Pottery

The old crypt of the St Edmunds Church building is a fully equipped pottery studio in which Salisbury Arts Centre provides a base for an artistic residency and offers the community a number of regular and themed classes/workshops for children, young people and adults.

Pottery workshops are led in a friendly and informal atmosphere where beginners work alongside advanced students and where individual creativity is encouraged and nurtured. Students are introduced to a wide range of hand building and ceramics surface treatment techniques and will get a thorough grounding in throwing on the potters wheel. The Arts Centre’s pottery benefits from both an electric and a gas kiln in which the students work is fired.

 
Regular pottery classes are taught by Mirka Golden-Hann and Jennie Gilbert.

Please watch for occasional themed classes as well as classes taught by visiting potters.

For information about Pottery Classes and other workshops at Salisbury Arts Centre taking place this autumn 2010 please click here.

 

Resident Artist Mirka Golden-Hann MA ceramic design

Mirka graduated from the iconic Harrow ceramics course in 1999. She received ‘Best Student Award’ at the Art in Clay festival later that year and has subsequently exhibited her work extensively in the UK and mainland Europe. In September 2009 she completed her Masters studies at Bath Spa University with a first class degree; specialising in colour in salt-glaze, a technology which is the area of her expertise. Within the last year Mirka’s fascination with colour manifests itself in her new porcelain work created in cooperation with the Arts Centre’s pottery.  Mirka is a published maker and an experienced pottery teacher. You can visit her website currently featuring her pre-MA work www.claystone.co.uk

 

Mirka's Artist Statement:

The prerequisite of learning and progressing is an open mind, everything and everyone is a potential influence. The more I have worked with clay the more I have noticed that it is not just the skill that creates but also the maker’s personality. My work is a reflection of myself at this point in my creative life. Creative practice is subject to continuous change. 

My focus now is principally on colour in ceramics challenging the traditional parameters such as surface utility and the aesthetic. In order to do this effectively I have reached out and away from ceramics and looked for inspiration in the study of colour theory. The new body of work is designed to communicate new potential in colour for ceramics, not just in the range of colours attainable but also in its ability to express a concept beyond that of common utility. Aspects of colour theory in action.

 

Jennie Gilbert

Jennie teaches our Wednesday evening pottery class for adults. Jennie originally trained in Swansea and then undertook a short apprenticeship in the village of La Borne in France, where she started making Reduction Fired Stoneware.  In 1993, she set up her own workshop in Surrey, developing her Domestic Range of Tin Glazed blue and white chequered work and her distinctive Mishima Range. Jennie now lives and works in Salisbury. You can find out more about Jennie and her work at www.jenniegilbert.co.uk.