the CHRISTMAS COLLECTION

Thurs 3rd Dec 2009 until Jan 20th 2010

The Christmas show includes work by over 100 selected makers - we cannot show them all here, but as the show builds, we shall add more images as the work comes in and goes out on display.

Artists featured on this web page are : (click on name to see images or scroll down and click an image to enlarge it)

BEN ARNUP, GILL DOUGLAS, PAMELA KNIGHT, PAUL SMITH, PHILIP HEARSEY, CLAIRE MALET, JEFF SOAN, CHRIS HAWKINS

BEN ARNUP
	Mini Box and Multi Boxes ceramic as seen in last years Christmas Collection
GILL DOUGLAS	Burning Bush Isle of Lewis watercolour, mixed media	Hebridean Overture, Staffa, Lino print	Red Sky Over Rum, watercolour
	Smoke on the Mountain - An Teallach, Wester Ross, Watercolour	Squall etching	Freswick II, watercolour

	Kate's Pond, etching, indigo	Sunk I, drypoint, carborundum, etching
PHILIP HEARSEY	'Apostrophe' bronze	'Skirrid Wave' bronze	Various pieces displayed in cabinet, patinated and polished bronze

CLAIRE MALET	'Flowing vessel' 33cm steel with 24ct gold plate

PAUL SMITH	'Strange Little Girl, medium' handbuilt ceramic	'Poles Apart' ceramic	Limited Edition bronze resin sculpture, 'If you go down to the woods'

PAMELA KNIGHT	'Brea	'
GUILIANA LAZZERINI	White Flight Oil on Canvas £2450 SOLD	Florentine Table Acrylic on canvas £1450 FROM xMAS 2008
	Island II mixed media on canvas £150 FROM XMAS 2008	Island I £150
JEFF SOAN	Wobbly-wood fish by JEFF SOAN . Large Cedar £290, Blue fish £260 (NOT SHOWN), small fish from £28. (Filleted extra, but we'll save you the head for the cat!)	JEFF SOAN Rocking Chickens, wood, leather, cluck
CHRIS HAWKINS	Blade Cufflinks, silver	Crow cufflinks, silver	Lozenge ring, silver
	Stingray cufflinks	Stingray bangle, silver	Wave bangle, silver

Views of LAST YEARS Exhibition taken on 12 Nov 08 please come back later to see the new show

PAUL SMITH

Girl and Wolf, Ceramic

All Paul Smith’s ceramic sculptures are unique, hand-built one-offs.

Using a system of rods developed by Ian Gregory he freely builds the figures, removing the supports once the clay can withstand it’s own weight.

He has adapted Ian’s technique by incorporating a solid “back-iron” support. These working methods allow for free and spontaneous variations on a particular theme, each piece being unique and subtly different from it’s predecessor.

He sponge-decorates his work with oxides, stains and glazes. Firing is to 1140 degrees or above, depending on the nature of the work. All sculptures are individually signed and dated.

Curriculum Vitae (2006)

Born: Northampton 1961

Art Education: Leicester Polytechnic 1983
2:1 BA(Hons) Fine Art Sculpture

Hertfordshire College of Art and Design 1985
Postgraduate Diploma in Art Therapy

Employment : Employed as a full-time sculptor 1987 -1997
(Stoke on Trent figurine industry)

(I have worked full time from my own studio since 1998 )

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2004 June          Cambridge Contemporary Art - “If you go down to the woods
                         today”
2001 July           Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, Derbyshire - “Animalism”

SMALL-GROUP EXHIBITIONS AND FEATURED ARTIST
2006 July           Grizzly Tales, Buxton Museum & Art Gallery, Derbyshire
                         Showcase of new work as part of the Buxton Festival Fringe
2006 May/June   Gallerytop- Fauna-small group show. Rowsley, Derbyshire
2003 May           Cambridge Contemporary Art - Featured Ceramicist
2000 Nov            Sanderson, George and Peach, Holmfirth,West Yorkshire
                          Featured Ceramicist in Christmas Show
1999 May           Ashbourne Gallery, Derbyshire - 2 Man Show with painter
                         Angelo Murphy

ART FAIRS
1999-2006          Glasgow Art Fair (represented by The Lost Gallery,
April                   Aberdeenshire)
2000-2003          Affordable Art Fair, Battersea Park, London (The Lost Gallery)
October
2005 March        Affordable Art Fair, Battersea Park, London (represented by
                         Cambridge Contemporary Art)

CERAMICS FESTIVALS
2004 June          Earth and Fire, Rufford, Notts
2004 May           Brasschaat Conference and Biennale, Belgium
2003-2004          Gouda, Netherlands (May)
2003 May           Clayart, Denbigh, Wales
2002 May           Swalmen, Netherlands
2002 Sep           Milsbeek, Netherlands
2000-04/06         Potfest in the Park, Cumbria (July)
2000-2006          Art in Clay, Hatfield House, Herts (August)

AWARDS
Aug 2000           The Derbyshire Prize at the Derbyshire Open
Nov 2004            Highly Commended in the Zelli Porcelain Award

This information gratefully lifted from Pauls own site at www.paulsmithsculptures.co.uk where more photo's may be viewed

BEN ARNUP

Ben Arnup has been a self employed ceramicist for more than 22 years, initially in Berkshire, moving home to the York area in 1986.

Several gallery exhibitions are made each year, mostly in England, supplemented in the past by lecturing for York University, Hull University and at Cyprus College of Art.

Up until now, Ben has concentrated on geometric forms. However, having recently won an Arts Council Grant for research, he has devoted 2008 to the development of new forms that arise from techniques of distressing clay to the point of disintegration. The images here are pieces that were made over the summer of 2008. The show will also include work that is still being made at the time of writing (Nov 2nd).

PAMELA KNIGHT

CLAIRE MALET

Claire’s innovative gilded vessels are inspired by the rich textures, colours and sculpted shapes of eroded natural forms: fragments of sea-worn shells, the rock formations of a battered coastline, a curl of split bark. She also draws inspiration directly from the characteristics of the medium, and relishes the natural qualities of metal.

The fusion of reclaimed and precious metals in Claire’s vessels is highly unusual and gives a mysterious and exotic character to the work. Discarded metal containers are plucked from obscurity and transformed. Claire works each piece entirely with hand tools, using heat, chasing and gilding techniques and often pushes the metal to the limit of workability to achieve the organic qualities she seeks. Each vessel is unique.

Claire had a lively career as a community artist before studying at Hereford College of Art, from which she graduated in June 2005 with a BAHons in Contemporary Applied Art. Claire received The New Exhibitors Award at Hereford Contemporary Craft Fair 2005 and a Honorary Mention at Chelsea Crafts Fair 2005. The receipt of a grant to help equip her new garden studio has given Claire a good start in her new career. Claire's work can be seen in galleries throughout the UK.

Retail prices £180 - £1500

GILL DOUGLAS

Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, she worked variously as a secretary and a social worker before completely changing direction at the age of 27.

After five years at art college, in 1976 she qualified with a Diploma in Theatre Design at Nottingham and then came to York to work as a designer for the Theatre Royal for a year.

A period of freelance designing followed and in 1989 after a lengthy time of illness, she began to paint again and started working full-time as an Artist and Theatre Designer. By 1998 she was painting full-time . Since 2004 she has been studying for a Diploma in Printmaking part-time at York College. Now having bought her own printing press she works as a Painter/Printmaker from ‘The Lighthouse', her studio and home, high above the bustling streets in the heart of York.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

1991 - York Theatre Royal

1995 - ‘Intimate Views’, Treasurers' House, York.

1996 - ‘A Wider View’, Treasurers' House, York.

1997 - ‘To The Lighthouse’, Langwith , University of York

1997 - ‘To the Islands and Beyond’,Treasurers' House, York

1998 - ‘In Search of Solitude’,Treasurers' House, York.

1999 - ‘On The Edge’, Treasurers' House, York.

2000 - ‘Turn of the Tide’,Treasurers' House, York.

2001 - ‘A Sea Change’, Treasurers' House, York.

2002 - ‘Painting up a Storm’, Treasurers' House,York.

2003 - ‘Painting up a Storm’, The Chambers Gallery, Moffat

2003 - ‘From a Storm to a Whisper’, Treasurers' House York

2004 - ‘Spirit of the Islands’, Treasurers' House, York

2005 - ‘A Tide that Sings’,Langwith, University of York

2005 - ‘A Dream of Islands’, The Chambers Gallery, Moffat

2008 - ‘On the Edge’, Langwith, University of York

PHILIP HEARSEY Back to Top

After leaving Camberwell School of Art in the late 60's I somehow got involved in the building and joinery industry, which as chance would have it, laid the foundations for a lifetime career in architectural, interior and furniture design.

The Creation Of Bronze Vessel Forms and the Alchemy of Patination

Vessels are solid and heavy: formed using the sand-casting process. The procedure requires a solid original pattern [of which the final casting is a replica] to form a hollow impression in sand into which molten bronze is poured.

The work does not exist as any meaningful entity before it appears in bronze. Until then it is simply a casting pattern, a tool to be used in imagining the idea into a 3-dimensional reality.

The sand casting process is relentless and unforgiving – the patterns must withstand considerable abuse – the sand foundry is no place for a delicate original. It is also restrictive and, denying complexity of form, imposes a simplicity that is both disciplinary and at the same time, enriching.

Each casting roughly replicates the original pattern but requires considerable work to refine and finish the surface and form. Sometimes the casting is cut, pierced or individually shaped to create a unique version and although born from a common original, a truly one-off piece.

The rim is critical; it is the interface between the container and that which is contained - it is most usually bright polished and not only reveals the beauty, colour and solidity of the material but crucially exemplifies any asymmetry or dichotomy between the outer surface of the piece as a whole, the “container”, and the space or void that is contained.

Patination presents challenging, unpredictable and seemingly endless possibilities. Although based on sound chemical principles it nevertheless involves a degree of uncontrollable mystery, chance, accident and risk: no two pieces are, or ever will be, quite the same.

The colouring is not a coating, it is the surface itself: it is a transformation of the material, by the material, and is an outward manifestation and celebration of the bronze.

Elegant objects result that do not rely solely upon their intrinsic beauty: they possess an essential presence and resonance.

Lunar Rollerbowl, bronze, patinated, polished rim

Apostrophe, bronze

'Upright Comma' bronze