Robin Welch
I stumbled across Robin Welch’s obituary and then took a closer look at his work. A student of Bernard Leach’s son Michael, he went on to the Central School in 1956, becoming a technical assistant to Gilbert Harding-Green. He met many creative and influential ceramicists and artists, including Gordon Baldwin and Eduardo Paolozzi, nurturing an experimental and open approach to ceramics.
With his wife Jenny he moved to Victoria, Australia in 1960 and made mostly functional pots, returning home to Suffolk in 1965 where he successfully made domestic ware. As he began to employ assistants he had the time to concentrate on his individual pieces. Another visit to Australia in 1980, inspired by the landscape and nature, led him to adopt a looser, more asymmetric approach to form (exactly what I need to do). He developed a range of vessels, some of which were huge and demonstrated a variety of textures and colours, often combining wheel-thrown bases with coiled or slab-built sections.
Examples of the work of Robin Welch:
The Rachel Wood Connection
Rachel Wood is a thrower and hand builder whose layered work invokes the colours and strata of the landscape. She uses slips and glazes to reflect diverse terrains, from Derbyshire to the Australian bush.
She studied ceramics at Loughborough University and has spent much of her time involved in community projects. Rachel was invited to work as a studio assistant with Robin Welch on a large piece of public work which she enjoyed enormously.
The Australian Connection
Rachel took up a residency at Sturt Craft Centre in Mittagong, south of Sydney. Like Robin she was drawn to and inspired by the Australian bush - the gum trees and their bark, their texture and unfettered natural state and powerful but fractured forms. The result was a collection of pots she named “Bark Vessels”, all thrown in sections, manipulated and stressed, using heavily grogged stoneware clay. Slips and glazes were applied and the work was fired in an electric kiln.
I have noted the similarity of inspiration which both artists took from the Australian bush and their ways of making which I, in turn, find inspiring. Following on from my self- initiated project I made a set of tall cylinders, intending to do some work on surface texture with them but every time I looked at them there was something not right about the forms.
I went back to my initial inspiration, the silver birch trees and instantly realised what was wrong – they (the cylinders) were obviously too symmetrical!! I imagine that subconsciously it felt wrong to take a thrown piece then alter or manipulate it.
I need to get over this, open my mind and experiment with more natural forms. Next steps are to throw a lot of small cylinders and play with ways of altering the forms then begin to experiment with different types of clay, layering, surface texture and colour.
I took my sketch pad into the woods and there wasn’t a perfect cylindrical tree in sight! I think it was Michael Cardew who said: “Pottery is about the majesty of form.”
I’m off to find a bit of that majesty.
Opmerkingen