Festival Exhibition
2022
Our Festival 2022 Exhibition features artists from across the United Kingdom, delivering Prints, Pottery and Jewellery
Contact us directly if you would like to find out more about our artists featured below or purchase one of their pieces.
Tamsin
Abbott
The old world of Britain runs in Tamsin’s veins. For the whole of her adult life she has been shaped by her determination to live in the countryside and to discover its ancient magic. Today most of Tamsin’s work is influenced by the Herefordshire countryside around her home, the orchards, the hills, the woods and all the plants, birds and animals that grow and live about. The seasons provide her with an ever changing abundance of colour and sights. Even in winter when the short gloomy days can be depressing there is the beauty of the naked trees to admire and the moonlit night to enjoy as early as five o’clock! Working with glass has really helped Tamsin appreciate and be inspired by these things.
However, Tamsin’s work is not only about, and inspired by, the physical nature of the world around her. She is also drawn to the world of myths, fairytales and our ancient connections to the landscape. This is to her the invisible tapestry that weaves and links us to our rural ancestry.
Tamsin’s final source of inspiration comes from the glass itself. This is a material with alchemical qualities and mystery of its own being neither a solid nor a liquid as we would normally understand them. It is produced from fairly base materials which are finely crafted whilst molten, and the final product is clear yet solid, bright-shining but coloured like the rainbow. It is a material that has been used in different forms for celebratory, spiritual and magical purposes since it was first discovered over a thousand years ago.
November Night
Julia Manning
Julia’s inspiration comes from drawing in the wild and her observations and sketches made while walking alone.
During lockdown Julia started doing a Daily Moth Drawing.
Each evening she set up her moth trap in her garden. The excitement each morning opening it inspired Julia. She would pick a moth put it in a clear plastic pot and draw it using a magnifying glass. After she would release it into a shady spot in the garden and post the drawing on Instagram (juliamanningartist) as her Moth Diary
Some of the prints in the exhibition are created from these drawings.
Lockdown also gave Julia the opportunity to experiment with printmaking, to create in print, her interpretation of the eel story, happening in real time month by month in her local rivers and coastline. She walked with a sketch book, capturing the environment the eels passed through on their migration to and from the Sargasso Sea.
Julia is a member of Make south West(The Devon Guild of Craftsmen) an elected Senior Fellow of The Royal Society Of Painter Printmakers (RE) an elected member of The Society of Wildlife Artists (SWLA) and for 5 years was a member of Pine Feroda, 4 printmakers interpreting sea and rocks in wood cuts.
Rodney
Lawrence
Having studied Philosophy at East Anglia University, Rodney worked for a short time as a porter at a London Auction House. In 1974 he trained as a potter at Harrow School of Art, and then as a workshop assistant with David Leach.
In 1975 Rodney joined Elizabeth Raeburn to set up their workshop in Somerset, where he has been working ever since.
His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in the UK and abroad, and in recent years he has concentrated on private commissions. These have ranged from small dishes to fireplace surrounds, and from pieces commissioned by the film director John Schlesinger to commemorate the premières of his films, to others depicting building restoration projects, people’s lifetime achievements, family celebrations or just special presents.
Cutlery drainer
Zsuzsi
Morrison
Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1988, Zsuzsi has created individual and one off enamel pieces by hand. Her original desire to study fine art has greatly influenced her work. Her painting and want for colour in her jewellery led her to specialise in the field of enamelling. Using traditional enamelling techniques to express modern concepts, her work has a distinct avant-garde personal language. Zsuzsi's jewellery is imbued with a joyful exuberance. The jewel-like intensity she achieves in her colour palette is re-invented through this ancient process in her hands. Zsuzsi's exquisite detailing on even the reverse sides of her pieces is testimony to the meticulous care in the hand making and finishing of every piece that leaves her studio. This subtlety and attention to detail might be a tiny heart motif or kiss on the clasp of a chain, a bright gestural fleck of intense colour dancing across a surface, or an unrepeatable drawn line pressed into the surface of the gold and silver which acts as the canvas she paints on. Poised somewhere between jewellery, sculpture and paintings, Zsuzsi’s work could be described as modern day talismans or amulets, each piece an individual work of art. Her pieces are in many private collections and exhibited in galleries and design shops both nationally and internationally.
Elizabeth
Raeburn
Having worked in music and book publishing and then as a teacher, Elizabeth Raeburn trained as a potter at Harrow School of Art from 1973 to 1975.
During that time, she spent an inspiring summer as a production student in David Leach’s pottery.
In 1975, she moved to Somerset, establishing a pottery with Rodney Lawrence.
Since 1981 she has concentrated on handbuilt Raku. She has had solo and group exhibitions in England and abroad, and her work is represented in private and public collections internationally, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, the Aichi Prefectoral Ceramic Museum in Japan and the Museo de Ceramica in Barcelona.
Raku snow standing tile
Emma Kate Ochom
Kate is at her most content when ‘making’ at home, in the magical, mystical Black Mountains of South Wales.
The curious nature of her younger self led her to live, love and labour around the globe, from the freezing lunar-like landscapes of Iceland to the exotic, dusty climes of Uganda and many places in between.
After years of living in other worlds, absorbing fascinating cultures, but ultimately becoming frayed at the edges, Kate was extremely grateful to return to Wales and begin the transformative and cathartic process of studying a Contemporary Design Craft degree at Hereford College of Arts. Here she spent three years learning the discourse and structural potential of Book Arts and bindings, dividing her energies between the textiles, print and 3D workshops.
Conscious of her environmental footprint, Kate chooses to work with as natural, biodegradable, or repurposed materials as possible and aims to use processes that require minimal energy consumption.
Kate is trying to live a harmonious lifestyle and says ‘making’ helps her to balance on the wobbly tight rope of life, whilst, in her words: juggling the batons of single parenting, teaching in a local primary school, and developing herself as a maker.