Kings, Saints and Sinners Exhibition

I have an exhibition starting this Saturday at the Discovery Centre in Winchester. It is in the City Space Gallery and features my figurative work, this time focusing on characters from local history. I've tried to imagine how the people such as King Alfred or Jane Austen would have stood and what kind of scene might be typical of their lives. I wanted to create self contained scenes that tell a story about the person, and illustrate a snapshot of their life. My figurines show characters of whom we have no exact visual record, and are therefore open to a certain amount of interpretation. My task was to make them into believable three dimensional people, albeit very small clay ones. The show opens Santurday the 11th Jan, until Sunday 9th Feb.

Budgies

Have recently delivered some work to Rostra Gallery in Bath, including some of these Budgies, which are also available in my online shop...... bysaw.bigcartel.com

Ruthin Craft Centre

I'm taking part in an exhibition at Ruthin Craft Centre at the moment. The theme of the exhibition combines my two favorite things- ceramics and illustration. I've been drawing some new tiles of my own, based on drawings I made last year at The Natural History Museum in London. It's great to continue using the drawings I made behind the scenes- there's so much inspiring material there.

'Hand-made ceramics and contemporary illustration, two very separate disciplines, come together here. With surfaces supporting images that are not simply decorative; objects, familiar from their everyday utility, address ambitious concepts and themes, providing arenas for depiction, expression, commemoration and political commentary'
The exhibition runs from September 28th until December the 1st at Ruthin Craft Centre in Wales- Ruthin Craft Centre
The Centre for the Applied Arts
Park Road, Ruthin,
Denbighshire
LL15 1BB

Giant Grouper Mural

Since becoming interested in Deep Sea Gigantism I have wanted to do a Giant Grouper Mural. Here's a photo of a section of it.

And having recently seen a BBC program on filming a Giant Squid in it's natural habitat, and it shone GOLD in the camera light, I feel the urge to do a new Giant Squid Mural. Here's an image of the last one I did which was for my RCA show last year....

Manchester Exhibition

The work I did for 'Forming Words' exhibition is now moving up to The Craft and Design Centre, Manchester.... it opens on the 13th July so you still have plenty of time to get to it...

Waiting for the kiln to cool....

A couple of photos I've taken today while waiting for my kiln to cool down. The foxes are glazed and waiting to be fired.....and below is a very good reason to always finish the biscuits before leaving the studio.

Trusty Servant

As part of my collection of Winchester figurines, this week I made this 'Trusty Servant'. I created my own print of him  (above left) from an image I found on one of my dads jugs
and then made a figurine from my own print. I was worried about making a figure that balanced on hooves rather than feet, but it worked out ok, although as usual I'm not getting too attached to this figurine until it's had both it's firings.
Below is the poem about the Trusty Servant explaining why he looks how he looks. He's an embodiment of the perfect servant, which is quite a horrid and old fashioned notion, but also means he's pretty interesting in appearance.

The Trusty Servant appears on antique  souvenir pottery and prints from Winchester, and there's a large painting of him hanging in Winchester College.