PotteryJames makes hardwearing, usable, practical everyday vessels but also more conceptual pieces inspired by his therapeutic work.
He chose clay 12 years ago as an additional means of physical expression in collaboration with his therapeutic work. It required learning an ever developing skill set that proved to be far more challenging frustrating and rewarding than ever envisaged. For the fluency of making to have any chance of flow that skill set needed to become part of him and he of it, to allow that inner source to express itself without intellectual control and censorship. James developed a passion for working with porcelain, the most unforgiving yet rewarding of clays. He was attracted by the constituent parts of flexibility, plasticity, strength and hardness all fusing together under firing to produce the most robust of pieces. The value of any thrown vessel is the space on the inside, because it is this space on the inside that dictates the outside form. It was this that particularly attracted James to bowls, the internal space they represent and the balance required in working with people and clay. In his pieces he contrasts the vulnerable unglazed texture with the glazed and decorated. |
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Exhibitions
Photobooks of 2016/17 exhibitions
2016 saw the first public event at The Builders Yard during Hereford Art week. The exhibition consisted of 100 bowls and pieces illustrating the human condition in a modern world and showing the link between working with clay and working with people. If a lump of clay is not centred the bowl becomes unbalanced with different thicknesses in the walls of the bowl and an uneven edge. If we leave too much weight in the bottom it becomes cumbersome and as we try to compensate by making the walls thinner, they warp and crack in the firing and if they survive the heat become brittle and easily chipped. So it is with us.
2017 was inspired by the Chinese Year of the Cockerel.
The cockerel knows his place in the world, claiming it in complete confidence every morning before the sun even rises. The ensuing exhibition pays tribute to the journey of porcelain from China, the aesthetics of Japan and adoption of porcelain by the West.
The Japanese tea bowl component was featured in Andelliart gallery in Wells.
2017 was inspired by the Chinese Year of the Cockerel.
The cockerel knows his place in the world, claiming it in complete confidence every morning before the sun even rises. The ensuing exhibition pays tribute to the journey of porcelain from China, the aesthetics of Japan and adoption of porcelain by the West.
The Japanese tea bowl component was featured in Andelliart gallery in Wells.
