifery…

2024 - NEW STUDIO!!

A am honoured to now inhabit a beautiful studio in Llandaff just around the corner from where I work at CSAD. It is a shared legacy studio for three ceramists, perfectly lit by skylights and glass doors, loo's and shower if we get really messy, external storage for clay, kiln area and the amazing Halley's park if we need to breathe by the Taff river! I have my bike and can pop over during a lunchtime!

2024 - co-written with Ingrid Murphy

This paper describes a practice-based research project being undertaken at Cardiff Metropolitan University, that focuses on the design and development of an interactive material library and the use of embedded RFIDs in object making. The project is part of a wider carbon literacy initiative in the school of art, and it is hoped that through digitally augmenting materials and objects with relevant data, we can enhance students’ learning while enabling them to evidence both their ethical choice and creative voice, in material practice and making processes.

2024

The following report maps the first stages of this study from initial interaction with the site of the residency at Niemelä house, E. Finland, and onto a series of drawing conversations with its attendees. The results start to show how, as a particular field of the visual arts, the drawing process can be shaped by situated ‘small talk’, reflected in equivalenthesitancies and utterances in emerging and growing ideas, and in turn, how narrative analysis can be used to interpret and explore the sociality of drawing taking place.

2023 - collaboration with Dr Cj O'Niell

Flightlines: Conversations in Clay, a collaboration with Dr CJ O'Neill explores the extraordinary practices that can arise from the relationship between ceramic practice and life. Using non-hierarchical approaches such as oral histories, fostering networks, and devising podcasts, we gather conversations that give insight into creativity informed by the entanglement of multiple, interconnected demands – a common negotiation of women artists - and yet, models of creative practice curiously lacking in recognition for their ingenuity, resilience, and contribution in creative terms.

Co-Authors include: Sarah Christie, Phoebe Cummings, Helen Felcey, Claire Loder, Sam Lucas, Mandy Parslow, Stephanie Rozene, Ina Kaur

2021

Creativity during the Covid lockdown: Life and Renewal During the Pandemic - The Royal Anthropological Institute, and The Folklore Society

Irreducible Forces of Home' explores how for many, the material-lore of ‘home’ lay dormant or unrecognised until lockdown, at which point its irreducible forces – a space containing memories, a shelter for day-dreaming - mobilised, tracing the ‘living history’ of families along pavements, parks and green spaces and contributing to a new, albeit temporary, sociality.