Hon. President:- Joe Finch

Hon. Member:- Henry Sandon

Helen Willis

Click here to return to list of members

I trained at Loughborough College of Art in the 1960’s when David Leach was a visiting lecturer and Arthur Griffiths was Head of Ceramics.  I gained my PGCE at Bristol University and had completed twenty-seven years of teaching ceramics by the time I retired in 2005.

 

My work is evolving and at the moment my forms and textures are inspired by the organic shapes and surfaces that I see in the garden where my workshop is.  I am also interested in the patterns and colours that develop on the pots during close contact with the flames and chemicals that combust around the pots during a wood firing.  I have a curiosity in the fire itself and a desire to understand how it can affect the clay with colour.

 

I focus on shapes that have an air of function about them but have no desire to make them actually functional at the moment.  I prefer to coil my shapes but will often use a thrown form as a starting point and then add to it.  I like the contrast of strongly textured areas next to smooth burnished ones.  One holds the oxides and the other is a canvas for the fire to paint its patterns on.

 

I have started to use colours from the garden in my work and am looking more at the flowers, making the forms by delicately pinching and coiling the shapes and, teasingly, calling them cups and saucers.